AT THE CWU rally at Central Hall yesterday afternoon, CWU leader Billy Hayes presented a successful outcome of the postal workers struggle as relying on getting PM Gordon Brown to intervene on their behalf to tell Royal Mail to act honourably and make a decent settlement with the CWU postal workers.
Well, as most people already know, there is more chance of hell freezing over than Brown doing the honourable thing.
He made this perfectly clear at his monthly press conference.
He called the strike actions unacceptable and said ‘I want these people back at work. I want the people to have the postal services immediately. . . We the government that is providing money for the post office will have to consider our position in the light of the events.’
Here he is threatening to bankrupt the Post Office and privatise it by diktat, dumping over 130,000 workers into the gutter.
Gordon Brown, who loves a banker, clearly hates the trade unions.
However union leaders, among them the CWU’s Hayes, insist in continuing to provide Brown and the Labour government with millions of pounds of his members’ money!
It is obvious that this strike will have to be won, and that Brown is quite capable of declaring a state of emergency and ordering a return to work.
For the struggle to be won the strike must be made indefinite, and the rest of the public sector brought out to mount a serious challenge to Royal Mail and behind it the Brown government.
In fact, at the CWU rally, Serwotka the civil servants’ leaders said: ‘If the government won’t settle we will all have to take strike action, if we have to.’
This moment of truth has now definitively arrived. We know from Brown’s remarks at his press conference that he is more intent on strike breaking than settling the dispute.
Therefore Serwotka is correct, ‘we will all have to take strike action’ – there has got be a general strike.
All branches, area and regional organisations of the CWU must demand of their leadership that it approaches all of the public sector trade unions and the TUC to organise action across the board in support of the postal workers against the Royal Mail and the Brown government.
The postal workers’ struggle is every worker’s struggle since every section of the working class is in the sights of a Labour government that intends to fatten the banks through robbing the working class.
If Hayes and Ward are incapable of making this turn, they must resign and make way for leaders who are seriously interested in winning this struggle on behalf of their 140,000 members and millions of other workers.
The branches of the CWU in the localities must begin the fight for indefinite strike action by the CWU and solidarity action across the public sector.
They must form councils of action in the areas and invite all local trade unions and community organisations to participate in taking strike action alongside the postal workers and fighting for a general strike to win the struggle.
To win the struggle means fighting the Brown government, and being prepared to bring it down, and to bring in a workers government.
This will end the onslaught on the Royal Mail and on all workers in the public and private sectors, by renationalising the privatised industries and expropriating the bosses and bankers, to bring in a socialist planned economy.
Central to this perspective is the building of a new revolutionary leadership in the trade unions in place of the current leaders who feel closer to Brown than they do to their own members.
Brown’s condemnation yesterday of the postal workers and his threat to de-finance Royal Mail must be answered by a general strike. There is no other way forward.
