THE postal workers have the support of the mass of the British people, the public sector trade unions and the other trade unions making up the TUC, plus the 175 mainly Labour MPs who have signed Early Day Motion 428.
The vast majority of the people are united that the Royal Mail must not be privatised.
Opposing this majority is the Brown government, and the Tory and Liberal parties who are following the lead of the Tory leader Cameron.
He has pledged in the House of Commons to PM Brown, that he should not worry about how many Labour MPs rebel, because the massed ranks of the Tory vote will see to it that the Royal Mail is up to 49.9 per cent privatised.
This will be done regardless of the fact that everybody knows that the privatisation of the Royal Mail does not have the support of the public!
What we have here is another Ramsay MacDonald national government in the making.
This time the Tories will keep in office a Labour rump, who have broken their pledge to the CWU that the Royal Mail will not be privatised.
While Brown has been ripping up his promises to the CWU he has been literally handing hundreds of billions to save the bankers, establishing a majority state shareholding in a number of banks, but without any control. This has left the bankers continuing to thumb their noses and flaunt their vast pensions in the face of the government.
Brown’s partner in this venture is the unelected Business Secretary Peter Mandelson. He has already been sacked twice as a cabinet minister. He is also a bosom pal of Russian and Indian billionaires. He has decided that the privatisation of the Royal Mail will be forced through whatever the cost is to postal workers and their families, plus the working class as a whole.
If Brown-Mandelson-Cameron get away with this onslaught on the Royal Mail and the general public, they will proceed directly to the next privatisation target, the NHS, while at the same time imposing a cruel regime that will make the working class pay for every pound of debt that the bankers have created.
The situation is crystal clear.
The postal workers have won the argument, but the Brown-Mandelson led ruling class is ready for a war to batter down the Royal Mail.
This situation requires action.
The CWU, if it is to win this war, must declare that if the House of Commons passes the Bill to privatise the Royal Mail it will take indefinite strike action.
On that basis it must then rally all the public sector and all the TUC trade unions who said at the recent London rally that they would consider taking action alongside the postal workers to decide to do just that.
The way to halt the privatisation of the Royal Mail is for the CWU to organise a general strike that will defeat the Brown-Mandelson government and bring it down.
This will clear the way for a workers government that will not only maintain the Royal Mail as a nationalised industry but nationalise the banks and the major industries and put them under workers’ control, the only way to defend every job and every family in the country.
After this clear-out a whole programme of public works can be started to build the millions of council houses that are now required.
These will provide jobs and skilled training, at trade union rates of pay for large numbers of workers and youth and put an end to the spectre of a return to the ‘hungry 30s’.
Hoping for the best is no solution. The working class has everything to lose but also has the strength to win. This is why action, not words, is the key to the situation.
