PCS:
the real issues at stake
The dispute within the left
of Britain’s largest civil service union raises key issues for the whole
labour movement. Above all, the need for democratic, lay-member control
of fighting trade unions. HANNAH SELL and ROB WILLIAMS explain the
background to the current situation.
For a decade and a half the
leadership of the civil servants’ union, PCS, has been dominated by the
left. Both the senior elected officers and the majority of the NEC are
members of Left Unity (LU), the broad left organisation in which the
Socialist Party plays a leading role. But at this year’s PCS conference,
Mark Serwotka, PCS general secretary, launched a campaign to support
Janice Godrich, currently union president, for the position of assistant
general secretary (AGS), in opposition to the incumbent, Socialist Party
member Chris Baugh, who has held the position since 2004.
Of course, within a
democratic left any individual, including those in key positions, has
every right to stand for any position. Nonetheless, PCS activists were
rightly concerned by this development. This was partly because such a
divisive campaign was irresponsibly launched at the same time as the
start of a major battle to try and win a ballot for national industrial
action over pay. And because they understood that it could lead to a
serious rupture on the left, which might weaken the union’s fighting
capacity.
Mark Serwotka had previously
approached the Socialist Party, giving us an ultimatum that, if we
selected Chris Baugh as the Socialist Party’s nominee for the LU
candidate for AGS, he would put forward another candidate, and that his
preference was Janice Godrich, a fellow Socialist Party member.
It has since become apparent
that Janice had already agreed to this proposal and was determined to
press ahead, regardless of the outcome of discussions in our party. As
is our tradition, the Socialist Party had a comradely and democratic
internal discussion, with both sides listened to and given equal time to
put their views. An overwhelming majority agreed that Chris should
stand. Unfortunately, a small number of Socialist Party members,
including Janice, disregarded the party’s decision.
Mark Serwotka initially
attempted to argue that his opposition to Chris Baugh was personal.
However, it is not credible to suggest that such a serious conflict
could develop for purely, or even primarily, personal reasons. To date,
Mark has refused to engage in a serious debate about his political
criticisms of Chris, something he would correctly demand of any left
standing against him for general secretary. We, however, conclude that
potentially serious political and industrial differences lie behind
these events, as will become clear as the debate over the LU AGS
candidate unfolds.
Socialists’ role in trade unions
Trade unions are basic
organisations of the working class through which millions of workers can
defend themselves against their employers in the workplace. However, the
constant attempts of the capitalist class to incorporate the union tops
into the capitalist state mean that there is always an internal struggle
within the trade union movement. On one side stands the pressure of the
mass membership, who the union tops ultimately depend on for their
positions. On the other, the huge pressure exerted by capitalism on all
representatives of working people, especially in the unions. The counter
pressure of democratic trade union broad lefts is therefore vital.
Our task is to try and act as
a lever to aid the development of the trade unions as effective tools
for struggle in defence of the interests of the working class. A vital
part of this is to fight for the maximum possible democracy and against
any elements of privilege or bureaucracy. This is the role we have
consistently played in PCS, and its predecessor CPSA. The CPSA had a
vicious right-wing leadership, almost literally the ‘M15 tendency’, as
shown by the recent release of state papers. The Socialist Party (then
Militant) was the backbone of the struggle to transform the CPSA into a
fighting, democratic trade union. This was recognised by our enemies –
the Guardian reported that MI5 in the 1980s was "most concerned with the
Militant Tendency".
However, we never sought to
work alone. On the contrary, we always prioritised the building of an
open, democratic trade union left – today known as Left Unity – to bring
together all those activists who want to fight for the transformation of
the union. Unfortunately, this is not Mark Serwotka’s record. He
originally stood for the general secretary against the democratic
decision of LU, incorrectly arguing that it did not matter if he split
the anti-Reamsbottom vote as there was no difference between the old
guard right-winger Barry Reamsbottom and Hugh Lanning, then deputy
general secretary, who was also standing.
Nonetheless, this did not
prevent the Socialist Party – and LU – going on to campaign for Mark
Serwotka’s candidature when Reamsbottom did not secure enough
nominations and, subsequently, backing him to the hilt when the right
wing attempted a coup against his election. Clearly, the same approach
of loyal collaboration is not being repeated by Serwotka and company.
After the left won control of
the union, there have been important moves to democratise and transform
PCS. Unfortunately, however, we now see the danger of that process being
thrown into reverse, with power increasingly concentrated in the hands
of unelected officials. Pressure in this direction is inevitable, given
the difficult period the trade union movement is going through, but it
is vital it is resisted.
Capitalist offensive
The increased pressures on
the PCS are bound up with the stage of the class struggle in general.
Since the start of the economic crisis, the capitalist class in Britain
has intensified its relentless attempts to decrease the share of wealth
taken by the working class. It has made significant gains, from its
point of view. The International Labour Organisation’s figures show that
UK workers’ average real wages fell by 1% a year from 2008-15.
At the same time, the public
sector has shrunk dramatically, with over one million fewer workers than
in 2009. This has included a fall in the number of civil servants by
around a quarter to 427,000. This is the biggest factor in the decline
in membership of the PCS, from 313,000 in 2006 to 195,000 in 2016.
Over the same period, levels
of union density have fallen. Overall union membership fell by 4.2% in
2016 alone, predominantly in the public sector and probably linked to
job losses. Nonetheless, trade unions remain potentially the most
powerful mass organisations in Britain, with 6.2 million members. What
is more, the driving down of the wages and living conditions of
previously quite privileged sections has resulted in many beginning to
orientate to the unions and adopt working-class methods of struggle. In
2016 there was a record low official level of strikes, with just 322,000
working days lost, but 40% of them were down to junior doctors, taking
part in determined, militant strike action.
However, for a number of
years the union movement has been in general retreat in the face of
relentless attack from the capitalist class and Tory government. The
result has been a decrease in the degree to which the movement is seen
as an effective way for workers to defend themselves. How could it be
otherwise when, in many sectors, trade union leaders have not attempted
to effectively defend their members? As a result, unions with more
militant leaderships, like the PCS, have been fighting a rear-guard
action in difficult circumstances.
This was not preordained. In
2011, almost 1.4 million days were lost in strike action, the highest
since 1990, as public-sector unions took coordinated action in defence
of pension rights. The strikes were marked by the enthusiasm and mass
participation of hundreds of thousands of trade unionists, many taking
action for the first time, particularly in the strike day
demonstrations. They could have been a springboard for further
coordinated strike action, as the Socialist Party argued at the time,
drawing in workers from the private sector as well. This could have
defeated the government and dramatically altered the balance of class
forces.
Instead, the leadership of
the TUC capitulated and accepted a rotten deal. While there was
opposition to this among rank-and-file members, the previous period
meant that they were not yet sufficiently steeled and active in the
structures of the unions to force their leaderships to change tack. This
increased the confidence of the capitalist class to go on the offensive.
It also strengthened the cowardly and pessimistic mood of the majority
of the trade union tops, who increasingly see their role as only trying
to mitigate the worst aspects of any attack.

The role of PCS
The PCS was to the fore in
fighting for coordinated action. It was one of four unions that took
action in June 2011, which acted as a lever to bring about the 29
union-strong strike that November. Then, when the majority of union
leaders settled for a rotten deal, PCS again led the struggle against
that retreat. This included LU calling a conference of lefts across the
union movement. Inevitably, however, the confidence of PCS members to
take strike action was dented by the general retreat.
In addition, the combative
stance of the PCS has meant that the Tories have targeted it for attack.
Tory minister Francis Maude, for example, launched the offensive against
trade union facility time in 2012 by targeting the civil service –
slashing it by more than 50%. The PCS were also guinea pigs for the
removal of check-off – forcing the union to focus huge effort on getting
members to pay their dues by direct debit.
The latest attacks on union
rights culminated in the implementation of vicious new anti-trade union
legislation, which the TUC did not oppose through effective mobilisation
and action. PCS has now fallen foul of these undemocratic laws in its
latest national ballot which, while it had a powerful 86% yes vote for
strike action, is decreed to be illegal because the turnout was below
50%.
A left leadership cannot
magic problems away in a complicated situation and, when that continues
for a long period, it can wear down the nerves and determination of such
a leadership. Nonetheless, the basic tasks are clear: in the face of
each attack from the government, to fight to convince PCS members that
they must be prepared to take effective action in defence of their pay,
conditions and rights, while preserving the strength of PCS for future
battles. This cannot be separated from continuing to campaign for
coordinated strike action against austerity.
Unfortunately, over the last
few years, the latter concept has been downplayed by Mark Serwotka.
Correct resolutions have continued to be put to the TUC calling for
coordinated action. However, there has been no serious attempt to create
a ‘coalition of the willing’ prepared to try to act together as a lever
on other unions – as in 2011 and 2012 – both by publicly appealing to
the union tops and by inspiring their rank and file to make demands from
below.
Since 2012, Chris Baugh and
other Socialist Party members have raised the need to put pressure on
right-wing union leaderships by campaigning for joint action with
left-led unions on a systematic basis. The potential for building close
coordination among the most active and militant trade unions, including
joint meetings of NECs – rather than appeals to the TUC and bilateral
discussions with some general secretaries – has not been acted on by
Mark Serwotka. Even on an issue as crucial as the threat of the new
anti-trade union laws such measures were not pursued.
Yet campaigning for those
proposals could have played an important role in giving confidence to
workers in other unions to make demands on their leaderships. As the
determined struggle of University and College Union members last year
showed – where attempts by the leadership to accept a woeful deal were
overturned by an uprising of strikers – important sections of workers
are learning by bitter experience. Endless austerity is forcing new
layers to move into action and begin to transform their unions. A left
union leadership that consistently puts forward a fighting strategy for
the whole trade union movement can speed up that process.
Undermining democratic traditions
Potentially, the proposed
merger of the PCS with Unite, first mooted after the 2011 setback, could
have been an important step to strengthening the most fighting elements
in the union movement. Chris Baugh and the Socialist Party supported the
merger provided it was done on a democratic and open basis, providing
opportunities to strengthen the left in the merged union. Unfortunately,
this was not the way it was approached by Mark Serwotka and others in
the PCS leadership. Chris, the second most senior elected official in
the union, was kept off the merger sub-committee in an attempt to hurry
the merger through, without sufficient discussion in the PCS about the
basis on which it would be carried out.
Regrettably, rather than the
main motive being to strengthen the fighting capacity of the union
movement, the proposed merger would have contained a large element of
expediency arising from the difficulties facing PCS. The NEC’s defeat on
this issue at its 2014 conference showed that this was understood by
delegates, anxious to protect the best traditions of the union.
The way the merger
discussions were approached was a warning of the danger of a general
undermining of the PCS’s democratic traditions. The previous period has
put a huge strain on the union’s structures. Over a period of time, this
has led to a dangerous trend towards a decrease in the union’s
democratic, lay-member-led traditions, and a strengthening of the power
of unelected officials. Chris Baugh and other Socialist Party members
have tried to counter this but have met opposition at each stage.
Unfortunately, this includes from Janice Godrich, who has been oblivious
of these dangers. This indicates that, if elected as AGS, she would not
resist this negative trend.
The possibility of creeping
bureaucratisation exists in every workers’ organisation, including the
most formally democratic. It is not only, or even mainly, related to
material privileges. Rather, under the continual pressures of the class
struggle, the administrative machine can tend to supplant the collective
voice of the rank and file. Workers’ parties and even workers’ states
have also faced – and will face – such difficulties. Leon Trotsky wrote
of the pressure on even the most dedicated leaders, "to concentrate
their attentions solely upon questions of administration, of
appointments and transfers; to narrow their horizon; to weaken their
revolutionary spirit". Such processes, he added, "develop slowly and
almost imperceptibly, but reveal themselves abruptly. To see in this
warning, based upon objective Marxist foresight, an ‘outrage’, an
‘assault’, etc, really requires the skittish sensitivity and arrogance
of bureaucrats".
Faced with a drop in the
number of PCS activists – partly as a result of job losses, because of
cuts to facility time and, in some cases, due to the difficulties of the
period – there is bound to be a pull to substitute unelected full-time
officials for the union members. This must be seriously resisted, both
from the top and by the rank and file.

Lay-member leadership
Unfortunately, this has not
been resisted sufficiently by Mark Serwotka and others in the
leadership. Our party has long supported extending the election of
officers from the current two elected full-time officials – the general
secretary and AGS. As a result, it has become LU policy, passed at the
PCS national conference in 2017. Yet its implementation has been
continually delayed.
At the same time, the duties
of the elected AGS, Chris Baugh, have been repeatedly undermined or
removed – in effect, handed to unelected officers. Mark Serwotka
justified this in discussions with Peter Taaffe, Socialist Party general
secretary, and Rob Williams, the party’s national industrial organiser.
He then wrote to the Socialist Party confirming his determination to
stand a candidate against Chris, alleging "repeated attempts to
undermine my decisions and my authority as GS".
We have refuted this
accusation verbally and in writing, but the response of a general
secretary to conflict with the union’s only other elected official
should not be to remove his duties and diminish his role. It should be
to bring the issues to the elected leadership of the union, the NEC, for
discussion and decision on the way forward. This has never been done.
Instead, the handing of
Chris’s responsibilities to unelected officials has continued, without
any discussion on the NEC. This includes events during the very
difficult period of Mark Serwotka’s illness and heart transplant. The
sensitivity of the situation, with Mark critically ill, meant that the
Socialist Party decided that its members would not raise any complaint
about the undemocratic manoeuvres taking place.
This has not prevented
completely false rumours that Chris was ‘plotting a coup’. In fact, he
and other Socialist Party members were involved in discussions within
our party on how to defend the lay democracy from infringement by
unelected full-time officers. Reluctantly, we agreed that we could not
raise that infringement without a conflict with Mark Serwotka, at a time
when he was unfortunately gravely ill, and would therefore remain
silent.
Normal practise when a
general secretary is temporarily unable to work, is that the duties are
handed to the next most-senior elected officer – in PCS’s case, the AGS.
When Dave Ward, Communication Workers’ Union general secretary, was
seriously ill for a number of months, its NEC agreed that Tony Kearns,
CWU senior deputy general secretary, would step in on a temporary basis.
The same thing should have happened in the PCS. Instead, Mark Serwotka
delegated his duties to unelected officials and side-lined Chris Baugh.
Chris and other Socialist
Party members have since been criticised for supporting lay group
presidents who raised concerns about various aspects of organisation
during this period, including the seemingly arbitrary removal of
officials in the middle of disputes. Yet, in doing so, we were only
endeavouring to ensure that the concerns of lay representatives were
taken account of. This was during a difficult situation when issues were
not being discussed at the NEC but behind closed doors by a senior
management team dominated by unelected officers, with little or no
involvement of elected lay reps.
There have been other
worrying developments. For example, setting up a new hub structure
arising from the cost-cutting restructuring. This has raised the
possibility of an alternative to elected regional committees developing,
or at least downgrading them, thereby reducing accountability of the
appointed officers. The Socialist Party will campaign to ensure this is
not the outcome.
In addition, differences have
emerged in recent years over organising and bargaining. We believe, and
Chris Baugh has argued, that bargaining issues and organising are
inextricably linked, and that they needed to be reflected in resource
allocation. Mark Serwotka and the circle of unelected full-time officers
who support him have questioned the value of negotiations in the current
situation. This has led to organisation being seen as an end in itself.
We have also called for an
urgent special national pay conference to discuss the way forward after
the ballot set-back. Mark Serwotka, Janice Godrich and others, it seems,
oppose this on grounds of cost. This is not necessarily an illegitimate
argument but, in our view, it is outweighed by the vital need to pull
the key union activists together to debate and decide how to defeat the
Tory pay cap following the ballot, which will have disorientated a layer
of members.
More generally, we believe it
is vital that LU acts to fight, as it has in the past, to maintain and
extend the democratic lay-member-led traditions of PCS, which have
weakened in the recent period.
Political representation
With May’s administration
teetering on the brink of collapse, leading the Blairites to step up
their campaign to prevent the election of a Corbyn-led government,
issues relating to the Labour Party have assumed increasing importance
for the whole trade union movement.
This has been another point
of tension between Mark Serwotka and the Socialist Party. This was the
case even under Ed Miliband’s Labour leadership, but has intensified
since. In 2012, the PCS held a membership ballot on whether it should
have the authority to "stand or support candidates in national elections
that would help to defend members’ jobs, pay, pensions and public
services". A huge 78.9% agreed that it should.
This was a big step forward,
particularly given the history of the civil service. Almost a century
earlier, after the defeat of the 1926 general strike, civil service
unions had been banned from affiliating to the TUC and Labour Party.
Ever since, the capitalist class has promoted the idea that civil
servants should not be ‘political’. This seeped deep into the
consciousness of much of an older generation of civil servants, and
remnants of it exist even today.
In 2005, however, PCS members
voted to establish a political fund. Then, following thirteen years of
pro-capitalist New Labour governments attacking pay and conditions, and
even more brutal attacks by the Tory/Liberal Democrat coalition, a mood
developed among PCS activists that to fight without a political voice
was to fight with one hand tied behind their backs. In addition, there
was agreement that none of the establishment parties represented PCS
members’ interests and, therefore, they should consider standing or
backing candidates who did. Unfortunately, the excellent 2012 vote was
never acted on.
Mark Serwotka gave individual
backing to Leanne Wood when she stood for the leadership of Plaid Cymru
(Party of Wales) in 2012. This was mistaken, in our view, given Plaid’s
record of implementing austerity at local level. However, at no stage
did the PCS approach other unions to begin discussing standing
candidates. In 2015, with Ed Miliband’s New Labour committed to
continuing the Con-Dems’ public spending targets, no support was given
to any anti-austerity candidates in the general election.
The Labour link
Following these missed
opportunities, the election of Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader marked a
significant and unexpected step forward, which all of LU, including Mark
Serwotka and the Socialist Party, wholeheartedly welcomed.
Unfortunately, this was not the end of our differences in approach.
Corbyn’s election was potentially an important victory for the working
class, but it did not mean that Labour had been transformed into a party
of the working class. Rather, it was and is two parties in one: a
potential anti-austerity party in formation around Jeremy Corbyn, and a
pro-capitalist Blairite party dominating the Parliamentary Labour Party
and local councils, and determined to defeat Corbyn.
The role of the workers’
movement should be to fight for the transformation of Labour into a
workers’ party. This would mean introducing mandatory reselection,
removing the Blairites from their positions and democratising the party.
That includes restoring trade union rights, readmitting expelled
socialists and moving to a modern version of the federal structure on
which the Labour Party was founded. This would allow the Socialist Party
and others to affiliate.
Unfortunately, the leadership
of Momentum – founded to defend Corbyn – has not put forward a fighting
strategy of this kind, but attempts to conciliate with the Blairites,
most recently by removing Pete Willsman from its list for the NEC
election, on spurious claims of antisemitism. Rather than fight to
transform the Labour Party, the Momentum leadership sees its main role
as trying to ‘police’ the left, making it ‘acceptable’ to the Labour
right. In reality, the left will only be acceptable to them if it is
completely defeated.
This is why the Socialist
Party, along with a majority of the PCS NEC and the 2016 conference,
opposed Mark Serwotka’s attempts to convince the union to affiliate to
Momentum. He argued for this – against the position of the NEC – on the
public platform of a Momentum fringe meeting at PCS conference. We have
also attempted – at each stage – to convince PCS members, not least Mark
Serwotka, to play a leading role in the battle to transform Labour, not
just by supporting Jeremy Corbyn but also by clearly opposing the
Blairites.
These capitalist
representatives in the Labour Party will do all they can to stop Corbyn
becoming prime minister. If, despite them, he does – and they are still
in the Labour Party – they will attempt to sabotage any attempt to
implement radical policies in the interests of the working class. A
Corbyn-led government will be far stronger if Labour’s pro-capitalist
wing is removed beforehand.
The Blairites are one of the
many means the capitalist class will use to try to force him to retreat.
A fighting union movement, demanding Corbyn implements policies in
workers’ interests, will be vital.
That is why, when a
consultation on political strategy was launched in 2016, Socialist Party
members argued strongly that it should include a reference to the MPs
seeking to undermine Corbyn. The original draft, by talking about "a new
anti-austerity leadership" of Labour and a "huge influx of members",
without any reference to the problems, potentially disarmed PCS members.
However, our attempts to convince Mark Serwotka’s office to include a
reference to local Labour councils implementing cuts were not
successful.
We also argued, again
unsuccessfully, for a reference to the current lack of democratic
structures in the Labour Party. The document referred to the decision of
the Fire Brigades Union to re-affiliate. Our suggestion to include the
position of the left in the RMT not to re-affiliate while the existing
undemocratic Labour Party structures remained was not agreed. In the
event, a majority of those responding to the political consultation
opposed affiliation.
This year’s conference agreed
to launch a new consultation where arguments for affiliation will be
put. The Socialist Party will oppose passive affiliation to the existing
Labour Party structure, but will argue for the PCS to continue to
support Jeremy Corbyn’s anti-austerity policies, while engaging with the
Labour leadership on how the party’s structures could be transformed.
A wider relevance
These are just some of the
issues raised in the PCS left in recent years. It is inevitable and
healthy that debate takes place. Unfortunately, the fact that Mark
Serwotka appears to find raising such issues unacceptable is a retreat
from the best traditions of Left Unity, which has always encouraged
open, democratic discussion.
We do not accept that the
‘personal’ behaviour of Chris Baugh is responsible for the current
situation. Not one concrete allegation about his behaviour has been made
within LU or on the PCS NEC. In reality, this conflict is a reflection
of a certain tiredness after a difficult period, and the beginning of a
worrying trend towards the undermining of lay democracy within the
union.
Why has that manifested
itself in opposition to one individual, Chris Baugh? Firstly, as the
only other elected full-time official, it has naturally occurred that
those who have come into conflict with unelected full-time officials
acting in Mark Serwotka’s name look to Chris for assistance. Secondly,
because of his membership of the Socialist Party.
Of course, there are numerous
good left activists in PCS who are not members or supporters of the
Socialist Party, many of whom support Chris for AGS. And, unfortunately,
Janice Godrich agreed to be Mark Serwotka’s preferred candidate to
replace Chris despite being a member of the Socialist Party.
Nonetheless, being part of a Marxist party – with a programme for the
transformation of the union movement, and of society – has aided Chris
and others in standing firm under considerable pressure.
Not for nothing did MI5’s
Subversion in Public Life organisation – for monitoring ‘extremists’ in
the 1980s – consider us the "most threatening Trotskyist group in
Britain" in the civil service. It said our "greatest strengths" were our
clarity of ideas and "the dedication of its members" to fighting for the
interests of the working class.
We call upon all
rank-and-file PCS members not to go down the dangerous road represented
by Janice Godrich’s candidature for AGS, and to support Chris Baugh and
the Socialist Party’s well-tested methods of building open, democratic,
fighting broad lefts as a lever to transform the trade union movement.
This discussion has relevance not just for PCS members but for every
trade unionist and worker.