The next battle in defence of public sector jobs will begin along a familiar front. A few months ago, with New Labour clearly bombing in the polls, a move was made within the parliamentary section of the party to force Brown aside, ostensibly so that a new leader could be elected - heaving the stinking carcass of the Blair/Brown years overboard. In spite of a handful of policy wonks and bureaucrats putting their heads up in interest - David Milliband had been jockeying for space at the front of the queue for some time, while Alan Johnson was not without significant support - no-one was willing to stick the knife in. Past experience has shown that the person to do so usually writes themselves out of the leadership contest in the process. Whether by accident or design this left the Brown premiership isolated from a large section of the parliamentary Labour party - with perhaps only Alistair Darling holding his nose long enough to stand with him (when asked about the state of the economy as the recession really took it’s toll shortly beforehand he had almost responded simply by miming the placing of a pistol inside his mouth then pulling trigger) - all the rumours pointed to Geoff Hoon and Patricia Hewitt as being the architects of this entire affair.

From what can be gathered it appears this Hoonite putsch in New Labour jostled Brown away from the levers of power long enough for Geoff Hoon and Patricia Hewitt to make an abortive attempt to cut back at civil servant redundancy payments via the Civil Service Compensation Scheme - no doubt in an attempt to establish their credentials with big business and finance capital by doing a particularly dirty job without expending any of the political capital the Tories had available for the post-election cuts. But before this could be completed, of course, both Hoon and Hewitt were embroiled in the cash-for-influence scandal, where Geoff Hoon was secretly filmed peddling his influence and contacts within the upper echelons of government and policy making in order to secure his next vocation upon leaving parliament. The scandal cut across this particular career move of theirs in fairly inglorious fashion - leaving the members of the Hoonite conspiracy in the political wilderness. The attempt to hack back at redundancy payments was beaten back by strike action on the part of about a quarter of a million PCS members across the civil service, with the decisive blow being struck by legal action brought by PCS, with the judicial review finding that the changes were invalid.

Once again, though, the new government has turned its eyes towards the redundancy payments of civil servants. The Tories reckon on saving more than the £500 million envisaged by the Hoonites last year when the time comes to destroy over half a million jobs across the public sector, a good portion of which is to come from the civil service. In a letter written to civil servants in the DWP, permanent secretary Leigh Lewis writes that "the broader context of this announcement [the hacking back of workers terms and conditions] is obviously the requirement for all of us in the Civil Service to play our part in reducing the fiscal deficit [which really means that Mr. Lewis would have us live in the abject poverty of the dole queue so the bankers and capitalists can continue to spin money out of money]." So, the government doles out billions in propping up the banking sector - effectively privatising those billions of pounds of taxpayers money - borrowing around £800,000,000 from Barclays and HSBC in the process and, in order to make the repayments (including interest!) to these banks, hundreds of thousand of public sector workers must now lose their jobs, have wages and redundancy payments cut away thus leaving those who keep their jobs to do the same overall amount of work with fewer staff, on less pay, ultimately receiving pensions which will be cut by around 20%, if we are permitted to retire before we die! Looking at this 20% cut in particular, formerly the average pension for a civil service worker was about £4,200 (£3,600 if you were female), that meaning if we were permitted to retire at 65 we could subsist on our pensions up to say, 85, that is if we didn't die of hunger for paying our heating bills, or of cold for trying to feed ourselves that is - now we can have the same atrocious standard of living up to around 80 when we will have no money of our own to put food on the table, clothe ourselves or heat our homes! As if to insult all workers across the civil service Lewis continues: “Francis Maude has explained that the new coalition Government wants to proceed by negotiation with the unions. Specifically, it wishes to have a permanent and sustainable new scheme which is both appropriate to current times and also gives greater protection to less well paid civil servants. The Government has today written to the Council of Civil Service Unions to invite them to discuss this.

In order to secure the savings required in a time of extreme economic pressure and to create the basis for further negotiations in the light of the current deadlock, the Government has reluctantly decided that it has also to begin a legislation process.

Legislation would limit the cost of future exit payments under the current (pre-reform) terms by:

·       capping all compulsory redundancy payments at 12 months’ salary; and
·       limiting payments for voluntary exits to 15 months’ salary.”.

So! The Tories want to negotiate with us the least painful way of cutting their pound of flesh from our collective body - but only after the knife has spilt our blood! Let us not forget that these redundancy payments may well be the last bits of money many civil servants will ever receive from an employer as the wasteland of lifelong unemployment beckons. Let us be clear, these jobs will never come back. Many parts of the country will return to the nightmare days of the eighties and early nineties – after the waves of closures and cuts under Thatcher. These Tories make wonderful noises about compromise and negotiation with the unions, the elected representatives of the workers, but they are prepared to force through their demands regardless. The Tories know the stakes, and have every intention of ramming this down the necks of civil service workers and anyone trying to tell us that a deal can be reached on the basis of negotiation or compromise (as the right wing in the PCS tried to in the recent gen sec and NEC elections) are foolish, deceitful or both. Our only defences are our unity of purpose, our collective organisation, not only through our unions but also through our party and a grim determination to bear many burdens. First, to the picket line, to hold off this assault on the working class as a whole. Then , to the party – clear out the pro-big business careerists, bring democracy back to our party, bring back the youth sections, the branches, resolutions at congress! No cuts to the public services. Nationalise the banks under workers control. An emergency program for the construction of public housing. One restriction only on workers from abroad – they work for union rates. Ultimately, we must have a Labour Party fighting for socialist policies.