With repeated cries of “Royal Mail, Not for Sale” and echoes of the 1980s with “Mandy, Mandy, Mandy, Out, Out, Out!” more than 1,000 CWU members and their supporters settled down in a meeting hall in Bilston near Wolverhampton on Saturday afternoon March 14th to listen to a range of speakers opposing the threat to privatise up to 49% of the postal services.

The day had begun in the late morning outside the Guru Nanak Sikh Temple in Arthur Street which had provided toilet facilities, teas and pakora for the marchers. When the march moved off it was preceded by three young Dhol drummers whose infectious Bhangra rhythm livened up the mood of the marchers and drew the attention of Saturday shoppers in the centre of Bilston as the march wound its way through the town centre to the meeting hall.

Interspersed among the marchers were CWU banners from all over the country, even from Scotland, North and South Wales as well as a PCS banner. The march was therefore representative of the CWU members nationally. On the march there were no police as the stewarding was done by CWU local members. What a demonstration yet again of the ability of the working class in action to organise itself and maintain discipline.

 And why was a national march held in Bilston, once famous for its steel works? Bilston is the constituency of the Minister for Postal Affairs Pat McFadden, who is assisting Mandy, Lord Peter Mandelson, to push through the privatisation proposals. This march was the biggest in Bilston since 1979 during the campaign to save the British Steel plant.

All of the platform speakers, including Labour MP Geraldine Smith and Labour MEP Brian Simpson, lambasted the labour Government’s proposals. With facts and figures both highlighted the record of privatisation in higher prices for worsening services accompanied by massive job losses in pursuit of profits and dividends for the new private owners. The other speakers, ranging from local labour councillor Phil Page and regional TUC official Roger McKenzie to CWU national leaders Bill Hayes and Tony Kearns, all hammered home the same message – the crisis in the post office is not the fault of the postal workers. Day in day out some 160,000 postal workers all over the UK turn out in all kinds of weather to deliver the post and get paid a low wage for the job, yet the head of the service Adam Crozier gets more than £3m per year and is incapable of managing the service.

The loudest cheers and claps were for those speakers who denounced the Labour government that was accused of breaking promises to keep the PO wholly public  - promises that were made at the 2005 Labour Party Conference as well as at the two meeting in Warwick where agreements were struck between trade union and LP leaders.

CWU speakers recognised that there was a problem with the pension fund, a problem affecting all pension funds except that of the MPs, as pension funds had invested in the stock markets where share values have fallen. That money, amounting to £bns, should now be paid back into the fund. This problem is the government’s responsibility. It will not be solved by privatisation. In addition, the employers’ side, that is the government, had taken a 13 year pension holiday when the times were good. There were also plans afoot and approved, with money available, to pay £280m per year for 15 years, to rebuild the pension funds.

The CWU speakers outlined forthcoming activities to build the movement against the privatisation plans. There were already more than 120 Labour MPs who had signed an Early Day Motion to keep the PO public. The next stage of the campaign would be to target those constituencies where there were Labour MPs who had still not signed the EDM. The problem with Mandelson is that he does not have a constituency as he is a Lord, so his house may be targeted for demonstrations. The point was made that some 92 unelected members of the Lords, who were there because of who their father was and therefore have no “democratic mandate”, were discussing and deciding on the fate of the post office.

The next phase of the campaign was a veiled threat to ballot CWU members on the union continuing to support financially, through affiliations, a Labour Party in government that is hell bent on attacking the livelihoods and jobs of those who work in the PO. The credibility of members with the Labour Government was being stretched. Speaker after speaker could not understand how the government could believe the mantra that “Private was Good, Public was Bad” when we are in the middle of the most serious crisis in capitalism since the 1930s, a crisis caused by the so-called “private enterprise” section of the economy. As one speaker said it was a perverse sign of the times that the government had been defending PFI on the basis that there was not enough public money available to finance public projects, yet £bns had been found to bail out the banks. Even worse, PFI bidders for public projects had been unable to raise funds in the capital markets to make a bid and were now bailed out with public funds to help them make these bids! What a condemnation of the bankruptcy of capitalism where it can only survive with the support of public money.

As regards CWU relations with Labour, the threat was made by CWU Deputy General Secretary in charge of Postal Services Dave Ward that trade unions may put up candidates in the next general election against Labour MPs who support privatisation of the PO. Rather than doing that it would  be more sensible and easier to get CWU members into their local Labour Parties to deselect MPs that do not support the campaign and then select candidates who do support the campaign? By putting up opposition candidates it leaves the LP in the hands of the right wing pro-privatisation leadership with a weakened internal LP opposition. Dave also stated that strike action as part of the campaign could not be ruled out. His words received a standing ovation that reflected the mood of those present.

The CWU will now expand the campaign to mobilise public support against the government.  In the 1980s the CWU was at the forefront of helping other sections of the labour movement to defend jobs. Now it was the turn of the CWU to defend its own members’ jobs and it was calling on the rest of the labour and trade union movement to help it do so. 

But what will be the aims of that campaign? Will it be to bring back in house those lucrative delivery contracts that have been handed out to private firms like TNT? Will there be a call to take into public ownership the private parasites that leech off public services? It must not be to maintain the status quo of a public postal service with a management on astronomical salaries that does not know how to manage, that is hell bent on running the service into the ground? Would it not be far more sensible to fight for a service that was controlled and managed by the workers in the PO and the wider trade union movement? If workers in Venezuela can take over plants threatened with privatisation or closure, and run those plants under workers’ control and management, why can’t the same be done in the PO? 

As regards the financing of the PO would it not be or sensible to nationalise the banking system to provide funds for a programme of planned investment and development. Such a programme would mean that improvements in productivity and efficiency in the service would not be at the expense of postal workers jobs, but would be to make those jobs easier with new technology leading to a shorter working week.

The CWU already has massive support in their fight. Most Labour MPs and 75% of the public are against these privatisation plans. If the CWU loses, it will give the green light to other planned moves to privatise public services under Labour. Not even the Tories when they were in office would have dared to privatise the PO, but now Labour might get their plans through Parliament relying on the support of the Tories!  As the CWU goes into battle with the support of the rest of the labour movement what will the role of the TUC?  Will it be to organise and coordinate the actions of the almost seven million trade unionists in the UK to support the CWU and defend a publicly owned postal service? Will there be demands for a one-day General Strike of all public sector workers to demonstrate to the government the strength of feeling on this issue and to show to public sector workers the organised power that they have once they take action?

The CWU is now in the forefront of the battle to defend public services and is determined to win. It deserves the active support of the whole of the trade union movement. As Dave Jones, Branch Political Officer for Wolverhampton and District CWU, stated at the meeting, “The government has picked a fight with the wrong people.”