Post Worker held a fringe meeting at the CWU conference to discuss the challenges facing the union and elect (rubberstamp?) its editorial committee. This annual event is the only time it is possible to actually get involved in Post Worker – its controlling force the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) states that it is for “socialism from below”, but blink and you’d miss Post Worker’s brief opening to the postal masses. However this year’s meeting was a bit different, showing that strains on the SWP’s strategy have emerged after last year’s strike.

The meeting was titled “Picket lines, politics and pension” and chaired by Jane Loftus, CWU president and leading SWP member. The main postal speaker was meeting was Martin Walsh, the London Divisional Rep responsible for the bureaucratic manouvre ensuring the union remains manacled to Labour for another nine months at least. A victimised rep from the Burslem strikers spoke on their continued quest for justice, as did Karen Reissman, victimised Unison healthworker.

Jane Loftus and the Renegade Belfast Reps

Things heated up pretty early on when CWU members from Belfast spoke of their struggle against the suspension of the Northern Ireland No. 1 Branch. They accuse the leadership, Billy Hayes in particular, of ignoring their calls for an independent investigation after the branch has been suspended for nearly a year. Without endorsing any side in the controversy, it is a scandal that a key branch is suspended for so long, at a time when every bastion of the union needs to be on its feet and ready to fight for our future.

The suspended Belfast reps behind the campaign for an investigation were crucial to the great Belfast walkout of 2006 which began the struggle against efficiency cuts – indeed these “renegade reps” as Royal Mail dubbed them went on to headline the Post Worker conference meeting in 2006 after being victimised by Royal Mail!

However since the suspension of the branch and becoming renegades within the CWU, they have also accused Jane Loftus of chairing meetings and not allowing them to speak in the past year after they have been critical of Hayes, and say she has done nothing to promote an investigation to resolve the situation – if true, this is a scandal. Certainly there is nothing about their situation in the pages of Socialist Worker or Post Worker. Jane Loftus evidently walked out of the room refusing to answer their questions – she was already gone when I got there.

This is not the first time Jane Loftus has put her loyalty to the bureaucracy and Hayes & Co above workers struggle and democracy. She voted against the Pay and Modernisation Agreement that sold out last year’s strike but refused to campaign against it when other members of the PEC did. A socialist organisation is measured by its programme and its internal regime, which in part means how it holds its leaders to account. Any organisation whose elected leaders such as Loftus do not struggle “from above” using their positions in the union bureaucracy will not be able to lead a successful revolution “from below”. Figures like Jane Loftus or the Socialist Party leadership in the PCS that stick to the union status quo and do not fight for a rank and file movement to dissolve the trade union bureaucracy, such “socialist” trade union leaders just end up as part of the bureaucracy’s leftwing.

No wonder in his speech opening conference Hayes thanked Jane and praised her service of the CWU as first woman president in damning terms, referring to her loyal role in not campaigning against the pay deal: “What has particularly impressed me – her ability to make her point in debate and then act on the collective decision of the Executive.” An honest working class militant would blush to receive such praise!

The eruption of the Belfast controversy on the Post Worker floor is just the chickens coming home to roost for this rotten method.

Post Worker: Bureaucracy + SWP

There was a debate from the floor about the vote on the political fund. Several SWP members rejected heatedly the idea that we needed to wait to withdraw from Labour or that we could use them to defend ourselves, no doubt sparked by Martin Walsh’s speech.

Post Worker, while controlled and produced by the SWP, gets mass subscriptions from several branches the London Division being one of the main subscribers, funding its production and distributing thousands of copies. This means that it is not a rank and file paper that seeks to organise a movement from below to create a militant, fighting union, but rather a paper for “debate and discussion” involving the SWP and left wing bureaucrats like Walsh. The SWP argues that this strategy ensures that it has a bigger voice for its more militant arguments, which then reach thousands of postal workers beyond its small number of activists.

The latest Post Worker is a good example of the approach, it has a leading front page article by Martin Walsh stating his position: reject Royal Mail’s imposed pension changes while being ready to compromise with some cuts, and disaffiliate from Labour if the government is not forced to support postal workers’ pensions and drop privatisation.

True enough next to this it has a smaller article from Paul Turnbull, the Area Processing Rep Eastern No. 4 and SWP member, arguing about why we should not accept any cut to our pension and postal workers should be ready for “sustained action”, but there is nothing on how to pressure the leadership to act, their record of foot-dragging and last year’s sell out deal, of the need for rank and file bodies such as strike committees to control our struggles, the chief lesson of the 2007 strike.

As we have stated before, the SWP refuse to warn workers of the danger of the bureaucracy. Their more militant positions therefore end up neutered of much of their potential and inadequate. It is a good first step to fight for “no compromise on pensions”, but we have to follow through and campaign for a set of tactics that can deliver a strike capable of defending our pensions without compromise. That means strike committees elected in workplaces to control our action, rank and file conferences to develop an alternative strategy and leadership, an all-out strike without which “no compromise” is not possible.

To sum up, the SWP does not advance a rank and file strategy but what is known as a “broad left” strategy, an uncritical bloc with the left-wing of the bureaucracy, something the SWP states it is against. It drops the militant tactics we need to win in its SWP postal leaflets and in Post Worker in order to avoid alienating such bureaucratic allies.

A bigger socialist voice or left cover for bureaucrats?

The SWP states that Post Worker’s big “plus” is its distribution to thousands of postal workers via branches, gaining them a bigger hearing. But the “minuses” of this tactic are unfortunately much bigger.

First off, Post Worker has no democracy or regular meetings anywhere, and the SWP avoids developing such structures because they would take positions and make policies that might alienate VIPs like Martin Walsh and see those Post Worker subscriptions pulled. The SWP argues that there is no possibility of developing such a rank and file network – after Post Worker has existed over 5 years, in one of the more militant unions in Britain, after several hard fought strikes and wildcats. This is frankly unbelievable.

Post Worker cannot lead anything because of its lack of policy and the mixed message it sends from the bureaucracy, SWP members, and many in between. For every article by an SWP member with a more militant stance, as inadequate as this often is, there is a front-page or prominent article by the likes of Martin Walsh, even Billy Hayes. The proof is in the pudding – the SWP dropped Post Worker for the duration of the strike in favour of its own leaflets.
Charlie Kimber (Post Worker editor but not even a postal worker, an SWP full timer) got in a huff when it was pointed out that Post Worker only had one issue during the strike, for August-September. It did not even criticise the leadership for dropping the strike for negotiations and cancelling a London demo because it might “put pressure” on Royal Mail! The closest PW got on its front page was “Prepare for further action”! A small article on page two from a non-SWP member asked “why call off the action when we were ahead?” but not to worry, Billy Hayes got equal billing in his regular column.

No wonder the SWP dropped Post Worker in the strike, besides the fact they put recruitment to their party above the need for a rank and file movement, Post Worker isn’t fit for purpose as a campaigning paper – it doesn’t know what to campaign for and when it does raise slogans, these are so vague as to be acceptable to any old bureaucrat.

Most damaging, by refusing to name the bureaucracy or even to criticise its actions, by giving such prominent space to bureaucrats to peddle their arguments, Post Worker gives them left cred with their own members and does not warn of the danger of betrayals.

Democracy or “the tyranny of structurelessness”?

Post Worker far from waging a struggle “from below” stages such a public meeting for the masses only once a year, at the CWU conference fringe. A democratic paper would have people put themselves forward, explaining what policies they stood for and what kind of Post Worker they wanted to develop, and they would be voted on by the meeting. While the leaflet stated that the meeting would be followed by editorial board elections, this ended up like in every year past just being a call for anyone who was interested to come up and leave their details (though this time the meeting was hastily shut down as we were kicked out of the room). Editorial meetings do take place but are advertised by the SWP only notify those they want to attend.

Activists in the social movements of the 1970’s discovered that such a lack of democratic structures is not liberating but in fact lets secret cliques control things behind the scenes. They called this the “tyranny of structurelessness” because without democratic decision-making – regular open meetings, majority voting, elected recallable leaders – there is no way to address problems, make changes or challenge a hidden leadership. In Post Worker that not-so-hidden leadership is the SWP.

Not having such policies or structures suits the bureaucracy down to a “T”. If Post Worker were to develop as a democratic rank and file network, taking positions against those pushed by Hayes or Walsh and criticising their manouvres, these bureaucrats would not take part and pull the plug on their subscriptions. And once again the interests of the SWP and the left officials dovetail – a front to recruit from for one, for the other a “left” paper to give them another route to their members and a left face.

The losers are the postal rank and file that desperately need to develop democratic structures to advance our struggle. Rank and file bodies that can control negotiations, that can act in solidarity with those who seize the initiative such as wildcat strikers, that can create a movement in the union to take it back from the bureaucracy and transform it into a democratic, class struggle union. Post Worker has not proved a step towards such a movement.

The SWP has few activists in the post but unlike Loftus these are not bureaucrats but genuine class fighters who have not bent the knee on pensions, privatisation etc, even if they are left disarmed by the SWP’s lack of a programme and thus fail to warn the workers of the bureaucracy, call for necessary demands such as all-out strike action etc. To these workers, to other militants and activists who have read Post Worker or believe we need such a left in the union, we appeal to them to fight for a real rank and file network that can lead the struggle to save our industry and union from the axemen Labour is sending our way.