Royal Mail has announced its intention to hire 30,000 temps to work through the strike, twice as many as it normally hires for Christmas and far earlier in the year. Royal Mail insists that this scab force will not do the work of striking staff, which is illegal, but will ensure there are enough staff to clear any backlogs as well as tackle the Christmas rush.

This is a blatant lie. Earlier this week leaked documents showed Royal Mail has no intention of negotiating. It is determined not just to fight the strike but to derecognise the Communication Workers Union in all but name, as exposed on the 15 October on BBC's Newsnight. Now the company has thrown down the gauntlet and shown it intends to break the strike with a massive scabbing operation.

In this it has the full support of Lord Mandelson, Labour's Business Secretary, who has attacked the union at every opportunity and not once criticised the company, instead echoing its lies about a union unwilling to talk. His response to the news of Royal Mail's scabbing plans was to once again attack the CWU, saying he was "beyond anger" at the strike. Hardly a surprise if you remember that this holidays on the yachts of dodgy Russian billionaires and has already offered to serve under David Cameron .But it is a measure of Labour's degeneration from being "the party of the trade unions" that this person holds the fate of the postal service in his hands.

Postal workers must act urgently to counter this latest attack:
• Step up the action - move swiftly to an all-out indefinite strike
• Mount mass pickets and flying pickets to stop scabbing and shut down temporary mail centres
• Challenge Royal Mail in the courts over its strike breaking operations - and demand solidarity strike from the TUC and every union if Royal Mail derecognises the CWU or the courts outlaw its action
• Withdraw funding from Labour and approach the RMT, FBU, PCS and others to launch a new anticapitalist party
• Demand general secretary Billy Hayes, postal deputy Dave Ward and every member of the CWU postal executive stop offering no strike deals and step up the fight - or make way for those, elected by and accountable to rank and file workers, who will.

Labour backs the bosses
If it was not clear that this was a union busting dispute, this development must sound the alarm. Postal workers must not listen to any official CWU statements designed to soothe fears and disarm opposition to these plans, but demand their union leaders immediately counter this threat. The time for the movement to unite and defend postal workers and their union is now.

The CWU is already mobilising for strikes this Thursday and Friday. Now post workers must demand it goes on a war-footing politically and demands every union in the TUC - and the TUC itself - go beyond a legal challenge, and demand point blank that Labour forces Royal Mail to back down on its scabbing and downsizing plans.

If the judges defend Royal Mail's right to break the strike, then they should be exposed for the anti-working class toffs they are and every union, every worker should declare the anti-union laws a dead letter and prepare to break them.

If the Labour government refuses to intervene on the side of postal workers, then all funding to the party should be suspended until Peter Mandelson as well as Royal Mail CEO Adam Crozier and his management team are sacked. More than this, the entire union movement should be directed to give solidarity action to the CWU, coordinated through local solidarity committees, including union branches, trades councils and socialist organisations.

In the run-up to the election, trade unionists have huge power over Labour, which depends completely on union money. At the same time that they take millions in union affiliation fees and handouts (£7 million from the CWU since 2001 alone), Labour openly plans 10-20 per cent cuts in public services, the biggest privatisation programme since the 1980s, and further attacks on public sector jobs and unions, with postal workers simply the first in the firing line.

The government bailed out the bankers with £1.3 trillion and now the bill is due, with the working class to pay for it. However, the bulk of CWU leaders - Billy Hayes in particular - are loyal Labour supporters, despite repeated kicks in the teeth from Mandelson and Gordon Brown. Rank and file CWU members and branches will have to force them to mount such a political campaign.

The leaders of the other unions (especially the "big three", Unite, Unison, and the GMB) and TUC bureaucrats are even more strongly welded to Labour and supportive of the government. Postal workers must act to mobilise the rest of the workers' movement at every level - the workplace, the local area, the branch, the region and the division. That way CWU members can meet and match the scale of Royal Mail's assault.

For an emergency plan of action
Workers Power has argued throughout this strike - and indeed in 2007 - for an all-out strike, mass picketing of scab mail centres, strike committees and a rank and file movement, solidarity committees, and a new anticapitalist workers party. These are all now catapulted from urgent tasks in the coming weeks to an emergency plan of action.

Royal Mail has shown it will not act as if this is just another "normal" dispute but intends to play hardball and bust the CWU. They say they will only use the scabs to sort the backlog not strikers' work. An all-out strike would not only be the fastest way to win but expose this lie. There will be no legal fig leaf for Royal Mail, the government or other TUC leaders to hide behind.

A legal challenge will not win the dispute - only a postal strike can do that - but is a necessary defensive tactic and one that forces the TUC union officials to act. We warn in advance that the courts and the judges are part of the capitalist state, there to safeguard the interests of the bosses against the working class. Therefore, part of our legal challenge must be to mobilise CWU members - and every worker - to break the anti-union laws, should the courts rule against us.

By building large picket lines, workers can defend their workplaces from scabs. Mass meetings would allow workers to discuss how to stop the scab operation through their own strength - organising flying pickets to shut down scab offices and appealing for solidarity from other sections of workers if police repression kicks into gear or the courts attack the strike, as they did in 2007.

But above all, the deployment of a mass scabbing operation must be answered by an all out strike - official and legal, if this does not delay our response - a wave of indefinite wildcat actions, if waiting for ballots and courts would delay.

Some will point to the lack of strike pay as a reason why many members are reluctant to move towards all-out indefinite strike action. Yet an all out strike could bring Royal Mail to its knees more quickly than anything. It could save us a long drawn out dispute. Their actions show there is no alternative to this. If strike committees are elected they can send speakers to local workplaces to demand solidarity, collections and donations

This is what strikers did at Tower Hamlets College last month and they raised up to £20,000 in just four weeks. And that was just a local strike over 13 job cuts, where the workers were on strike pay. Think how much more postal workers, in a nationally important dispute, with no income, could raise!

If solidarity committees are established in every town, city and borough, like those initiated in Bristol and by Brent Trades Council in London, then postal workers would not be isolated but could pull the trade union movement and working class public around them as a shield. These could raise funds and spread the word, pressing the postal workers' case and puncturing Royal Mail and government spin. See our solidarity leaflet for the High Street here

Solidarity committees could also begin to coordinate post workers' action with other strikers, such as college lecturers, refuse workers, firefighters, Fujitsu workers and more, all moving into dispute.

If pickets are attacked locally or the CWU itself attacked nationally by the police, courts or government, postal workers would be in a strong position to call for solidarity action and to demand the TUC, locally and nationally, calls a general strike.

Strike committees and branches that have led the fight in London Scotland and Bristol should call an emergency conference on how to win the strike and develop an alternative strategy and leadership to the current Postal Executive Committee under Hayes and Dave Ward.

This is the same leadership that snatched defeat from the jaws of victory in 2007, calling off strikes, obeying court injunctions, entering secret negotiations, demanding wild cats to return to work without their leaders and finally selling a rotten deal, by lying about its real implications, which inevitably unravelled and led to this year's strikes. Their performance this time round is even worse. Many members especially in London believe Dave Ward is more trustworthy than Hayes but in reality the strategy of delays, accepting cuts and offering to pull the strikes for talks is his.

It's time the rank and file postal workers took control of their own dispute by electing strike committees at every level - workplace, local, district and national. Directly elected and recallable leaders should control every level of the dispute: when and for how long to strike, how to smash the scab operation, what the negotiating strategy should be and so on. This way, the strikers can really control the dispute and make sure they are not sold out or sold short.

The current CWU leaders have always lagged behind events, delayed the ballot and then the strike, and continue to hold out for negotiations when none are possible. They are too eager to publicise it wide and far that they are in favour of cuts, but that these should be negotiated, while dropping one of the CWU's central demands in this dispute, for the 35 working week with no loss of pay. Why should there be any cuts if it is to be a top quality, modernised service?

All the cuts over the last year should be repealed. Instead, share out the work available after walk sort machinery comes in - with no loss of pay, no service cuts (like later delivery times) and no raising of individual stamp prices.

The strike ultimately poses the question of a fully nationalised postal service under workers and consumers' control, with the market closed and the private operators like TNT nationalised and shut out. If won, it can be a serious step towards realising such a demand.

New anticapitalist party
Last of all, Hayes especially has led the union to take the route of least conflict with the government, pretending the problem is Mandelson alone, when in fact the Labour government appointed and upholds him and the Crozier management team. Time to choose which side you're on, Billy: is it the postal workers' cause or the Labour government's survival, the union members' future or that of this party that acts for the bosses, the bankers and the generals?

Regardless of Hayes' personal dilemma, London CWU postal members have already voted - by 98 per cent - to stop backing Labour. The union should immediately implement this mandate and raise the call for a new workers' party, contacting other unions, like the RMT, FBU and PCS, which have also either abandoned Labour or sought to challenge it at the polls.

Indeed, the RMT has called a conference to debate an alternative to Labour on 7 November. CWU workplaces and branches should send hundreds of delegates, demanding it sets up a new party that fights for the working class, and for socialism against capitalism. Such a party would help promote the unity and solidarity in the working class in deeds not just words, something that the postal workers now urgently need.

An injury to one is an injury to all! The postal dispute is the first round against the cuts programmes, which will be driven forward whatever government wins the 2010 election. Postal workers have taken the front line in the coming battle. Now they must ensure their union acts effectively to sound the alarm from one end to the other of the labour movement, and rally the working class in their defence. A victory for the postal workers is a victory for all workers!

For more on the postal strike visit the Red Postie blog