16.06.2004

Socialist Party stung by opposition

Lee Rock looks at the behaviour of the left in the PCSU

The Public and Commercial Services Union (PCSU) held its national and group conferences in Brighton throughout the week commencing June 7.

The largest group, or section, in the union is that organised in the department for work and pensions (DWP), where just over 90,000 members of the 300,000-strong union are employed. The DWP group conference took place on the Monday and Tuesday with 300 delegates in attendance. It came immediately after the Left Unity victory in the DWP group elections. Left Unity, whose biggest component is made up of Socialist Party members and supporters, took 32 of the 34 places. Of the 32, Socialist Caucus, which is supported by much of the non-SP left, including myself, increased its representation from three to five, while the Socialist Workers Party went from one to two.

The SP-dominated group executive (GEC) must have expected a conference which was fairly supportive of itself and the campaigns it has led. The comrades were in for a surprise when it came to the major issue of the pay campaign. A campaign that has seen nearly 100,000 people not reporting to work.

The very first debate was around the strategy to win the ongoing 2003 pay dispute. Following on from two well-supported periods of 48-hour strikes (February and April) there is a clear need to have a strategy that can win the dispute.

There were three emergency motions up for debate: The first, from Socialist Caucus supporters (submitted by seven branches), called for selective action in key areas alongside further national action; the second, moved by SWP comrades, called for a three-day strike and then two days of strike action every month (and nothing else); and the third, from the GEC itself, called for more of the same strategy that we have had over the last six months. Bev Laidlaw on behalf of Sheffield branch moved the Socialist Caucus motion. The ever rightward moving Martin John of Sheffield HQ moved the SWP motion, and Janice Godrich (PCSU national president) spoke on behalf of the group executive.

Whilst the debate was a relatively low-key affair, the actual vote proved to be anything but. The executive and thus the Socialist Party were visibly shocked by how close the ballot was. On a show of hands the Socialist Caucus motion lost by 143 votes to 153. On a card vote it was even closer: 41,694 to 42,039 (49.8% to 50.2%). The GEC and SWP combined had only defeated the motion by 345 votes out of a total card vote of 83,733. If just one branch had voted the other way, then the motion would have been won against the executive.

This motion being lost, the vote was then taken on the SWP motion, which mustered no more than a dozen votes (ie, several branches). The GEC motion was then passed overwhelmingly, as there was no other strategy still left on the table.

The problem for the GEC/Socialist Party is that it now knows that half the conference preferred a different strategy to what is being adopted. And if the SWP had not been so sectarian and insisted on voting against Socialist Caucus, then on a card vote a better strategy would have been adopted. The SWP seemingly failed to pick up that the debate was between the Caucus and GEC motions - it believed that our motion would be smashed and delegates would rally around theirs. The voting shows just how out of touch the SWP are in this pay dispute.

The pressure on the GEC/Socialist Party is now immense. The strategy is solely their own (though one that all delegates will continue to do their best to support, as it is policy), and it is one that they must win.

There was also a close vote on a motion of censure regarding the decision of the GEC to call off action in January for further talks. The motion was moved by Sue Catton on behalf of East London branch. I spoke in favour of the motion, criticising the GEC for deserting the other groups in the union (eg, the home office and department for constitutional affairs), who were standing together on pay, and leaving them to take the first round of action on their own. In a much more lively debate the motion was defeated on a show of hands by about 165 to 135. This was also a shock to the executive, as no one really expected the motion to get anywhere near 45% of the vote.
Both the vote on the pay strategy and the censure motion demonstrate the support that Socialist Caucus now has in the group. Much of the conference supported the lead being given by a left grouping that only had two dozen delegates, but was able to get the support of an additional 100 on the hottest issues.

The rest of the conference was relatively uncontentious with only one other motion requiring tellers. A proposal moved by the executive and supported by the black members group expressed concern at the lack of ethnicity data held by the department and called on the incoming executive to negotiate with management for all staff who have not responded to the request for information to be classified as 'white European'.

Needless to say, many delegates regarded this as a problem: such a classification is regarded as an insult by many black members and would negate their choice not to be classified. It would only serve to distort the figures in favour of the department - black members are predominately in the lower grades, get lower box markings and take longer to get promoted, so by classifying many of them as 'white European' the figures would not in fact demonstrate the discrimination that exists but would 'show' that many 'white Europeans' suffer the same treatment! The distortion of figures would also hinder the campaign in London to stop relocation of work to elsewhere in the country - as part of the campaign demonstrates that relocation from London has a much larger impact upon ethnic minority workers and communities. The motion was fortunately defeated by 104 votes to 148.

There was also a debate around future pay claims. Socialist Caucus member Claudia Campbell moved a motion on behalf of the North East London branch that called for future pay claims to have the European decency threshold of £16,780 as the minimum wage in the department and that the executive should recommend rejection of any pay offer that does not meet this demand. The motion was unfortunately heavily defeated after the intervention of both the Socialist Party (Rob Williams) and the SWP (Martin John), who both argued against the motion, as they felt it was not an achievable demand.

How this fits in with their claims to belong to 'revolutionary' organisations and to fight against low pay simply beggars belief. But then this is the same Martin John who spoke the previous year against flat rate increases in favour of a percentage increase, "because the union also has to look after the management grades"! For Martin John it is no doubt more important to get elected than fight for the policies he claims to stand for. Needless to say, not all the SWP comrades at the conference were prepared to support Martin John on these issues, but they seem unable to replace him as their leading representative and therefore the whole SWP gets tarnished with the bureaucratic nonsense that he espouses.