In 1974, I started my job in what was then the DHSS and joined the union which was then CPSA. I got active in it very quickly. Like most unions, there was a left and a right, but in reality, not a great deal of difference. However this was about to change, as in 1977 (35 years ago) the “Broad Left” was opened up to rank and file activists. The Right-wing group was known as the “Moderates”, but there was nothing moderate about them! They were on the hard right of the Trade Union movement. They controlled the National Committee and were suspected of being funded by various fronts for the USA and UK intelligence services. Recent revelations by Norman Tebbitt about his briefings from Special Branch and meetings with right-wing Trade Union leaders when he was a Secretary of State (for Employment, Trade and so on) under Thatcher, serve only to reinforce those suspicions.
The Broad Left quickly grew from a clique of individuals on the National Executive Committee and a handful of supporters, into an open democratic organisation with members everywhere. We developed policies which we brought to the CPSA conference.
Unfortunately, we were unable to convert support for our policies into votes for the National Executive Committee, and so our policies were ignored by the leadership. Of course, this just made other conference delegates angry, and so the Broad Left grew. What follows are some highlights of the issues that shaped the left in CPSA and PCS.
Terry Adams Defence Campaign
The Broad Left Split
In 1983/84 we managed to win the NEC elections, however, the majority of the NEC let a group of members down badly when they refused to support a group of members in dispute over shift payments. Rather than face the music at the 1984 Broad Left conference, they walked out to form another group (Broad Left 84). But in truth this led to a further hardening of the left in CPSA. The worst opportunists carried on their journey to the right wing. Others came back over time.
Newcastle Eight
Wind ahead to the late eighties, and the Newcastle 8. These were Branch Officers in a large branch of the union, which supported the Broad Left. They were accused of misappropriating members’ money, and evidence was fabricated. Simple really, a list of people who paid for an unofficial leaflet (to support Broad Left candidates in an election) was removed from a copy of the leaflet, and this was presented as evidence that it had been paid for out of Branch Funds. They were expelled from CPSA, but this was later overturned by the 1990 conference, who decided “no penalty”. The conference would have also decided “not guilty”, but were not given that option.
Merger to form PCS
When CPSA and PTC merged to form PCS, the executives of the unions had ignored their delegate conferences and drafted a rule book which made it difficult to change the rules even if the conference voted unanimously on a change to the principal rules. If the National Committee didn’t like it, they could get it overturned in a ballot of members who would of course see only their point of view. The Right Wing did this more than once. They didn’t realise the fact that their shenanigans over the years, in CPSA, had produced a tough opposition that wouldn’t go away. (The old CPSA Broad Left linked up with other left groups from the PTC to form Left Unity.) The Right Wing obviously thought we were all just professional troublemakers and would get fed up and go somewhere else. Wrong. We were and are committed trade unionists whose activism came from a genuine concern about our members’ pay and conditions, and our wider view of how they are affected by society as a whole. The more the Right Wing tried to ignore the policies decided by delegates at the conference, the more the delegates rejected the Right Wing. But the postal ballots were something else. Most members didn’t see first hand what went on, and the Right Wing managed to get elected to the NEC year on year.
General Secretary Ballot
Then in December 2000, a ballot was held for the person who would take over as General Secretary from 1st June 2002, there were two candidates, Mark Serwotka and Hugh Lanning. Barry Reamsbottom, the previous GS, didn’t get enough nominations, but just to make sure, a compromise agreement was signed with him to stop him standing or claiming that he should have been allowed to stand. Lanning’s vote of 33,942 would have walked most elections in PCS, but Serwotka’s 40,740 was stunning! What I remember about both campaigns were that they were very clean — no red scares or attacking the opponent, just saying what each candidate believed in and saw as the way forward for the union. I think that helped the high participation.
The Right Wing “Coup”
The Right Wing don’t call themselves The Moderates any more. They try to deny their links to their disgraceful past, particularly of 2002. They call themselves “4themembers”. They had largely disappeared from the scene, by the time I retired.
2013, the year of my retirement
PCS had got itself in the position to lead the fightback in the Trade Union movement, thanks to the work put in by the Broad Left and Left Unity since around 1977. Our experience was there, for others to use.
The fightback on Pensions in 2011, and the alternative economic strategy, led by PCS within the Trade Union movement, owes itself to the work that we all put in over the 35 years. Had we not been hardened by the setbacks, had we not accumulated wisdom and patience, and passed it on to the next generations of activists in PCS, things might be different. By the time I retired from the job in the Autumn of 2013, PCS had become a beacon to the whole trade union movement, but it didn’t happen by accident. It took years of work. However, the job is never completed, there’s always the danger of routinism and depoliticisation of the leading post-holders.
Complacency and Right Turn
I, of course, kept contact with my old union colleagues and comrades after I had retired. Meanwhile, the government had continued to pass even more laws to put fresh obstacles in the way of trade unions, to prevent them fighting back. One of those was a rule that says that, in an Industrial Action ballot, a majority of members must have voted in the postal ballot. Due to the nature of postal ballots, and the fact that many PCS members are spread around, and that people move house and don’t always update their records, achieving 50% turnout is no mean feat. You also end up with the ridiculous situation where failure to vote is more effective in preventing action, than actually voting “No”.
The National Executive Committee, in consecutive years, twice ran national ballots over our continuing low pay, and twice, narrowly, fell foul of this 50% rule. However, certain well-organised parts of the union could have achieved this. A proposal to get round this was put forward: a disaggregated ballot. This was rejected by the majority of Left Unity on the National Executive Committee. Serwotka, once the darling of the rank and file, had become increasingly bureaucratic, and surrounded himself with sycophants, turning on his Deputy, Chris Baugh, who had never lost his political grounding. In the absence of any sort of organised Right Wing, the Left Unity group has become complacent, and rather than face criticism, went about silencing it.
Last year, they even “parked” our National Pay Claim in a show of unity with the government to fight Covid-19, even though the government have given us nothing back at all, and continued with their attacks on our pay and conditions. This has led to the Driver Vehicle Licensing Agency in Swansea becoming a sort of Petri dish for Covid-19 in that town and many staff and local people becoming ill as a result. This complacency and right turn by Left Unity, has reversed many of the gains we made over the time I was active in the PCS. The 2021 Conference will be held over Zoom, and they have used it as an excuse to restrict the subjects and motions that Branches can put forward.
The Future
Those Socialist activists who have stood apart from the complacency of Left Unity, have formed a group called “Broad Left Network”. We retire, we move on, we educate the next generation of activists, and trust them with the future. I don’t think that it will take as long to put things right, as it did for my generation. They have a rich history of our struggle to fall back on. If there’s a lesson to learn, it’s that you must never rest on your laurels, because if you do, you become all that you were fighting against.
