Mark Serwotka correctly excluded from Labour leadership election

The farcical election organised by the Labour Party took another twist last night as news emerged that the far-left General Secretary of the civil service union PCS had been excluded from the vote.

The Independent reported:

The leader of one of Britain’s major trade unions has been banned from voting in the Labour Party’s leadership election.

Mark Serwotka, the general secretary of the PCS union, which represents civil servants, had his ballot retroactively revoked after having voted online earlier this month.

The trade unionist was a member of the Labour party until the 1980s; his union says he has not been a member of another political party since.

Serwotka's response was somewhat disengenuous to say the elast. At the time he was in the Labour Party he was (cough) "associated" with Socialist Organiser, a Trotskyist entrist group inside Labour now known as the Alliance for Workers Liberty. The AWL you will recall was calling for a purge of non-Corbyn supporting MP's only days ago, but I digress.

When the 12 Respect councillors were elected in Tower Hamlets, Serwotka welcomed this development and appeared on Respect platforms mainly at the behest of the Socialist Workers Party with whom he had very good ties with. His main contact was former CPSA activist Martin Smith.

When the SWP fell out with Galloway, Serwotka sided with them and denounced the "witchunting" of socialists. The SWP's attempt to replace Respect floundered and disappeared.

Enter the Socialist Party (Militant) with their latest attempt to supplant the Labour Party and the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition was born (via the clumslily named Campaign for a new workers Party). In 2007 Serwotka wrote in The Socialist newspaper:

…we need the trade unions to be involved to give us bedrock on which to build. Already we see the FBU and the RMT, no longer affiliated to Labour, looking around to see how they can take forward issues politically, possibly even standing and supporting candidates.

The TUSC publicised it's two biggest backers, the late Bob Crow and Mark Serwotka at every opportunity.  For Serwotka this included the last general election when every habd was needed to stop the return of the Tories, he was opposing the Labour Party.

Further back in 2009 Serwotka along with the Socialist Party pushed the PCS union itself to a position of actually standing candidates (against Labour).  

In an article for 4Discussion, Bulletin of the 4themembers group in PCS #39 (June 2009)  I reported:

The decision of PCS Conference to pass a resolution that includes a policy for PCS, as a Trade Union to run candidates in Parliamentary Elections is a radical departure from the norms of this and other Civil Service Unions. It is the continuation of a long term project by the General Secretary Mark Serwotka and his left-wing allies on the national executive Committee that begun with the so called Make Your Vote Campaign, an expensive white elephant trumpeted by our leaders for the last few years.

It actually comes as no surprise that the PCS leadership has taken this route since most of them have been involved in one project or another to create a new Left-Wing Party “predicated on the Trade Unions” as John McInally put it in his article in The Socialist newspaper last year.

Labour are well aware of Serwotka's high profile antics aimed at undermining and replacing their party. He is no friend of Labour has no right to expect a vote after all the damage he has done over the years.