PCS Union Conference: Swansong of the Socialist Party

  

The Annual Conference of the largest civil service union took place last week in which the Socialist Party (Militant) finally found themselves at the bottom of the pecking order on the far left as the useless Chris Baugh bowed out of the Assistant General Secretary position and were left with just two seats on the National Executive Committee.

John Maloney the guru of the Independent Left and member of the Alliance for Workers Liberty (AWL) was magnanimous towards his erstwhile opponent. Solidarity (the AWL paper) reports:

John was generous in his comments about his defeated opponents and very demonstrably stood to applaud Chris Baugh, the defeated AGS, following his last conference speech as AGS. It was a respectful tribute to Chris Baugh’s work on behalf of the union, despite John’s serious political differences with him, and stood in stark contrast to the personalisation of the attacks upon Baugh by his opponents in the PCS/Left Unity leadership (people who once stood shoulder to shoulder with him on all major issues).

Maloney's standing ovation forced the backstabbers on stage to stand and applaud the hapless Baugh. 

Baugh of course still remains on the pay role as a senior negotiator though will have to vacate the AGS office as it's needed. Since space is "limited" in PCS HQ he's likely to be shipped off somewhere out sight and out of mind...

Meanwhile the now thoroughly routed Socialist Party who carelessly lost the biggest contingent of senior union activists in their organisation and were used to having a major say in how the union is run have been pushed to the fringes.

In a rather mealy mouthed report of PCS Conference the SP's boring rag The Socialist reports:

For nearly 20 years PCS Left Unity has been the dominant political force in the civil servants' union and Socialist Party members have played a major role.

More recently, PCS general secretary Mark Serwotka has increasingly concentrated power in his hands with support in the union's full-time officialdom and from elements within Left Unity.

In other words we want our ball back.

The Socialist Party organised a fringe meeting bringing down Socialist Party general Secretary Peter Taffe to boost the morale of the remaining sect members. Takings were well down in their collection which usually went over a grand.

Meanwhile the bitterness of the now effective leader of the tiny Socialist Party contingent Marion Lloyd was obvious as she wrote about Mark Serwotka's bid to get re-elected again:

....delegates, on their way to the Left Unity rally, were handed leaflets by prominent Left Unity national committee members announcing Mark Serwotka's re-election campaign.

The Socialist Workers Party, who were first in the line of those handing out leaflets, had no answer to the question: "What democratic process did this go through?"

Serwotka, astonishingly given his backing for a non-Left Unity candidate in the assistant general secretary campaign, spoke at the rally and made clear that the pre-emptive announcement of his candidature was exactly that.

The Left Unity national committee members handing out the Serwotka leaflet are obviously expecting some sort of coronation but this will not be acceptable to most activists who will demand a democratic election process to determine who will be the Left Unity candidate.

Are the Socialist Party are possibly thinking of challenging Mark Serwotka the failed messiah of trade unionism? Will Baugh make a bid for the top seat? Only time will tell.

Meanwhile we'll hear a lot about "PCS officialdom" from the Socialist Party who now seek to rebuild an opposition. Their depleted ranks would suggest otherwise.

Stop laughing at the back....