PCS union: A three way General Secretary election?

The political fallout from the internal squabbles within the far-left controlled union continue as the election for their General Secretary. The Socialist Party who have been at the centre of the union at the same time as Mark Serwotka were forced to withdraw their candidate Marion Lloyd from the Left Unity nomination race as she simply just couldn't get enough support.

So now maid Marion is running for General Secretary openly as a Socialist Party candidate and is seeking nomination. Writing in their turgid newspaper The Socialist she writes:

I am a Socialist Party member and have served our union the whole of my working life. Along with others, I played an important role in paving the way for PCS to become a fighting union, first under New Labour and then against the Tories, and their vicious austerity. However, I believe that this is now under threat...........

Oddly Marion and her party are somewhat schizophrenic in the political approach to the Labour party and she muses:

I will campaign for the election of a Jeremy Corbyn-led government with anti-austerity policies in a general election.

However, I have opposed attempts within the PCS leadership to move us towards affiliation to Labour in the current situation.

Finally she appeals for support which must be sadly lacking outside the big tent of Left Unity:

Candidates need fifteen nominations to get on the ballot paper by the closing date of 14 October. Please give me the opportunity to put my programme to the PCS membership.

It'll be touch and go whether she gets on the ballot, only time will tell.

Most of the former Socialist Party Grandees have defected to Socialist Voice or taken leave from the union for other reasons. However their whinging about the plight of the now tiny rump of Taffites has become laughable. They complain:

As General Secretary for over 20 years Mark Serwotka has increasingly centralised power and decision making, with a consequential weakening of elected lay rep control of the union. We are opposed to this. Additionally, there are a number of other issues which we disagree with him over, including pay strategy, organising, gender recognition rights and political strategy.

Except for the issue of gender recognition rights everything they complain about Serwotka doing is something they were complicit in as the far-left stitched up affairs in the union so that opposition to the dear leader became almost as blasphemous ans the left treat Corbyn today.

The Socialist Party feted Serwotka for their ill fated Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition project which fell apart when old Compo took over the Labour Party. The SP arrogantly attempted to form an alliance with Labour which was unsurprisingly ignored

The fact is Mark Serwotka who promised to live on a workers wage actually never did and has become one very rich individual. A champagne socialist indeed, but then old Corbyn has quite a few pennies and a massive pension pot. Seems being a leader on the left is quite lucrative for many. Arthur Scargill anyone?

If any union needed change and a kick up the arse so to speak it would be PCS though Lenin McCluskey ought to get shoved out to pasture as well.

Meanwhile a third and quite credible candidate has emerged from the Independent Left, Bev Laidlaw a pleasant PCS activist who despite having politics somewhat too far left is certainly a better choice than either Sir Mark Vodka or Maid Marion. Her political ally John Maloney is already in post as Assistant General Secretary.

At least she sees the real problem with the union:

PCS’s full-time apparatus is far removed from its lay membership. This is not a fault of individuals amongst the union staff but a structural issue due to the way that the union is set up. As a candidate who believes that ours should be a lay-led union, with members firmly in the driving seat, I intend to address............

One hopes she does though there will be opposition from all quarters and some of the Indepepdnet left's "fundamentalists" need to be firmly controlled.

The question remains how many or rather how few PCS members take any notice of any of this as the union continues it's current decline.