March against Post privatisation

15.03.09

Around 600 CWU members from right across the UK gathered in Bilston, Wolverhampton, on Saturday to march against government plans to privatise Royal Mail.

The Black Country town had been chosen because it is the Parliamentary Constituency of Minister of State for Postal Affairs Pat McFadden.

Showing just how determined union members are to win this vital struggle, CWU delegations from all corners of Britain - Edinburgh and Plymouth members having made the longest journeys of all - paraded 26 branch and regional banners through Bilston.

But the union’s Keep the Post Public campaign is also clearly winning key support from across the labour movement too, with banners from fellow public-service unions UNISON and PCS indicating that the anti-privatisation fight has many fronts, while local teachers from Dudley NUT branch and specialist union solicitors Thompsons also marched alongside.

And, carrying out TUC general secretary Brendan Barber’s recent pledge of solidarity on behalf of the nation’s seven million trade unionists, his Midlands regional secretary Roger Mackenzie led delegations marching under the Wolverhampton, Mansfield and Nottingham TUC banners.

On an unusually sunny afternoon, Bilston’s Saturday shoppers stopped to applaud the determined but lively and good-natured procession as it wound its way through this historic market town, taking leaflets from our CWU activists explaining the need for everyone to join the fight to save the UK postal service.

Arriving in the town centre, marchers took a well-earned break before packing into the grandly named Imperial House, to hear a range of speakers outline the successes of the campaign so far and spell out the next steps.

After opening the rally by praising everyone for the day’s “marvellous” protest, particularly local organisers from Wolverhampton and Bilston Branch, CWU vice-president Jane Loftus vowed: “From today, we intensify our campaign” and announced a further demonstration in the nearby town of Corby next Friday (March 20).

General secretary Billy Hayes renewed his call for every Labour MP to sign Early Day Motion (EDM) 428, which reasserts the party’s long-held anti-privatisation stance, and vowed to organise similar protests in the constituencies of other Labour MPs who refuse to stick with Labour’s policy.

“We want to know why our MPs can’t support our party’s policy,” he explained, adding: “It’s not the words of our opponents that we’ll remember, but the silence of our friends.”

Morecambe and Lunesdale MP Geraldine Smith - the original signatory of EDM 428 - claimed that the union and its allies had “won the argument and I think even Lord Mandelson knows this,” while European Parliament member for North West England Brian Simpson reminded the CWU of this June’s forthcoming European elections and urged the union to “lobby the MEPs as well.”

CWU senior deputy general secretary Tony Kearns outlined the union’s plans to take part in the forthcoming G20 protests in London at the end of this month (March 28) and urged everyone present to attend.

And Dave Ward rounded off the rally by explaining that the day’s protest marked “a different phase in our campaign - taking it away from the politicians and into the heart of their constituencies” and, in a swipe at the pro-privateers who claim that there is no alternative, Dave insisted: “There is an alternative - our values.”