LAST May, PCS conference voted to agree that a Corbyn government is in the interest of our members. 

This week, realisation of that government is closer than ever. Survation, the only pollsters to call the last general election correctly, shows Labour now at 41.3 per cent — ahead of the Tories. 

If Theresa May’s “meaningful vote” falls today, it will show the Tory government cannot rule the country. Jeremy Corbyn can pursue the vote of no confidence to trigger a general election. The real people’s vote is who decides what happens next.

PCS is not affiliated to any party, but neither are we politically neutral.

In the 20 years of our trade union’s existence there has never before been a leader, shadow chancellor and Labour Party with a radical class approach to workers’ rights, public services and wealth redistribution. 

Our members can never forget the damage of New Labour governments. In 2004, then chancellor Gordon Brown announced to cheers from Labour benches, the need for 104,000 Civil Service job cuts. New Labour openly attacked Civil Service pensions and redundancy schemes and began office closures. 

Then David Cameron escalated the assault on workers’ collective organisation, placing PCS in the firing line — first taking away union facilities and time from reps, then spitefully aiming to financially destroy PCS by removing payroll deduction of union dues. All before the hated Trade Union Act went through Parliament.

PCS fought back by intensifying workplace organising and last year won a £3 million High Court settlement against the DWP for removing check-off. We fight on building, growing and winning at grassroots level with renewed vigour and strength. 

Meanwhile, May’s minority government continues to run down services, public-sector wages, working-class communities and the most vulnerable in our society. 

With Brexit omnishambles almost upon us, government departments are frantically drawing up no-deal contingency plans such as 24-7 Civil Service, mass redeployment of processing civil servants to the Border Force and other front-line roles. Yet we face a potential national emergency laced with little good will or acknowledgement of the loyalty of public servants. Pay is still capped below inflation. 

Civil servants are regularly scapegoated by ministers for government failure. Staff suffer daily draconian attendance management procedures. Jobs are insecure as government offices around the country are closed. Yet in a Tory no-deal Brexit our civil servants will be expected to be deployed to keep calm and carry on.

Pay for PCS members is at the centre of an intensified industrial climate in which we are strengthening the organising vigour in every workplace. Our NEC aims to win an aggregated national ballot for industrial action on pay and will not hesitate to exercise any industrial leverage that may arise from Brexit if necessary.

Unity is required around a bold 8-10 per cent pay claim, the level at which wages have fallen in real terms over the austerity decade. While the Tory government insults its own workforce with the 1-1.5 per cent cap, PCS demands pay restoration.   

In comparison, Corbyn and McDonnell offer significantly improved material interest. Their Labour government will end the pay cap and introduce a £10 per hour living wage. McDonnell will return national Civil Service pay bargaining, ending Thatcher’s phoney delegation of collective bargaining, with its resulting pay disparities and inequalities.

While some sceptics try to claim PCS is in danger of aligning itself too closely to Labour, the reality across the country is that working-class people, including PCS members, look to Corbyn to make a difference. This is the first opportunity, certainly in my lifetime, for a radical Labour government to be elected on a socialist programme.

Look no further than pledges in the 2017 Labour manifesto to evidence that a Corbyn government is in the interest of PCS members and public-sector workers at large. 

Commitments include a fair taxation system and investment in HM Revenue and Customs resources; public utilities, private rail companies and the Royal Mail back into public ownership; repeal of anti-union legislation and increased workers’ rights; repeal of benefits cuts, scrapping sanctions and changing the performance management system for jobcentre workers; secure homes for all including building 100,000 new social homes; keeping the Land Registry public; statutory rights for union equalities reps, sectoral collective bargaining with trade unions; investment in public services and the public-sector workforce, including more border guards. 

Even with Corbyn and McDonnell in government, PCS would require to make the case for urgency and priority of public service workers interests among all the Tory wrongs that Labour will try to right. And we won’t shy away from our duty.

PCS will consult members in all parts of Britain on how best to support the election of a Labour government. Some suggest that with different political dynamics in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, we should not argue that a Corbyn government is in the interest of our members in these nations. Only Labour can beat the Tories to become the government at Westminster. 

As president of the Scottish Trades Union Congress and the PCS national officer for Scotland and Ireland, I meet regularly with politicians and trade unionists across political divides. Socialists and trade unionists, whatever their party vehicle and view on constitutional matters in these nations, understand and, increasingly publicly, agree that a Corbyn Westminster government is in the interest of working people.  

For PCS, delivering an aggregated ballot for our members to take industrial action on pay is centre stage in our fight with this Tory government. Those interests do not change with the political complexion of government. However, addressing the PCS Annual Delegate Conference in 2018, McDonnell, former chair of the PCS parliamentary group, said: “When we go into government, the trade union movement is coming into government with us.”  

PCS is not affiliated and as such remains independent of Labour. But who can doubt that it is in the interests of PCS members for us to be negotiating with McDonnell as chancellor of the Exchequer and with a prime minister not afraid to call himself a socialist?

Lynn Henderson is PCS national officer for Scotland & Ireland and STUC president.