MARK SERWOTKA’s retirement after nearly 25 years as general secretary of Civil Service and outsourced workers’ union PCS, is a significant moment for the union itself and the wider movement.  

When I visited him in Papworth Hospital as he awaited a heart transplant in 2016, a procedure fraught with danger, we were both aware it may be the last time we met, yet he focused little on his own precarious situation but expressed great concern toward me following a dreadful bereavement. 

His concentration and strategic foresight in the detailed conversation that followed was, given the burden of his condition, remarkable for its analysis of PCS’s perspectives and identification of the tasks ahead.   

That reminiscence encapsulates for me his essential decency as a human being and the depth of his commitment to his members and class, the product of unshakable socialist conviction. 

No one individual takes most or all of the credit for the collective endeavour and achievements of working-class activism, but Mark’s exceptional contribution to our movement, in a period of relentless assault on the working class, is rightly recognised. One of the most effective, principled, and influential union leaders in our movement’s history, he played a critical role in building a democratic, lay-led, militant union widely regarded as a “beacon of resistance” and, in the wider movement, class solidarity against neoliberal barbarism.     

His journey from benefits officer and militant activist in his native Aberdare to election as general secretary in 2000 almost ended before it began. The union’s right-wing “moderate” leadership launched a bureaucratic coup to remove him from office. But they were defeated by a campaign that united activists and members in defence of union democracy — the final blow a victory in the High Court action that he and socialist president, Janice Godrich, risked losing their homes to fund.  

Due to years of Thatcherite cuts, enabled by “moderate” collaboration, PCS members were working themselves into the ground delivering desperately needed services for their class, of which they were becoming one of the most exploited sections.

In 2003 chancellor Gordon Brown, to the baying approval of New Labour MPs, announced he would cut 104,000 Civil Service jobs. The following year members responded to the lead from their new general secretary and left leadership by supporting PCS’s first national strike action. The fight for members’ jobs and conditions also prioritised defence of the services they delivered, an important factor in securing strong and enduring public support.   

Under his leadership, PCS campaigned against every government’s cuts programme. Not every attack was successfully fended off — far from it: considerable damage to services and conditions has been the price. But if weakness invites aggression, militant campaigning got results: jobs, redundancy terms, conditions and services were defended, privatisations stopped and, to some extent, the fall in living standards inflicted on the entire working class obviated.  

In the defensive struggles that have characterised the past four decades, and in the face of an unfavourable imbalance in class forces, fighting back has secured concessions that have made a material difference to workers’ lives — a fundamental truth beyond the comprehension of collaborationists who say striking doesn’t work, and ultra-leftists who claim anything short of total victory is a sell-out — both demoralising postures of cynics with no serious understanding of the dynamics and hard realities of class struggle.      

Since all attacks emanated from the same source — the government — alliance-building was central to PCS’s strategic approach, and included demanding joint TUC-wide co-ordinated campaigns, while working with those unions prepared to fight in a united front, supporting social movements, community and other campaign groups, fighting for a fair social security system, claimants’ rights and tax justice, and organising against fascism and racism.  

The union also advocated effective working-class political representation, but the one thing the political Establishment could never forgive — its demand for, and popularisation of, an alternative to the Westminster political consensus that claimed austerity was a necessity, rather than a political choice.   

PCS was by no means the only union whose leadership challenging the status quo, but it did, with Mark playing an indispensable role, galvanise resistance, particularly in demanding defence of public services must be on the basis of organising united campaigns, including co-ordinated strike action to win concessions collectively and individually by maximising solidarity in action. 

Unsurprisingly, members and activists across the movement regarded such an approach as the essence of workers’ solidarity, but while paying lip service some union leaders deemed it as “unrealistic” or “too difficult” to organise.  Despite formal support at the TUC there were those who did all they could to ensure this collective response was not implemented, leaving unions fighting individual isolated struggles against the odds.  

Yet this approach was strikingly confirmed when New Labour sought to steal pension rights prior to the 2005 general election, Mark played a very effective role in arguing for the united response that forced important concessions from the government.  

When the coalition government again attacked pension rights, strikes by PCS and NUT in June 2011 were decisive in building momentum that led to the two to three million-strong public-sector general strike that, if escalated, would have stopped austerity in its tracks. Subsequently betrayed behind closed doors, PCS and some other unions fought on — in revenge the government sought to crush the union, an attack from which it emerged mauled but undefeated. 

In all this is expressed the chasm between militant and conciliationist union leaderships: the former prepared to fight, the latter prepared to see governments systematically dismantle our public services and attack workers’ rights, while acting as “reasonable and responsible” mediators in the class struggle, policing activists and “managing” members’ expectations.  

These are precisely the issues our movement must confront as we move deeper into a period of uninterrupted and interconnected crises in which the ruling elite demand the worker-class pay for the failure of their system.

There are lessons from Mark’s long years of activity — the trade union movement, still the biggest democratic working-class force in society, can organise, resist and fight back, for its members certainly, but for the wider working class too. Unions are not insurance companies and workers’ interests do not end at the workplace door. Winning industrially on “bread and butter” issues is their job, but unless the industrial struggle is linked to the political task of building a socialist alternative then we fight with one hand behind our back.

A last observation — in a movement that has produced some powerful orators Mark proved a consummate communicator; eschewing rhetorical flourish, he excelled in expressing in clear, digestible form complex ideas, strategies and tactics while also motivating and inspiring, a skill reflecting his respect for workers and rooted in a class imperative: the need to explain why struggle was necessary.