Given that the average age for a United Kingdom postal worker is around fifty-five, it is a fair bet that the majority of postal workers have witnessed over four decades of betrayals by the Communication Workers Union(CWU).
A small number of postal workers in their late sixties or seventies,
believe it or not, are still working. They would remember the first national
postal strike in 1971[1].
I raise this matter because the most pressing question facing postal workers at
the moment is the issue of leadership.
Over the last five decades, postal workers have witnessed
betrayal after betrayal and have seen their pay and working conditions
decimated. It is time to face the facts: the CWU is nothing more than a company
union that is doing the current owner, Daniel Kretinsky’s, dirty work. There is
no line it will not cross to impose Amazon-style working conditions that will
turn Royal Mail into an Amazon-style company with all the implications that
entails.[2]
Postal workers have not been taking these attacks by the company
and the union lying down. They have met these attacks head-on with every weapon
at their disposal. However, it is time to face the facts: the old way of struggle
has not worked. Do not get me wrong, I am not saying not to strike, but what is
the new perspective that postal workers must fight for?
Leadership is an art. As the Russian Marxist Leon Trotsky
said, “There is an ancient, evolutionary-liberal epigram: Every people gets the
government it deserves. History, however, shows that the same people may in the
course of a comparatively brief epoch get very different governments (Russia,
Italy, Germany, Spain, etc.) and that the order of these governments doesn’t at
all proceed in the same direction: from despotism to freedom as was imagined by
the evolutionist liberals. The secret is this, that a people is comprised of
hostile classes, and the classes themselves are comprised of different and in
part antagonistic layers which fall under different leadership; furthermore,
every people falls under the influence of other peoples who are likewise
comprised of classes. Governments do not express the systematically growing
“maturity” of a “people”. Still, they are the product of the struggle between
different classes and the different layers within the same class, and, finally,
the action of external forces – alliances, conflicts, wars and so on. To this
should be added that a government, once it has established itself, may endure
much longer than the relationship of forces which produced it. It is precisely
out of this historical contradiction that revolutions, coup d’etats,
counterrevolutions, etc., arise.
The very same dialectic approach is necessary in dealing
with the question of the leadership of a class. Imitating the liberals, our
sages tacitly accept the axiom that every class gets the leadership it
deserves. In reality, leadership is not at all a mere “reflection” of a class
or the product of its own unrestrained creativeness. Leadership is shaped in
the process of clashes between the different classes or the friction between
the various layers within a given class. Having once arisen, the leadership
invariably arises above its class and thereby becomes predisposed to the
pressure and influence of other classes. The proletariat may “tolerate” for a
long time a leadership that has already suffered a complete inner degeneration
but has not as yet had the opportunity to express this degeneration amid significant
events. A great historic shock is necessary to reveal sharply the contradiction
between the leadership and the class. The mightiest historical shocks are wars
and revolutions; precisely for this reason, the working class is often caught
unawares by war and revolution.[3]
It is pretty clear that postal workers have been caught unawares
by the unprecedented nature of the attacks on their pay and conditions. They have,
in Trotsky’s words, witnessed a great historical shock. It is time to face
reality square on and realise that the CWU is dead and is just waiting to be
buried.
Postal workers have tolerated the CWU for a long time
because they did not really have an alternative, but now they do. Firstly, they
have the World Socialist Website (wsws.org). Its analysis has been second to
none in terms of accuracy and perspective. It offers a new way forward for
postal workers. The CWU bureaucracy knows it is in a fight to the finish, so
much so that it has lashed out at the WSWS on several occasions.[4]
Postal workers need a new organisation. The way forward is
the struggle to build the Postal Workers Rank-and-File Committee (PWRFC). Although
it is small at the moment, it has the only socialist perspective to take on both
the CWU bureaucracy and Royal Mail. While it must join and build this new
organisation, the task facing postal workers is a political one. The philosopher
Hegel was fond of saying, "The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with
the coming of the dusk", and this is true for postal workers today.
To be blunt, postal workers do not have much time to build this leadership. Any
delay in building the PWRFC will mean that, soon, there will be nothing left to
defend.
[1]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1971_United_Kingdom_postal_workers_strike
[2]
UK postal workers discuss fightback against gutting of Royal Mail and Kretinsky
takeover-www.wsws.org/en/articles/2025/04/29/zmzb-a29.html
[3]
The Class, the Party and the Leadership-https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1940/xx/party.htm
[4]
Communication Workers Union's Martin Walsh attacks WSWS over opposition to “USO
reform” pilots- www.wsws.org/en/articles/2025/04/01/nxgz-a01.html
