“Thank you, Mark, for all you do,” said Labour ‘leader’ Jeremy Corbyn to PCS general secretary Mark Serwotka at the union’s recent gathering of swivel-headed Trotskyists, otherwise known as its annual conference. That, presumably, includes the decades of actively campaigning against and generally attacking the very same Labour Party Serwotka has, unaccountably, been allowed to join as Corbyn leads the party to electoral oblivion. He could have no better ally than Serwotka.
Let us, then, examine Corbyn’s statement, “Thank you, Mark, for all you do.” This could take all night but let’s begin with the PCS union Serwotka purports to lead. This is a union, run largely by the Socialist Party (Militant) along with members of the even harder left, like Serwotka himself. Corbyn must have been thanking Serwotka for taking the union close to bankruptcy, following a long period of mismanagement and incompetence. He must have been thanking Serwotka for achieving regular election turn outs of less than 10%. That must be the new politics Corbyn talks about, where almost no one votes. There’s plenty left where this came from.
How about a near decade long pay freeze in many departments, except for the favoured MOD which seems oblivious from belt-tightening and even austerity? Austerity? Nonsense. Have another promotion, why don’t you? The DWP where I worked has just been sold a pup of a pay deal by the hard left executive where those below the maximum level of pay (i.e. the rate for the job) get substantial rises (as they should) for the next three years and those on the maximum get pennies. The hard left recommended a terrible pay deal for many staff which included compulsory weekend working. The executive of which I was part 25 years ago would have been slaughtered by the comrades had we recommended such a shocking sell out of pay and conditions and, to be honest, quite right too. But Corbyn says, “Thank you, Mark, for all you do.”
And Serwotka’s miserable record of failure continues. Civil Servants now pay higher pension contributions for a longer period for a lower pension. His abject failure to constructively engage with the government cost members dear. Whilst the leader rakes in an overall pay package of circa £130k, his members were sold down the river. “Thank you, Mark, for all you do.”
And it was Serwotka who organised yet another rally for Corbyn just last week – wouldn’t it be great if he put in as much energy on behalf of his long-suffering union members? – where John McDonnell described those opposed to Corbyn as “fucking useless” (“it was a joke”, said the friend of Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness), Serwotka said “fuck Blair” and then described Neil Kinnock as a “disgrace to Wales.” Pots and kettles and all that. Some of the greatest failures the Labour movement has ever produced spewing the usual hatred and bile over anyone who dares to disagree. The kinder, gentler politics of Jeremy Corbyn. “Thank you, Mark, for all you do.”
Let us be absolutely clear about this. There are parallels between these two men of the hard left. Serwotka has taken a once serious and campaigning union into an ineffectual, almost irrelevant pressure group. It is bankrupt, not just financially but intellectually. PCS cannot be changed, such are the structures that exist. Dozens of one day strikes over the years have replaced serious campaigning and strong negotiations. Every major national dispute under Serwotka has been lost, almost all the local ones have been too. Pay and working conditions have deteriorated, often to alarming levels, yet Serwotka and his hard left disciples shout the myth from the rooftops that PCS is a great union, despite all the evidence to the contrary. And you know what? Serwotka and the comrades probably believe it too. No matter the poor bloody members, lions led by donkeys, have been trampled underfoot by this terrible Tory government. It’s like the hard left doesn’t care, so long as Serwotka and his pals can satisfy their endless egos by speaking at gatherings, belting out the rhetoric to the people who already agree with them.
Serwotka, to be fair, is a powerful orator, even if the content is largely vacuous. You could never say the same of the leaden-tongued Corbyn who remains, despite decades of public meetings and rallies, as hopeless a public speaker as you can find. But one thing unites them: they do not represent the people who are affected more by a right wing Tory government than anyone else. They prefer showboating, they prefer simplistic slogans, they have not policies but positions.
The mutual love-in between Serwotka and Corbyn should set off the alarm bells for anyone working and even hoping for a Labour government. Neither man sees their current position as being a lever towards power. Both men want to build a social movement, to attend more public meetings for their followers to cheer their every word. Perhaps it is the viagra both men need, at least in the political sense.
If Corbyn does to Labour what Serwotka has done to PCS, Labour will fade and, if not die, then turn into a minor irrelevance, a noisy distant neighbour, the equivalent of the nutter on the bus who you would rather not sit next to.
When Corbyn says, “Thank you Mark, for all you do” he shows himself up to be either a deluded buffoon, a naive dreamer or a Class A cynic who genuinely believes that genuine power through parliament is irrelevant.
If anyone is a disgrace to Wales, it’s Mark Serwotka. Thank you, Mark, indeed.
