PCS members, if there still are any, must be blinking with disbelief at the attempts of the leadership to silence Howard Fuller from posting things on…er…his own blog.
As well as being a highly gifted blogger, Howie just happens to be a branch secretary of a PCS branch in London. But because he has had the brass neck to allow someone who is considering setting up a new union in the civil service (specifically HMRC) on his own blog – repeat again: on his own blog – he has been ordered, not requested, to remove the offending article by the union General Secretary Mark Serwotka.
I do not see what the union, controlled by the basket case ultra left of Militant (AKA the Socialist Party) and their fellow travellers, has to complain about. Howard has always made it crystal clear that his blog has nothing to do with PCS and that articles on it appear in a personal capacity.
But Serwotka means business, as do the hardliners on the executive who will surely want to clamp down on any sign of dissent among the ranks that, they might feel, might threaten their power base in Britain’s biggest Civil Service union (for now).
But this is the modern day PCS, controlled as it is by a rump of Trotskyist hardliners. They want Howie’s head on a stick.
Serwotka has written to Howie and there is a subliminal message within the latest one which reads to me like “I know where you live, mind how you go’ although the actual words themselves are “please consider this matter carefully” and it doesn’t say “or else”, but it might as well.
Surprisingly for the Trots, the President herself Ms Godrich said “by all means promote anything you like in your own Facebook page” which suggests that she has not spoken to Serwotka, the General Secretary re-elect unopposed, because the great man clearly has a different stance. So if Howie sets up his own Facebook page and says what he likes and invites ‘friends’ to say what they like, that’s all right but not if he has a blog?
My advice to Serwotka is simple: you said in the Militant (The Socialist) newspaper that PCS is a very different union since you became General Secretary. You can say that again. It used to be a respected union that got things done, that was taken seriously by both the employer and other unions and, more importantly, by its members. It is none of these nowadays, just a pathetic excuse of a far left political party masquerading as a union, waving posters and shouting slogans for the revolution that we all know will never come whilst letting its members go to hell in a handcart. I have personal experience of the union actively acting against the interests of its members so I am not at all surprised that a lot of good people want something better.
Howie Fuller must be supported. He has not chosen a fight against the dark forces of Trotskyism but they are after him and it is more than a possibility that they will seek to suspend and then bar him from union office for having an opinion that they don’t like.
That’s democracy PCS style and I am very glad to be out of it.
Visit http://howiescorner.blogspot.co.uk
