AFTER A two year review of the Post Office costing over £1 million, Michael Heseltine, has called for more consultation in a Green Paper. However it is clear now that the preferred option for both Heseltine and the Post Office Chief Executive, Bill Cockburn, is to sell 51% of the Post Office for £1 billion.
This could be a privatisation too far - the Post Office is a very popular public service with wide ranging facilities. Privatisation can be defeated. The Union of Communication Workers is very well organised and quite prepared to take strike action to defend jobs and working conditions.
In the last year there were 17,002 days of unofficial industrial action involving Postal Workers. Last month an unofficial walkout in Liverpool to defend a victimised worker lasted 6 days, the longest unofficial walkout since the introduction of the 1991 Trade Union Law.
The UCW has enormous industrial strength. The Royal Mail handles 61 million letters daily, collects from over 120,000 pillar boxes and delivers to 24.5 million addresses.
The union has already launched its campaign to oppose privatisation, 'Stand by your Post'. So far this has been concentrated at the level of lobbying and postcard campaigns but clearly 'Stand by your Post' has to become a real mass campaign led by postal workers.
The UCW conference outlined its campaigning approach; 'All branches will, in support of the campaign, redouble their efforts to secure the widest knowledge, publicity and support for our case, including wher appropriate a national petition and lobby of Parliament? Existing policy commits the union to a speaking tour, a levy of UCW members of £1 a week, a national Householder leaflet and consideration of strike action to combat privatisation.
A successful campaign must learn from the defeat of the miners. Despite huge demonstrations in October 1992, the campaign ran out of steam by demobilising on the streets and relying on the backbone of "Tory rebels'.
Counters closing Some Tories will oppose privatisation. Their rural voters will be hard hit by the threat of Post Office counters closing and variations in services which are subsidised by other parts of the Post Office such as free delivery of prescriptions and the Post bus.
The UCW will only be successful if it unites the labour movement and post office users behind it in mass action on the scale of the Poll Tax rather than relying on lobbying wet Tories.
Every area needs to support the UCW campaign.