POEU face Tory auctioneers

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AFTER Thatcher's landslide victory the whole of the public sector will be under immediate and heavy attack.

The last four years will appear as the Garden of Eden if the Tories, full of confidence and class hatred, can carry through their "final solution" against the organised working class in this country.

The decision of the POEU will put us in the forefront for the defence of the public sector. The POEU is now pledged to begin an immediate campaign of industrial action. Parallels can be drawn with the position of the organised workers of British Steel after the 1979 election.

Redundancy threatens every worker in BT. The unions have no real tradition of militancy, but what could prove to be a crucial difference is that the major union in BT, the POEU, has returned a left wing dominated executive and that a real shift towards fighting privatisation through industrial action has begun.

The rural areas, where the branches tend to be small and/ or scattered over enormous geographical areas, are the areas where the profit-driven privatisation will hit hardest. The cost of providing telephone lines and service in these areas is enormous. It is doubtful if the full cost of line provision is returned in many of these places even after ten, twenty • or more years.

The right wing's dominance of the union has traditionally been rooted in the rural areas but it is evident that loyalty in some areas had been stretched to the limit on the threat to jobs became known, and the leadership which had depended upon their loyalty was shown to be completely lacking.

Jobs in the cities are also under attack as "streamlining" which BT's management envisage as being the complement of new technology, begins to appear on the horizon.

The POEU's new national executive will need to turn to campaigning hard amongst the membership. The right wing have "declared war, and still have roots amongst many branch officers.

The campaign will undoubtedly begin with selective industrial action, the tactic of hitting financial and governmental institutions combined with a levy from all members not taking industrial action.

But the POEU is also committed to holding a Special Conference to discuss further the anti-privatisation fight.

Political differences both within the Broad Left and outside it will sharpen. Questions of whether the action should be stepped up, continued at the same level or even called off, whethar to push for escalating the action to ather public sector industries or keep within the boundaries of BT unions will arise.

The POEU Broad Left has consistently argued for a public sector alliance. If necessary the POEU must go over the head of the TUC if they try to block this. Certainly we must ensure that the fight does not become bureaucratised into a routine of rhetoric with no action. The public sector alliance must be built both at national and local level: