A LOT of Labour MPs might be concentrating their fire on their own members right now, but with the results of a strike ballot over Post Office sell-offs due today, the Communications Workers Union is taking the fight to the Tories.

Not that general secretary Dave Ward lets Labour off the hook. “What the Parliamentary Labour Party has done can never be acceptable,” he says bluntly, referring to the Westminster mutiny that sparked a leadership challenge just as the Tories looked most vulnerable.

The CWU has endorsed Jeremy Corbyn for re-election to the leadership, and Ward doesn’t think the notorious “chicken coup” was launched because MPs thought he wasn’t holding the Tories to account.
Indeed, as a CWU member says in the union’s punchy three-minute video Vote Hope, Vote Corbyn (check out its Facebook page), a leader who has forced government retreats “22 times in the last nine months” has been far more successful than his enemies dare to admit.

The sheer number of shadow cabinet resignations might have been “because there was a lot of destabilisation around Brexit. People got caught up in the panic.

“But we always knew there was going to be an attack on Jeremy. Everybody knows there was going to be a moment when a hard core of people who despise everything Jeremy stands for would make their move.”
And those in Labour who have lent their support to the coup, perhaps despairing of a Corbyn victory because of constant media misrepresentation of the leader, have “missed a trick,” Ward reckons.
“There’s a shift in thinking in this country. I’m excited — I really do think we’re in a cycle where the economics of the market, of privatisation, is falling down.

“People are angry, and we’ve got to channel that in the right direction — Jeremy is part of that but the unions are as well.

“We need a completely new model of politics to face this challenge. I don’t say Jeremy can do no wrong, but what he stands for is so important at the moment.

“We must support him and John McDonnell and act to change the Labour Party once and for all.

“This attitude that the PLP can make all the decisions is totally out of step with the public mood. Jeremy represents democratic change and I don’t think it’s too hard to buy working people into that change, particularly in areas where there has not been a lot of investment.

“And there’s far more chance of that happening if you build a mass party, as Jeremy is doing,” he says, pointing to the fact that under Corbyn Labour has become bigger than every other political party in Britain put together.

“Labour could have a million members in a couple of years. It’s so refreshing.”

This mass mobilisation stands in contrast to the hackneyed phrases and old solutions of his critics. “It really struck me when Angela Eagle [before she pulled out of the race] held a press conference,” he tells me.

“The cameras panned out to the audience and these people looked tired, outdated, out of touch.

“I didn’t understand what they had stood for in the past and certainly didn’t see them as the future.”

The fact that the new Tory leadership is talking about a fairer world of work is evidence of the extent to which Corbyn and McDonnell have changed the narrative in this country, Ward believes.
The same is true, clearly, of Corbyn’s challenger Owen Smith and his newfound enthusiasm for “socialist revolution.”

“There is a question of trust over Smith. Who are his real backers? His populist positions are aimed at the party membership because he recognises the mood, but will he continue in that vein once he’s won?
“Let’s vote for the people who have been rock solid in their views. The country can recognise that we need fundamental change. Jeremy is the catalyst for that.”

Ward sees the Brexit vote as evidence of popular anger at the status quo, though CWU supported a Remain position in the referendum.

“Actually we, like Jeremy, were accused of being a bit half-hearted because we made a case for reform and weren’t happy with the EU as it stood,” he explains. “We had serious reservations about the EU institutions and their economic agendas.”

And he has no time for proposals for a second referendum, which he labels “stupid — we’ve just had a referendum.

“My advice to the labour movement is, don’t go back to these arguments. We should concentrate on uniting the labour movement after the vote, not turning away from people because of how they voted.”
The Brexit vote wasn’t evidence of a “little England” mentality in Ward’s view.

“People were entitled to be angry and I think in some cases they were angry about exactly the right things.

“The pressures on people’s living standards are enormous. People are angry that nothing has been done about the world of work, about housing.

“The danger is some people will blame immigrants and we have to stand up against that. Our priority is, how do we channel people’s anger in the right direction?” he asks, returning to that key question for a left confronted with the failure of neoliberalism and the menace of the far right.

“The dividing lines of the referendum are not ones we should stick to. If people want to ‘take back control,’ we should be saying: ‘Let’s take back control of the railways then. Let’s take back control of the utilities’.”

Ward sees huge potential for setting out positive goals so the labour movement can start going on the offensive.

The coming TUC will be the first since the Tories’ draconian Trade Union Act became law, and lots of delegates will be talking about how to defeat it.

“I’d rather we went on the offensive on some issues that apply across the movement. One that sticks out like a sore thumb is insecure work.

“What I’ll be talking about at TUC is the need for us to have common bargaining agendas — all our members are affected by the explosion in insecure work through bogus self-employment, fixed-term and short-term contracts, zero-hours contracts, work without sick pay and holiday pay.

“Haven’t we got to now unite around the fact that it’s our job to change that world of work?

“We need every individual union saying we’ll be pursuing this with the employers. A new deal for workers in Britain — and one which will also mean shaming some of these companies, driving pay up.

“We need common pay agendas. It’s not about having a figure. It’s about each union pushing pay higher, and that means co-ordinating union activity to a depth we have not seen in recent years.”

With a pro-trade union Labour leadership, this could start feeding through to a new vision for British workers. Ward is savage about the lack of vision that has led to the current Post Office dispute.

“When they privatised Royal Mail, they promised not to privatise the Post Office,” he says. But the reason creeping privatisation is continuing is that “there was no strategic reason they didn’t privatise it.

“They get more heat politically when post offices close. That’s it. But they’re running down the service, selling off some offices, laying off workers.

“When we complain, the government says it’s putting money in. But it’s not putting money in to come up with ideas for the future, but to let good people go on reasonable terms.

“I’ve put it to ministers: it’s your job to come up with a solution for an industry that has operated for 500 years.

“But the government just doesn’t have this vision. Frankly management don’t have the ability.

“Clearly with technological change it needs to innovate, but the Post Office also has key strengths, such as its community role.

“If it diversifies it could do different things. Jeremy talks about an infrastructure bank, why not have an ethical banking system run through the Post Office?

“This may be the last chance to change the direction of the company,” he says of the ongoing dispute.

But he remains optimistic that the growing Labour Party contains the seeds of a mass movement which could change the rules of British politics.

“It’s the moment we get the workers mobilised and on the streets that we will see the mass change,” he says. “And it isn’t that far away if we play our cards right and the union movement is prepared to step up.”

And Labour’s current distractions? If he could give one piece of advice to Owen Smith, what would it be?

“Pull out,” he laughs. “Accept that he should serve in the shadow cabinet — if he believes in some of what he’s been saying he should be willing to serve.

“Saying he won’t foments disunity. Seriously, what’d I’d say to him is: think about what you need to do to help reunite the party, after you lose this election.”

Dave Ward is general secretary of the Communication Workers Union. Ben Chacko is editor of the Morning Star.