THIS Congress will be another reminder of the loss of the outstanding trade union leader of our generation, Bob Crow. Crow’s strength lay in that of his union, the RMT, with its motto “unity is strength.” 

As the poet John Donne wrote, “no man is an island” — our strength lies in solidarity. 

Congress gives us the opportunity to demonstrate our potential as the collective voice of over six million workers.

My union, the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS), can also be proud of its democratic member-led culture embodied by our activists and members. 

We will need to draw on all of that as the government attacks our reps’ facility time — the time off for attending conference or for our elected lay officials to play their role in the union — and threatens the financial footings of our union by threatening to end check-off.

Although a technical change, by removing check-off — the decades-old method of our union collecting its subs — this government is embarking on a union-busting tactic that has been used by right-wing governments around the world to sabotage union finances. 

Our organisation and activist culture means that PCS will not be beaten by these methods, but it could cause us problems.

Our members need their union more than ever. They have been hit hard by this government’s onslaught on the public sector. 

Like workers in the health services, local government, education, the fire service and everywhere else, my members have seen their living standards drop — some by 20 per cent — because of year after year of capped pay.

The pay cap is a public-sector-wide policy so it needs a public-sector-wide response. 

This cap cannot be breached in just one sector — the government is not going to allow civil servants 5 per cent and leave everyone else on 1 per cent.

The general election won’t resolve this for us in nine months’ time. All the three main Westminster parties are committed to maintaining the public-sector pay cap — so whatever government takes office, this is a campaign that will continue deep into next year.

Of course they will tell us that they can’t break the pay cap because the money just isn’t there. 

But when our members see executive pay shooting up by over 14 per cent and the richest 1,000 Britons’ wealth increase by £70 billion in one year, they know the money is there. This is a political choice — and our movement must influence it.

And so I come back to those words — unity is strength. This is an attack on the very notion of public service. 

George Osborne is balancing the books on the backs of hard-working public servants who are treated like numbers on a spreadsheet because he runs the economy only in the interests of the corporate boardrooms and the spivs of the square mile.

This is ideological. But it can be defeated on the ground. We have turned back the drive to privatise the Land Registry this year, with strike action and campaigning that united our members with those who use the service. 

Unity was strength and it was strong enough to beat this government back.

In 2006 when the last Labour government came for our pensions, our movement united and saw off their attack. Sixteen unions in the public sector came together and balloted together in a common dispute. 

We didn’t have to take a single day of strike action because the government stopped its attempts to impose worse terms and we negotiated a fair deal.

We need that same resolve today. I am under no illusions that we can win without a shot being fired this time. 

It will take strike action, but it needs to be real co-ordination as part of a common dispute with an agreed common strategy. We got a foretaste of that on July 10. 

This autumn we need the full banquet — every public-sector union uniting together fighting for a fair deal for all. That’s what the composite on public-sector pay and living standards calls for, and I hope delegates will vote for it.

No union has a monopoly on wisdom and no sector has a monopoly on suffering. 

As a trade union leader, I know my primary duty is to PCS members, but that duty requires me to look beyond our own sector and to understand the political context. There is a consensus that the public sector must be slashed. 

So my members, and workers across the public sector, will keep paying — whether with their jobs, pay or pensions — until we change that consensus.

So if we can defeat the pay cap, we won’t just be putting much-needed money in the pockets of our members, we will be opening wider questions about austerity and the devastating cuts to the services our members provide.

However, if we keep to our sectoral silos then we let down our members and our communities and condemn our society to more poverty, inequality and misery. 

To quote John Donne, don’t “send to ask for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee.”

With austerity due to intensify in the coming years, we have a duty at this Congress to raise our heads and consider what sort of future we want for our public services and, ultimately, for our society. 

We cannot defeat austerity in one sector. We have to do it together — unity is strength.

Mark Serwotka is general secretary of PCS.