FEW public-sector workers will shed a tear at the retirement of the Cabinet Office Minister for the Civil Service, industrial relations and public service reform.

In his five-year tenure, Francis Maude MP applied the kind of Thatcherite ideology to the Civil Service that even the woman herself didn’t dare to do. He reduced the Civil Service to pre-WWII levels, imposed damaging cuts to services and forced through unnecessary and draconian pension reforms.

He also announced a further £30 billion of Civil Service cuts by 2020.

The dastardly departing shot, however, is a ridiculous and unworkable media gag on 400,000 civil servants who now require ministerial clearance before speaking to any journalist.

The Tory assault on public services and public servants and their union is a warning shot to the rest of our movement.

Maude sought to demonise the PCS general secretary Mark Serwotka through personal slights while trying to disable our union through drastically reducing trade union facility time and removing check-off facilities across Civil Service departments, forcing PCS to re-recruit our own members.

It is no coincidence that the Tories allowed Maude to go after the union at the forefront of industrial resistance to cuts, and with a strong advocacy of an alternative to austerity through tax justice, investment and public ownership.

Maude and the Tories didn’t bank on either the reasoned skill of Serwotka in speaking up for his members’ interests, or indeed the organising ability of our network of reps and activists.

Who can forget the Paxman interview Serwotka v Maude following the November 30 2011 pensions action, in which the PCS general secretary branded as “lies” Maude’s claims about the number of people on strike. Reason over ridicule was repeated in subsequent radio broadcasts until Maude finally refused to be interviewed with Mark.

Neither could Maude have perceived the resolve of active workplace-based representatives committed to fighting for their union. Within weeks of the threatened withdrawal of check-off, PCS field teams and lay activist networks signed over a significant majority of our membership to direct debit.

Maude’s venom has reinvigorated an active trade union cadre across the Civil Service. Our workplace strength is growing, not depleting. As the late feminist punk icon Poly Styrene might have put it: “Oh bondage, up yours!”

Away from the shadow of Toryland, in our devolved sectors in Scotland and Wales, PCS engagement with government ministers looks different. Yes, we remain in dispute with SNP and Welsh Labour administration-imposed 1 per cent pay caps. But rather than wage all-out war on their own workforce and its representatives, Carwyn Jones and Nicola Sturgeon have both embraced trade union facility time, pledged to maintain check-off for union subs and opposed the daft Civil Service media gag.

In Scotland, the PCS-negotiated no compulsory redundancy guarantee for Scottish government staff has been in place since 2008 and our members are covered by the Scottish living wage.

PCS is not affiliated to any political party, and our general election strategy is to inform our members of facts to make their vote count. It is a safe bet that not many PCS members will be voting Tory.

• Lynn Henderson is PCS Scottish secretary.