Postal workers from across the county marched through Glouce

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Postal workers from across the county marched through Gloucester with one message “Our mail is not for sale”.

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Postal workers from across the county marched through Gloucester with one message “Our mail is not for sale”.

More than 100 people descended on the city to show their opposition to the Government’s plans to sell off Royal Mail to the private sector and their anger at the ongoing cuts.

A marching band led the crowd from Gloucester Park to the steps of Shire Hall as they carried placards saying “Con/Dem the Cuts”.

Colin Short, a retired teacher, from Gloucester, said: “I am just appalled by the cuts that are being made by the government.


“It is affecting our education, libraries, youth services, it is affecting people in so many ways.”

A postal worker from Gloucestershire, who wished to remain anonymous, said: “I am here because this is a public service, I think the public will suffer if Royal Mail is sold, prices will rise and I want to defend our jobs.”

For more on this story see Monday's Citizen.

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I want to start by congratulating the Gloucestershire Amalgamated Branch, of the CWU, and all those who have contributed to organising today’s demonstration.

In this area, there are a number of MPs from the Coalition Parties who have marginal majorities. Richard Graham MP for Gloucester, Neil Carmichael MP for Stroud, Robin Walker MP for Worcester, and Robert Buckland MP for South Swindon – all have majorities of less than 10%. If there’s a swing of just 5 votes in every hundred of their supporters, then these Tories lose their seats. So we must make a lot of noise about our opposition to Royal Mail privatisation. They may just listen. The future of Royal Mail is one of the key questions in public sector policy. Today’s demonstration is an important boost for our campaign to Keep the Post Public.

It follows demonstrations that we held in the Prime Minister’s constituency and demonstration in Vince Cable’s and Ed Davey’s constituencies, and in many parts of the country. As we meet here today, so CWU members and officials are organising a demonstration outside of the Lib Dems Conference in Sheffield.

The Government is not listening to the arguments of the CWU. In fact the Ministers aren’t listening to the opinion of the general public – who regularly oppose Royal Mail privatisation in the opinion polls. The Ministers won’t even listen to the opinion of their own voters. In an opinion poll on 1st October, more Tories were against privatisation than supported it. And nearly two thirds of Lib Dem supporters oppose privatisation.

The arguments against the Bill are straight forward. The Government intends to privatise and break up Royal Mail. The Ministers offer lots of warm words to suggest that the future of local post office branches are secure. But if you privatise Royal Mail then you allow it to look for other retail outlets than post office branches. A privatised Royal Mail – searching for every possible profit – will want to use other retail outlets than a publicly owned, loss making post office network.

The Ministers have refused to allow any guarantees in the legislation that there will be an inter-business agreement between Royal Mail and Post Office Network. The Ministers know that puts a question mark over the future of the network. But political calculation, and cynicism, mean they can’t admit that privatisation of Royal Mail will undermine post office branches, and will result in massive numbers of closures of local post office branches. Well, we mustn’t accept such two faced policy making. We insist that Royal Mail and Post Office Counters should stay together as public services. The privatisation of Royal Mail will also lead to a loss of the Universal Service that Royal Mail currently provides.

Today, you can post letters, parcels and packets with Royal Mail and get a guarantee that they will be delivered Monday to Saturday, anywhere in the country for a single stamp price. It costs much more in real terms to send a letter from Gloucester to the Isle of Skye than it does to send it to Stroud. But today you pay the same price – while Royal Mail remains a public service. A privatised Royal Mail will want to maximise the bottom line – for sacred profit for the blessed shareholders.

Shareholders will want quick and fast returns on their investment. They will not want to subsidise the loss making services and areas. So there will be huge pressure on ending Universal Service. And the Government has created 15 separate points of the Bill which allow for the service to be reviewed, undermined and minimised.

We already know that a privatised Royal Mail will be much more expensive. The privatised mail companies – TNT and Deutsche Post – deliver first and second class letters for around twice the price of Royal Mail in their own home markets. So for domestic customers – and small and medium enterprises – privatisation of Royal Mail will lead to a poorer and more expensive service.

That’s why we oppose privatisation and that’s why we must keep fighting. Now we have a few months to defeat the Bill. Next week, the Bill is in committee stage in the House of Lords. Our supporters are organising and fighting the Bill, line by line. There is some chance that we can create problems for the Government in the Lords.

There will be a fight inside the Lords on this. The Government cannot guarantee a majority there – so every bit of pressure we can apply by this campaign will be important. And it has to come back to the House of Commons for final approval of amendments to the Bill and the voting on the Bill as a whole. This was the stage when we defeated Michael Heseltine’s Bill to privatise Royal Mail in 1994. So the fight is obviously not over.

After today – I hope you will all step up your campaign against this Bill. But for now, I want to thank you all for coming out today and supporting this action.

Thank you for listening. Together we will win.

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"Together we will win."