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Following speeches by guests including Graham Stringer MP and former manchester council leader, Opening the Rally, Carl Webb, CWU NW Regional Secretary welcomed the crowd by detailing the day's event. Following the rally campaign material, leaflets, badges and information would be handed out to the public, as well as encouraging them to sign a CWU petition calling on the government to abandon its plans to part privatise Royal Mail. Carl then introduced the event speakers as: Graham Stringer MP,Lindsay Hoyle MP, Alan Manning, Regional Secretary NW TUC, Eddie Newman, Manchester Councilor. First up was Graham Stringer who reminded people that the Labour Party 2005 manifesto was based on a fully and wholly public owned Royal Mail.It stated "We will not privatise it!" Further he added that the Labour Party 2008 Policy Document report stated, "We will have a wholly publicly owned fully integrated Royal Mail Group."
He questioned the sell-off as a "pretty strange and bizarre objective to do." He add that the campaign will be won in the "court of public opinion" stating that "at the moment the parliamentary arithmetic does not look great!" You can watch Graham's full speech by clicking open the above. Next, Lindsay Hoyle, Labour MP for Chorley gave a passionate speech in which he slammed the principle of privatisation by giving some basic facts on the cost to the British tax payer. He questioned the motives behind privatisation of Royal Mail, asking the question,
Addressing the enthusiastic crowd of CWU members on the issue of the future of Royal Mail, he continued, "... and it is no use telling us this is about the future and protection of Royal Mail, it is an absolute nonsense; 'cos we all know and we all understand the Liberals are committed to privatisation, the Conservative party's committed to privatisation, they aint committed to 30% they are committed to a fully privatised Royal Mail; and that is not acceptable. So let us not be the ones to do the dirty work for the tories and the liberals. Extending greetings from the North West TUC, Alan Manning Secretary NW TUC, referred to the governments argument regarding the introduction into a 30% privatised Royal Mail of "private sector management expertise." Alan said he is puzzling over that one. By some strange and appropriate turn of fate, the Town Hall bells tolled out the mid-day hour as Alan listed privatised companies currently in the news, asking the question,
As the bells continued to toll, Alan turned his attention to conditions and investment in Royal Mail. Eddie Newman is a Manchester City councilor and has been a CWU member for some 34 years. " Its a crazy idea at a time when privatisation is completely discredited, this idea that we've had coming from Thatcher that public is bad and that private is good, for goodness sake the americans are nationalising the banks and we are in effect doing that as well and at the same time as that we have got a labour government calling for the part privatisation of royal Mail.It is not acceptable!" Reminding the rally that the deficit in the Royal Mail workers pensions is in part caused by the government he continued: " We hear about the pension and the deficit in the pension fund and the scares that are put against low paid postal workers and pensioners who are formerly low paid postal workers who've got a small occupational pension that they either receive or are looking forward to; and the threat is that if you don't go along with the privatisation plans, that will be under threat. But there's no mention of the 13 years that the government did not contribute it's share to the pension fund!." He added, " So it's about time now that that pension fund deficit, billions and billions and billions of pounds thrown at the banks and Sir Fred Goodwins and all the rest of them, ordinary working people and ordinary retired working people who need assistance to keep that pension fund going , who will not be living like Sir Fred Goodwin; then that's the least we can ask. Even the privatisation proposals will do nothing to assist in dealing with the pension fund." The final speaker of the day was CWU member and Labour MEP Brian Simpson,who pledged his support "for however long it takes to convince the powers that be that what we want is a publicly owned, publicly funded Royal Mail." He had a strong message to the Labour Government, stating that they had got it wrong and emphasised his view that " we should go back to our fundamental principles that essential services should remain in the publicly owned and publicly funded....." ".... for 20 or more years the Labour members have fought against the liberalisation of the postal services instigated from Europe. At now time did we get any support from the Conservatives or the Liberal Democrats or UKIP or anybody else for that matter. Only the socialists where the ones that stood against the liberalisation of postal services." Making the point strongly, that the issue of the privatisation of the postal services was not the fault of Europe he said, " I want to make it clear ladies and gentleman that never at any time has the ownership of the national postal administrations ever been discussed by the European Parliament or the European Union. That is for member states to decide." He emphasised the fact that the UK Government were solely responsible saying," So the decision as to whether Royal Mail remains in public ownership, or is part privatised, or fully privatised, rests solely with the UK Government and it is their decision that we are challenging here today." Campaigning for petition signatures
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On a cool sping-like morning in Manchester's Albert Square with the Town Hall buildings in the background, CWU members from both the postal and telecomms constituencies joined together to bring their campaign against the part privatisation of the Royal Mail to the general public. 