General Election 2015

I'm writing this tired and emotional on the day after the election.

I've woken up to the news of a Conservative victory. Not just winning the most seats but actually having a majority without the help of any other party.

I guess we will now see if the Lib Dems really were a brake on the worst excesses of the Tory party.

This means that we will have 5 more years of the same or worse. Austerity policies mean massive cuts to public services which will affect all PCS members both at work in terms of job cuts and more pay restraint and in their home lives. A promised £12bn of welfare cuts will affect the people we serve and some of our colleagues and our families. The attacks on trades unions will continue such as the attempt to make it almost impossible to win a legal strike vote, reductions in time for us to work on behalf of our members, ending check off, etc. I could go on.

It is not good news but we have had set backs before.  We can't allow ourselves to be deflected from our aims of protecting and improving the lives of our members and speaking up for the downtrodden and dispossessed in this country and abroad.

Today I will mourn but tomorrow I will get back to the fight. Join me because we are the last line of defence. Our colleagues, our families, our communities and our country depend on us.

Rise, like lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number!
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you:
Ye are many - they are few!
Percy Bysshe Shelley