Campaign to Reopen Llanedern Post Office

Llanedeyrn residents were shocked this week when they turned up at the Post Office and found out it had been closed without warning. So was I! - we were at the Maelfa on Tuesday campaigning to abolish the carpark charges at the Heath Hospital and the Post Office was very busy.

I contacted Post Office Limited today, who told me that there is no re-opening date, that the Llanedeyrn Office has been closed indefinitely and that there is no emergency plan to provide services locally until the Office can be reopened permanently. Many people, including pensioners, are now having to trek all the way to Albany Road to use the Post Office there and fear (justifiably, in my opinion) that the Post Office won't reopen unless there's a campaign to save the service.

Post Office Limited wouldn't comment but there are rumours that the local franchise operators couldn't keep up with their payments and have gone bankrupt.

If this is true, then the finger of blame should be pointed straight at the Labour Government, which - besides carrying out a massive programme of Post Office closures around the country - has cut subsidies to local Post Offices, putting the important public service they provide at risk.

All three main parties, including the Liberal Democrats, plan to push privatisation further in Royal Mail, putting services further at risk. It seems the main parties won't be happy until communities like Llanedeyrn are stripped of every last shop and service. The Liberal Democrat and Plaid Cymru Council Executive plan to close the local high school Llanedeyrn and now it seems the Post Office is at risk.

The Socialist Party and supporters of the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition are campaigning for the immediate reopening of Llanedeyrn Post Office and for fair funding and democratic control for all public services. No more treating vital public services like businesses - put services before profits.

Support Union Members' Democratic Right to Take Action to Defend Jobs

Socialist Party members who support TUSC were campaigning today in Clifton Street and Albany Road to scrap the anti trade union laws after another disgraceful decision banning workers from exercising their right to take industrial action. With no political party representing us, trade unions are the only thing standing between those who depend on public services and the main parties who plan to go further even than Thatcher did in slashing them to ribbons.

Hot on the heels of the second BA strike, postponed from its original date on the whim of a millionaire judge, RMT signallers and maintenance workers were due to take action next week to fight against their employers' plan to cut jobs. Network Rail wants to axe 1500 maintenance workers and are ripping up agreements with signal workers as a step towards cutting their jobs and worsening their working conditions. The result could easily be another Paddington, Hatfield or Potters' Bar.

But the courts have stepped in again. Unions are bound by so many requirements that defending services and jobs by taking industrial action legally is becoming impossible.



This year is the thirtieth anniversary of the first of Thatcher's anti-trade union laws and the fact that almost half that period has been spent under a Labour government demonstrates the character of that party today and the urgent need for a "Taff Vale Two" - a move by the trade unions to help found a party that represents ordinary working class people and trade unionists.

Meanwhile, Liberal Democrat Assembly Members demonstrated the contempt their party has for trade unions by making a point of crossing PCS picketlines at the National Assembly. Centreforum, A Liberal Democrat think-tank, has effectively called for the expulsion of trade unions from national negotiations over pay, earning the condemnation of Unison, my trade union. And Plaid Cymru members in Caerphilly have embarrassed leaders of their party by withdrawing facilities for trade union reps in the Council in order to try and weaken their campaign against cutbacks.

It's often said that the trade union movement, without a political voice, is fighting with one hand tied behind its back. But, unless it bursts out of the legal constraints binding it today, it will face its toughest fight in living memory with both hands bound.

The Contempt for Democracy

The attitude of all the main parties towards democracy became crystal clear yesterday.

In a letter to Cardiff Council, Leighton Andrews, Assembly Education Minister, agreed with the decision of Cardiff Council to close Llanrumney and Rumney High School and Eastern Leisure, and replace these three important community facilities with one school with some scanty leisure facilities attached on the site of Rumney Rec. The community in all likelihood will lose the playing fields there too unless the plans are stopped.

A referendum of local residents voted a whopping 93% against the plan on a turnout higher than the council elections but Andrews, a Labour Minister, nevertheless supported Cardiff's Liberal/Plaid Cymru executive's decision.

I and other Socialist Party members helped to set up the campaign against the plan but had to battle against Labour Party supporters who argued that ordinary people should relax, not cause too much trouble and rely on "their representatives" in the assembly and council to defend the facilities - this despite the fact that Labour councillors sit on the committee that drafted the closures plan, and that Labour (and Plaid) Assembly ministers have created the problems in schools though underfunding.

The way schools are funded sets up schools to fail. Because funding is allocated on a per-pupil basis, if fewer children go a school one year - for whatever reason - the school gets less money. It becomes harder and harder, therefore, to keep schools running and if there wasn't a problem in the school before, after years of not getting enough cash to maintain school buildings etc then one soon develops. It's a deliberate and cynical attempt to cut back education purely to save money which will leave some communities, like Llanedeyrn, without a community school.

Instead, getting slightly less children one year should mean that class sizes become smaller and chlidren get more time with teachers. In that way the quality of education would both increase overall and become more even across the city.

The game isn't over yet. Campaigners from Llanrumney, Llanedyern and Canton, where Lansdowne Primary School is also under threat, should link up with campaigners across Cardiff and stand against the main parties in the council elections this year, demanding an end to the school closures plan. Former First Minister, Labour's Rhodri Morgan estimated that 170 schools would close across Wales, with a devastating impact on the communities which they serve. In Cardiff alone, 600 jobs in 22 schools are threatened by the plans. We've got to get organised to defeat them. We need funding for schools based on need, not on some marketised perversion of education.