ANDREW FISHER pays a fond tribute to one of the country’s most admired trades union leaders
A born leader: Mark Serwotka, who stepped down as PCS general secretary yesterday
Yesterday marked the final day in office of Mark Serwotka, who has retired after 23 years at the helm as general secretary of PCS, the country’s largest civil service union.
Mark’s story is a remarkable one. In 2000, he worked part-time in a Jobcentre in Sheffield, balancing parenthood with work. In his thirties, the left-wing outsider candidate was elected to lead one of Britain’s largest unions, the Public and Commercial Services Union, and moved to London.
Even after his remarkable democratic victory, Mark’s path was strewn with obstacles.
The departing general secretary, a right winger, tried to nullify Mark’s election, and it took a High Court battle which saw Serwotka put his family home on the line to fund and ensure the democratic will of the union’s members was respected. Mark was duly endorsed by the courts as having been properly elected as general secretary. He would eventually serve four terms.
Mark is one of the longest-serving and most recognisable trade union leaders of modern times – and with a strong Croydon connection and not just because yours truly spent nearly six years working in his office in the early 2010s. Mark Serwotka and his family lived in Croydon for many years.
Today is also significant because Fran Heathcote becomes the union’s first woman general secretary, elected by members at the end of last year. Like Mark, Fran started her civil service career in what is now the Department of Work and Pensions.
Champion of the people: Serwotka at a Trafalgar Square rally in 2014, accompanied by Andrew Fisher (centre). Jeremy Corbyn (left) was one of the speakers that day
At age 16, Mark started work as a clerical officer in the Department of Health and Social Security in in Aberdare, south Wales, in 1979. He joined the union on his first day, and within a year he was a union rep. So began a life of trade union and political activism.
“I was helping the most vulnerable people around, and by working in Aberdare I knew a lot of the community I was serving,” Serwotka has said.
He grew to have a passion for the work he was doing, the people he was serving and his fellow workers. It is that combination that made him a powerful advocate for his members and for social justice as PCS general secretary.
In 2010, severe heart failure nearly robbed us of the one of the greatest trade union leaders of his generation. His heart was beating more than 220 times per minute. Years of interventions followed: a pacemaker, then there was a cutting-edge VAD machine, a ventricular assistance device, which left him without a pulse and reliant on rechargeable battery packs on his waist to keep him alive, and eventually a heart transplant.
I worked in the general secretary’s office of the PCS from January 2010 until the autumn of 2015. It was a dream job, working for someone I greatly respected. What I got to know was that Mark is one of the most personally resilient and optimistic people you could ever hope to meet.
With the debilitating health problems he faced, no one would have blamed Mark if he’d decided to walk away from a stressful job to spend time with his family. But he didn’t. He worked through even on days he now admits he was vomiting or passing blood.
Mark was a pragmatic radical. As he said in a recent interview, “Being radical only works if you bring people with you. If you are too far ahead of everyone, you can be radical and never deliver anything.
“If you are too far behind them, people don’t think the union is actually going to galvanise and fight for them. That balance has to be struck and fought for, and it changes constantly.”
Certainly Serwotka was industrially militant, but he was also judicious about when to strike, when to dig in and when to negotiate the best deal available. After successful industrial action ballots in 2022 and 2023, PCS members last year secured improved pay deals for all civil service workers – that includes many hundreds who work in buildings along Wellesley Road, including Home Office workers in Lunar House and HMRC staff in Southern House.
The union’s strike fund grew by almost £1million between the end of 2021 and the end of 2022, while subscription income grew by £740,000 in the same period, according to the union’s annual finance report. New members are drawn to a union that takes action and gets results – and he hands over a strong union to his successor.
But PCS achieved so much more under Mark. In a sector where members are required to be politically neutral in their day job, Serwotka made the point that they shouldn’t be neutral about their job, their pay or the service they provide.
Even more bravely, the union took strong moral stances against the Labour government’s plan to bring in ID cards (even though the administration of it might have created more civil service jobs, and therefore more union members), against Tory benefit sanctions (building campaigning alliances with disabled people’s organisations and other claimants’ groups) and most recently taking the Home Office to court over its immoral and (as the court found) illegal Rwanda scheme.
Congratulations: Serwotka is embraced by John McDonnell MP at last year’s PCS conference
As well as fighting for his members, Serwotka also found time to support local trade union and community initiatives, attending the Croydon Assembly meetings organised by Ted Knight in 2014. He also spoke in a local debate at Ruskin House on the EU referendum in 2016, putting the socialist case for Remain.
Mark has lived a lifetime in his 24 years as general secretary, but PCS and the whole trade union movement in Britain is better for having had him as a leader. That was evident at his leaving do two weeks ago – I was fortunate to be there among dozens of his fellow trade union leaders, MPs like John McDonnell, and PCS staff and activists past and present, assembled in the union’s Clapham HQ to give him a warm send-off.
On a personal note, it was a privilege to work with him. His principle, positivity and personal decency are things we should all aspire to emulate. I learned a lot from him, and wish him the long and happy retirement he thoroughly deserves.
- From 2015 to 2019, Andrew Fisher was the Labour Party’s Director of Policy under Jeremy Corbyn. Fisher is also the author of The Failed Experiment – and how to build an economy that works, and now writes regular columns for InsideCroydon, the i newspaper and is a regular pundit on BBC and Sky News programmes
Andrew Fisher’s recent columns:
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- If you have a news story about life in or around Croydon, or want to publicise your residents’ association or business, or if you have a local event to promote, please email us with full details at inside.croydon@btinternet.com
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As a former civil servant and PCS union rep I’ve been a supporter of Mark for many years. Apart from a couple of brief ‘hello’s at meetings, I didn’t get chance to know Mark but the reports I heard and his reputation match Andrew’s description of a man who genuinely cared about his members and doing the right thing. I wish Mark well in whatever he does next.
When I heard him speak he just spoke common sense.
I found the PCS union to be great at briefing. This was especially useful for lobbying successfully to save the Croydon Land Registry office from closure and instead have it as the national HQ. The brief provided common sense detailed winning points to make.
It was great being a member of PCS when Mark was its leader. He was an invariably an excellent speaker and his points were persuasive and encouaging. I remember him criticising GMB for supporting Trident because they have members who build nuclear submarines. He said, “Well, PCS members work in the prison system, but that doesn’t mean I’m in favour of more prisons being built to provide them with jobs.”
Classic Mark Serwotka.