Post Office Mass Closure Plan

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Post Office Mass Closure Plan

Steelworkers Discuss Way Out of Pensions Crisis

The Ethics of Revenge by A Father Who Lost His Son to Terror

Four post offices are to be shut down every working day for the next three years, it was announced on Monday.

Plans to close 3,000 urban post offices will be enacted from next year until the end of 2005, according to a Consignia spokesman. The closures are said to be designed to help the Post Office division cut down on pre-tax losses which hit £163m.

Post Office chief executive David Mills said in an interview with the Financial Times: "It is my job to, on average, close four urban post offices every working day over the next three years."

The scheme will axe one-in-three urban post offices, with rural branches remaining untouched, in line with a government report which has stressed their role in supporting countryside communities. The closures are part of a £270m post office "revival" plan, which includes compensation for sub-postmasters closing branches, and cash to redevelop sites maintained.

Colin Baker, general secretary of the National Federation of Subpostmasters, said the programme was designed "to get a more viable, nicer network for the customers and ensuring that it is done with their agreement".

The restructuring has been backed by government, whose decision to pay state benefits direct to bank accounts, rather than through Post Offices, has been blamed in part for the network's plight.

This "restructuring", coupled with the "restructuring" of Royal Mail, is based on the criterion of being successful in making the maximum capitalist profit. It is not based on what will profit society or provide a service for the people. No amount of window-dressing can hide this fact. It is in line with the whole agenda of privatisation, handing over public funds to private capital and cutting back on social programmes on the basis that not enough resources are available.

The struggle against this agenda is a uniting factor for the workers in Consignia. The scale of the attack on the workers and on the fabric of society through this privatisation agenda demands that the workers seize the initiative. This means that they must set their own agenda on the basis of what favours their interests as well as serves the building of a society in which what serves the people becomes paramount. Thus they cannot be content with a call for "renationalisation", bringing the Post Office firmly back into the "public sector" (whatever the financial mechanics of the situation). In essence, this is to surrender the initiative to those in power, because society is being wrecked to such an extent that government control does not guarantee anything for the working class and people.

The workers must oppose the agenda of privatisation and the attack on their livelihoods on the basis of what favours their interests and linking that with the general wellbeing. This will open a broad path for the workers to advance, creating the conditions for the elimination of the backwardness in the movement.

Steelworkers made redundant at the Allied Steel and Wire plant in Cardiff have held urgent talks about the major shortfall in the company's pension scheme.

Welsh First Minister Rhodri Morgan joined 300 of the 800 workers for a crisis meeting last Saturday. The meeting was attended by officials from the ISTC steel union.

The Castle Works plant in Tremorfa closed on Friday, July 26, after attempts by receivers KPMG to find a buyer for the site failed. Workers have been told that the fund – which showed a £21m deficit on December 31 last year – had worsened with the continuing fall of the stock market.

Existing ASW pensioners would take priority in receiving whatever funds existed. Since the pension scheme is not fully funded, this means that not much would be left for the remaining workers.

The disastrous downturn on the world markets has seen more than 20% wiped off many company pensions, creating a double blow for ASW workers.

On Friday, Cardiff Council called on the Welsh Assembly to take immediate action to help those laid off. They demanded an urgent meeting with First Minister Rhodri Morgan, and an assurance that the former employees be given the same sort of support as was given to redundant Corus workers.

"There are more people living in deprived areas in Cardiff than anywhere else in the country," said Councillor Marion Drake, Cabinet member for enterprise. She said the Council was working with others to do what they could to help the situation but it was the assembly which had the power to make a real difference.

Many employees failed to turn up for work at the Tremorfa plant since receivers KPMG revealed earlier this week that the site was closing.

KPMG took the decision to close the plant ahead of the annual August shutdown. The Welsh Assembly said it was powerless under EU competition rules to step in and help save ASW.

ASW went into receivership on July 10. The firm's share price had dropped to just 2.5p after riding high at more than 100 times as much at its peak.

The double blow to the steelworkers demonstrates how the parasitism and decay of capitalism is now completely wrecking the fabric of the society at this stage of neo-liberal globalisation. Economic criteria based on the needs of the working class and people are completely absent. EU criteria on competition only exacerbate an already impossible situation. Major industries like those of coal and steel, which were the first industries to be subject to regulation by the forerunners of the EU, have also been the first to suffer attack through the capitalist crisis. Anarchy and overproduction were not solved through the EEC, and as the crisis deepened through the 1980s and 1990s, these heavy industries have been decimated, and the workers have become overall more impoverished. The pension funds themselves have been huge resources of capital in the hands of the finance capitalists, benefiting the financiers in times of stock market boom and now being further robbed from the workers in times of depression.

A speech made by Yitzhak Frankenthal, Chairman of the Families Forum, at a rally in Jerusalem on Saturday, July 27, 2002, outside the Prime Minister's residence.

My beloved son Arik, my own flesh and blood, was murdered by Palestinians. My tall blue-eyed golden-haired son who was always smiling with the innocence of a child and the understanding of an adult. My son. If to hit his killers, innocent Palestinian children and other civilians would have to be killed, I would ask the security forces to wait for another opportunity. If the security forces were to kill innocent Palestinians as well, I would tell them they were no better than my son's killers.

My beloved son Arik was murdered by a Palestinian. Should the security forces have information of this murderer's whereabouts, and should it turn out that he was surrounded by innocent children and other Palestinian civilians, then – even if the security forces knew that the killer was planning another murderous attack that was to be launched within hours and they now had the choice of curbing a terror attack that would kill innocent Israeli civilians but at the cost of hitting innocent Palestinians – I would tell the security forces not to seek revenge but to try to avoid and prevent the death of innocent civilians, be they Israelis or Palestinians.

I would rather have the finger that pushes the trigger or the button that drops the bomb tremble before it kills my son's murderer, than for innocent civilians to be killed. I would say to the security forces: do not kill the killer. Rather, bring him before an Israeli court. You are not the judiciary. Your only motivation should not be vengeance, but the prevention of any injury to innocent civilians.

Ethics are not black and white – they are all white. Ethics have to be free of vengefulness and rashness. Every act must be carefully weighed before a decision is made to see whether it meets the strict ethical criteria. Ethics cannot be left to the discretion of anyone who is frivolous or trigger-happy. Our ethics are hanging by a thread, at the mercy of every soldier and politician. I am not at all sure that I am willing to delegate my ethics to them.

It is unethical to kill innocent Israeli or Palestinian women and children. It is also unethical to control another nation and to lead it to lose its humaneness. It is patently unethical to drop a bomb that kills innocent Palestinians. It is blatantly unethical to wreak vengeance upon innocent bystanders. It is, on the other hand, supremely ethical to prevent the death of any human being. But if such prevention causes the futile death of others, the ethical foundation for such prevention is lost.

A nation that cannot draw the line is doomed to eventually apply unethical measures against its own people. The worst in my mind is not what has already happened but what I am sure one day will. And it will – because ethics are now being twisted and the political and military leadership does not even have the most basic integrity to say: "we are sorry".

We lost sight of our ethics long before the suicide bombings. The breaking point was when we started to control another nation. My son Arik was born into a democracy with a chance for a decent, settled life. Arik's killer was born into an appalling occupation, into an ethical chaos. Had my son been born in his stead, he may have ended up doing the same. Had I myself been born into the political and ethical chaos that is the Palestinians' daily reality, I would certainly have tried to kill and hurt the occupier; had I not, I would have betrayed my essence as a free man. Let all the self-righteous who speak of ruthless Palestinian murderers take a hard look in the mirror and ask themselves what they would have done had they been the ones living under occupation. I can say for myself that I, Yitzhak Frankenthal, would have undoubtedly become a freedom fighter and would have killed as many on the other side as I possibly could. It is this depraved hypocrisy that pushes the Palestinians to fight us relentlessly. Our double standard that allows us to boast the highest military ethics, while the same military slays innocent children. This lack of ethics is bound to corrupt us.

My son Arik was murdered when he was a soldier by Palestinian fighters who believed in the ethical basis of their struggle against the occupation. My son Arik was not murdered because he was Jewish but because he is part of the nation that occupies the territory of another.

I know these are concepts that are unpalatable, but I must voice them loud and clear, because they come from my heart – the heart of a father whose son did not get to live because his people were blinded with power. As much as I would like to do so, I cannot say that the Palestinians are to blame for my son's death. That would be the easy way out, but it is we, Israelis, who are to blame because of the occupation. Anyone who refuses to heed this awful truth will eventually lead to our destruction.

The Palestinians cannot drive us away – they have long acknowledged our existence. They have been ready to make peace with us; it is we who are unwilling to make peace with them. It is we who insist on maintaining our control over them; it is we who escalate the situation in the region and fee d the cycle of bloodshed. I regret to say it, but the blame is entirely ours.

I do not mean to absolve the Palestinians and by no means justify attacks against Israeli civilians. No attack against civilians can be condoned. But as an occupation force it is we who trample over human dignity, it is we who crush the liberty of Palestinians and it is we who push an entire nation to crazy acts of despair. Finally, I call on my brothers and sisters in the settlements – see what we have come to.