Stroud Save Our Post Offices Protest

Just a note to publicise the protest on Saturday 15th March at 1.00 at top of pedestrian High Street, Stroud. Below are more details from the local campaign. See Green party views here.

Photo: Cainscross PO: one of the spared POs

Fight The Post Office Closures
The announcement by the government and the Post Office that 2,500 post offices are to close nationally will have a devastating impact on our communities, especially on the elderly, disabled and those with small children. In the Stroud area Ebley, Uplands, South Woodchester, Horsley and Forest Green post offices have been targeted for closure with 39 post offices and related services under threat in Gloucestershire. While our communities face these attacks and we are being offered the prospect of longer queues and journeys, Royal Mail’s directors have received £4.5 million in bonuses on top of their £2.5 million salaries. It is reported Alan Cook, managing director of Post Office Ltd will be paid a bonus of £1 million for delivering the post office closures on time. It’s time our need for good public services is put before the greed of big business.

Post office closures are part of the government attack on public services, allowing big business to boost their profits. Since the government brought in the Postal Services Act of 2000, the Royal Mail Group, the Post Office parent company, is run as a publicly owned commercial organisation, rather than a public service. Now Post Office Ltd tell us the postal network is losing money and has fewer customers and are proposing ‘Network Change’, a modernisation programme meaning huge closures. But the government are deliberately making the post office unviable. People were pressurised to accept payments of pension and benefits through bank accounts rather than post offices. Now we can’t buy TV licences, pay water rates and some gas bills at the post office and fewer post offices deal with passports.

Consultation or PR Exercise?
The government and Post Office Ltd claim a national consultation took place before the announcement of the 2,500 closures. We are told there will be an ‘in depth analysis’ of how post offices serve the community before any are earmarked for closure. There is a 6 week period of ‘consultation’ but the overriding criteria is profitability. Although the rigid Post Office formula means some post offices that make a profit, like Uplands, are also threatened with closure.

A letter was sent by the Post Office to those sub postmasters and mistresses under threat, saying they could lose their compensation if they discussed the closure with anyone. A 71 year old Northamptonshire sub postmaster refused to sign this ‘gagging order’ and it has now been withdrawn. The Post Office also admitted that the government has instructed them not to implement closure decisions in the run up to the local elections this May.

The consultation process appears no more than a PR exercise, for the Stroud area it officially ends on March 17th, but our fight will continue, as we saw with the Maternity Hospital campaign, it’s public pressure that forces a change in decisions.

We Need A United Campaign
This announcement of 2,500 post office closures is highly unlikely to be the last. Six crown post offices have been franchised to WH Smiths with plans for 70 more. Richard Handover, a Royal Mail director, was chairman of WH Smiths until 2005. The government is only committed to a measly £150 million per year to meet sub postmasters and mistresses salaries and infrastructure costs up to 2011. Then there’s no limit on the number of closures. In the last ten years 4,500 have closed. We are fighting for the very future of our postal service. The Post Office say if one post office is saved another must close, so it is vital for the campaign to unite against all closures. We do not want to be picked off bit by bit, our communities are worth more than big business profits.

Only by uniting campaigns regionally and nationally can we hope to challenge the government policy. In London 169 closures have just been announced, if a demonstration was called in the capital it could become national and unite campaigns across the country. The Post Office is deliberately rolling out the closure programme, with different areas affected at different times, making it harder to build a united national campaign to fight to save them. But if we don’t fight we will lose our postal service as we know it and public pressure can force policy changes. If the government can subsidise and nationalise the bank Northern Rock, why can’t it fund our postal service? Royal Mail’s directors bonuses alone could keep hundreds of post offices open.

Want to help the Save Our Post Offices campaign? E mail chrismoore61@yahoo.co.uk or phone 07810 732379