Public and Commercial Services Union

Thank you to all members who took part in our make your vote count (MYVC) campaign this year. We asked thousands of candidates to support our five pledges and over two thousand responses were published to members and potential members on our website.

Our aims for the campaign were:

• To put our issues and policies onto the political agenda during the general election to strengthen our influence with politicians.
• To try to stop far right parties making any more electoral gains.

These pages will give you information on the campaign and the successful candidates and whether they responded to our pledges.

Make Your Vote Count 2010

It is the first time we’ve run our Make Your Vote Count (MYVC) campaign during the general election and an unprecedented amount of activities have taken place in the past few months.

Thousands of candidates were asked to support the five pledges and thousands of responses were published to members and potential members.

We focussed on the general election this year however some activity did take place where there were BNP and other far right candidates standing for election, such as in Hartlepool, Stoke on Trent and Barking and Dagenham.

As part of our general election campaign we selected five target constituencies per region/nation based on the incumbent’s majority, PCS membership, whether they were a key figure in either the government or their party, whether we had specific industrial issues such as office closures in the constituency and also whether the BNP were standing.

The constituencies were selected by using the criteria outlined above. We wrote to the candidates encouraging them to support our pledges and published the responses to members but we also held candidates’ question time events and invited members to attend to put their questions to candidates directly. We sent over 29,000 letters out to members inviting them to attend the events and encouraging them to get involved in our campaign.

Activities undertaken this year

As part of MYVC we undertook an unprecedented amount of activities, these included:

• Writing to the main Westminster party leaders and publishing the responses to members in the April edition of View and on the PCS website
• Publishing a commentary on the party leader responses on the PCS website
• Producing a separate mailing for members of the responses from the Scottish and Northern Irish party leaders and publishing this on the PCS website
• Writing to all the MPs who were re-standing asking them to support our pledges
• Writing to 1,800 prospective parliamentary candidates in early April asking them to support our pledges and publishing any responses on our website
• Analysing the main political party manifestos and publishing this on our website
• Producing and distributing campaign materials to branches encouraging members to get involved in our campaign, including materials about the importance of registering to vote
• Targeting key constituencies and holding candidate question time meetings with candidates and PCS/other trade union members. This allowed members the opportunity to grill their candidates before they voted
• Supporting other like-minded organisations, like The Fair Pay Network, Carer Watch, Working Families and The Refugee Council

We also organized various successful anti-fascist activities, these included:

• getting PCS members trained to show the Anne Frank exhibition in Hartlepool where the BNP have been a threat
• well supported days of action leafleting and canvassing against the BNP for Unite Against Fascism and Hope not Hate in Barking and Stoke
• workplace days of action taking the message against the BNP to other members in the workplace
• the Love Music Hate Racism carnivals in Luton and Barnsley; and
• leafleting and community activities in North Devon

How you can get involved in our campaign

Once the new government have outlined their policies and priorities we will want to engage with them and also the opposition parties to demonstrate that spending cuts will not deliver quality public services. 

You can get involved in the make your vote count campaign in loads of different ways. You can do as little or as much as you have time for. Here are a number of ways you get can get involved and make a difference.

• Organise a stall in your workplace and talk to members about the make your vote count campaign
• Challenge your local MP and see if they have commented on our pledges. 
• Sign up for the PCS anti fascist newsletter, to subscribe please email antifascism@pcs.org.uk