Richard Baum

This is the speech I made to full Council last night proposing the Liberal Democrat motion to stop the government’s plan to close five Post Offices in Bury as part of the national plan to close 2,500. The motion passed unanimously.

“Thank you Mr Mayor.

I am proposing tonight’s motion on Post Office closures.

The programme of closures sets government against local people.

It puts Whitehall bureaucracy on a course against the residents of Bury.

And it sends the message that the future of Post Offices is bleak and unsustainable.

Mr Mayor, this is the biggest Post Office closure programme ever seen.

Ten years ago there were 18,000 Post Offices

Now, one third of them have gone.

In 1999, Bury had 46 Post Offices.

When the doors close for the last time at the Post Offices now threatened, that number will have fallen to 25.

40% of the Post Offices in Bury, gone for good.

They call it modernisation. I call it decimation.

The actions of the government and Royal Mail, Mr Mayor, mark a sustained and relentless attack on a cherished local service.

Something that has defined this country for hundreds of years, destroyed by the government in just ten.

Like limits on habeus corpus and right to trial by jury, the end of Post Offices is another plank of Labour’s legacy.

And I condemn these proposals here tonight.

Because Mr Mayor, these aren’t just buildings closing.

They’re symbols of community, familiarity and unity.

That might sound grandiose, but just ask the man on the street whether I’m over-doing it.

Closing the local one is alright for me. I can drive to the next one to pick up my parcel from eBay.

But to the frail widow next door, the local Post Office is a lifeline.

A Post Office is more than a place to buy stamps.

It’s a place where public service meets the public it serves.

If they take away our Post Office, they rob us of a fundamental interaction with a necessary service, and steal from us a trusted and familiar way of doing the basic things.

They drive us away from comfort and towards hardship.

Why are we sitting here and letting them do this do us?

This is not what this Council is about.

The people of Ainsworth Road are losing their Post Office.

The people of Rochdale Road are losing their Post Office too. The alternative suggested by Royal Mail is for a Post Office with a bus stop over twenty times further away.

The people of Walmersley Road are losing their Post Office, sending people to The Rock, where the queues at busy times already stretch out the door.

Greenmount are losing their Post Office, and Elton their’s.

These aren’t in the middle of nowhere, visited by no-one and providing scant services. Rochdale Road alone serves over 1,000 people a week.

And let us not think that this is just an issue for Bury.

There are many people up and down the country, living outside the Borough, like the Leader of the Council, who face the threat of closures too.

These are busy, thriving Post Offices being closed just because the government says the network can’t pay to keep them.

But the response as proposed makes no sense

Because even if this economic argument held water, which it doesn’t, the government is closing down Post Offices on a geographic rather than an economic basis, picking ones to close not because they should, but because it’s less likely to be obvious if they do.

As the sole shareholder in Royal Mail, it is this government’s job to think again.

The government’s years of disinvestment, idly presiding over a network falling into economic slump mustn’t go unchallenged any longer.

I can accept an argument for closures if it is based on reason, and if the solution proposed is better.

But Mr Mayor I cannot accept the government winding down the network and then closing parts of it just because they’re wound down, and then replacing them with nothing.

And so I say, when there is so much that we can’t do anything about;

When there is hardship and trouble that we cannot stop;

When sometimes the problems our residents face just cannot be solved, should we not seize every chance to make a difference now?

This is one such chance.

We need to tell Government to offer the Post Offices a viable future.

A future as part of a sustainable network of useful community facilities.

Why, for so long, have Post Office services been dismantled, when there is so much more we could be using them for?

Why, with the advent of new technology, is the Post Office not a place where I can access a range of services that means that every Post Office is profitable and serves a purpose?

The National Federation of Sub-Postmasters calls for the development of better banking services in Post Offices. The government says no. We should say yes.

Post carriers say they want to work with Post Offices, ending monopoly and providing choice. The government says no. We should say yes.

We should say that we are for better local services, not closing local services.

We are for progress, not cut-backs.

We are for innovation, not ruination.

And Mr Mayor we are for a Post Office in every community that needs one.

Four million pensioners use a Post Office Card Account for pensions and benefits.

Four million.

Lots of them live in Bury, and in closing Bury’s Post Offices, the government will make it harder for our most vulnerable people to access these services.

Who will be the voice of the elderly and the frail if not us?

We should leave here tonight resolute in our opposition to closures.

And then tomorrow morning we should start work, like Essex County Council has done, to think of new ways for Post Offices to work.

Of using the Post Office as a hub for community services provided in venues as diverse as sports clubs and local shops.

A community wide solution, so that the services go on even if the buildings themselves are taken from us.

Making use of the resilience and resourcefulness of this great Borough to make change for the better.

And let us not say that a small group of determined people cannot take on the forces of power and win.

Not only must we do just that, but we should do so in the knowledge that nothing else has ever changed the mind of government.

The people of Bury should expect nothing less.

And like they expect more from us, I expect more from national government.

Their job is to lead and to innovate. To think of new ways and new solutions.

It is not to manage a decline, but to reverse it.

Because where once we had a postal service to rival any in the world, now there’s no second delivery, no Sunday delivery, and soon no Post Office at the end of your street.

I have yet to meet a single person in this Borough in favour of Post Office closures, and yet the government continues with its charade of consultation.

Believe me Mr Mayor. As someone trying to eke out a few quid from the road maintenance budget of this Council, I know that there’s only so many times you can ask a question before it becomes obvious that the answer is going to be no.

The government keep asking us on this one, but they don’t seem to hear us tell them no.

Their consultation should be called off now Mr Mayor, along with the plans for closures.

And our MPs should be forthright in their opposition to these plans. They are at Westminster to do our bidding.

It’s no use Ivan Lewis lamenting in the papers how he fears the government is out of touch, if he stands back and watches it ignore the pleas of the people by closing half the post offices in his constituency.

Mr Lewis let every person in Bury down when he failed to vote against these government plans in Parliament.

Instead he went to the papers and said “Residents who use these post offices will be concerned,” and that bit of stirring oratory was as underwhelming as his complete lack of condemnation for these closure plans.

Where’s his passionate defence of local services? And where’s David Chaytor’s? He too didn’t vote against the closures when the people of Bury cried out for him to do so.

These men we sent to Parliament could go some way to fulfilling their promise to the people of Bury, by signing Early Day Motion 1584 calling for extra support for Post Offices and our elderly with the renewal of the Post Office Card Account.

I ask them to do that.

Mr Mayor, we do not relish, nor do we enjoy a confrontation with government.

We do not suspect, nor do we believe that this government sets out to damage communities.

But our paths are diverging where they should come together.

And let the mark of this Council’s service to Bury be that when we saw the low road taken, we stood up proud and forced the government to turn back.

And even though this Council’s leading group may have shamefully voted tonight to take away the rights of the people to come to our door and question us, they should show that their respect for local people hasn’t dwindled entirely, and join us in calling for a halt to these closures.

Mr Mayor, us Councillors are a fortunate bunch of people.

We have influence and a little bit of power. And as people who spend our free time leafleting, we know more about the value of the postal service than most.

And on this of all topics, our voice can be heard that little bit louder because of this room we meet in, and the faith shown in us by those who put us here.

So come on. Let’s use every drop of our energies and all the power of our office and stop these Post Office closures, starting now, starting here.

Too many have gone already, let us start building the future of the Post Office in Bury right now.

Mr Mayor, it is with a determined heart that I propose this motion.”