Additional 37 Crown Post Offices to close in Britain
By
Richard Tyler
21 January 2017
The demise of the UK’s Post Office moves one step closer with the planned closure of a further 37 Crown post offices, threatening over 400 jobs, some 12.5 percent of the existing 3,344 workforce in these facilities.
Crown Post Offices are mainly larger branches, usually found on the high street of most towns or populous conurbations that provide an extensive range of services. Notwithstanding the tremendous developments in technology and global integration, the offices continue to provide an important function in many aspects of life.
For the powers-that-be, however, the post offices are just another lucrative source of profiteering, and the jobs, livelihoods and services it supplies are of no consequence. That is why postal services globally have been a target for privatisation and outsourcing and Britain is no exception.
At its highpoint in 1975, nearly one-half million people worked for the Post Office, making it one of the UK’s largest employers, with 177,625 in the postal service alone. The Post Office Annual Report for 2016 records a total of just 6,605 employees.
The breakup and privatisation of the Post Office began under the Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s. Legislation passed in 1984 lifting the previous state monopoly over telecommunications accompanied the sale of 50 percent of the shares in the newly-created British Telecommunications, which had been hived off from the Post Office. In 1990, the Post Office’s banking arm, Giro Bank, was sold off to the Alliance and Leicester.
The process of dismantling and selling off what remained of the Post Office continued under the Labour governments of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.
In 2004, the second…