The following correction appeared in the Guardian's Corrections and clarifications column, Friday February 2 2007
Alistair Darling is no longer transport secretary as we mistakenly stated below. That post is now held by Douglas Alexander.
Hundreds of thousands of civil servants walked out on a one-day strike yesterday, disrupting work in tax offices, courts, museums and galleries, and causing the cancellation of hundreds of driving tests.
The strike over pay, compulsory redundancies, privatisation of services and the use of consultants by the government, is the first of a series of disruptive actions by the Public and Commercial Services union, which represents more than half the civil servants in Whitehall.
The action was aimed to coincide with one of the busiest times in Revenue & Customs's calendar - the final day for receiving last-minute tax self-assessment forms. Revenue & Customs drafted in senior civil servants to keep offices open around the UK and enable the public to deliver cheques. The action also closed down the Welsh assembly and disrupted the trial, at the high-security court in Woolwich, south London, of the alleged July 21 would-be bombers.
Union officials mounted early-morning picket lines outside government departments in Whitehall, including the Treasury and Department for Education, and at the British Library and the National Gallery. Labour MPs, including the leftwing leadership contender John McDonnell, joined pickets, and some Tory and Liberal Democrat MPs also supported strikers.
Philip Hollobone, the Conservative MP for Kettering, supported workers on a local picket line because of a threatened tax office closure, and the Liberal Democrat MP Edward Davey, chief of staff to Sir Menzies Campbell, the party leader, backed workers at Customs & Revenue's office in Tolworth, south-west London. Judges brought coffee out for Revenue & Customs and Crown Prosecution Service members picketing at the Chichester tax office inquiry centre.
Alistair Darling, the transport secretary, had to cancel a visit to the national headquarters of the Coastguard Agency, which closed due to the strike.
An internal Cabinet Office memo to press officers instructed them to say there was no need for the strike and that the civil service could not be immune from the need for change. The government also opposed a proposal by the union to go to Acas for mediation in the dispute. The briefing memo says: "It is PCS [the civil service union] that are deciding to ballot or take industrial action. It is for them to reconsider their actions rather than seek third-party intervention at this stage."
Officials were also told in the briefing to defend consultants in Whitehall, despite criticism from the National Audit Office on the £2bn cost of employing them.
The memo says: "Consultants can perform a vital role in delivering public services ... and [help] to bring about improvements which may otherwise have been unattainable."
