Fears of postal votes delays despite ending of strike

Party political strategists were last night faced with another unforseen disruption to the 2001 general election as the aftermath of the post office strike left thousands of voters unlikely to get their postal ballots in time to vote.

A change in the law has meant that postal voting for the June 7 election was ex pected to take place on an unprecedented scale - with some councils reporting a 500% increase in applications now that the process has been made much easier.

With the closing date for postal votes due next Tuesday allowing nine days to return completed ballots, postal workers started to clear the backlog of 50m letters as they returned to work after members of the Communication Workers Union at Watford voted to accept an agreement between managers and union leaders aimed at defusing the original dispute which triggered strikes across the country.

Alarm bells rang through political party HQs as further strikes remained a possibility, despite most workers who had joined the unofficial walkouts in protest against attempts to divert Watford's strikebound mail voting to call off their action.

There were still doubts last night about Liverpool, where strikers are due to meet this morning to decide whether to return to work; if negotiations fail to reach a final settlement of the Watford dispute within the next week, renewed industrial action is likely.

Party HQs have already suffered one unexpected disaster on their election planning "grids" this spring - the foot and mouth crisis which caused the election to be postponed from May 3.

Fear of fraud and the additional complications in not being able to count such votes before polls close at 10pm - as used to happen - have also raised the prospect that key early results will be delayed.

"Late votes will not even be opened, so in a marginal seat no one will ever know if the result could have changed," said a spokesperson for the Association of Electoral Administrators, the returning officers who announce all 659 results.

The Electoral Reform Society called on town hall returning officers to allow late-arriving votes to be counted if their postmark shows they were cast in time. But Whitehall officials said the 2000 Repre sentation of the People Act did not allow such flexibility and that it would make chaos of the overnight count on June 7.

A strike planned for today by guards on South West Trains - the latest in a long-running dispute about bad industrial relations on one of the country's busiest rail routes - was called off after a deal was agreed by the Rail Maritime and Transport union executive.

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