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Billy Hayes, General Secretary of the Communication Workers Union, is facing a growing rebellion from within his own ranks over the strike that will cause misery in the run-up to Christmas.
Royal Mail workers used an internet forum to launch a series of scathing attacks on a leader some suggest is failing to get their message across.
"He is a 24-carat ----. Get him out now," wrote one postman, a union rep in southwest London. Another, who uses the sign-on 'Sticks', described Mr Hayes, who is 56, as "a useless bumbling dithering old idiot" adding for good measure: "We need rid of him as soon as!"
The protests didn't end there. He is called variously 'uninspiring', a 'stumbling oaf', or else a 'muppet'.
A postal worker, who calls himself "Axeman", wrote: "Fat Billy needs to be sidelined as soon as possible. Can he go sick?"
It will be a harsh criticism for Hayes to take. For despite the salary and friendships with some of Labour's most senior politicians, at heart he still considers himself one of them, having pounded the streets of Liverpool as a postman for 18 years before beginning his climb to influential union boss.
To his friends, Hayes is an affable, left-wing intellectual with a penchant for reading George Orwell and listening to pop music by such fashionable bands as The Ting Tings.
To his detractors, however, he is less than endearingly known as 'Fat Billy', the firebrand union boss who is leading his members into a national strike that risks destroying the very postal service he says he is trying to protect. It is not clear if the use of the word 'fat' refers to his bulk or else the size of his salary which weighs in at a hefty £97,000 a year. A postman's pay starts at £16,268.
His political baptism began at school at the hands of a sadistic teacher who would cane pupils suspected of communist sympathies. Writing recently in Socialist Review, he recalled: "It was the location of my first introduction to politics. Mr Semple, our teacher, would roar about most things to us ten year-olds, and when you had done something bad you would be whacked with a ruler on the back of your hand or cane on your backside. The one group he rallied against most were communists. Semple terrified our class with tales of communist plots and intrigue."
After school – the same one in Croxteth incidentally that would be later attended by the England footballer Wayne Rooney – he became an apprentice fitter welder and then went off to work for John West Foods. It was the early 70s and Hayes – faced with a life in front of him on the factory floor and the likelihood of the dole as industry in Liverpool crumbled around him – took a six-month break, 'doing a Jack Kerouac'. He disappeared from Merseyside and headed for Europe to find himself.
When he returned having hit the road, he instead hit the Liverpool streets, becoming a postman in 1974. The rest is the history of a mailman who found union activism and with it the lucrative path to the top. He first joined the Labour Party 33 years ago at the age of 23 – and unlike other so-called members of the union movement's 'awkward squad' – has stayed loyal to Labour and spurned hardline Trotskyites.
He met his wife Dian, inevitably, at a union meeting in Liverpool, where she was a union official at BT. For their tenth wedding anniversary last weekend, ever the activist, he treated her to a romantic night out at a Labour Party conference fringe meeting in Brighton.
Hayes moved down to London in 1992 when he was elected the union's Assistant Secretary of the Outdoor Department. He moved into a modest semi in Mitcham, now worth about £250,000, that was bought with the help of the union who lent him at least some of the money towards it at a reduced rate – a nice perk available to union officials who in theory could be voted out of office after each five-year term. Hayes had replaced Alan Johnson, now the Home Secretary, who had just been voted the union's general secretary. (Johnson subsequently quit the post when becoming an MP in 1997.)
Hayes, seen as the left wing candidate, was surprisingly voted general secretary in 2001, winning with the backing of the Communication Workers Union's 'outdoor' vote – the postal workers who had been his comrades in Liverpool and elsewhere around the country. Many had been on unofficial strike at the time of the election.
He spends his time nowadays between leafy Wimbledon, home to the union's HQ, and the family home – still in Mitcham – where he lives with his wife and two young children, aged nine and seven.
When he's at Wimbledon HQ, he's often spotted in the local HMV, buying DVD box sets, CDs or else books for himself or as gifts for staff.
"He came back the other week talking about this Ting Tings' song and saying what a great feminist song it was," said one official, adding: "He is probably one of the best read people I have ever met – almost in a geeky way."
At the negotiating table he is, according to one source, "very much a Seventies-style union leader. But he's quite a pleasant man to deal with. He doesn't bang the table in negotiations but has quite a calm style."
Hayes is certainly aware of the pressure he is under and has so far kept the smile on his face. But whether this is a postman who can actually deliver, only the next few weeks will tell. It's a high risk strategy – that like Arthur Scargill's before it – may be doomed to failure.
97,000 smackaroos--for what Billy.?
I remember it now 
