<P> In 1971, postal services in Great Britain were suspended for two months between January and March as the result of a national postal strike over a pay claim . Postcodes were extended across Great Britain and Northern Ireland between 1959 and 1974 . </P> <P> Postal workers held their first national strike for 17 years in 1988 after walking out over bonuses being paid to recruit new workers in London and the South East . Royal Mail established Romec (Royal Mail Engineering & Construction) in 1989 to deliver facilities maintenance services to its business . Romec is 51% owned by Royal Mail and 49% by Haden Building Management Ltd which became Balfour Beatty WorkPlace and now Cofely UK, part of GDF Suez in a joint venture . </P> <P> British Telecom was separated from the Post Office Corporation in 1980 and demerged as an independent business in 1981 . Girobank was sold to Alliance & Leicester in 1990 and Royal Mail Parcels was rebranded as Parcelforce . The remaining business continued under public ownership as privatisation of this was deemed to be too unpopular . However, in the 1990s President of the Board of Trade Michael Heseltine began investigating a possible sale and eventually a Green Paper on Postal Reform was published in May 1994, outlining various options for privatisation . The ideas though, proved controversial and were dropped from the 1994 Queen's Speech after a number of Conservative MPs warned Heseltine they would not vote for the legislation . </P> <P> After a change of government in 1997, the Labour administration decided to keep the Post Office state - owned but with more commercial freedom . This led to the Postal Services Act 2000, where the Post Office became a public limited company in which the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry owned 50,004 ordinary shares plus 1 special share, and the Treasury Solicitor held 1 ordinary share . The company was renamed Consignia plc in 2001 and the new name was intended to show that the company did more than deliver mail; however, the change was very unpopular with both the public and employees . The Communication Workers Union (CWU) boycotted the name, and the following year, it was announced that the company would be renamed Royal Mail Group plc . </P>

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