Leadership These pressures have, leadership battle itself.
taking place in the constituency Labour Parties.
two figures represented equally can racy Food and Ben, it should be called, trading on ineir lett' image, differences with Wilson's policies.
NO CUTS IN PUBLIC CUTS I SPENDING Motivating last month's social expenditure cuts, Dennis Healey commented that that they were the only way of 'restoring and maintaining full employment!. The sugar covering the pill seems to have had the desired effect. cluding Hugh Scanlon) visited the Labour leaders to inform them that they fully supported What, in fact, the TUC was supporting in the jobless record levels in the next fen years. Cutting social services to inject massive aid into industry will not, as Healey suggests in a neat 'public create more jobs when an export-lea boom appears.
it is designed to finance 'rationalisation' schemes and 'productivity deals' that will be at the expence A recent report published by the CIS which accuses the government of seeking to create a permanent unemployment euonomy, points out: 'State intervention Is no new phenomenum but it is now 'more oriented to the needs of capital than ever before.. Its main ettect will be to speed up the process of rational¡sation and concentration of capital -The CIS have, of course, put their finger on the government's underlying The money now being 'saved' education is to de poured into private enterprise to modernise It at the expence o peopies' joos. i ne chosen instrument for bailing out ailing firms is the National Enterprise Board (NEB) whose effects have already been seen at British Leyland or Chrysler. dieds, over 262 millions in 'state aid'into Ricardo's collapsing company was not, as Healey likes to pretend, to to 10%. oron uo ods Dul orecisely lo ciedica new 'stream-lined' firm in which over 9,000 jobs were 'axed'. What happened ever, mere toretaste or wnat is to come over the coming years, particularly in the The CIS suggests that, on the basis of the Central Policy Review Staff's report on the motor & componant supplies' La total of 275, 000 Jobs will need to be axed by 1985 if British cars are to compete in the cut-throat EEC market (where there already exists a The function of the National Enterprise Board will be to finance this Irationalisation' in which inous ands will be forced out onto the 'dole Financing rationalisation schemes at the expence of jobs is not the only effthe recent. social expenditure cuts. They will also accelerate similar trends inside the nationalised sector as the CIS point out, ' Britist Rail and the National Coal Board have an enormous number of jobs - over 700, 000 - over the past PARTY AVIATIC ARVE Only a short while later, a TUC delegation (inIn ine past to sop up redundancies in industry ) into the danger zone. For the first time in almost fifty years, workers such as nurses and reachers are facing the bleak prospect of largescale unemployment in the Autumn, hospitals are closed and the schools' teacher-pupil ratio worsens.
It is little wonder, therefore, that ASTMS in a paper presented to last year's Labour Party Conference predicted that the jobless total by the end of the year would be at the record region of 2.25 millions Connivance That the government feels contident in getting away with such blatently pro-capitalist policies must. be laid firmly at the door of the TUC. Originally, course, TUC leaders sold the Social Contract - and the more stringent 10% limit - to the unions on the grounas that it was the only way to save jobs. They faithfully echoed Healey's words that a cut in living standards was preferable to 'millions living on the dole'.
The chickens in that arguement have now come home to roost. Despite the Tact Inal wages have complied to th 10% norm - which is likely this year to be tightened still turther to blo unemployment has • continue lo rise at the rate of 1,000 a day.
such as the Merseyside, the shadow ot the 'inirties is once again becoming a stark reality as closures and lay-offs have pushed up the total Despite this growing evidence, nowthe TUC has at no time sought to chalienge nead-on ine government's policies by putting forward a viable alternative -based on the real need to defend jobs and living standards -and mobilising the entire labour movement to fight for it. The massive majority vvison won arine last cavour harv conference, supported even by 'lefts' such as Fool. is proot of inis Even now when the social expenditure Culs are Doung lo push unemolovmen to recora levers, the TUC has meekly toed the line and - in the person of Jack Jones sharply criticised those Tribunite MPs who dared vote against the government's proposals in their first reading in the House. The most they have done is to utter a few 'concernee noises. hinting to Healey that it will be difficult to continue selling ine social contract without a tew toker unemployment safeguards (such as ' import controls').
Isolated The TUC's cynical connivance with the government's pro-capitailst pol• prepared lo warch dole queues encinen as vine standares orummel. has had a major impact on the labour movement nis is not to say inal militancy in fighting redundancies & layotis nas been wanting. Factories from Plessey's in Liverpool to Persona in Glasgow have been occupied as workers have spontaneously begun to reject a moment's notice, can throw people on ine scrapneap,