STEVE POTTER reports on the Coventry mass meetings The Wilson Government had a good year in 1975. The social contract became the £6 limit, living standards fell, social service cuts were stepped up, and unemployment reached the staggering total of 1,211,464 - 5.2 per cent of the total working population.
As the year came to an end, Dennis Healey introduced an anaem ic package of measures against unemployment on 17 December. Since Cabinet agreement on another £3,000 million worth of public expenditure cuts in 1976 was hardly a well-kept secret, even the Financial Times (18 December) concluded: "In the deepest recession since the war his actions are probably deflationary.... The chances are that it will prove to be comatose for some time to come.
Not only will the Wilson Government do nothing significant against unemployment, but in cahoots with the TUC and the Confederation of British Industry it is consciously planning to increase it. The fear of unemployment will now be used to carry out a mass ive productivity offensive on the railways and in steel, cars and many other industries. That was the decision of the November summit at Chequers attended by the TUC and the CBI. The follow-up to the £6 limit will enforce it.
MORE UNEMPLOYED According to the Daily Mirror this 'son of £6' will be even more stunted - £3 for all plus £2 more where there is an appropriate increase in productivity. Not only will this mean a further enforced drop in living standards, but there will be another deliberate increase in unemployment, with the 1½ million mark almost certainly being breached These 'leaders' of the working class must be brought to book before their disastrous policies are allowed to return the working class to the conditions of the 1930s - and bring about a disastrous Labour defeat at the next general election. Emergency conferences of both the TUC and the Labour Party are needed to put them on the spot. The unemployment policies of the Labour Government must be rejected, and a programme drawn up which defends jobs, living standards and the social services.
But what is the response of the 'lefts"? After the Tribune group of MPs had abjectly capitulated to the Government's Chrysler deal - and presented the subsequent fight over sackings as an argument between management and the unions - Tribune has finally stirred itself to call for a special Labour Party conference on Government policy. It's a polite request with a deferential question mark at the end, of course: So why not a special Labour Party conference to discuss the issue which is so basic to our socialist beliefs?' (Tribune, 2 January 1976).
RECALL THE TUC
The working class needs to fight to defend its living standards, not defer to those who are busy attacking them. The demand for a special Labour Party conference must go up in every Constituency Labour Party. vote and campaign against the policies which are leading the labour movement to disaster. They must fight to remove Wilson and Co. or be exposed as useless babblers.
The 'lefts' in the trade union bureaucracy deserve the same treatment. They must support the call for a recall TUC and fight at it for support for every struggle against redundancies.
The commitment to support the Government's economic policies by the last TUC conference has given these lefts a get-out clause for failing to wage a fight. They plead that to do so would be to risk isolation from the trade union movement - as do their co-thinkers in the Labour Party. The demand for a recall TUC to break with the Government's policies brings these leaders before the eyes of the whole labour movement: either they are shown by their passivity actually to support the Government's attacks on the working class, or they mobilise opposition to these attacks. The 'left' MPs must be forced to fight Wilson and