Fighting the speculators means revealing the machinations of this Government and the industrialists with which it is in league. Opening the books of the financiers by workers representatives would soon reveal what is going on. The working class should recognise the 'pound scares" for what they are — method of attacking the labour movement.
Chancellor Healey and the governor of the Bank of England share a smile. After all, what's a run on the pound when its ly the same thing! inflation rate.
WAGE CUTS past." The capitalist class always use two main arguments to show that wage controls "benefit the worker. The first, and most ludicrous, is that it is necessary to compete with other countries. Why this is farcical is simple - because the workers of those other countries are being told exactThe latest facts and figures on wage settlements in other countries show only too well what is happening. In Japan steel workers have been offered an 8.5 per cent increase -the smallest offer since 1966 and in a country with a 9 per cent annual In West Germany, Ruhr miners have been forced to accept 5.25 per cent, central and local government workers 5.3 per cent, and rail and post office workers 5 percent, in a country where price rises are running at 5.5 per cent. As the Economist magazine cynically commented in a report on West Germany: "Unemployment will stay high but the silver lining is that workers are settling for smaller wage increases than in the Meanwhile, despite these low wage increases, Japanese steel prices anc German coal prices continue to rise. The low wage increases in every case are justified by the need to compete with foreign countries, including Britain, where the workers are being told to accept wage cuts to compete with the workers who are being forced to accept wage cuts to compete with them! It is a crazy merry go round in which the only winners are the divide and rule tacticians of the ruling class.
If, as the bosses argue, the wage increases won by workers in Britain are too big to enable them to com pete with foreign economies......
Why, instead of trying to cut British workers' wages, don't they urge the workers in other countries to increase theirs?
An international campaign for wage increases, however, is something we don't think the capitalists will be too keen on.
The second argument used to jus tify wage controls is 'the fight against inflation'. Healey continually repeats that his number one priority is to get the rate of inflation down to 5 per cent. In fact he not merely knows that this is not going to hap pen, but is pursuing policies which will actually help to prevent it from happening The very fall in the value of the pound which is being used to 'encourage' the TUC in coming to a wages deal is one such example. Even the financial press admits that the fall in the value of the pound was started by the Bank of England.
Already, due to the fact that cap italism is only interested in plundering the countries of the "Third World' and not in increasing the output of vital
on Unemployment.
on jobs should be fought for:
ies under the control of the workers; materials in a planned way, the price of food and the crucial goods needed for production in Britain is soaring. The price of copper has gone up by 60 per cent since the beginning of 1975, while the price of coffee has nearly trebled, the price of wheat has increased by 15 per cent and that of cocoa has gone up by nearly a half in the same period.
The average price of raw material and food commodities has increased by a third in the last year, and more increases are on the way. The Financial Times of 14 April admitted: It is not generally recognised that whatever happens to world grain markets, UK prices of wheat and barley (the basic material of bread and animal foodstuffs) will have to go up much further by the end of the transitional period in 1978 to stay in line with EEC levels.' MAKE WORSE The effects of the foreing down of the value of the pound will make this situation much worse. When imported commodity prices rise, roughly half that is passed on to wholesale prices. Thus the 10 per cent fall in the value of the pound will add 3-4 per cent at least to prces.
This makes nonsense of Healey's claim that price rises due to all changes will be brought down to 5 per cent. Far from aiming to fight inflation, the Government with its policy tants in every union and Labour Party branch to win rejection of any deal with Healey and mobilise support for a massive turn out for the Day of Action on 26 May called by the National Assembly At the same time the real alternatives to the sterling blackmail, the inflation fraud and the lies * ON STERLING - a labour movement enquiry into the speculators - close down the foreign exchange markets, take over all British investment abroad, nationalise the banks and finance compan* ON INFLATION - demand automatic increas es in wages to compensate for increases in the cost * ON JOBS - impose policies of work-sharing with no loss of pay, reinstate all the cuts, and embark on a programme of socially useful public works. Nationalise under workers control and without compensation all firms creating redun"It's nice to know we're helpi to hold it down a little up accelerang even turner since the early 1960s. 1957—58 the increase in prices was roughly 4 per cent, in 196061 about the same, in 1964-65 it was up to 5 per cent, by 1969-70 it had reached almost 8 per cent, and by 1975 it was running at 25 per Cena Yet throughout this period the share of wages in the economy has actually been falling.
FALLING Figures printed by the business magazine Politics and Money in it to 700,000 by 1979.
firms. 2-3 percent at most!
9975 HER BLOCK to add up.
For example in product is around 60 percent. Red Weekly has many times exposed Healey's lies on cuts and jobs. The most scandalous one of all is that the proposed deal will cut unemploy- delicately: ment - specifically, that it will cut The Government is at present engaged in a gigantic productivity drive - the full weight of which is being felt by workers in Leyland and other The aim of this is to drive the rate of increase in producitivy above the 4 percent it has averaged in the last ten years. But this 4 per cent plus increase in productivity is predicted at a time when realistic prospects for an increase in output only average If production goes up less rapidly than increases in the rate at which workers can produce, then less jobs are going to be available, not more. You don't need to understand economics to see that Healey is lying through his teeth - only the ability Even the capitalist class is a bit embarrassed about Healy's lies on wages as a proportion of the economy can accompany soaring prices Is conclusive disproof of the argument that it is wages which are responsible for inflation. The 'costs' which go to make up prices are determined by many more things than wages - in fact the cost of wages in the average In other words, even if the whole increase in wages were passed on, the present E6 increase - roughly 10 percent - would only lead to prices going up by 6 per cent. In fact prices are going up at an annual about cutting unemployment to 700,000 by the end of 1979!' jobs. The forecast made by economists at the London Business School in the Sunday Times put it rather *In fact our present forecast suggests that demand will be insufficient to get anywhere near an unemployment rate as low as 3 percent by 1979 (the Chancellor's target). Indeed, we do not see unemployment falling below the million mark through- council house rents; drastically cut out the period - and at the end of the decade it is likely to rise again."
Others put it less carefully. The Times for example, considered on 7 April that it was necessary to discuss the possibility of a situation of *2,000,000 unemployed, and deindustrialisation quickening to a gallop' This is probably somewhat alarmist even for the capitalists, but it shows that Healey's promises are a mockery.
Just as vicious as his attack on jobs, however, are the proposals for cutting public expenditure. In addition to providing vitally needed hospitals, schools, houses and other In General Motors, for example, profits in the third quarter of 1975 were up fifteen times on a year earlier - an increase of 1,500 per cent at a time when wages were going up by less than 10 percent! Already the business sections of newspapers such as the Daily Telegraph predict for Britain that while wages will go up by 3 percent in 1976, profits will go up by 20 per cent.
hands. has been telling the unions things - and there is still a huge shortage of these - public expenditure is one of the only ways in which unemployment is prevented from rising even more rapidly that A DIESCUE For example, in the ten years from 1965-75 industrial employment fell by 15 per cent. The only reason why unemployment did not rise even further was that jobs were then still being created in the public sector.
Quite apart from the savage attacks contained in the Government's White Paper on expenditure, incred ible plans for further cuts have recently been revealed. The Sun reported on 27 April that plans were being made to stop annual inflationlinked rises in pensions; cut social security payments to strikers; raise still further the rail services; and cut the health service. As the paper put it: "Did ex-Premier Harold Wil son know what was coming and decide to get out while the going was good?' We don't know the answer to that, but everyone should know right from the start that Healey's promises on jobs would result in him being imprisoned for perjury if there were any such thing as an honest capitalist court! The truth is that under capitalism unemployment in Britain will never again fall below one million - and by 1980 it is more likely to be nearer two million.
MP Neil Kinnock bleated in Tribune on 16 April: What iron-clad guarantee has the Government obtained or what machinery has it invented to ensure that cuts and sacrifices will be turned into new investment, higher productivity, fresh jobs and lower prices?" The answer is of course none.
There is no way of ensuring that any sacrifices made by the working class benefit it or increase production as long as industry remains in private This is one of the reasons why
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'Have you heard the one Denis 3. Chopping jobs - Healey's real aim