NO contract Vote Vote Socialist (IMG)
Vote Vote Brian Heron Brian Heron THE POLICIES of the Lahour Government have cut your living standards. Real buying power has fallen by £9.50 a week since 1975.
Unemployment is at a post-war record of 1½ million. Albert Booth, Labour's Minister of Employment, says we will have to 'face the prospect of 2 million being unemployed'.
The Labour Government has cut public spending by £8 billions. Now we have less hospitals and longer waiting lists. We have less schools and fewer teachers. We have less houses, less money for repairs and higher rents. We have less nurseries for the children and less homes for the aged and the infirm.
These policies have boosted and helped the cause of the worst enemies of the working class. The fascists of the National Front have gone onto the streets in growing numbers. They have threatened Labour majorities in manyareas.
Anti-working class forces have been encouraged by the Government's policies to launch new attacks on working class women. By supporting the anti-abortion Bill of William Benyon the Tory party and a gang of right-wing Labour MPs threaten to drive women once again to the horrors of backstreet abortions. The Government has refused to vote down this Bill.
The labour movement and working people have suffered by these policies. Meanwhile the banks are making record profits. In February, Lloyds Bank boasted of their £147,734,000 profit for 1976. This was 54 per cent up on 1975.
ING For fre against k Vote Socialist (IMG) Socialist (IMG)
Vote Brian Heron It is clear that the policies of the Labour Government have served the interests of the bankers and big business and not the interests of the working class.
Working people did not vote Labour for such shameful policies. No government can be called socialist that pays for higher profits by cutting your wage packet. This means you have less money to buy food and clothing. You pay for such policies by you and your friends joining the dole queues. You pay for them by risking your health and your life - because this is what cuts in the health service mean. You pay for them by your children being taught in overcrowded, understaffed, old-fashioned schools.
The Labour leaders and their allies like Jack Jones justify these policies by claiming that they keep Labour in office. The by-election results and the opinion polls show this claim to be nonsense. Callaghan and Healey's policies are demoralising the labour movement. If the Labour Government and its supporters like Jack Jones are allowed to carry on with these policies you will also pay for them with the return of a Tory government. That government would then introduce even worse cuts and even higher unemployment. Only the fight for a socialist alternative to the policies of Callaghan and Jones can keep the Tories out.
Both 'left' and right in the Government have supported the Social Contract. It is disastrous policy which will bring back the a demand, tracion laws re telenes r's policles, Black people Vote Socialist (IMG)
Vote Brian Heron Tories. Unlike the 'left' trade union leaders and left' MPs I stand for a fight-back now.
As a Trotskyist and a socialist I have only one loyalty and that is to the working class and its allies. As a British Leyland shop steward I will be on strike on 19 April. I shall campaign to turn this into a day of national strike action against the Social Contract, inside and outside the car industry.
Workers in the public sector are beginning to fight closures and cutbacks. They need our support. We must insist in our trade union branches, in local Labour parties and so on that we back tel struggic We must organise support for their pickets, their demonstrations and where possible build solidarity strike action to back their struggle.
Every fight against sackings, every fight against pay policy, every fight against the cuts must get the maximum, united support of our class organisations. We need to organise a united movement of all people opposed to the Contract who are prepared to fight back.
Such a socialist opposition must unite people both inside and outside the Labour Party. It would reject any Social Contract with the employers and fight for socialist policies against the right-wing leaders. This is the only realistic alternative to the misery and poverty that big business and its accomplices in the Labour Government want to stick down your throat. I stand for a socialist solution. This means:
• An inflation-proof system for both wages and the social services. This means that both wages and the social services will rise by a comparable amount every time there is a rise in the cost of living.
• An immediate across-the-board increase to compensate all workers in full for the cuts they have suffered in real wages since the introduction of the Social Contract.
• A programme of socially useful public works. This will enable us to build more homes, hospitals, schools and turn our decaying towns and cities into places where people can live decently. It will also provide jobs for hundreds of thousands of people • Nationalise all firms which introduce sackings and redundancies. Take over their machinery and assets under the control of the workers, so that we can produce the goods that we need.
• An immediate reduction in the working week without any loss of pay to end unemployment.
• An immediate freeze on all prices.
• A national minimum wage of ES0 a week This is to be paid to the unemployed, the sick and the infirm and the pensioners.
• Full rights for women. Free abortion on demand on the NHS, full nursery services and an endto low pay. Equal pay now.
• Full rights for black people. End all discrimination in jobs, in housing and in social and political life. No platform for Hitler's disciples of the National Front to spread their racist poison. End the immigration laws which divide black families. Full support for black people defending themselves against the fascist HOOT CES • Withdraw all British troops from Ireland End all links with the racist regime in South Africa. Down with the Smith regime in Rhodesia. For an end to all Britain's military alliances • End all compensation payments to the old owners of the nationalised industries. Abolish all arms expenditure. Stop all interest payments to the banks and the moneylenders. This would provide the resources to carry out a genuine programme of social advance and create jobs for everyone.
• Nationalise the banks, the finance companies and the insurance companies without compensation so that the resources can be planned in a socialist way.
Vote Socialist (IMG)
Vote Brian Heron The weekends of 19/20 March and 26/27 March ar decisive for the campaign. Every single person is needed. We need people out on the knocker, to give out leaflets 0200a30200 put to real use in the fight to build a socialist oppositio birmingnam
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