If you believe everything Labour and Tory politicians tell you, this election is going to solve all sorts of problems. "Put us in, " they say, "and we'll get you a job, take you out of your slum and make you a citizen of Europe." Balls. The real problems are going to start after the election when they ve quit selling their shoddy wares and can get back to running British capitalism.
There are all sorts of unfinished jobs that Labour has left, either to have another crack at them, or to let the Tories have a go. Since these problems don't figure in election manifestoes, they don't have to pretend that they have big differences on how to solve them.
incomes & Productivity British capitalism has a long-term strategy for dealing with the factories. After the Second World War they got left behind in developing new techniques. This, combined with the upsurge of a powerful shop stewards movement, which was able to operate independently of the Union bureaucrats, and which pushed up wages through militant action, has meant that they now have to decisively cut the costs of production through lowering the amount they lay out in labour costs, and introducing new techniques and working practices.
There are two arms to their policy, "Incomes Policy" and "Productivity Deals". Incomes policy means the integration of wages into capitalist planning, the elimination of any independent action by the working class to re-divide the surplus value in their favour; in the long term it means a lowering of real wages for the mass of the workers. No one should be deceived by the recent spate of wage increases. The bosses are content to allow these temporarily, knowing they will soon be eliminated by inflation. They want a breathing space until after the election. After that the real fight will be on.
Closely linked to incomes policy is the strategy of productivity deals-already these cover something like 30% of industrial workers. They quite simply mean that workers are induced to "sell" some of the privileges they have gained through struggle over the years, and to accept all sorts of modern techniques, usually Uncle Tom leaders docilely to seek the involving total submission of working life to the needs of the machine, and always meaning a major attack on those aspects of control which workers at present operate over aspects of life in the factory. The price got by workers for these deals is then washed away by inflation.
The stalemate reached between the Government and the TUC over In Place of Strife ended in a partial retreat by the Government over incomes policy, but a retreat by the "left" union leaders on the question of productivity. After the election, whichever party is elected, the offensive on the incomes policy front will LABOUR'S be resumed. Militant shop stewards should be preparing for tough battles ahead.
Revolutionaries should be preparing for solidarity action with more and more stormy strikes of the Pilkington type.
The Common Market In the modern world the important markets are in the advanced capitalist countries. The strength of U.S. big business makes the penetration of the transatlantic market difficult for the British bosses: they have got to get a piece of the West European market. That means entering the Common Market, and that's why Labour in office got its road to Damascus conversion to the EEC. To compete, they have to cut living standards here. Everyone knows this, and that's why, strictly for the election season only, both major parties are kidding people into believing that they are trying to get suitably painless "terms". Don't believe a word of it-after the election they'll be in the first chance they get. We must start now to prepare for a class struggle on a European scale. The Fight Against Racialism: Black Power Racialism in Britain stems directly from the old days of empire. To get the support of the British population for foreign conquests and wars of repression, the ruling class instilled the concepts of Anglo-Saxon superiority, and the need to run the lives of wogs who were incapable of fending for themselves. These are changed days and they now need some of these wogs to look after their investments for them. So they now pretend to be horrified at racialism, and to believe in "integration". But the reality of imperialism means that they cannot really eliminate racialism, although now it takes a subtly different form-they must try to maintain the feeling amongst black people themselves that they are inferior. This is why they are uptight at the growth of Black Power.
They would like the black people here to be a docile, cheap work-force, convenient for taking the blame for housing and hospitals. The example of the struggle of black people all over the world, and especially of the Afro-Americans is inspiring a growing Black Power movement here. This is just what the bourgeoisie fearblack people standing up, proud and defiant. They had hoped that Powellism and skinhead attacks would drive the black people behind protection of the British bobby, and keep quiet for fear of deportation. But the response of a growing section of the black people has been to organise themselves for self-defence and to develop a strategy to combat racialism by organising the black communities. Comrades who participated in the Black Panther demo. in Notting Hill on May 31st report that they received a warm reception from the black people. It was for these reasons that the police launched their vicious unprovoked assault on the black militants after the joint VSC/Black Panthers remn on Anril 26th It is for thece the Labour Government when it took office in 1964; and how the Labour Party acts as an reasons that the Black Power movement is going to grow, and will be subjected to even harsher repression. So far the response from the British Left has been miniscule, if not contemptible. The SLL's Workers Press carried substantially the same report on the April 26th demo. as the Daily Express. Solidarity with the black people is an urgent necessity. They must not be left to fight alone.
Attack On Youth Repression in the universities, colleges and schools is on the agenda whoever occupies 10 Downing Street. Technological capitalism needs a highly skilled labour force; the education system must produce this for them. The radicalisation of youth puts this in jeopardytherefore political files, expulsions, etc. etc. But the strategy they are working on is reflected in the DES proposals for re-structuring the higher education system. Loans instead of grants, home-based students, a cut-down in the number of overseas students, restructuring of courses. All designed to re-tool the education system to serve the monopolies more and more directly, and to undermine resistance from the students. A mass student movement will be needed to smash these plans. Militants in the universities, colleges and schools must prepare now for these battles. The present lull in the struggle while comrades are being victimised must be overcome.
The Irish Struggle One of the unexploded bombs left lying around from the days when the sun never set on a British colony is the Irish problem. The civil rights movement of the last two years may have seemed to many people to have blown it up, but it only lit the fuse. The treaty setting up the Free State in 1922 aborted the national/demo cratic revolution which was sparked off by the Easter Rising of 1916. The repressive N. Irish state was set up based on Orangeism.-a reactionary ideology fostered by British imperialism.
After Bogside and Falls erected their barricades, British troops were sent in, not to protect the Catholics from Orange extremists, but to directly restructure N. Ireland in the interests of British imperialism. Britain wants a neo-colonialist solution to the Irish problem, and therefore is trying to get a close alliance with the Lynch wing of Green Toryism in Dublin. This means that while they will quell the excesses of Paisleyism or even buy the reverend doctor over, their faces are set more sternly against those who want real freedom for Ireland; an Ireland united and owned by the workers and small farmers. The swing to the left in Sinn Feinn, their increasing commitment to political and social issues, the emergence of a small Marxist vanguard in Ireland, the increasing of organisation that Lenin built. A vangu militancy of workers struggles over there (recently a ship trying to ship in cement to break the cement strike in the Republic had to turn back after being stoned by hundreds of it thought Wilson could erode and break working-class resistance to the solution to their problems more easily than Heath precisely because of the illusions that the majority of the working class still had in the Labour Party.
The Wilson Strategy The Wilson strategy was not a simple confrontationist one. If he had done that, then maybe he would have laid the basis for such widespread disillusion in his party that in all probability it would have split and we would now be seeing the emergence of a Left alternative and perhaps even a revolutionary one. No. He worked through the trade union leaders. His object was always to make a distinction between official and unofficial strikes and try to widen the split between the T.U. bureaucrats and the shop stewards. It must be emphasised that the attack on the workers' organisations was not some aberration, some absence of mind on the part of the Wilson regime. It was, and remains, the corner-stone of its whole strategy for modernising British capitalism. For it is one of the distinctive features of modern capitalism that it has to plan ahead-years ahead-before making its investment decisions. And wages have to be included in that plan. But how can capitalist planning co-exist with free wage bargaining on the shop floor? It can't. The shop stewards have to be broken either by law, by coercion, or by being by-passed, by productivity deals. We have seen all methods tried in the last six years. The result so far has been a sort of stalemate with the defeat of the penal clauses in May 69 but an undertaking by Vic Feather and others in the TUC to "keep their own house in order". The rank-and-file response to this attack has been the election of left-sounding tradeunion secretaries, notably Jones and Scanion and also a growing militancy and strengthening of the shop stewards committees. But these men, women and children in Newry, N. -all put this strategy in danger.
This means repression against Irish fig more Irish prisoners in British and Green jails, more exchange of information betw London and Dublin. The need is for an effective solidarity struggle with the Irish militants, all the more since the sharpeni the struggle over there is going to radicall large numbers of Irish people here. The B Left must overcome its woeful ignorance trish history and politics and construct st unity with the Irish fighters.
War & Revolution in Indo-China Britain's contemptible support for the U. escalation of the war in Indo-China will continue on June 19th. The escalation in China is the signal that imperialism is not to give an inch to the revolution in the T World; there will be more Song My's, the be more Cambodia's. The fall of Sihanou the involvement now of the Thai governr indicative of the fact that there can no lo be any standing on the sidelines in Asia, or Latin America. No more "neutralism" more pacificism, the choice is either/or; e you fight on the same side as the NLF ag imperialism, or you submit completely t requirements of the world's greatest and brutal power, the United States of Ameri This means that solidarity with Third struggles, particularly the Indo-Chinese, i vital than ever, and yet the British Left h allowed this tremendous change in the w situation go almost unnoticed, apart fron demonstration. Solidarity with these stru not an alternative to other forms of activ is their necessary corollary. We can never come the lack of revolutionary conscious amongst British workers unless we can ge to understand the international dimensio their struggles; we can never do that unle are passionately involved in these battles Third World ourselves.
Build The Vanguard These are some of the struggles facing us the elections, but it is not enough to see as a separate series of issues; they are clo inter-related. That means that in fighting we must attempt to link them, to use on struggle to help another, and to attack th enemy on the weakest front at any given It is useless to link them merely on the le propaganda-what is required is organisat An organisation which can make a politic assessment of these issues and construct strategy to fight them, and which has the authority and experience necessary to giv lead to all who are involved in the struggl This means a revolutionary vanguard, the which, dealing with a world enemy, is its international. That is the challenge we fa the problem that this election will not so productivity deals from the "left" trade bosses.
A Responsible Government?
And abroad, the Labour Government ha shown itself to be a very "responsible" g ment-responsible, that is, to the interest international and British capital. When vacillating reformists come under pressur the right, they move to the right fast. Th record on Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and murder of American students in Ohio, et needs no comment here. On its own acco the Labour Government has sent troops Caribbean and fought a war in Aden; eve it is napalming liberation forces in Dhofa Persian Gulf. It has funked in Rhodesia, | to Zionist-American pressure in the Mido and played the Imperialist in Northern Ir as adroitly as Lloyd George ever did.
Let no one get away with the argumer supporting Labour "To keep the Tory B partists out", or even worse, "They've ha very difficult situation to deal with". Th Labour Party in and out of office has alv principally served the interests of the ruli class. The reforms it has fought for in the have undoubtedly made it more effective doing just that. It survives on the illusion the class which elects it continues to hav But mainly, it survives because there is n alternative to it from the Left. What the six years have shown is that the crisis of capitalism has not allowed the Labour Pa grant any reforms at all; and without the reforms it can only lose all credibility.
If we want the Labour Party to win th election, it is for one principal reason-be in office it can hang itself quicker than o office. But our main task is build the ro finish off the job.
John Weal