good deal of controversy amongst economists. On the one hand we see the Tory die-hards stating that the attitude should be the "lame duck philosophy"-i.e. reliance purely upon the operation of the law of the market with the weakest going to the wall. On the other hand we see the TUC programme of a reflationary policy to stimulate a big rise in the growth rate. The quandary for the British ruling class is deepened by the fact that we have the phenomenon of cost inflation accompanied by rising unemployment. Most economists have insisted on the "lame duck" philosophy stating that the way to combat inflation is to increase the level of unemployment, thereby reducing the effectiveness of trade union strength in wage bargaining and thus reducing the rise in real wage levels. Unfortunately for their theories this has not happened to date, for while the level of unemployment has increased from 350,000 in 1966 to 820,000 today, the rate of inflation has been increasing dramatically.
The TUC and various individual trade union leaders have plugged the idea that if the growth rate was increased greatly there would be a reduction in inflationary trends. They should of course know that such a policy is in the present period impossible of adoption by a Tory government who would thus be selling out the interests of big business. However the TUC and their hangers-on appear to prefer having cups of tea with Ted Heath and his cronies, to coming forwards with a programme for mass working class action to defeat the Tory government.
They should also know full well that the main concern of the Tories and big business is the defence of their rate of profit. Related to this is the fact that the gross trading profits of companies as a proportion of national income declined from 13½% in 1968 to 12.6% in 1969 and to 11.6% in 1970. In other words, although actual profit may have increased, the rate of profit has fallen very considerably. This fall of course explains the ferocity of the Tory propaganda against the trade unions and the Government's aggressive policy against wage claims together with the introduction of the Industrial Relations Bill. It explains the Government's rejection of any form of price control because the employers must be left free to raise prices in order to delivered from the yards since the formation of the consortium was 3 in 1968, 7 in 1969 and 12 in 1970, with a cutback of 25% in the labour force (15 ships would probably have been delivered in 1971). Productivity has increased by a staggering 87%. All this has been achieved through successive bargains with the unions involving greater flexibility of working (particularly the introduction of "'interchangeability" in the steel working trades, e.g. platers doing their own tack-welding) and cooperation in phased redundancies. In other words the workers of UCS have themselves paid for the recent expansion of reduction.
A crisis of liquidity has hit UCS. The main reason for this problem is the type of ship built. The order book for 1971 consists of 7 "Clyde" class all-purpose cargo ships (18,000 tons), 16 bulk carriers (26,000 tons), 1 drilling rig, 1 train ferry and 2 suction dredgers. The production of standardised ships indicated above has been one of the main aspects of UCS management's attempts to get the consortium out of the red. However, this type of ship is not at all CLYDESIDE A CHALLENGE TO ALL THE WORKING CLASS