appalling record of this first year. by 216,566 and in the last year by 326,786.
No wonder Hugh Scanlon said at the AUEW Conference in Hastings: 'If this trend continues there will be no need for the regulation of wages - unemployment will do that'.
These are, of course, only the official figures. There are also thousands of women unemployed, who because they do not pay the full insurance stamp are not officially registered. The guess now is not will unemployment top the million - but how far over the million mark has it already gone?
Urgent action
Protests from Scanlon and calls from T&GWU leader Jack Jones for urgent action from the Government and co-operation between unions and employers' will fall on deaf ears. The voices to which the Government leaders are tuned in sounded off in Basle last week. The annual report of the Bank for International Settlements says: "Sure as fate, real consumption is going to have to be curtailed, and the mass of labour will be obliged to shoulder its share of the cuts.' It goes on: *The only questions are the extent to which the cuts will come by unemployment and the amount of financial stress the manufacturing sector will be forced to bear.' The bankers were simply spelling out loud and ciear the terms on which the International Monetary Fund will supply an emergency loan of around $ 2,000 million. Their terms will be wage cuts, increased unemployment and lowered living standards. The commitment of the Wilson Cabinet to preserving British capitalism means that it will do what the bankers demand.
Wilson and company can only gaze with fascinated horror as British capitalism slithers down the slope of recession. In May, retail prices were up 25 per cent on those of a year double that of most of its major competitors.
Pound plummets
Meanwhile the pound sterling plummets in value and is now down by around 26.5 per cent from its parity in December 1971. The National Institute of Economic and Social Research forecasts that the pound's devaluation will have reached 32 per cent by the end of the year.
The picture of gloom spreads like a pall of doom right across the economy. rates, and declining business confidence, brought investment in manufacturing down by eight per cent from the last quarter of 1974 to the first quarter of 1975. A gloomy Department of Industry predicts investment will slump by 15 per cent this year.
Over the last year desperate attempts have been made to cover the losses in the economy.
The proposals of Jack Jones are a sham and a fraud. They mean nothing more than a cut in wages. Even if the unlikely sum of £10 across the board is accepted as the union norm, this would still mean a cut in wages. A worker with two children who got the f10 rise would still take home only £6.50 after tax.
Jones claims that his policy would get inflation down to 15 per cent. But the reality is different. In May, inflation hit an all-time record of 4.2 per cent in one month. If maintained this would produce an annual rate of 65 per cent.
The original talk about £10 is now being changed to the more "realistic' figure of £8, and the Government is leaning on the unions to bring it closer to £6. The worst unemployment figures for any June since 1945 have just been announced. There are now 869,000 people out of work - 3.7 per cent of the working population. Unemployment has climbed by 19,489 since May, in contrast to the expected seasonal drop of 35,700. On the seasonally adjusted figures this really represents an increase of 47,900. In the last six months unemployment has risen Some £1,000 million has been borrowed from British banks. Another £600 million has been borrowed from the Shah of Iran, eating up valuable reserves and cutting into the deposits banked in London by the oil producing coun tries.
Urged on by the international bankers, the Labour Government sees only one solution.
The Observer of Sunday 8 June wrote: Mr Healey intends to warn trade unionists that he will slash public spending, allow unemployment to rise and introduce extra taxes unless they can assure him that ways will be found for keeping wage claims in the next round below a 15 per cent ceiling.
Although it will be claimed that the new phase of the Social Contract will help the poorly paid, their living standards will in fact be driven into the ground even more firmly than under Social Contract Mark I. As the Child Poverty Action Group point out: The poor get poorer under the Social Contract.
They write: "Taking a family with one two and three children earning f25 a week in May 1974, the Chancellor was able to show that if they had received wage increases in line with the general level of settlements, these families had marginally increased their real incomes'. Healey claimed that a 'one-child family's income had increased by 14p a week, a two-child family's by 18p and a three-child family's by 68p a week."
Drop in income What Healey "forgot' to examine were the ONE YI
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A year ago, in July 1974, the Tory incomes policy laws came to an end. Wages came under the framework of the Social Contract. Now Jack Jones and the TUC are planning a second round. Bob Pennington examines the