In the coming weeks there is no doubt that the most central task facing the working class and socialist movement is to defeat the Healey measures. Wilson is leading the working class to the greatest cuts in its living come of this struggle to defeat incomes policy that the ability of the working class to advance will depend. standards for forty years.
Behind the incomes policy lies a capitalist crisis and a Labour betrayal which goes far beyond even questions of wage control. The Wilson Governmnet is creating the conditions for mass unemployment. It has cut hundreds of millions from spending on education, housing and health while pouring out thousands of millions on nuclear weapons, foreign military bases, and all the trappings of capitalist military "defence' policy. The Labour Government refuses to oppose threats to throw tens of thousands of women back into the age of back street abortion. The torturing, murdering role of British troops in the North of Ireland continues. Wilson creates conditions in which the cancer of racism can flourish and the vile vermin of fascism dare to raise their heads.
PRIVATE PROPERTY
This Government sacrifices the entire economic, political, cultural and moral life of the working class to the defence of the system of production for profit and capitalist private property. It is this total nature of the capitalist crisis which dictates that in the coming weeks and months the socialist movement must give a response at every level and on every issue to the attacks of Wilson.
The IMG believes that any policy for the fight back must include * Opposition to any form of incomes policy, statutory or voluntary, within capitalism.
opposing the norms.
talks on incomes policy. * Automatic increases in public expenditure to compensate for inflation and protect the value of the 'social wage. * Opening of the capitalist books and imposition of workers' control of industry to enforce work-sharing with no loss of pay instead of redundancy. * Nationalisation of the banks and finance system to create conditions for control over industry and destroy the currency speculation.
expenditure and confiscation of all incomes over E10,000 a year to release resources for investment.
A massive programme of public works to soak up inflation, nationalisation without compensation of all firms creating redundancy, and development of an economic plan to expand production based on the takeover of the leading industrial and financial firms. * Free abortion and contraception on demand, equal pay for women, free 24-hour community controlled state nurseries. * Opposition to all forms of racism * Immediate withdrawal of troops from Ireland Solidarity with the Portuguese revolution and with the workers' struggle in Spain.
Solidarity with all workers End the TUC-CBI-Government Abolition of capitalist defence He is taking Labour to its greatest electoral defeat since 1931. It is on the outclass and socialist movement on all or any of these points. It will support every move, even when united action does not exist, which takes forward any of these policies. In particular it demands the recall of the TUC and Labour Party conferences; demands that Benn and Foot resign from the Government and organise mass action against Wilson, or be clearly revealed as "fake lefts' ; calls for every union-sponsored MP to be instructed to vote against the proposals; believes every Labour MP who votes for the proposals must be replaced, calls for every Labour council to defy the pay norms in wage rises for its workers, and demands that the Wilson leadership be openly challenged for removal by forces opposed to the Healey measures.
SOCIALIST ANSWERS
The possibility of united action around socialist answers has already been shown in recent months around organisations such as the National Abortion Campaign, the Troops Out Movement, the Medical Committee Against Private Practice, and the Chile Solidarity Campaign. All these campaigns and their actions must be strengthened in in the trade unions against the Healey proposals.
Various national organisations - the LCDTU, the IWC the Rank and File Movement - already exist in the trade unions. Local conferences and action committees of the type which fought In Place of Strife amd the Industrial Relations Act can be built. Al these organisations must coordinate their work into a real mass action united front The IMG will fight for united action within the working the coming months. But above all united action must be created ers fighting them.
there is not a danger that total opposition to its main wer is undoubtedly yes, that such a possibility exists -although it is one created by Wilson's moves and not by class.
ment can be saved by the capitulation of the left. If the Labour Government continues on its present course it is no open opposition from the left, this Government will trophic defeat at the next election, and perhaps even force the working class. The watchword of the hour must be:
WILSON'S TORY POLICIES!
CUTL owned 89 per cent of Britain's industrial The Government's Prices and Incomes Polcy was sold to people on the basis that it was aimed to help the worst off.
However, when challenged on this Harold Walker, then Joint Parliamentary UnderSecretary of State at the Department of Employment and Productivity, calmly admitted: "It is not a primary function of the Government's Prices and Incomes Policy to redistribute wealth. He might have - except to give more to the rich In 1970, Labour's last year of office, 80 per cent of women manual workers were still earning less than 40p an hour The Trades Union Congress had declared that the minimum wage should be set at the pathetically low sum of £16.50 a week. By December 1970 the Department of Employment reported that there were still over 75 categories of occupation where at least 25 per cent of the workforce carned less that 40p an hour. which against the Healey measures and in solidarity with all work The question must inevitably be posed as to whether policies may bring the Labour Government down. The ans the left. But even the fall of the Labour Government as a by-product of such action is better than a capitulation which throws millions into poverty and demoralises the working What is more, there is no way in which a Labour Govern doomed to collapse, and the Labour Party at the next elec tion will suffer a catastrophic defeat. Worse still, if there is demoralise the fighting ability of the working class outside Parliament and make infinitely harder the type of resistance to the next Tory Government that was put up against Heath.
CAPITULATION
There is no way to save this Government by capitulation, but only the certainty that a fight back by the left can prevent the demoralisation of the working class, prevent catas the withdrawal of some of Wilson's attacks. Any failure to fight cannot save the Labour Government, but it can defeat THE LEFT MUST UNITE FOR MASS ACTION AGAINST Wilson had claimed that Labour was eliminating poverty and the inequalities of wealth by its taxation policies. But from 1964 to 1970 taxation rose fastest for the worst off. For those on a wage of f16 a week the proportion of total in come paid in all forms of taxation went up by over 15 per cent. For incomes of over £60 a week it only rose by three per Medicine Nor did the National Health Service flourish under Labour. In 1969 the num ber of people receiving surgical and medical treatment went up by 79,000. That year the number of beds available decrea ed by 3,700.
Since 1962 - including two years of Tory Government • 12,000 beds had been taken out of the NHS. The waiting lists for hospitals then rose to 530,000. In 1970 Labour cut from £121 million to £101 million the money allocated to - starting new hospitals.
Re distribution However Labour did try to compensate for its lack of radical proposals in housing, social services, wages, unemploy. ment and the re-distribution of wealth It attempted to introduce a very radical piece of legislation known as In Place of Strife. This nasty bit of work was in tended to curb the power of the unions and infringe on the rights of workers to Lane suIKe actor Only a revolt by the trade unions stopped Labour from putting this on the statute book. But those two Labour Governments of 1964-70 will be better remembered for this piece of anti-working class legislation than for any socialist or