RAMSĄY MacDONALD A few hours after the announcement of the Healey measures, Tony Benn hinted to an audience of trade union-sponsored MPs that he might stay in the Government because 'we are not facing a 1966 or 1972 situation. This is 1931 all over again. It really is a grave international situation.
Curiously enough, almost exactly the same parellel had been drawn earlier that day by Jack Jones at the Transport & General Workers Union conference. Keeping from his members his knowledge of the imminent Healey proposals, Jones successfully argued for support for a revamped Social Contract as the only alternative to coalition. He spoke bitterly about those 'in high places' willing 'to stick a dagger in the heart of the Labour Government' and repeat the 'betrayal of 1931'.
But both the words and actions of Benn and Jones show that they have not learnt the lessons of 1931, when Ramsay MacDonald and a handful of other Labour leaders split to join the Tories and Liberals in forming a National Goved discussion of the non-contributory principle which was supposedly Labour policy, emphasising instead the need to make the scheme solvent and self-supporting'. Not surprisingly it recommended cuts in benefits, limitations on the period during which they would be paid, and increases in workers contributions. Government's response was to introduce an Anomalies Bill which accepted the principle of these attacks but simply limited them to certain specified groups of workers.
There was a similar story over the miners' working day, increased to eight hours by the previous Tory Government. Instead of fulfilling its promise to restore this to seven hours, Labour only reluctantly agreed under mass pressure to reduce it from eight to seven and a half hours. In return for this a whole series of concessions were made to the owners, most notably the withdrawal of any proposals for nationalisation.
WAGE CUTS
At the same time the Government was giving its approval to the employers attempts to impose wage cuts in a number of industries. Among those who saw their wages reduced were the cotton operatives (down by 7½ per cent), the jute workers (down by 4 per cent), and the woollen workers (down by 9 per cent). This last cut was only forced through after a nine-weeks' strike by the woollen workers, scabbed on by the trade union leaders and smashed give £30.73 - a 9½ per cent wage cut.
Tied to Parliament and the preservation of capitalism in one form or another, they were thus helpless when the economic crisis really began to hit home. In the summer of 1931 a series of European banks collapsed, and the resulting panic led to a run on sterling. At the same time the May Committee established by the Government in February of that year to consider possible economies reported back: it demanded cuts of £97 million, mostly off Healey's 10 per cent wages ceiling and Jack Jones's flat-rate £6 increase will mean one and the same thing - cuts all round in workers' wages. At present a low paid worker on £30 a week takes home £27.16. Just to keep pace with an annual rate of inflation of 25 per cent would require an increase in take home pay to £33.95. A 10 per cent rise would give a take home pay of £28.94 - a 15 per cent wage cut; while a E6 flat rate would The Child Poverty Action Group has already exposed the plight of Brit ain's poor. Seven hundred thousand parents go to bed hungry once a fortnight so that their children can be fed. Britain's 5 million poor are already existing on a sub-standard diet, spending only half the inadequate £3.48 per head each week that British families on average spend on food. And to Bevin, Attlee and Morrison-three of the mail WE MUST THINK OF OUR SAVINGS AND OUR HOME THAIS WHY IM VOTING FORTHE