There have been many names for incomes policy since the end of the Second World War. But the game remains the same: wage-cutting.
Every Labour Government has applied "wage restraint'. On each occasion it has been accompanied by the same pious lies: *If wages continue to rise, jobs will be lost and the social services cut back' - so wages were duly frozen, while unemployment increased and social expenditure was cut in any case.
Each time 'common sacrifice' has been called for in the name of the so-called national interest'. Control of dividends, prices and profits has been promised in return for wage restraint, and each time the living standards of the working class have been the only sacrifice.
TRICKERY
In 1948-49 Sir Stafford Cripps sold his wage freeze to the unions by using the dividend-freeze trick. The bosses own union, the Federation of British Industries, was asked to produce a scheme for reducing their own prices and profits where possible! What Cripps didn't point out was that even if the bosses had complied, re-invested profit would simply have meant larger capital gains for the shareholders later on, whereas a frozen wage rise is lost forever.
Healey is using the same trick today, claiming that a dividend freeze will balance the 10 per cent ceiling on workers wages. Chairman of the Association of Unit Trust Managers for one treats such a suggestion with with contempt. He told the Daily Express (4/7/75) that 'the dividend restraint is purely a cosmetic factor, drawn up to fool the public and placate certain ignorant members of the TUC.
And what about the more equitable distribution of wealth, the socially just society that incomes policy is meant to create? 'Redistribution of wealth could go no further until new wealth had been created - and in the meantime there must be a ceiling on the social services', declared Cripps in his Budget speech in LOW PAID HIT At the same time the Minister of Labour, encouraged by the TUC's acceptance of the wage freeze the previous month, instructed wages councils and wages boards - mostly centred on low paid sweated industries where unionisation was weak — to accompany all future awards with a memorandum to him showing that the conditions laid down in the White Paper on Wages and Personal Incomes had been adhered to. So much for incomes policy helping the low paid.
Living standards were consciously reduced. The Economic Survey for 1948 stated that supplies for home consumption would be three to five per cent less than in 1947; food supplies would go down; there would be less meat, fat, fruit, vegetables and potatoes, with increases in cereals and (slightly) in eggs.
While retail prices rose by 10 per cent over the year to September 1948, wage rates rose by only six per cent. And profits? Cripps stated in his mid-July report that profits declared this year have been considerably higher than in the last twelve months'.
Cripp's Budget in 1949 was so right-wing that tue Observer remarked that some people might even say he had taken over Conservative policy. The pegging of food subsidies led to an immediate rise in the cost of living index of
SOLID BONE
GREEN WITH ENVY DEAF TO REASON PERMANENTLY OPEN ALWAYS OUT TO FIND BRAIN -BREAK GLASS But the A premature attempt to take advantage of splits inside the working class was this cartoon in the Evening Standard during the power workers' dispute under the Tories. On that occasion class solidarity by printworkers stopped the presses. Now Jack Jones's divisive plan opens the way to similar witch-hunts.
SPACE RESERVED FOR READER PARTICIPATION -NOTHING HERE 30p a week ferent. Stafford Cripps-post-war architect of wage restraint After the period of 'severe restraint' ended in June 1967 wage rates rose faster, often as a result of productivity dealing which increased work pace and work loads and had spread to six million workers by 1969. But this did not stop the Government's incomes policy from notching up a number of 'successes'.
In January 1966 the Prices and Incomes Board reported on a particularly badly paid group of workers, the rail workers. Wages per standard week (excluding overtime) were given as follows: porter £10.90; leading luggage room attendant £12.25; second-year guard £12.95; qualified fireman £14.40; qualified train driver £16.95. The report refused the rail workers any increase.
This wasn't the last that was heard of tne PIB. In 1967 the Retail Drapery Wages Council intended to increase the minimum wage paid to male assistants in drapery shops from £11.15 to £11.90. The Prices and Incomes Board decided that that was too generous -£11.75 was enough!
However, to give the PIB its due, it did use the low pay exception when dealing with the 1967 claim of agricultural workers, who at that time were earning f10.50 for a 44 hour week. It gave them 3 per cent more - another UNEMPLOYMENT And what had been the effect on jobs of these years of wage restraint - which the cap-