this will be:
from the economy:
every three years;
to damp down wages. As one bourgeois 'expert said in the Financial Times at the end of the year: "The Two main questions for the year are when will the crisis come?and what form will it take?' Certainly no one doubts any longer that 1975 will be a year of Almost every major element in the economy-profits, investments, the balance of payments, the pound-will be pointing towards economic disaster, Among the results of * an almost totally stagnant-if not declining-total output * a rate of inflation of around 25%-fi.e. prices doubling * a level of unemployment of at least 1 million-much more if Labour decides to encourage unemployment in an attempt This crisis will unleash a major attack on working class revive it.
of the capitalist set-up. This means fighting for particular can only be generalised and gains consolidated through a of the capitalist class, expropriate capitalist property, and replace the bankrupt capitalist system with a planned.
the fight for socialism on the agenda for 1975. living standards, but it also represents a grave threat to the capitalists. Each class will try to solve the crisis in its own interests. For the capitalists this is a question of fighting to defend their system and shifting its burdens on to the backs of the workers, forcing them to pay the costs necessary to For the working class the crisis can only be solved, and their interests defended, by fighting against the whole logic measures which force the capitalists to bear the cost of the crisis in their system. But the fight for individual remedies united struggle of the whole working class to break the power socialist economy. For that reason the economic crisis places cracy The presence in government of a Party which claims to represent the working class, and which depends on the support of the work ers' movement and millions of working and present experience show conclusively that the Labour leadership are dedicated defenders of capitalism.
However, as the coming upheavals throw millions of workers into bitter struggles to defend their hard-won gains they will begin to demand ever more insistently that the Labour Government serves them, and not their bosses, If workers come together to ram this message home they can make things too hot for the Labour bureaucrats to carry through their sell-out policies. And, more importantly, they can build the sort of fighting unity within the working class that can actually launch the fight for a workers' solution to the crisis - for socialism - in 1975.
Neither heat nor a light from WILSON'S attack on strikes-and the turn in Government policy it "lefts" both in the Labour Govern ment and the trade union bureauIt is these gentlemen who were given front-line responsibility for selling the social contract to the working ciass and giving Labour policy a phony "socialist' veneer.
RESPONSE So far their response has heen a mixture of boot-licking mid sileno Top trade won tell' Jack Jones. charged, among others, with the delicate job of inspiring confidence within the workers" movement in Labour 'conciliation and arbitration machinery, has replied by asking for a meeting will Wibion. Jones has ready made it clear what be wants to Need lo get an improvement of industrial relatioos rather than talking We should be ng the expansion of the concili d arbitration simrice. [believe workets shosld use it as an alternative to In ather wonds.
Jones intends to plead for a second chance to sat the workers movement le he back before lihon embarrasss him by settin, about bashing them While it is being said that the one Only way is for workers to take matters into their own hands-as at IPD, Kirkby time hero of the Labour left, Michael Foot, will contings to echo the Prime Minister's wurds, nothing but a deafening silence has come out of the office of industry Minister Tony Benn. This is par oct any revealing boogue Cbe brurt of Ailson's attack was directed at part of in any event, Wilson's speech sounds the keynote for one sure pro spect for 1975: a renewed assault on working class Living standards. Wilbosses. son has made it clear what side he and the Labour cabinet intend to take in this fight. But a united working class movement, determined to fight by any means necessary against every form of incomes policy, could force the Labour Government to change direction-unless that is, they want to commit polipeople's votes, should facilitate this struggle. But both history the lefts' For a long time Benn has put forward a vision of socalism being beir bit by bit as the National Enterprise Board sail along buying up slices of the big capitalist fires, strewing the path behind it wid the blooms of workers democracy British Leyland was the first ripe plum to fall into Bean's hands and should be a test case sor hes scheme:
But Benn has been beaten to the punch by Wilson, who has spelled out in nd uncertain terms what governmcs! support for falling industry will real Whether this loss of production wat acceptable or not with private capital Involved.... is a matter now for historical argument. What & not a matter for argument. for the future, Is this, With public capital, and an appropriato degree of public controi involved. the Govem ment could not justify... the subsiding of large factories... which could pay their way hut are failing to do so because of manifestly avoidable stoppages of production.
I would appear that it is not workon but captaiter autocracy!
The new year will bring with it a rash of factory closures and redundancies as efforts are sade to push snotlier million workers on to the dolo queues. It is clear that no answer to this threat will come tom asthin the Leboor Government neither from Wilson. from Foot, nor frost Benin Tabour will bez-off from giving Tinancial aid to all but those tires where it thinks redundabeles and speed up can be enginered without resistance under Sorcerent sponsorse art Intena don on these terras benctits only the The only way a solution in the workerz' inlerests can be won is by workers taking matters into their own Hands and meeting closures and redunand contionting the Labour pollticians with a united workers' movement demandine tho recion alisation ofall companies declacine redundancies, under workers control, and with a clear guaran