Somalist Healey to Use "tory Policies"

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The settlement of the railwaymen's pay claim, on basis of a 30% increase, is a heavy blow to the pay policy of the Labour Government. The requirement of the capitalist crisis was that Wilson stood and fought.

Their retreat reflects the growing strength of the working class and will be a spur to all workers fighting to protect MUST BREAK FROM AFM their living standards.

Having failed in confrontation, the Wilson cabinet, which long ago gave up any pretence to a socialist approach to the crisis, now turns to the attack on another front - unemployment.

In an unprecedented statement last Saturday, Labour Chancellor Healey delivered an ultimatum to the working classes: either accept a new 'social contract' in which wage increases are massively below price increases thus slashing real wages, or face what he termed "Tory policies" on health and social services.

Healey gave the working class six weeks to accept his threat. Wilson, speaking on Monday backed Healey up, saying that six weeks is too long. It is clear that a date has been set for a deflation. ary budget which would massively increase unemployment from a starting point of nearly one million.

The Tory press screams hysterically to the Labour Government to proceed. The Sun last Saturday called for public spending to be cut until "we all bleed". , and went on to say "leave the roads unfinished, leave the new council office unbuilt. Yes, and the new schools and hospitals, too"

SITUATION The working class now faces an entirely new political situation. Wilson is well aware that workers will defend jobs. He knows that the class movement before which he retreated on the NUR claim contains the same threat as that behind the miners' strike which brought down the Heath government in February 1974.

For the Labour Government to turn to the creation of mass unemployment is not an easy road. The militancy shown on wages can in a moment turn into the widespread and determined defenc of jobs. This is shown in the decision of the AUEW conference to support all action (including occupations) in opposition to redund-. ancy.

The pressure building up in the working class can be seen in the steel industry, where workers ha been in struggle after rejecting tl phoney deal cooked up by Benn and the BSC.

INADEQUATE

As working class resistance builds up, the inadequacy of the old forms of struggle are exposed. The railmen's settlement, whilst being a blow to the Labour Government, is a cut in real wages. A government economic adviser calculated recently that a 37% wage increase is necessary to maintain take home pay at a rate of inflation of 25%.

The claim contained no demand for a sliding scale of wages agreement to keep pace with inflation using an index worked out by trade union committees. Such a clause is the only way to protect workers against inflation under these conditions.

By their avoidance of such a fight the trade union leaders are preparing the ground for Wilson. Jack Jones' support for the social contract and his proposal to limit wage increases by the use o flat rate payments is central to this.

If Jones can swing the TGWU conference next week behind à 'new' social contract, and take this into the TUC conference shortly after, the inevitable failure of such a policy, in the face of the strength of the working class, will be used by Wilson to blame the working class and establish the argument to force his measures in.

Wilson needs this kind of cover. ] His problem is simple. If he could not hold the railwaymen to 27%, how is he going to hold the rest of the working class to 10%? If he is to have any chance he needs trade union leaders who speak to 1 the working class in purely capitalist terms.

Jones argues that workers should accept a few percent less in order to save jobs. No doubt he will argue the same next week - that it is only higher productivity Denis Healey and lower wage settlements that can prevent unemployment.

Workers can find no solution in these policies. A fight for jobs is hotting up as unfilled vacancies dwindle and unemployment climbs relentlessly towards the million mark. For capitalism to survive this crisis millions of workers would have to accept the dole.

FIGHT To fight back calls for a new leadership which will lead a real fight to defend both jobs and wages. Both monetary inflation and "stabilisation" on capitalist terms must be exposed as capitalist instruments of the crisis, and ultimately two ends of the same stick.

Against soaring prices, the fightmust go ahead for the sliding scale of wages. Against unemployment must come the fight for work sharing on full pay, administered by trade union committees Employers' pleas of bankruptcy must be answered by committees to examine their accounts, backed up by the nationalisation, under workers' management, and without compensation, of those industries proved unable to pay.

Workers have no interest in conserving bankrupt capitalism, and all attempted social contracts must be thrown out by the trade union and labour movemen continued on back page col An important new stage in the Portuguese Revolution was marked by the declaration of the 22nd June, after a week long meeting of the leadership of the ruling Armed Forces Movement.

The statement made it quite clear that the AFM is continuing to play its role in the defence of Portuguese capitalism. All politic: organisation within military barracks is banned. Independent militias of workers are forbidden. The political position of the parties in the constituent assembly is guaranteed, although these organisations are now rapidly losing the confidence of the working class.

Not that the military leaders are united on how to deal with this situation. Carvalho, head of the COPCON military security force, häs been putting on a left face during the recent internal wranglings in the AFM, calling for an er to the constituent assembly, and for military rule linked directly to the AFM through workers councils and popular assemblies.

What lies behind such proposals is the loss of control by the AFM and its Stalinist allies over the leadership of the working class. As a recent despatch from Lisbon to the Financial Times put it: "On the factory floor the comm unist dominated unions have long since been swept aside by militant workers councils-many of whom are now controlling plant management and running the business."

On 16th June demonstrators marched to the Lisbon Palace calling for an end to the constituent assembly and for governme! "not by the rabble but by the workers".

In this situation Carvalho's policies represent a crude attempt to adapt the movement of the working class to Bonapartist methods of rule. He is looking for ways to prevent any independent action by the workers councils which would inevitably bring them into conflict with th AFM. WORKERS COUNCILS Many of these issues have come to a head over the occupation of the print works of Republica, whose editorial staff support the Socialist Party. What is involved here is clearly much more than the efforts of Stalinist-led worker to suppress the expression of other opinions in the workers movement. As the Times put it on June 20th, the Socialist Party 'in the present struggle must be admitted to be on the right"

As the masses move rapidly beyond their traditional organisations, not only do the Stalinists lead such movements in order to head them off, sections of the AFM try also to adapt to them. Thus COPCON has supported demands for workers control over editorial policy at Republica in open defiance of the AFM's own press law passed last August which provided for journalistic approval of the election of editors but excluded any control by production workers. They have also defied the ruling of the AFM's own supreme council that the law must be implemented in the Republica case.

The real role of Carvalho and COPCON can be seen in the continuing imprisonment of the MRPP Maoists in the Caxias prison near Lisbon, formerly used by the fascist torturers, and the breaking up of demonstrations demanding their release. Carvalho sees the MRPP as a threat not because of its criminally wrong 'social fascist' characterisation of the social democrats and the Moscow-line Stalinists, but because it represents the possibility of independent action on the left.

The vital question of the hour is for the defence and expansion of the workers councils movement. Above all, it must establish the independence of the working class from the capitalist state and the AFM. It must set up workers militias and arrange national meetings to set up a plan for socialist reconstruction. The building of a revolutionary leadership to fight for the Fourth International on the basis of the Transitional Programme will be an essential part of this process.

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last 5 years she has destroyed or driven out the old leaders, downgraded potential rivals and replaced chief ministers in states with her own nondescript loyal nominees.

The apparatus she runs founded upon corruption. The Party is largely financed on 'black money' illegally contributed by businessmen and therefore protects economy in black money Parhich fuels inflation and creates starvation and scarcity. The rural bosses of the Congress Party dominate over food distribution, growing rich at the expense of the hungry. Mrs. Gandhi's strategy has been to talk like a radical social-democrat, but to act to defend this system 1 and the interests of big business. example to the Indian masses. The pro-Moscow Communist Party tries to defuse the movement. It has consistently supported the bourgeois Congress Party in the past and does so now, denouncing opposition as 'reactionary plotters' (The Morning Star, paper of the British C.P. has this week called for the defence of Mrs.Gandhi).

This is consistent with the policy of Stalin towards Chiang Kai-shek and the nationalist Kuomintang in China in the 1920s -looking for a force outside the working class Stalin found it in the peasantry and channelled it to support the bourgeois nationalists. Trotsky defeated this argument at the time, when he wrote in his 'Permanent Revolution' of the completely applicable to colonial and semi-colonial countries, at least to those where the proletariat has become capable of carrying on independent politics. The central task of the colonial and semi-colonial countries is the agrarian revolution, ie the liquidation of feudal heritages, and national independence, ie the overthrow of the imperialist yoke. Both tasks are closely linked with each other." (p.42)

Such a programme must include the nationalisation of land and the collectivisation of agriculture, but in such a way that, as Trotsky says, "it should exclude the possibility of expropriation of small farmers and their compulsory