The price hikers

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Currency dealers at work-inflation has fallen due to stabilisation of the pound Four and a half years of a right wing Labour government implementing Tory policies have doubled the cost of living.

The government's own, warped, metal Prices Index, which (by lumping together all retail prices including top luxury and services) always understate: the increases that most affect InE class shows a 97.7% rise since Labour came to power in 1974.

This increase is four times times that yest Germany and twice as much as in the USA, Japan and France. period when successive Phases And it has taken place in a wage COnTrOl Nave limited pay increases to £6, 4½% and now 5%.

Small wonder workers fail to pe eve ineir eves or ears writi by the press and media with claims that neir living standards are now improved.

PRESS Nor does the Labour Party's house journal Labour Weekly carry much conviction with its latest centrespread, headlined "The Price Fighters", , which insists that "Labour is pulling Britain out of the economic ditch".

The "Britain" of course Big business only section of hat is benefitting is ig business. The rate of profit of British industry, though still chronically low, has according to F.T. figures been markedly increased over the last period by Callaghan's tax cuts. wage . controls, subsidies and laughable "price controls" that take as their main criterion the "right" of the employer to a guaranteed profit.

Subsidies

Meanwhile over the last four years hundreds of millions of pounds have been dished out in subsidies by Labour leaders to hire the wallets of the food monopolies and attempt to keep bread and other prices artificially low.

That charade has now come to an end. But the fraudulent talk of price controls as a means of protecting workers' living standards carries on.

The only way in which price controls could operate would be if the major industries were nationalised under the management of elected warkers committees, as part of à planned, socialist economy.

Without such planning, the unprecedented successful imposition of price controls on particular private employers would affect profitability, interfere with cash flow, and could even prompt closures.

The unsuccessful imposition of price controls on the other hand has been shown, time and again to be no more than the undercover device used to slash workers' living standards.

Wage controls

The Labour leaders make much out of the current fall in inflation-and attribute it to wage controis.

But the reality is that the cutbacks in government spending on social services and education, combined with the improved standing of the pound in the money. markets-cutting the price of imports-and the slump in world trade (caused by the recession) have had the decisive impact on prices.

In other words the low inflation rate "given" with one Labour hand, is in reality based on the slashing of public services, the forcing through of speed-up, and the creation of mass unemployment on the other.

The only defence of workers living standards in such a crisis is through the struggle in this pay round for every section to break the 5% limit, and protect. their pay increases against inflation through the fight for a sliding scale of wages.

Under the sliding scale, cost-of-living increases would be met by automatic wage rises, calculated in each case on the basis of price index drawn up by elected committees of trade unionists and housewives taking taxation and other factors into account.

Such a system of payment of course runs directly counter to the need of the capitalist class to increase the exploitation of the working class through cuts in real wages.

As such it is a policy that forces workers to look for a solution to their problems beyond. the confines Aila: ill tr,,.

You may think you've got financial problems.

But spare a thought for the poor. old Labour Party. While straining every nerve to give credibility to the European elections and the Devolution proposals, its coffers are all but empty.

Last week the National Executive voted to spend €85,000 on campaign work in Scotland and Wales and in an effort to get the necessary votes for the formation of the new Edinburgh and Cardiff Assemblies.

And it is to consider a further £100,000 expenditure on the European Assembly But, though bad enough, this is not all. Labour Party staff are up in arms over their wages and conditions.

PHOTO: Chris Davies, Report Europe supremo Jenkins They have already rejected a Phase 4-busting offer of a 5% rise now and another 5% in April.

And they have begun to take militant action-which has already hit the production of Labour Weekly.

Tribunite Les. Huckfield points out in this week's issue of that journal that the parlous wages and conditions of Labour Party full-time workers |-not to mention the total lack of any socialist perspective from the Party leadership) is a key factor in ensuring that the Party's real membership is only 250,000 and that only 77 agents are employed to cover 624 constituencies.

What is the answer, according to the reformists? For Huckfield, it amounts basically to pleading for state aid to assist the Labour Party in bulilding up the European elections.

Lamenting the fact that "in many constituencies the Labour Party has become so professionally middle class that it doesn't know how to talk to working people" , he proposes the setting up of factory branches.

The fact is that no matter how it is organised, the Labour Party remains hog-tied to the savagely anti-working class policies of Callaghan and Its growing alienation from the working class could only be reversed by a decision by some of its so-called "socialist'" left wing to launch a campaign throughout the Party and the unions for the removal of the Callaghan-Healey leadership and the adoptión of a programme of socialist policies.

But, lacking any genuine alternative policies to put forward and frightened of a conflict with Callaghan, the lefts' drift on while their party lurches towards bankruptcy.

PHOTO: Andrew Wiard Report