Manley tightens wage contro

Scan page 3

The Jamaican People's National Party government of Malcolm Manley has cut the pay ceiling from 15% to 10% in a further desperate attempt to stabilise the economy and meet their obligations to the International Monetary Fund.

IMF loans together with a wide range of import- credits are likely to reach a massive $400 million dollars by this time next year. The population of Jamaica is 2 million.

Force election

The opposition pro-imperialist Jamaican Labour Party has rejected the 10% guidelines and called on the Jamaican people to force a general election within the next six months after Manley turned down the offer of a 'Social Contract advanced by the JLP and the Bustamante industrial Trade Union (BITU) which supports the JLP.

The President of BITU, the Right Honourable Hugh Shearer told the annual general assembly of the union that delegates had mandated the union to opp ose the 10% guideline and "take and support strike action' wr ere "we are satisfied that the employers have the ability to pay more than they offer"

The island has already been hit by a wave of strikes this year as a result of massive price increases and rioting broke out when the price of gas was increased in February.

While many of the strikes are the wholly justified militant response of workers to a 60% level of inflation, the employers have also locked out workers or even paid them to stay at home during strikes called by the JLP..

Turned Manley has only himself to blame for the hostility of the Jamaican workers and peasants.

Elected on an anti-imperialist, 'socialist' programme in face of a major 'destabilisation' attempt by the CIA, he was faced with the choice between bold socialist policies to tackle Jamaica's immense economic 1200 Manley problems or reliance on the capitalists to bail out the economy-at a price.

Not unexpectedly, this left-talking social democrat turned to the IMF for loans and he is now faced with the task of trying to make the Jamaican working class pay the price of such aid.

But Manley still has some friends left on the island. The Workers Party of Jamaica, formerly the Workers Liberation League, and the larger of the two Stalinist parties on the island (the other being the Jamaican Communist Party) has offered an electoral alfiance with the PNP.

The WPJ, led by Dr.. Trevor Munroe (who is also president of the University and Allied Workers Union) has announced their intention to 1) enter candidates in the next election, 2) defend the government, and 3) seek an electoral alliance with 'progressive, sections of the PNP.

columnists It was the third point that prompted hasty denials from Jamaica House. But the capitalist press, who see their daily task as convincing the Jamaican people that the PNP is a communist front organisation, lost no time in setting their | hack columnists to work, using the WPJ statement and the fact that Manley has only recently returned from a visit to the Munroe Soviet Union.

There is only one way forward for the Jamaican workers and peasants and that is the building of a Trotskyist party capable of mobilising the masses in the struggle to expropriate the foreign and native capitalists and institute a planned, socialist the struggle of workers in Crossroads-and the whole of South Africa-is one of leadership.

The threat to the gains made in struggle rests on the absence of a revolutionary leadership capable of consolidating and developing independent working class forces.

The crucial task now is the development of the political perspectives, programme and cadre which, drawing on the lessons of Soweto and Crossroads, are based uncompromisingly on the independent class interests of the proletariat. *Build the South African revolutionary party! *For a revolutionary programme of democratic and transitional demands stemming from today's needs and today's consciousness and leading unatterably to the workers' seizure ot power. *Build the independent organisations of the working class-in the factories and schools, on the farms and mines, in the communities. *The first task of the armed struggle is the defence of workers! *Cadres with military training to develop defence squads within the country. *Destroy the influx control migrant labour systems!

Concluded