Social service cuts hit pool

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-also face closures, speed-up and mass redundancies.

Other sections-the profitable areas of state-owned industry like British Airways, the National Freight Corporation, British Petroleum and others-are being sold off at bargain prices to Tory bankers and speculators.

This is not simply some irrational hatchet attack by a crazed government of big business representatives: it is a conscious plan to drive up the profitability of British industry at the expense of the jobs, living standards and basic rights of the working class.

Where the Tory government has direct control, it is coupling drastic cuts in public spendingwhich will itself drive towards unemployment and recessionwith a withdrawal of support from weaker sections of industry to force forward rationalisation and speed-up.

being forced on to the offensive against its workforce through the manipulation of "market This is why industry as a whole now faces a major two-way squeeze, in which soaring bank interest rates make it difficult for firms to borrow money at home, and an overvalued pound makes it increasingly hard for them to sell goods abroad.

Instead the high value of sterling has effectively reduced the cost of imported goods on the British market-forcing British firms to compete on unequal terms with more advanced overseas competitors.

As the share won by British industry in world markets falls, the weaker sections and more antiquated factories go to the wall in bankruptcy cases or ruthless rationalisation. This leaves increased markets and increased profits for the giant corporations, for the banks and Tory course is leading with great rapidity towards a growing "import-led recession", in which even now, only the scale of the revenues from North Sea Oil conceal the huge deficit accumulating in the balance of payments.

High interest rates

The pound now stands in real terms nearly 25% higher in value on the international money markets than it did in 1974-and is held up by Tory insistence that high interest rates are the way to control inflation. The results are devastating.

• One forecast by the ITEM Club expects Gross Domestic Product under the Tories to actually fall by 4% between the second halves of 1979-1980, and for Britain to become a net importer of manufactured goods to the tune of £3.5 billion in 1981.

Inflation meanwhile, far from being under control, continues on target for at least a 17% annual rate by the end of this year-and this figure itself is artificially low because of the way in which the strong pound cuts the cost of imported goods.

Economist after economist is now sounding a dire note of warning to the Tories. Even the arch monetarists of the London Business School have accused the government of a policy of "overkill' Blind ignorance Meanwhile Wynne Godley of the Department of Applied Economics at Cambridge has aptly described the Thatcher/ Joseph strategy:

"It is as though a physician from another age had come back to find a patient in receipt of transfusion, and, in blind ignorance, proceeded to bleed him because it was the only remedy he knew.

"My belief is that the present policies will drive the economy into the worst recession since the early 1930s, He argued that it is "illusory" to look for a spurt in economic growth or increased oil revenues to bail out the economy in the mid 1980s.

Tory Chancellor Sir Geoffrey Howe, has also weighed in with an appeal to union officials to face up to the "reality" of the crisis of British capitalism.

"Today's redundancies and retrenchment would be far less painfui if we had faced up to our problems years ago" , he declared, from his constituency in comfortable Surrey.

Of course all this "reality" is a far cry from the dream world of tax-cuts, home ownership and new "real" jobs so cynically promised by the Tories during their election campaign only a few months ago.

Cinema advert

Remember that Saatchi and Saatchi cinema advert for the Tories, in which a confused couple wander from queue to queue looking for the cinema queue-and discovering long lines of people waiting for jobs, for hospital treatment and for houses?

Of course the Tories would never dare show such a film again.

But one aspect of the film was valid. The groundwork for the present cuts and the mass unemployment which the Tories are determined to create was laid by the last Labour government.

it was Callaghan and Wilson's policies of seeking simply to 'manage' capitalism which led inevitably to spending cuts in health, education and social services, coupled with huge subsidies being handed out to private employers through the National Enterprise Board and other attempts to prop up ailing industry more former public sector and nationalised industry. workers onto the dole queues will swell the demand for supplementary and unemployment benefitthus driving up one area of public spending in the process of cutting it elsewhere.

To compensate for this, existing cases of need must suffer, as benefits are cut back, taxed or abolished altogether by the Tories.

The Labour government's cosmetic scheme to help poverty-line people on supplementary benefit, family income supplement and rent rebates to pay electricity bills seems certain to be an early casualty of the cuts.

Biffen The £45 million plan now falls between the Deparment of Energy and the DHSS, each of which are forced to carry out spending cuts.

Meanwhile the government is stepping up pressure on the unemployed to accept low paid jobs and thus "solve" the problem of 1.5 million on the dole.

Bludgeon

Employment Secretary Jim Prior has called on local labour exchanges to summons long term unemployed men and women and bludgeon them into accepting available vacancies.

Within the DHSS officials have been asked to draw up options for 10%, 15% and 20% cuts in spending.

The Tories are also preparing a new Bill on the social security system, which may well provide retrospective provisions to protect the DHSS against court actions brought by claimants deprived by the cuts of their legal rights.

One proposal likely to be included in the Bill is an extension of the present 3-day waiting period before sickness benefit is paid: a period of up to six weeks is now possible-in a move to shift the burden of payment from the DHSS onto the employer.

The consequences of the DHSS cuts are a major threat to the most downtrodden sections of society. Elwyn Owen, chairman of the British Association of Social Workers has warned Patrick Jenkins that:

"'Frail, elderly people and abandoned children will die as a result of these cuts.

«Cuts in day centres, home helps and social work staff will expose scores of people to unnecessary risks. The Conservative manifesto talked of improving services to those in real need. Where, then, is the mandate for neglect?"

The BASW estimates that a 10% cut in social service spending will mean 28,000 less people receive home helps, 1,500,000 less meals will be served to home-bound patients, and 5,500 old people will be denied a place in a home.

Hostels for the mentally ill and the handicapped will close, and 10,000 abused or delinquent children will be without places for treatment.

Nobody will be safe. Minister for the Disabled Reg Prentice created howls of rage when he bluntly told the Royal National Institute for the Blind that blind people and the handicapped must carry their share of the cuts.

And if Tory plans for a means test on the Death Grant are implemented they will ensure that even the dea d will continue to suffer the consequences of Thatcher's re thless spending cuts.

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Manipulation The remainder of industry is