Labours Cuts Boost Unemployment

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The Wilson government is hell-bent on creating a pool of unemployment which will make Heath's figure of 1 million on the dole seem like a charity picnic.

Every statement, every document issued from the Labour Cabinet shows an arrogant contempt for the workers who elected them, and a determination to make workers pay for the profits crisis of British capitalism.

TUC And yet every statement, and every document, is now openly backed by the TUC who ally themselves with Wilson and the employers against their members.

Workers are witnessing a historic period of betrayal by these reformist leaders. Not even in 1926, nor in 1931 did the TUC so eagerly participate in such broad, brutäl and blatant attacks on jobs and wages.

The Ryder plan to speed up and rationalise British Leyland, steam-rollered through against the wishes of the membership by trade union bureaucrats, now becomes the blueprint for the Chequers plan to attack the whole of industry, throwing up thousand and hundreds of thousands of redundancies.

And the TUC's only action on unemployment has been to attack the loby of Parliament called by the North-West TUC.

Meanwhile, from the Health Service to the car industry, trom British Steel to British Rail, from machine tools to the bus service, every field of work, and every job is coming under the twin hammers of speed-up and redundancy.

Latest to zome in for treatment in the national drive for demanning is spending in local government - which, of course, is responsible for education, housing, community needs, and a whole range of services basic to workers' living standards.

AXE The axe is to be brought in on jobs, and services reduced. Wilso last week spelled out that in allocating cash-spending limits, the Cabinet will start from the priority of preserving the profits of private industry. He said: "Financial constraints and the needs of manufacturing industry mean we cannot afford such continuing expansion."

This outline was followed next day by the announcement from Environment Secrétary Crosland of figures showing this the government will cut its thancial support of local authority spend ing next year. So the New Year promises new wayes of redundancies in town halls and schools- white the management offensive within the Health Service also really begins to get under way with all-out attacks on manning levels now combining in nearly every area with cuts in the service provided.

The disruption of the Health Service also shows sharply the other prong of the Labour Government's attack on workers - the £6 state pay laws. It is purely Castle's defence of this reactionary legislation which has forced junior doctors into the arms of the Tory-led associations who at present lead the strikes and threats of resignation.

CASTLE

But Castle, in defending the pay laws, is well aware that their :dge is not felt simply by doctors 1 vut by all trade unionists and their families who now see living standards slashed as a result of the TUC - Labour leadership deal.

Castle's position shows that the Wilson Cabinet is united on these questions. For them, if the Health Service, along with all the most basic living standards of workers must be demolished in the name of profit - so be it!

And the encouragement given the by the TUC shows that the only challenge to this must come from building newleadership which will struggle for the independence and the interests of the working class. In every school, hospital, factory, foundry and pit the demand must be raised that those leaders who will not lead a struggle to reject continued on back pas

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