Bosses divided on way forwarc

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Amid growing signs of disarray in the Thatcher cabinet, even the most staunch Tory employers are beginning to lend their less monetarist strategy.

Anguished bleats from textile employers, electronics firms and others have become as commonplace as the nationalist demands for "import controls" from union leaders who refuse to litt a finger to mobilise action in defence of jobs.

But now, in the wake of the first-ever balance sheet loss for ICI, Britain's biggest corporation, bosses of the country's giant chemical monopolies have weighed in with demands that Chancellor Geoffrey Howe take "speedy action" to cut interest rates and bring down the value of the pound.

A letter from the Chemicals Economic Development Committee points out that many firms are losing almost all their export profits because of the high exchange rate.

Howe These objections are now increasingly finding an echo within the Tory Party itself. The fragile facade of unity that was preserved at the Tories' Brighton conference has now begun to crack as MPs have openly criticised the Thatcher Last week saw Howe floundering in Parliament as he attempted to defend the government's economic policy not only against routine Labour criticisms but also against sharp speeches from former Heath minister Geoffrey Rippon and from MPs Nicholas Winterton and William Waldegrave.

These Tory critics by no means offer any hope to the working class: rather they differ with her over tactics. They fear the consequences of Thatcher's policies in ruining sections of small and larger businessmen, and in promoting militant working class resistance.

Rippon in particular centred his criticisms on the need to cut interest rates.

And in Manchester Edward Heath himself joined the attack with an unusually blunt speech to a gathering of businessmen, where he declared that:

"Your problems are greater than at any time since the 1930s. It can't be right that we see small businesses built up by hard work over generations now being forced into bankruptcy.

It can't be right that great firms, among the most efficient in the western world, should find they are making losses because they cannot export because of the rate of the pound...

With the capitalist class itself increasingly divided on the way forward, and rumours of possible resignations from the Cabinet over the forthcoming £2 billion package of spending cuts, workers must seize the initiative and look not towards the prospects of a Thatcher "U turn", , but towards the prospects of mass action to bring down the Thatcher government.

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Several million trade unionists who fall under the South East Region TUC would have been surprised last week to read in the LOUL 1980 PRESS

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weight to the "wets" in their pleas for a relaxation of the government's relent-