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reviewed - p.9 Support hunger strikers-back page BRING DIONIN THE TORIES TES WIER !

This government has got go!

Its contempt for the working class-for the unemployed, the poor, the sick, the homeless, the elderly-is matched only by Thatcher's determination to increase the profits of the banks, bosses and speculators who finance the Tory Party.

Last week proved this beyond doubt. On Monday, Thatcher herself stood up amid the sumptuous Lord Mayor's banquet in London to defend the new 6% pay limit on public sector workers and announce that:

*We now have no alternative but to accept a reduction in the standard of the country's living if investment and employment are to recover."

Whose living standards is she talking about? The managers and employers who cruise around in company Rovers, livina off ernense acenunte as they plan their next asset-stripping factory closure?

No! Thatcher means to sacrifice your living standards-the living standards of the working class—in order to maintain the rich in the style to which they have become accustomed. Every step taken by the Tories since they rode to office on a platform of fraudulent promises has been taken with this sole objective.

They have slashed spending on education, health services, housing, old people's homes, social services and transport; they have sent prices rocketing: they have even driven the weakest employers into bankruptcy in a bid to increase the profits of the strongest.

Low paid

Then, a week ago, they came along with a 6% pay limit in the public sector-aimed primarily at millions of low-paid manual workers already struggling to survive in the midst of 15% inflation.

But even as they announced the derisory 6% figure- and thus tore up the pay deal settled with the firemen in 1978-the Tories were planning to take even more money off the working class!

The first public revelation of this was the fumbled attempt by Michael Heseltine, the Secretary of the Environment (and a millionaire) to sneak through a thumping £3 a week rise in council house rents.

That rent increase alone would effectively wipe out a 6% pay increase for the 5½ million families affected.

But behind the scenes the knives are being sharpened for even more drastic attacks! The Thatcher cabinet is debating how to allocate a further £2 billion in spending cuts so as to unload the burden wholly onto the backs of the working class.

Thatcher appears to have failed to win support for a cut in the value of old age pensions: but it seems likely that taxes on drink and tobacco will be increased, along with a rise in the employee's national insurance payment-effectively a further straight cut in wages for millions of workers.

And the growing army of unemployea-wno nave already had their benefits cut by 5% by Thatcher-seem likely to face another onslaught on their poverty-line existence.

These attacks have not gone wit cla: ToI intr gre: He:

eng vot pay by VIe: offi and mai real livi gov seci WO1 san pay gatr labr con Lan lign to | mel tha the MAGGIE MOUSETRO hout notice in the workin ss. The outcry against the ry government has reached at ensity and a unanimity a at as at any time under the ath government.

Firemen are right now raged in action against the limit; BL car workers who ed 2-1 for strike action or , have been held back only the most shameful manoeu s of convenors and unior icials; miners, water worker: I gas workers are among the ny who have indicated : diness to fight to defenc ng standards against thi ernment. In the private tor, 100,000 furniture rkers are already operating ctions in pursuit of thei • demands.

On November 1, 700 dele es from the trade union and our movement voted at a iference convened by nbeth Labour council tc it for mass industrial action halt the cuts in local govern: nt spending.

On all sides there is evidence t workers are ready to fight Tories. Yet they are being offered only abject surrender by their union leadership, and the vague hopes of a chance to vote Labour in 1984 by the Labour leaders.

This is not because they are unaware of the feeling in the working class: Michael Foot in an interview with the Guardian last week pointed out correctly that:

"I think there is a very deep ferment growing. When it will explode I do not know."

But for Foot the main objective is not to direct the risino militancy towards mass action to bring down the Tories: it is to head workers back towards the rigmarole of Parliament.

want it to explode in a way which will make it possible to maintain democratic institutions in this country, and that means that the agitation outside this place [Parliament] has got to have its representation here."

This explains the fisticuffs by Labour MPs in Parliament last week over the £3 rent increase-and Foot's refusal to condemn those responsible. We support their action-as far as it went. But nobody should be fooled int thinking th that such gestures Gil halt the Thatcher offensive or remove the Tories from offipe.

The task in the next period is not to mass picket the House of Commons in order to prevent the entry of Black Rod: it is to mobilise the mass strength of the working class to prevent the Thatcher government destroying our basic rights and living standards.

It is by their stand in this struggle that workers must judge their trade union and Labour leaders. им sPA Those that seriously wish to defend the working class will join the fight for mass action alongside the firemen, BL workers and any other section prepared to battle against the Tories.

Those who oppose such a fight must be exposed and removed.

This means building a new leadership in the labour movement.

That's what Socialist Press is all about. Join us in the fight for action to bring down the Tories this winter!

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