Lk Is Not Enough Force Lefts to Fight Cuts

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The purpose of the Labour government's proposals for savage and sweeping cuts in public spending could not be more plain: the gains made by the working class in social services provided through the state should be sacrificed in the interests of capitalist profits. Healey's White Paper says nothing essentially different from the Tory Party pamphlet published a day earlier.

The only difference is that, where the Tories talk about increasing profits, Healey talks of an effort to maintain or improve our industrial capability and give us a better chance of success as the economy picks up?

The document is an exact fulfilment of the commitment made to the United Statesdominated Monetary Fund in November in exchange for £1 billion loan.

In 1931, Ramsey Macdonald and Philip Snowden, the Labour Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer, were expelled from the Labour Party after splitting the party through their insistence on implementing public spending cuts. Those cuts were relatively much smaller than the ones the Labour leadership now proposes!

But MacDonald's expulsion did not solve the problems of the working class 1n the capitalist crisis, the lefts' in the Labour movement and Labour Party offered no alternative leadership.

ALTERNATIVE

The issues are now the same. The complete class collaboration of the Labour Party leadership poses the stark alternative for the working class: the pious laments and snivelling compromises of the "lefts' or a real fight against the present Labour government and its policies, based on a revolutionary programme.

The extent of Healey's proposed cuts is devastating. Comparing planned spending in 1978-79 with previous plans (which already implied reductions in many programmes), the sectors most hit would be education (cut 9%) health (cut 3%) roads and transport (cut 21%) and housing (cut 8%).

Spending on trade and industry, largely grants and subsidies to capitalists, would on the other hand go up by 30% The total cut would be 6% -at a time when the needs of the working class can only be met by the opposite - a programme of increased spending on public works to end unemployment.

The reductions in spending would, if they were implemented, cut workers' living standards in three different ways:

* the cuts in spending on the social services (health, education and welfare) would cause a major reduction in the quality of these services, which have already been deteriorating for years and so damage the living standards of all those who now benefit 'from them;

* the social services cuts along with all the other reductions in real government spending would produce a huge boost to unemployment, already approaching 1½ million;

* the reduction in food and housing subsidies, which are to be almost totally abolished, would raise the cost of living by something like f1 a week for the average working class familv These three methods of eroding living standards and lasning jobs would, or course, be ombined with the continuation of rigid legal control of wages and rapid inflation.

The government's figures published last week prove that in the last year those two things alone have had the effect of reducing real earnings before tax by about 6%, and real take-home pay by something like 8%.

1930s Not even in the 1930s were real earnings of those who still had jobs cut by so much. In fact there is no parallel in recorded history in Britain, the previous largest reduction in one year being about 5% in the economic crisis of 1857!

The new spending cuts also expose the fraudulence of the statements made by Denis Healey over the last three weeks in his attempt to secure another year of wage restrictions.

On February 12th he introduced a series of measures supposedly designed to reduce unemployment. These would involve, he claimed, extra government spending of about £215 million. It is now clear from the White Paper that this "increase" is really designed to be a decrease.

Again on February 13th Healey hinted that there was no reason why he should not reduce taxes to encourage trade unions to accept another period of wage restriction.

BURDEN

But it is made quite explicit in the White Paper that, in spite of the cuts in spending, the burden of taxes will continue to rise. At present a good deal of government spending is financed by borrowing or printing money; the White Paper contains a pledge to move as rapidly as possible towards a balanced budget.

The spending cuts alone cannot continued on back page, column 1 expelled The Labour Government has plans in hand for British troops to go to the aid of lan Smith's racist regime in Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) and wage war on the liberation forces of African nationalists in their homeland.

These plans have been prepared in the closest collaboration with Henry Kissinger and the American State Department, now desparately looking. for the military and political means of stemming the threat of revolutionary | war in southern Africa after the rout of their agents in Angola.

OFFICIAL The official line of Foreign Secretary Callaghan and the Wilson Cabinet has been that they are using the sharpening of the Rhodesian struggle to put pressure on Smith to step down, withdraw his 'unilateral declaration of independence' and make way for a front-man who would open the way for a 'long-term' process of gradually granting political rights to the 95 percent of blacks in Rhodesia's population.

On these conditions, said Foreign Office Minister of State David Ennals in a policy speech at the end of last week, Britain could become involved in policing operations, after, a return to legality (i.e. the token withdrawal of UDI) and while an agreed settlement was being put into effect."

This statement was the cover for a fortnight of sinister clandestine dealings. They richly confirm that the joint war plans of the Labour government and US imperialism are only the extension of their diplomacy "by other means.

A fortnight ago. as it herama bigger clear that the US-backed fronts -FNLA and UNITA - opposing the MPLA in Angola were doomed, a high-ranking British Foreign office official (later named as Sir Anthony Duff) travelled secretly to negotiate with the Smith regime and with South Africa's Vorster in Cape Town (the FO denied only that he had actually entered Rhodesia -since it is still, in the theories of international law, a British colony, the Smith regime's only recognised diplomatic mission abroad is in Cape Town).

From South Africa the (still anonymous) Sir Anthony returned to London to brief Callaghan, then flew immediately to Washington for discussions with the State Department - it was later confirmed that he discussed • with Mr. Cisco -Kissinger's chief advisor.

'Passing through' Washington at about the same moment there also happened to be senior representatives of the two African regimes which gave direct support to the US-backed war on Angola — Mobutu's new Foreign Minister of Zaire, Mr. Nguza, and the continued on back page, column 4 Callaghan - backing Smith

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Ever since the alleged left ag insurrection of 25th NovIber, Portuguese workers in in and country have been sed with an increasing range • attacks on their wages, aditions and democratic pts.

All illusion in the "progressive tracter of the Armed Forces mement has been shattered in the eks of repression since 25th rember.

Many thousands of workers who rched through the streets of bon last summer shouting kers always on the side of the ople' have been faced in recent Fts with the reduction of their Bes, the dissolution of the amittees they had set up to ¡trol the factories, shops and Iks, and the enforced changes of Morial control in the newspapers it supported them.

The very Sixth Provisional wernment that came to power at ! end of last August with headis about 'Men of the Revolution power' in the Lisbon press, has • turned sharply and decisively tinst all manifestations of the lependence and strength of the king class.

Thus early this month it was orted that the same commandos im Amandora who had been used repress the rising' of 25th member were now raiding the macs of workers involved in the occupation of agricultural land in the Alentejo.

They were surrounding agricultural properties with helicopters near Bejia, searching, they said, for 'foreign revolutionaries"

Elsewhere in the country, at Mirandella in the North-East, the now familiar reactionary gangs were out on 3rd February raiding the offices of the Communist Party, burning documents and office furniture.

In the same town, a fortnight later, it was reported that striking prınt workers were dislodged by bombs, one of which Killed a ten year old girl. Eight other people were injured.

This acceleration of counterrevolutionary activity throughout Portugal is accompanied by a whole range of methods by which the political power of the ruling class, which seemed weak almost to vanishing point a few short months ago, is being re-asserted.

Thus all the Lisbon daily papers have been handed back to editors and boards close to the Socialist Party or the bourgeois PPD.

However bureaucratic the control of the Stalinists over the media in the past, the new masters of the means of communication are in no sence democratic or subject to popular control of any sort.

At the same time, Radio Renascenca, which was under the control of its leftist workers, has been returned to the Catholic Church.

The paper Republica which reflected the views. of workers commissions and various left wing political organisations, has been handed back to its former masters, the anti working class Socialist Party leadership.

The capitalist class in Portugal and its agents in the military and the Sixth Provisional Government have been carefully preparing ground so that political parties and ideological currents on the left no longer receive the same hearing that they did at the time of the fraudulent Constituent Assembly elections in 1975.

Thus the pro-capitalist PPD, the only bourgeois party to obtain substantial support in that election has been claiming that the military has now agreed to repudiate the political power it demanded last year and to hand over the right to rule to the political parties.

The PPD has been combining such hypocritically 'democratic' sentiments with attacks on the 'third world military dictatorship' of the right-wing foreign minister and on the 'social Marxism' of the Socialist Party.

Another indication of this trend is the emergence of new right wing parties such as the PDC, (Party of Democratic Christians) which held a conference in Lisbon over the weekend of 14th-15th February.

There is also increased activity on the part of the CDS, a party consisting of various ex-fascists and associates of British Tories, who secured a derisory vote in the Constituent Assembly elections of last year, and have been able to appear openly on the streets of Lisbon this month for the first time for nearly a year.

There are real dangers to the living standards and organisational gains of the Portuguese workers as these political worms begin to crawl out of the woodwork.* Not only are strikes and occupations being attacked by bombs. At the same time wages are being kept down and the formerly "expropriated" owners brought back from across the Spanish border.

Thus at the textile factory owned by Manuel Goncalves at Famalicao near Oporto, the 4000 workers were represented on an administrative commission set up last July.

This factory is part of one of the most important textile firms country, with other smaller units, and a large export market.

In the first week of February, the workers, who were never offered any serious step to take control into their own hands by their leaders, were deceived into voting for the return of the capitalist.

Such events are reported and more widely.

SPAIN

Meantime, Melo Antunes has been 'normalising' relations with the crumbling fascist regime in Spain.

This long series of attacks on the social conditions and democratic rights of the Portuguese workers nave taken place not because ol their lack of militancy.

The real cause of the problems facing the Portuguese working class has been the rotten degenerate leadership of their "traditional' organisations.

First and foremost must come the cringing Stalinists of the Communist Party. They simply content themselves to hanging on with ever-diminishing strength to the most minor posts in a dis. credited anti-working class government.

Thus Portuguese Socialist Party leader Soares has been speaking in recent weeks of the need for a class collaborationist 'social contract for progress in order to get the nation out of its economic difficulties.

At his mid-february press conference, CP leader Cunhal said that it was time for an alliance between his organisation and the Socialist Party.

All the officers arrested since 25th November must be immediately released and allowed to put forward their political views in the same way as before.

The fight for policies such as these in the Portuguese working class is essential to forge the unity in action which alone can break them from their capitalist rulers and from all those leaders in their own ranks who aim to maintain and defend the power and authority of capitalist repression.

Such a call should be welcomed by Portuguese workers though not on the terms that Cunhal or Soares would want it.

The crying need of the Portuguese workers is for class unity on the basis of the defence of the gains of their revolution.

They must demand democratic rights for all workers organisations, free from the bureaucratic manipulations of Stalinist or social democratic intrigue.

They must unite to smash the wage freeze and 'austerity programme' of the Azevedo government, and increase all wages in line with the rising cost of living.

All the workers committees must be reestablished. The soldiers committees must be aliowed to meet publicly and elect those who will command them.