'lefts' Gesture Poses Tuc

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the late 1970's to only one third of the level of the early years of the decade.

Now Shore's measures mean further cutbacks and the pressure grows daily for cuts in next year's plans of around £2,000 million!

This is approaching 10% of total public expenditure. Since the government have no intention of cutting back expenditure oll defence, the police and so on and many other areas, like pensions, would be very difficult to cut, this implies a massive axing of the social services.

"ALTERNATIVE"

Workers must be prepared to fight both these cuts and the nationalist 'alternative' of import sontrols, which the Labour lefts' tre certain to push.

A fight to defend the social services must be waged around the demands for an immediate cash injection to replace all provisions already cut and a sliding sclae of social service expenditure to prevent inflation reducing provisions in the future.

A timid move by Labour "lefts' on the Party's National Executive has exposed still further the TUC leaders' active support of public spending cuts.

The lefts' succeeded by 11 votes to 8 in inserting a number of amendments to the new social contract • a document already accepted by the TUC leaders the day before.

These amendments included one to delete a sentence on spending cuts which states that "there will be no scope for any further overall increase [in public expenditure] in real terms" - though they offered no clear alternative perspective.

The sentence had been inserted at the specific request of Callaghan and Healey as their carte blanche for the coming further cuts in social service and other public spending.

But it had been endorsed by the 1UC General Counci by 2u votes to 3 - despite the devastating impact further cuts will have on jobs and living standards.

Small surprise the TUC were embarassed when the "lefts' feeble gesture of opposition to government policy highlighted this aspect of the social contract.

While postmen's leader, Tom Jackson, had given explicit support to spending cuts in his speech at the TUC Special Conference, Fisher of NUPE and Drain of NALGO have until now been forced to give an impression of muted opposition.

But as our lead article in the last Socialist Press stressed, the TUC leaders were not just voting to accept the 4%% pay cutting deal when they lodged their 17-1 vote on June 16th.

If the highest priority is not defence of the working class but to "save the pound", as argued at the Special Conference, then acceptance of spending cuts is an auto matic response by the union In this climate the puny protest of the Labour lefts' does nothing but pitserve their shallow consciences - enabling them to say they "fought" the cuts.

What is necessary for these 'lefts' is to launch a campaign throughout the mass Labour and trade union movement to expose and defeat the right-wing leaders who are carrying out the Tory policy of cutting public spending.

Their continued refusal to do so means the right-wing simply treat their gestures with contempt. The Financial Times made this clear, commenting on last week's vote:

..neither he [Callaghan] nor the trade union leaders who have worked together to agree on a statement of policy are likely to be amused by this latest piece of attitudinising".

Nor will workers whose jobs are at stake.

The need is clearly not for left' words and manoeuvres but to take forward the fight for a sliding scale of social service spending, fot defence of all jobs in public sector industries, and for the opening of the books in these sectors to elected trade union committees as the first steps towards workers' control.