England Expects

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In the position that - with prices they were made of by voting on These policies - the minimum Cont d erupted last week confirms once more that what confronts workers in this period is NOT a "choice" between accepting pay cuts or facing inflation, but the necessity to defend the value of the wage packet through the fight for increases to keep pace with inflation - a sliding scale of wages.

And the upheavals which erupted at the Labour Party Conference and on the foreign exchange markets confirmed to the hilt our analysis that the TUC's stage-managed 17-1 vote for the Social Contract is not accepted by the working class.

The seamen's vote for strike action over their pay claim, although eventually diverted into the haggle for fringe benefits, struck a body-blow at the cabinetTUC conspiracy to thrust the economic crisis onto the shoulders of the working class.

Only a matter of weeks after the TUC Congress it has raised a huge question mark over the ability of Murray and Jones to subject their members to wage cuts and to carve from them the pounds of flesh demanded by has accumulated the most intense and justified hatred of the 'social contract and all those who foist it on workers' backs.

Similarly, the violent struggles which erupted last week on the night shift of the Ford factory at Dagenham stem from the fact that almost two years of Labourled wage cutting have left workers in the position that - with prices ENGLAND EXPECTS....

TIM_ increasing almost every day they just cannot afford lay-offs, even short ones, any more.

Yet virtually every trade union bureaucrat in the country insists that pay claims must stay within the government's 4½% wage-cutting guidelines.

The Labour Party lefts headed by Benn, showed what they were made of by voting on economic "strategy" - pay cuts and all.

MANAGEMENT

Meanwhile the British Oxygen Company prepare pay increases to management of almost t50 per week, more than the total take-home earnings of millions of workers. And the response of the government to this is simply to prepare a police enquiry into how BOC's plans had leaked!

None of the waffle, whether "left' or from the right of the Labour Party Conference offers any way forward to the millions of workers who are threatened by the full savagery of the world economic crisis.

The only answer is policies which defend the living standards of every section of workers.

This must centre not only on the fight for substantial wage increases to pull back wages lost over the past year, but on a sliding scale of wage increases to keep pace with the cost of living as democratically worked out by elected committees of trade unionists and housewives.

MINIMUM

- the minimum MAO (Part Two). .. P.3 The fight for African Unions in S. Africa .... P.8 Why we Resigned from the IMG. .. P.9 The 35-hour week traud..... . P.9 Defend the Method of the Transitional Programme, the split in the Greek section of the IC. .PP.6-7 necessary to protect living standards - are viciously opposed by every type of bureaucrat and centrist, both "left" and right within the Labour Party and the trade unions (as well as by the Communist Party).

All of these people, openly or covertly agree that the working class must be made to pay for the crisis.

Cont'd on Back Col.