Pound's Slump Confirms

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CAMPAIGN FOR DEMOCRACY IN THE LABOUR WAGE CONTROL AND UNION DEMOCRACY Sunday 24th October, Digbeth Hall, Birmingham at 10 Credentials, 50p, from Kevin Lee, Campaign Secretary, Devonshire Road, Handsworh Wood, Birmingham 20.

Murray speaking at the TUC in Brighton shortly before seamen's vote The Campaign for Democracy in the Labour Movement, the committee campaigning for the October 24th Conference on Wage Control and Trade Union Democracy has issued a new statement to Trade Union branches following the plunge of the pound last week.

Speaking of the development of the campaign the statement explains that when the committee set out to organise the conference last July "We did so from the conviction that the working class would not accept the 4½% ceiling on wage settlements imposed on them by the TUC and the Labour The committee chose October for the Conference says the statement "because we were convinced that this Autumn would see struggles on wages in which the quality of leadership would be the central issue and in which a programme for action would be decisive."

"Recent events," says the Committee, "have confirmed this perspective and have in our view heightened the urgency for and the importance of the Conference."

"Three weeks ago the decision of the seamen to strike over wages forced a settlement on fringe benefits which drove the first crack in the social contract.

Last week, during the Labour Party conference, the pound collapsed, resulting in an application to the IMP for a massive new loan.

CONDITIONS

The IMF promptly announced that stringent new measures to further reduce living standards will be a condition of that loan."

The committee statement goes Management in the public "rationalisation' in the same way as industrial bosses.

In Coventry, however, Aitken, Coventry's Director of Education and Ridger, Warwickshire's Chief Education • Officer, in a confidential document to the Board of Governors of Lanchester Polytechnic have shown themselves prepared to resort to an even older method of cutting labour costs -the sack!

After urging early retirement to increase student/staff ratios to an arbitrary 10:1, the report states, in the absence of positive strategies there will undoubtedly be redunAnaar? MOVEMENT Conference on am 44, on to say wiat these measures likely to include:

"Further cuts in public spending and the further demolition of the social services; a possible mini budget to increase direct or indirect taxation; an increase in the minimum lending rate and mortgage interest rates and a possibility of a reduction in the money supply."

All these things, says the committee statement, "would force up unemployment rapidly, not only in the public sector but, through trade recession, in the manufacturing industry particularly motors."

"The argument of the Labour Government and the TUC that high wages are responsible for inflation and the weakness of the pound has been demolished by these events.

The £6 limit was successfully imposed and living standards have substantially fallen yet the pound collapses and inflation races out of control."

Socialist Press very much agrees with this perspective and the aims of the conference; to bring together the wages struggle, the attacks on trade union democracy launched on workers by the bureaucratic trade union leaders, and the programme necessary if workers are to defend their living standards is a very powerful combination in this situation.

SLIDING SCALE

The demand contained in the Conference resolution for a sliding scale of wages to defend living standards is seen clearly as the only effective policy to defend the working class against inflation.

It is clear that the Conference can make an important contribution to the struggles of the working class in this period.

At its meeting last Saturday the Organising Committee agreed a platform including speakers from sections of workers who have been in struggle on wages. From the The Polytechnic branch of NATFHE, at a meeting held last Thursday passed a motion which was "opposed to any form of redundancy whether by voluntary wastage or early retirement. ›natural or compulsory means, It called for the Joint. Union Committee to draw up contingency plans including a day of action involving all those who work in the Polytechnic to be enacted if any move was made towards redundancies for any section of the Polytechnic staff.

This move to involve the Joint Union Committee in the event of redundancies should be supported by the students.

And 'natural wastage' must be as strongly opposed as redundanrecent struggles and victimisations in Cowley, from the struggles on Oxford and Camden Trades Councils against Rule 15 and bureaucratic attacks and from recent struggles against bureaucracy in the Labour Party.

FULL DISCUSSION

As well as these main speakers there will be time for a full discussion from the floor of the conference.

• In the past two weeks support from Irade Union organisations has grown.

Delegates have been elected North London Medical West London Medical ASTMS, Horsey CLE Barnes and Richmond CLP and Aylesbury Trades Council.

Jackson - UPW leader opposed to free collective bargaining The report recommends that "10 full time posts be deleted from the establishment" (there are 22 vacancies at present) "and that an even stricter policy towards the filling of vacancies be adopted in the future."

Already new contracts are only being issued on a temporary basis.

The Joint Union Committee must demand access to the accounts and future plans of the LEA as a first step to working with committees of elected trade unionists and students to draw up jointly a workers' plan for education based on the nationalisation of the educational supply industries, and the fight for a sliding scale of state spending to :4e8a

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sector, at the Labour govern- ment's bidding, are attempting to implement "speed-up' and

from Enfield Polytechnic NUS, Central London Hotels G&MWU,