Budget Axes Jobsthorn

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The budget presented by Denis Healey on Tuesday is heavily deflationary and represents a direct attack b the Labour government or the living standards of the working class and poses massive increase in unemployment.

The VAT increase alone is estimated to reduce the Labour force in the already hard-hit electrical goods industry by 40%. It is a budget designed by Wilson to shore up crisis-ridden capitalism and to please the international bankers An increase in road fund licent from £25 to £40 will be another blow at a car industry in which short time and voluntary redundancies are already widespread, and which will anyway suffer Healer from the overall drop in workers living standards brought about by Healey's package. Ciearettes are up 10p, beer up 2p a pint, whisky 64p a bottle and wine 24p a bottle. alongside a 2p in the E increase in income tax. The overall impact on the retail price index is estimated at 2%. Even Hugh Scanion was forced to admit that this "quite deliberately put the whole burden onto ordinary people, cutting their purchasing power, and was "diametrically opposed" to the course proposed by the TUC in addition, a £1,000m cut in public spending will produce further cutbacks in the building industry and in the civil service. Out of that figure E150m will be cut from food subsidies, alongside the ending of price controls, thus giving the manufacturers free reign to raise prices as they choose. The fraud of food subsidies is exposed for what it was - a smokescreen to avoid the vital question of the nationalisation of the food industry, while propping up the nonopolies with state finance.

This is the outcome of the social contract, in which the TOC leaders pledged Wilson they would hold back and sabotage wages struggles in exchar for price controls and a curb or unemployment. Now workers are confronted with the reality - soaring prices, growing unemployment, and the continuous attempts of the trade union leaders to hold down wage settlements.

This budget shows the urgency of developing the campaign to defend jobs based on the deman for a sliding scale of wages - wor sharing on full pay and the occupation of plants in the event of redundancy or plant closures.

About 250 G&MWU members have been in dispute since 2nd April at the Thorn Colour Tube plant at Skelmersdale, over the defence of an agreement.

A mass meeting on 5th April unanimously voted for strike action and a 24-hour picket was mounted on the gate. At 3 a.m on Monday 8th April however the management's security guard (ASTMS members) attacked the four pickets on duty, only to be driven off when more pickets arrived.

The management's actions follow the settlement of the annual wage review in which they succeeded in getting spee‹ up and de-manning in exchang for a backdated increase. This was followed by a programme of voluntary redundancies, but when the employers stated insufficient workers had volunteered, the dispute began.

As one former steward told Socialist Press "In my opinion the dispute was created by management in the hope of more workers leaving the factory at nu cost to them. The union must make it quite clear that anyone leaving must be replaced, carrying out their mandate, which is to resist redundancies". The demand for work sharing on full pay is clearly the only way Thor workers will be able to combat this offensive by the employers.

MAY DAY STRIKE

The Workers Socialist League declares its critica support for the one-day strike on May Day called for by the Liaison Committee for the Defence of Trade Unions, to free them Shrewsbury 2. This must prepare the start of general strike action to force their release. them stands tradition, experience and routine, and most important, with them stands bourgeois society as a whole which slips them ready-made solutions."

It is therefore vital that the strugg against Wilson is carried out not simply on the Common Market issue, but broadened to include fighting the social contract and the use of the law and of troops against the trade unions, posing instead socialist proposals to defend the working class. This means a fight to release the Shrewsbury Two and support for all sections of workers fighting to defend living standards. The way forward for every Labour Party member must be to fight the betrayals of the Wilson leadership and expose the take lefts in the Labour Party's ranks. In each trade union brancl and Labour Party GMC resolutior must be fought for declaring no confidence in Wilson and calling for his resignation.

At the same time they must call on Heffer to lead this fight, and or left MP Siuncy Bidwell to make good his statement that Wilson himself might "face the prospect of the sack" and becom a "candidate for the boot" if defeated at the Labour Party's special conference on April 26th. Only in this way can Heffer's stand be transformed from an individual gesture into a serious stand for principle in the Labour Party. Anything short of this wil be a betrayal.

AL IST LEAGUE