Eec Plans Food Price Chaos

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SO "SUI BARLEY MOUNTAIN OLIVE OIL LAKE i257000000 Labour's Agriculture Minister John Silkin has had to resort to barefaced lying to defend his food prices agree. ment with the rest of the Common Market.

It will, he claimed, increase the cost of living in Britain by only one third of one percent.

In fact there are three reasons why EEC rules and Silkin's latest deal are going to give a giant upmard push to food prices in Britain orer the next year.

In January 1978 comes the final stage in the equalisation of British food prices to the higher EEC price levels. This is part of Britain's phased adoption of the EEC: economic rules agreed during "negotiation"

Those EEC food price levels *ca Itemselves raised at last mosta: meeting by a further 3½%c.

Sixir agreed also to devalue the "Fees pound" . The "green system for farm prices F35 set up ir. 1971 to stabilise food prices ihroughout Europe at a time •3e: excharge rates between the Ecropean currencies began changing ever day because of the miemational monetary crisis.

Councies those cumencies went 21292149T S/HI IS WHAT THE 1MIT WAS ALL ABOUT L MILK POWDER MOUNTAIN BEEF MOUNTAIN KEEP WHEAT MOUNTAIN WINE LA devaluation (and so a 2.9% in imported food prices).

But there will now be for more.

All these measures will put up the price of food and is likely to add at least an extra 2½% onto the rate of inflation which is already rapidly approaching 20% a year.

SUBSIDY

In "exchange" for all this Silkin got the EEC to agree to a temporary subsidy on butter in Britain which may for a few months keep its price Sp a pound below what it would have been.

It is in Silkin's interest to lie about the effects of this deal because if the truth were told, it would be one more shovel-full ot earth into the grave of the Social Contract.

That is why Silkin held out for a better deal until the last possible moment-up to the point, according to the EEC Agricultural Commissioner Gunderlach, where he threatened to destroy the whole And to destroy the C.A.P. virtually means the Common Market itself, since 95% of the EEC's budget and three quarters of the time of its Council of Ministers ic dainted to the agricnitural policy.

The essence of that policy is the guaranteed purchase at artificially high prices by the EEC of all farm produce.

This benefits the big agricultural capitalists who receive vast subsidies and produces high food prices in the shops which keeps down the standard of living of European workers.

The difference between the huge amount farmers produce and the smaller amount consumers can afford to buy is accumulated as surplus stocks by the EEC.

This is what causes the famous butter and meat "mountains" , the win and olive oil "lakes" and so on-all expensively stored in vast refrigerated warehouses around Europe while millions of the world's population starve.

The basic political reason for this economic insanity is that the C.A.P. was the price which the French government has always demanded for supporting the EEC.

And that is because, aside from benefiting the big agricultural capitalists, the C.A.P. keeps in business tens of thousands of small French farmers who constitute the bedrock of political support to the reactionary Gaullist regimes of the last 20 years.

The C.A.P. is producing huge contradictions between the capitalist EEC governments.

The West German government opposes it because the bulk of the multi-million pound subsidies come from West Germany.

The British Labour government has, launched a verbal campaign against it because the implementation of the C.A.P. in Britain means a . further sharp decline in workers' living standards and that threatens the policy of the Social Contract by intensifying opposition to wage control.

But Silkin's "campaign" against the C.A.P. is largely hypocritical since the end of the C.A.P. would mean the end of "green currencies" and West German subsidies to British tood imports.

That would involve new cuts in the living standards of British workers

BEDROCK

HYPOCRITICAL But these cuts would be cuts that boosted not the profits of British capitalists (the intention of the Social Contract) but the strength of West German capital.

WITHDREW Clearly, the interests of workers in Britain can best be served by the immediate withdrawal of Britain from the EEC. To protect workers wages against the inevitable increase in food prices, the fight would have to be taken up for wages to be linked to the level of inflation as determined by elected trade union committees.

But the struggle to replace the BEC with a socialist United States of Europe will have to include in its programme demands to win the subsidised small farmers of Europe to the side of the working class, including provision of interest free credit for the collectivisation of small farms, through the nationalisation of the banks and credit institutions.

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BUTTER MOUNTAIN