Workers Socialist League

Socialist Press, Trotskyism Today and the Trotskyist International Liaison Committee, 1975–1984

[FOOD NOT FOF CONSUMPTION EEC, so their food…]

Socialist Press no. 60, 11 May 1977 · scan p. 4 · about 180 words

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FOOD NOT FOF CONSUMPTION EEC, so their food import prices would not go down.

And those whose currencies fell in value would get a subsidy to control rises in food prices.

The system, designed to deal with small fluctuations in exchange rates, in fact operated while some currencies (especially the British pound) were enormously devalued and others (especially the West German mark) went up.

The result has been not the intended small compensatory payments but a huge semi-permanent subsidy from West Germany to Britain on all food imported to Britain from the Common Market.

It is now running at over £1 million a day.

DEVALUE

The only way to eliminate this subsidy would be for Britain to devalue the "green pound" by as much as the real pound has been devalued since 1971 (about 40%); this would raise the price of imported food in Britain by the same 40%.

The other anti-working class EEC governments are sensitive enough to realise that this would murder the Social Contract, so their demands are less extreme.

fillin has an far zoop?

← Contents of Socialist Press no. 60, 11 May 1977