Healey's Dole Queue Grows

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Vorkers Socialist League. hellar Yet another post-war peak in unemployment this month-with 1,635,950 registered as out of work -is a further confirmation that the orchestrated press clamour about "booming Britain" is a conscious fraud designed to create. the climate for renewed wage controls.

for TUC leaders the figures can only be an acute embarassment. A main. line of argument for wage control has for some time been that without it workers could "price themselves out of the market"

Yet now, after workers have suffered unprecedented cuts in real wages over the last two years, unemployment continually scales new peaks.

The latest figures show an The situation plunging socialist the maj overall increase of 13,59l even after 21,977 school eavers succeeded in finding jobs-meaning that the real increase in adult unemployment is nearly 35,000, while unfilled vacancies also dropped by 5,659.

SHORT TERM Meanwhile some 307,000 jobs are now dependent on some form of government aid measures, including short term job creation and "work experience" schemes which carry a virtual guarantee of redundancy as soon as they expire.

These figures fit into a European picture which shows that one in twenty of the labour force in the Common Market is unemployed-a total of 5,680,000, 12%. above last year's figure.

Indeed in many ways the economic situation in Britain is also worse than this tame last yearwhen inflation was 5% lower at 12.%%, and the figure for increases in earnings was 1? higher at 17*.

And in the filed of production, the figure for new housing starts over tife last year is 78,000 lower this year than last, at an abysmal 274,000.

STAGNATION

only way out of this of stagnation decline and policy of nationalisation of living standards r industries couplest lo 1608. TOTAL OUT OF WORR (regrates. 1500 1405. 13901 1260:

PEGl 2031 309 ГОТА! 2001 'us sep in 1976 1977 unemployed youth and adults at trade union rates and under workers control.

Such a policy can only be implemented if the reactionary parliamentary coalition between the Liberals and the Labour Party is broken and the extreme right wing Callaghan-Healey leadership removed.

COALITION A number of Constituency Labour Parties have passed resolations against he coalition. It is essential that they mobilise maximum forces to lobby this year's Labour Party conference demanding that delegates fight for such a position.

In particular they must demand that the seit-styled left' MPs cease their support -whether tacit or open-tor the coalition and its leaders and lake up a campaign throughout the Labour and trade officials, 'left and right wing alike.

The 'left' wing, bolstered by the Communist Party will attempt to bolster the case for claims of 15-20% as they have done at Fords and at Longbridge. Such claims may sound large, but even if won in full they are inadequate to regain lost living standards. In negotiation they will be whittled down to real increases in line with Healey's 10% limit Meanwhile the right wing will seck to ensure that wage struggles are stalled, diverted, sabotaged and isolated. A barrage of fraudulent propaganda claiming that wage increases cause sackings and inflation will be churned out by union officials, particularly in the public sector, aimed at persuading workers to tailor their wage demands to the profitability of the employer.

In this situation the elements needed are a clear programme to regain and defend living standards and a leadership developed within the working class to carry such a programme into practice.

"heoretical Journal of the "heretical Journal Vorkers Socialist NUMBER ONE Features include:

POLITICS AND ORGANISATION - A reply to the IMG on 'Faction and * WHAT ARE THE ONS OF CUBA Order Now. Copies plus 15p pap from:

WSL, 31, Dartmou1 • Pa can make a major contribution. For this reason we are calling a Conference on October 23 which can bring together those in struggle on wages and discuss the role of the trade union leadership; the role of the government and the need to break the coalition and establish a government which will support the working class; the attitude of the lefts within Parliament and the trade unions; and the programme on which wages struggles should be fought.

1. For wage increases to regain what has been lost since 1974.

2. For cost of living clauses to protect against inflation.

3. For workers comm ittees to assess a working class cost of living index.

• Support for wage 'strikes. particularly by low paid workers.

5. Support recognition strikes such as Grunwick and Desoutters.

6. Call on • left Labour MPs Ic break the LibLab coalition and support all pay strikes.

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CONCLUDING OUR SERIES ON FASCIST MOVEMENTS IN EURO iti-tascists full back from a harrice near Aldeate as balle charge it from Previous articles in this series have been concerned with the question 'How did fascists seize state power'. . This one turns itself to the opposite question. Why did fascists not come to power in Britain? The workings of capital are international and the needs of capital are international. How was it that capital did not require the fascist solution in Britain?

The answer to this question will not be found in any notions such as British love of "justice" or demo¿racy or British "character". These sort of bogus notions are swept aside when capitalism, in crisis, is fighting for its life.

For it is in response to capitalist crisis that fascism emerges. Unable to solve the endemic problems of slump and stagnation in the 1930s, the capitalist class could only impose the economic measures necessary for survival by attacking the working class; in Germany, Spain, Italy and Portugal by entirely breaking the back of the working class.

CRUSHED

In that situation of economic catastrophe, with bourgeois democracy unable to maintain a stable social order, the "little men" feeling themselves crushed by the growth of monopoly, not wishing to identify with the workers' movement, turned in desperation and panic to fascism.

Small shop keepers, farmers, small businessmen, lower professionals and the peasantry form the social layer from which fascist parties take their recruits. These fascist parties none the less served the interests of capital.

Why in Britain did these layers not turn in such numbers towards fascism? There was of course no peasantry in Britain and the small ¿apitalist farmers were also very few in number. Despite the size of the urban petty bourgeoisie the ¿lass nature of British society was one where there were fewer of the kinds of social groups that fascism incites to action.

WEAKENED

The answer to the question, however, lies mainly in two areas. Firstly the nature of the capitalist crisis and the relation of class forces were not such in Britain as to Jemand a fascist solution. It was possible, because of the , earlier Jefeat of the working class in the 1926 General Strike, for solutions to be imposed by the capitalists on a working class greatly weakened by the earlier betrayals of its leaders.

The British ruling class did not need to call the fascists to power to break the working class; the British ruling class could rattle the sabre of fascism but did not need to hand over state power to the fascists.

But secondly, at crucial moments the British fascists were physically taken on by the workers' movement and were physically halted on the streets. These events Lemand special attention today as once again street battles break out against the fascists.

But before looking at the dramatic climax of the rise and fall of the fascists in Britain, we should see in some more detail how the ruling ¿lass managed without putting the fascists into power.

Britain at the end of the 1920s experienced the economic depres510 n which was world-wide.

Between 1929 and 1932 the British otticial index of industrial production tell by 17%. Coal output in 1931 was no higher than i: had been in 1900; and iron Froduition was down to that of Moseley inspecis before is 'troops' before the battle ment reached 3 million. In the twelve months to June 1933 the world tonnage of merchant shipping showed a net decrease of 1,814,000 tons-more than half this decrease being tonnage owned in the UK. In many ways, however, this crisis in Britain was less precipitate than in other major capitalist countries because British capitalism had failed to achieve even the modest, short-lived boom of the 1920s.

Following 1926, when the General Council of the TUC handed the working class on a plate to the government, British capital was able to operate with the most abject collaboration of the leaders of the labour movement. Thousands of militants in the factories had been sacked at the end of the strike and the Tory government passed the anti-union Trades Disputes Act in 1927. Then, in 1931, MacDonald and Snowden betrayed the labour movement by entering a coalition government with the Tories. What was left of the Labour Party went down to a catastrophic electoral defeat TAMPERING The "National Government engaged in repressive measures against the working class. As a commentator at the time put it:

'The record of the National Government is largely the history of a movement away trom democracy. The tampering with parliamentary forms, the reorganisation of the police and their increasing violence. the restrictions on free speech and assembly, the Royal Detence Corps (a new body of the Territorial Army to deal with 'foreign agents' i.e. the left) the Unemployment Act (cutting the dole and means testing), the Incitement to Disaffection Act-behind all these is a purpose essentially fascist It is the good fortune of British mmitalion that it hao en far nnly of Cable Street. needed to adopt a part of the authoritative fascist procedure. It has been able to achieve its purposes-the partial subjugation of the working class without resort to anything glaringly undemocratic, without the trouble of dressing in coloured shirts." (W.A. Rudlin, The Growth Fascism in Britain).

BEATEN

Yet there were those who dressed in coloured shirts and they did need to be physically beaten. This was the movement that Mosley built. There were fascist bodies in Britain prior to the formation of Mosley's British Union of Fascists but it was this movement that was most significant. Indeed the history of the British fascist movement is often seen as the history of one man-viewed by the bourgeoisie as brilliant but erratic, as a maverick who could have been Prime Minister. Beatrice Webb, the Fabian, described Mosley in 1923:

"Here is the perfect politician who is also a perfect gentleman.

This gentleman was to lead a movement which marched through the East End of London chanting *The Yids, the Yids, We gotta get rid of the Yids" and initiated and ordered the worst scenes of thuggery seen in British politics this century. This was Mosley.

ARISTOCRAT

He was an aristocrat who entered Parliament as Conservative member for Harrow in 1918-yet by 1920 he had crossed the House and joined the Independent Labour Party in 1923. By 1926 he reached the Labour Party national executive and became Labour MP for Smethwick (having ironically been defeated in Birmingham Ladywood).

In 1930 he was defeated at the Labour Party conference on resolution urging a program he • of action unemployment He PAR straight away began to build a new party which was to move rapidly right towards fascism.

Like Mussolini he moved from the left to the far right.

Mosicy was , supported financially by big business: to begin with by William Morris the motor manuTacturer, one of the fathers of what is now British Leyland, followed later by Lord Rothermere, owner of the Daily Mail and Evening Mosicy began building the action wing of his movement in his youth clubs where young thugs were trained in physical combat.

Various intellectuals, such as Harold Nicholson and Osbert Sitwell dithered at the edge of Mosley's movement, not 4 uite able to commit themselves nor to break from its horrid appeal.

The New Party failed resoundingly and Mosley moved to model his movement more closely on the continental pattern and came out in favour of that key aspect of fascist policy. the corporate state.

HARMONY

socicty working with the precision and I harmony of a human body, every interest and every individual is subordinate to the overriding purpose of the nation."

He toured Spain, Germany and Italy (as honoured guest of Mussolini) and came back a convinced fascist.

The British Union of Fascists. which by 1934 had 370 branches and perhaps 5,000 active members had 3 conditions of membership, loyalty to King, Empire and leader, acceptance of discipline and payment of one shilling a month.

Its themes were its appeal to youth, nationalism, anti-communism and anti-semitism. It relied on the politics of action, of marches, demonstrations and rallies, in its moves to set up a corporate state where the employers, workers and consumers would be equally "represented; there would be no strikes, no trade unions and decisions of the state would be unchallengable.

The Mosley movement, dressed in its black shirts and black boots, made scapegoats of the Jews blaming them for unemployment.

There was. they said, a conspiracy TALIST PRESS, H'ednesdur 31 Auges: of Jews and Boisheviks which must be physically fought. From the beginning the Mosley movement engaged in physical violence against its opponents. It was at the rally in Olympia in 1934 that it reached its peak and revealed most sharply the dangers of fascism. Mosley stood, picked out by a spotlight in the vast hall. When he was repeatedly heckled by anti-fascists in the audience he stopped speaking and the spotlight turned on them and they were beaten up.

Even a Conservative member of parliament who was present was shocked:

'Men and women were knocked down and were still assaulted and kicked on the floor. It will be a matter of surprise for us if there were no fatal injuries."

The extreme violence of the Mosleyites lead to the timid dithering calls by the Mervyn Stockwoods and Mayor of Lewishams of those days that "tho government ought to ban fascist marches"

PUER

The Communist Party, too, lent support to the demands for the government to do somethingrather than relying on the strength: of the working class. But as the Trotskyist paper Militant put it just before the Cable Street march:

"The methods with which the Labour Party and Communist Party are opposing Mosley's proposec march are equally puerile. To ask : capitalist government to ban the activities of the Fascists, the agent:

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