Another Budget

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PHOTO: Andrew Wiard, Report Healey The Lib-Lab mini-budget announced by Chancellor Healey last week was designed to ensure continued backing from TUC leaders for the 10% pay limit and to give the appearance of generosity while giving nothing of substance to the working class.

The tax handouts so British Leyland-a supposedly 'nationalised" industry operated a 'slush fund' for the payment of bribes to officials, dealers and distributors at home and abroad.

This much was revealed in much trumpeted in the Tory press are merely the result of bringing forward changes due next April anyway, and have been more than financed by huge cuts in public spending now devastating the social services.

The £400 million supposedly designed to create jobs in the construction industry will find its way directly into the coffers of the privately-owned building firms. the secret speech made by deposed Leyland chairman Sir Richard Dobson, published by Socialist Challenge.

But this kind of revelation must lead on to further questions on the relationship between the "public sector" and the capitalist economy as a whole.

In the meantime Healey has made lavish concessions to small businessmen and those who take frequent holidays abroad; while pensioners are insulted by a pathetic £10 Christmas bonus.

Pensions at present, even with rises due in November, still languish well below even the inadequate £18 for a single person and £23.30 for a married couple called for by the Help the Aged organisation.

the fight for Transitional Demands In such a situation the demand for an elected workers committee thoroughly examine Leyland's books offers a clear perspective to develop the struggle both within the car monopoly itself and also far beyond it.

Starting from workers free" Christmas donation of 3p a day over a year may create an illusion of wealth in the fortnight before Christmas but will do nothing to relieve long-term poverty among Britain's 8½ million pensioners.

Indeed 2½ million are already so badly off that they pay no tax at all and qualify for supplementary benefit.

In short the budget is well summed up by the Sunday Times Business News:

"To barely concealed Tory dismay, Denis Healey has become Dix awareness of widespread corruption at management level, the 'open the books' demand points to the fact that what is at stake is not a handful of corrupt individuals in one firm but a system in which similar behind-the-scenes deals, swindles and we have.

In his latest Budget he again observed, almost entirely, the conditions laid down by the International Monetary Fund ... and he brought substantial relief to the backbone of the Conservative Party, namely the small businessman.

Yet TUC leaders have hastened to give the fake package their seal of approval, hoping against hope that the £1 a week tax cut will defuse the pay Jack Jones, himself well on the way to a comfortable TGWU pension, declared the measures were. *a step in the right direction".

David Basnett of the GMWU announced the package was a "good try" and that he would wait until April to see what followed.

And TUC General Secretary Len Murray claimed that "this package is useful, but more will be needed, and soon".

Not so impressed, however, were public sector union chiefs, who now face the certainty of policing further cut-backs in the social services.

motor and component industry, along with the banks and to run them as part of a planned, socialist But to achieve such a demand it is necessary to do more than proclaim it. • We must build a sufficiently broad mobilisation within tary Bernard Dix complained that the latest package of Tory policies was "too little, too late"

Less printable

The comments of the 1.5 million currently on Britain's dole queues, now obviously condemned to an indefinite future of unemployment are likely to be less printable.

But while shedding crocodile tears on unemployment, the Labour "lefts of the Tribune newspaper simply moaned that Healey has made no further money available to the National Enterprise Board-which is now spearheading a job-slashing drive to cut manning levels in British Leyland and other industries.

In contrast to these 'lefts' who tacitly support the coalition, the answer to Healey's Budget from the workers' movement must be clear and categoric.

The Lib-Lab coalition that spawned the Budget must be broken, its defenders ousted from leadership positions, and a socialist programme adopted to fight a General Election.