Jobless as Slump Deepens

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Capitalism is inflicting a new age of mass unemployment upon the working class. Last week the European Economic Community announced that the number of workers registered as unemployed throughout the EEC had reached 6 million. Even that vast fionre is an underestimate.

There are further millions of jobless in the rest of capitalist Europe, including probably 2 million in Spain and In the United States 8 million are without jobs and countless millions of others throughout the rest of the capitalist world.

About 1,500,000 ot these millions are in Britain where unemployment has doubled since the Labour Government took power in 1974.

Monstrous

Last week's figures show that this monstrous number shows no sign whatever of abating. The number of wholly unemployed in fact fell by a negligible 500 which the Government, clutching at any straw, saw as a 'positive' sign.

The other 'hopeful sign' pointed out by the Ministry of Employment was that this month there were 2000 more WITCHING jobs on the list of registered vacancies-2,000 jobs to be shared among one and a half million workers!

The week also saw economic news which made it clear that there is no prospect of the problem of mass unemployment being solved by capitalist system.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (the club of the rich capitalist countries) held a conference in Paris at which its 'experts' produced figures to show that the rate of growth of capitalist economies was everywhere lagging far behind the predictions made a few months ago.

Bleak prospects And the figures showed equally bleak prospects for the future.

The Financial Times summed up the mood of the conference by saying:

*Failing any new expansionary measures, the OECD CONTACT secretariat has painted a Joomy picture for 1978, nvolving lower growth of industrial production, a stagnation of investments, rising unemployment and a sharp decline in world trade which could lead to much greater protectionism'.

Raging

'Protectionism' is the polite word for the trade war which is already raging between the major capitalist countries, desperately searching for a bigger share of the world's diminishing mass of profit.

Although in general the frightened economic authorities of the capitalist world have stopped this trade war from taking the form of an increase in tarriff and custom duties on trade, it is still there in the form of the increasing number of 'voluntary' restrictions on exports, which the United States in particular is trying to impose on a growing number of countries. The textile industry in week by two events: the first

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RE INSTATE SWINDON BRANDI PHOTO: John Sturrock, Report.