Phase Four door opened
Socialist Press1978 1978-04-26Read it in the scan (PDF), scan page 12 →
Read from the scan by machine and not corrected: expect misread words, and now and then a caption or a line from a neighbouring story. For anything you quote, read the scan.
Scan page 12
Remember the Great Control Fraud last year?
Remember all those speeches, led by Jack Jones, that declared that a rigid Phase Three of pay policy was not on?
Remember the calm assurance of Lib-Lab government ministers, convinced that all these strong words were simply a cover and that a new pay straightjacket would be forthcoming after the 'left talk at the union conferences were over?
Carefully phrased
Well it's all starting again, only this time Jack Jones' place has been filled by new General Secretary Moss Evans.
In a series of carefully phrased statements Evans has declared for the gullible that there must be no curb on free collective bargaining.
He has been assisted by Stalinist miners' leader Mick McGahey, who added a touch of colour by declaring that:
"I would suggest to those that talk about phase fourin another couple of years it will be phase 24-1 say, that you should tell them to get stuffed"
But behind this rhetoric is a conscious purpose.
Neither Evans, McGahey nor any other union bureaucrat has declared that they will fight the Lib-Lab government's attempts to impose a Phase 4. They will again sit with folded arms while the government yet again imposes pay limits-as they have done with the present 10% limit.
And Healey has already shown that he is determined to enforce a further year of wage controlreverting to increases equal to the 5% settlements under Phase 2, assisted by a renewal of the 12 assisted by month rule.
12-month Let no-one be fooled. The fight against wage control is as crucial now as ever. Every worker must take up the fight for rejection of the 12-month rule, rejection of the present arbitrary 10% limit, action to defeat any Phase 4, and action to break the anti-socialist Lib-Lab coalition that even now is plotting further cuts in living standards.
The only sure defence of workers wage packets is through a rejection of all forms of wage control and the fight for catching up increases linked to cost-of-living clauses based on figures from elected labour movement prices committees. conference.