Howe's budget: charges up, benefits down

Scan page 3

fives. Though powerless alone, they are strong and determined to fight.

What is needed now is not simply arguments for nurseries, but a political leadership to mobilise the necessary fight against the Tory government. The Tory budget, distinguished only by the blatancy of its savage attack on the working class and unemployed, was described by Len Murray as destined to lead Britain "back to the thirties with a vengeance". . He argued that it would give an incentive to trade unionists "to give massive support" for the TUC's day of action against government policies on May 14th.

Perhaps wishing to forget that the working class have suffered continued cuts in their living standards under successive Labour as well as Tory government, the TUC's response to the budget hardly reflected the real effect that it will have and the certainity of organized working class opposition that it will bring.

Raising the prescription charges to £1, introducing charges for 16-21 year olds for dental and optical treatment was just the beginning: budget day revealed plans in the White paper on public. spending to reduce capital expenditure on local authority housing to €1,915 M for the year 1980-81 (in 1974-5 it was £4,461M). The effect of this massive cut will mean, in most areas, the freezing of council house building and modernization programmes.

Forced onto the private market, tenants can expect high rents and with the passing of the Housing Bill, loss of protection and rights, an increased harrassment from landlords. The long term effect of freezing housing programmes will almost certainly be the demise of densely populated, slum housing of inner city areas; remaining unimproved and unmodernised.

Working class and immigrant families, in particular, will suffer the effects of land planned for housing being re-zoned and sold by councils for, more profitable, industrial use.

Along with this were announced plans to tax unemployment, sickness and other short term benefits; to scrap Earnings Related Supplement and to end the index-inking of short term benefits in order to effect a 5% cut in real terms. The increases in benefits-to take effect from November '80-have been deliberately designed to widen the gap between the unemployed and workers in a farcical attempt to disuade "scroungers' from taking advantage of the social security system and persuade them to find jobs instead!

These measly increases, along with plans to further attack benefits for strikers'- families and the new provisions in the social security bill (that under the guise of 'simplification' will mean in practice less money), make increased poverty, of an unprecedented scale, a certainty amongst the unemployed. And with unemployment soaring over the 1½M mark, more and more workers will be forced into this situation.

For workers the future seems no better; with a mere 75p increas in child benefit and an increasing burden in taxes, the low paid can look forward only to the fear of massive food bills and the threat of eviction and disconnection of their fuel supply as the cost of living rockets. Faced with redundancy, lay offs or sickness, workers will feel the effects of the reduced value of their national insurance contribution and the totally inadequate protection that it gives as an insurance against loss of pay.