The balance of payments in 1982 Oil Invisibles Oil Invisibles Visibles 1st quarter 2nd quarter Visibles Note: Figures for visible trade exclude oil Source: CSO The 'productivity miracle' in manufacturin!
Despera Oil - +1,000 invisibies - +500 — -500 3rd quarter Visibles 1—7.000 -11!
- 110 All granhics from TUC Fronomic Poview 108:
- 105 - 95 PETER SHORE, the Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, makes no bones about Labour needing an incomes policy. He says that the National Economic Assessment proposed in Labour's manifesto is for 'moderation in wage matters... whether it is expressed as a social contract, a national understanding, or in any other way'.
Jim Callaghan Denis Healey echoed this when they both made keynote speeches calling for wage restraint.
The ruling agrees. Papers like the Financial Times insist wage needed whoever governs.
The pro-incomes policy lobby sieze on the experience of the Labour government in 1974 when free collective bargaining ruled. They say inflation galloped away, the pound collapsed and ultimately the government had to give in the Monetary Fund's demands for cuts .in wages, services and jobs.
The argument that it won't happen again doesn't wash either, as a glance at Mitterrand's France shows The causes of the 'economic chaos' as the press like to describe it however not in the wage demands of the workers but in the capitalists' thirst for pre chaos of inflation is the result of the workers' struggle being restricted to wagę demands and not fighting the employers by measures which stop the bosses punishing the working class by inflicting prices increases In 1974 when a Labour government was returned on a tide of mass struggle Wilson was forced to impose a rents and prices freeze. . An extra £2 billion was pumped into the social services, pensions were jacked up and real wages increased by 10 per cent.
later when the right wing leaders had dampened struggle were the bosses able to take their revenge by swingeing price rises.
A slump is not a national disaster like an earthquake or a flood. It arises out of the fact that capitalists can't get big enough return on their capital.
Thatcher claims she has a solution to this and sets out to slash wages in real terms by about 40 per cent. This is sell-dercaung policy. wages for the workers mean reduced ourchasile DOWC. which Lull means workers buy less goods and therefore the bosses can't sell enough goods to create new jobs.
This most economic forecasts assume that if her policies carry on there will be no appreciable fall in unemployment this century.
Have the Labour leaders got an alternative? They claim that by pumping money into the economy people will buy more goods which will stimulate increased production create more Jods. But the canttalsts object that such a policy won't restore When Shore took his that Treasure cer age i that only a wage spread over five years would make his policy i work.
The Statesman (26 November 1982) explained such wage cut would send profits 'into the stratosphere' The choice is not between so-called chaos and sanity. It's a choice between cutting wages or profits. Any economic chaos which came out of a policy that cut profits would be the result of the bosses withdrawing their money and sabotaging the This opposition can be dealt with But it needs measures that attac capital by taking control of th economy out of its hands. Here, of course, National Saconomi Assessment falls flat on its face.
It bases Labour's strategy on col laboration between unions employers cutolucis. know The what they Tories the wage cuts, a big run down of the NHS and other public services, reducing the railways to an inter-city business travel network and conscription for The National Assessment would not give the unions any right to im. pose their will on the employers. All they have is the right to 'consult' and 'present alternatives much the same as under the Social Contract'.
conditions and defend jobs with such policy DIOSCIL climate. . They have to use the time. honoured weapons of strikes and oc cupations future government would then have two choices. It can either do as Healey and company did last time and accuse the unions of dragging Britain into chaos or it can legislate in favour of the strikers and against the employers, encouraging the workers to take over the factories, run them and nationalise such con cerns.
These are the two options before Labour's left. Either it's more of the same or an alliance of the Labour Party, with the unions_and the mass struggle — in or out of office. That is the only way to stop the employers imposing poverty mass unemployment.
It is also the only way that the left inside the trade unions the Labour Party can defeat the righ wing - the willing prisoners of the In ternational Monetary Fund and thi British establishment.
Socialist Action 3 June 1983
Socialist Action 3 June 1983 ACTION SociAlist