AMID strong hints of unemployment to one million by 1988.
The policy. announced an incomes policy.
step taken by the Labour leadership since Callaghan resigned, and if a concerted campaign is conducted around it, it will go a long way to removing Thatcher from office. But the Tories will, of course, guns blazing to say Are they right?
There is no doubt that PERCHE rould cut unemploymen temporarily. BuT 64,000 dollar question is:
next? It WES thing to march forward without drastic measures but with radical reform programmes in the 19005 and 19/05 WACH the crisis had bitten so deen Now, especially CADCICICO of the Wilson/Callaghan government to refer many traditional Labour voters ask a simple question: will such a programme work?
isn't it going to provoke massive inflation (as it did 1974), run on the pound (as it did in 1975) and a sharp U-turn (as did in 1976)?
The answer turns around what Labour will do when the IMF and CBI Dut on the pressure Will they cave in, as in 1975 -or will they take additional steps needed to bring the banks and CHI Labour's control, instead of vice versa. And there's the rub. Two vital steps are omitted programme which will be essential the package outlined by Michael Foot -LO be achieved. These spring Michael Foot and David Basnett have relaunched Labour's Programme with a promise to cut last week, was rounded out by Peter Shore on Tuesday. Using that modern-day oracle, the Treasury computer, he says it can be done without the services and public sector investment - with The announcement is the first imaginative go in with all the that it cannot be done.
• The nationalisation of the banks and financial institutions • Serious measures to mobilise working people to take control over investment decisions by large-scale industry.
The Labour leadership believes it will not need such measures because by borrowing to nance expansion it produce a new boom. This isn't very convincing It the election programme is to have any credibility, theretore. left will have to prove itself able to win the battle for these additional measures during the life of a Labour LILOULI combination of extra1001135tion struggle to right wing leaders.
Why were these additional measures needed?
First we must look at what the Tories have done to the COOTECILY Thatcher's stratcgy was very well explamca in article by John Harrison in Marxism Today for July 1982 Despite the monetarist ideological cover, he says, is to 'crash the economy". he a st destroy working class resistence and shake out unproduc capital. thus laying the basis for a substantial rise in productivity and profits for domestic industry But by doing so they have gone further than They havens ars Taid machinery off. They have haven't broken up factories and SOO DELETE MECOMES crash has been truly As John Harrison points out: Output fell by more than in any other downturn for over half a includin: the CHILLEY. crash of 1929Manufacturing output fel by a colossal 15 per cent in MONTES December 1979. This comfall i930s of only el sof the any single year cent. Chronic crash on this scale should make us cautious about simply arrying on left The WILCIC chronic British indu problem industry been poor competitiveness. provoked by underinvestment: insufficient up-to-date machinery.
But now there are not only new machines the ones broken up and even some of 30Oe too. John Harrison that despite the apparently sensational rise in produc tivity last year, almost entirely due to harder working. speed-up and so on, *British unit labour costs (the conventional measure of competitiveness) are still 35-40 1919, cent higher was hardly a record-beater then."
This low competitivity is nor because the British workers are high paid. On the contrary, they are now about eighth in Europe. Productivity is low fundamentally because we do have modern machines.
If this is not corrected, government-financed exDANSION can only result either in a flood of imports produced by better machines abroad, very high prices at home because workers are forced (by import controls) to buy badly-produced home goods Of course it could be corrected if the governTICHE and the unions, took charge of investment And if they drew up a plan boat nod, the soney created social needs could expand to meet new demand relatively smooth way So it is possible to implement gramme using means. It is, to say the Ley capacist mder to do is by capitalist means. involves guaranteeing profits for private capital. Capitalists are quite rational: they invest where can now, has meant abroad Everything in Labour' programme would make It would only become profitable to begin large-scale new investment at home if the working class's resistence were completely smashed To put the figure on this, only stud the deadvanced b the CBI: for a thirty er cer cal wage cut. And Labou could never deliver such an attack successfully; indeed doubtful whether which Labour would have to re-establish, loss of profits which would result trom letting the pound sink.
It is geared to overscas investment and, as in 1975, wome use every oil or in fluence it possessed to try and STIC government.
Labour would thus face a combined assault industry and bankers, which it would be unable to match unless it was prepared to take them over We can summarise the problems Labour would race simple Thatcher ha crashed the cconomy: and Peter Shore wants to uncrash it. But you can't pu a crashed car back on the road without some drastic garage work. It isn't the same shape. And the sooner we have a Labour leadership that understands this the better puzzled Foot.
Labour's social programme?
YOUTH MA JOBS NO CRUISE Wondering how to implement LEMBER I
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economic crisis the Tories confidently predict. by spending Labour's promised E9bn on social