TOO HOT TO HANDLE
BRITAIN E50 per week wage for skilled members of the union and a proportional increase for semiskiiled and unskilled members), George Smith, general secretary of the Union of Construction, Allied Trodes, and Technicians, has been unable so far to fulfill his promise to the government to reduce the demand of his union conference, which called for increases of 87 and 109 percent. The executive of the Miners Union felt unable to declare its agreement with the productivity deal proposed by the Nationalized Coal Board, and the deal was rejected by an overwhelming (2-to-1) majority of the rank and file when it was put to a vote. Hospital ancillary workers are continuing a militant campaign that has been going on since early summer. These workers have not given up a struggle perspective, despite their very weak economic position. All these examples indicate that the militancy of the working class is far from having abated; in fact, everyone still expects a large wage explosion in the spring. Secondly, we should note the attitude of the ruling class toward the Labour government and its Social Contract, It can best be judged by the recent action of the employers' organization in Britain, the Confederation of British Industry (CBI). On November 22, a week after Healey's give-away budget was announced, it refused to issue any guidelines to its members as to the type of settlements that should be made with trade unions. Mr. Bateman of the CBI declared: "Unless we are given more help by the government, our powers to resist wage claims are limited. " The level of trust between the government and the employers was further eroded when Labour's reaction to this was to propose "fining" through the official pricing system, the Price Code, IRELAND: One of the biggest scandals in an overall miserable performance by the Labour left at the recent party conference was the left delegates' total failure to take up the question of the new anti-Republican laws. These include banning the IRA in Britain and making it a punishable offense to carry banners or signs supporting the aims of the IRA or to collect money for it. The state now has the right to expel from Britain anyone it suspects of engaging in IRA activities. Police power has been extended dramatically; the police now have the right to hold people for one week without charges, with the permission 6 employers who granted "inflationary wage settlements. Wilson's maneuvers, inside and outside the Labour party conferences, grow out of the political weakness of the left and the paralyzing relationship of class forces faced by the ruling class. The maneuvers cannot come to represent any new strategy for the ruling class. While it is true that the ruling class is watching developments in the Tory party with anxiety, its central aims have not been abandoned. The economic formula for capitalism developed by the Wilson government between 1964 and 1970 and later consolidated by Heath - that of transforming British capitalism around the leadership of industrial capital and turning it toward the Common Market - has yet to be capped with the appropriate political formula, a formula that would be capable of substantially altering the relationship of forces within the society against the working class. In the present British social and economic context, this means the development of the strong state. As the economic situation worsens and the workers move into the struggles of late winter and spring, the present paralysis of immediate perspectives for the bourgeoisie will develop into desperation. Such a situation, which everyone agrees is virtually inevitable, will shatter the present right-wing equilibrium within the Labour party. Whether it is precipitated around the question of a wage freeze or the question of the Common Market, the crisis of Social Democracy - intensified by the experience of a workers upsurge combined with a coming worsening economic situation - has only been temporarily delayed; it has not been averted. of the home secretary. These new measures, enacted after the Birmingham bombings (see INPRECOR, No. 13, November 28), have precipitated a wave of police raids throughout Britain. Twelve people were still being held on December 2 after a weekend "roundup" November 30-December 1. The new laws have been used as an excuse to raid left organizations in general. In the Birmingham area, houses of supporters of the International Marxist Group, British section of the Fourth International, have been raided and documents have been taken.
F NOW One of the few comments about the new laws at the Labour conference came from Joan Richardson, left-wing MP for Barking constituency. She said that the new laws made "many of us deeply unhappy. Why? Because they could be used against "colored people" or other political groups. After all, she warned, we will not always have a Labour home secretary. Those in the internment camps of the North of Ireland or whose homes have been raided might be forgiven for wondering what difference a Labour home secretary made. Outside the conference, Joan Maynard, a left-wing MP for Sheffield Brightside, said at a meeting on Ireland that a date should be set for the withdrawal of British troops from Ireland, for the end of the Special Powers Act now in force there (which grants almost dictatorial powers to the regime), and for an end to internment. That is as far as the "radicalism" went. The failure of the left to make a fight on this issue was part of its general failure to struggle af the conference. Despite the fact that ruling-class use of the Irish issue is potentially most dangerous to the unity of the working class, most of the left in the Labour party backs away from a fight with the cabinet, fearing unpopularity. Those who do raise the
TARLAN GONS OUT issue do so in a very confused and limited way. Some of the most important anti-working-class legislation passed in Britain since the second world war is now in force; but in general the lefts would prefer to conduct their fight against easier targets. The repressive action of the British troops in the North of Ireland is gratefully covered up by the wave of anti-Irish chauvinism sweeping the working class in the wake of the Birmingham bombings; by maintaining their silence the left MPs become accomplices of this tremendously dangerous process. The left MPs have been followed in their political retreat by most of the left groups in Britain. The International Socialists, for example, the largest far-left group in Britain, has printed a headline on its newspaper reading "Stop the Bombings, " exactly the slogan of Labour party Home Secretary Roy Jenkins. This attitude is based on a complete adaptation to the anti-Republican and anti-Irish sentiments of the British working class. Those are the same sentiments the ruling class has used in its attempts to win support for its war of repression in Ireland, the same sentiments that the far right in Britain and Ire land are attempting to use to produce a lasting shift in the balance of forces against the working class. n
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revolutionary group