SUPPORTS REDUCTION
The congress of the Labour party, held September 29October 3, marked a critical turning-point for the workers movement in Britain. The dominant feature of the congress was the rejection by a very large majority of a motion proposed by the Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers (AUEW) defending free wage negotiafions and rejecting any form of state control over incomes. The major speech against this motion was delivered by Michael Foot, ex-leader of the Labour party left grouped around the weekly Tribune and present minister of labor. No serious struggle against the Healey measures, which limit nominal wage increases to E6 a week (about S13), was launched at the congress. (See INPRECOR, No.31, July 17, 1975.) This congress was the fourth step in a conscious attempt by the British bourgeoisie and its supporters in the workers movement to shift the relationship of class forces in Britain in their favor.
Britain INREAL WAGES by BRIAN HERON
The first step was the referendum on British membership in the Common Market. That referendum demonstrated that the overall political project of the bourgeoisie -reorganization of industry under the Impetus of the EEC - could not be effectively countered by purely trade-union, economistic militancy from the working class, however discredited the bourgeois project may be. The victory of the bourgeoisie in the referendum was a result of the absence of any overall alternative solution, which could only be a socialist solution. Because of their fear of dividing the Labour party, the left Social Democratic leaders were incapable of presenting such an alternative during their campaign for a "no" vote on the referendum. The second test was the vote on the Healey measures in Parliament. Thirty-six Labour MPs, grouped around Tribune, voted against the measures. The only MPs to vote that way were those whose base lies in the local party constituency organizations rather than among the trade-union bureaucracy. The MPs whose base is in the union 1E
bureaucracy did not engage in a real struggle against: the measures. Anthony Wedgwood Benn, for example, the most representative spokesman for this section of the Labour party, accepted his removal from the post of minister of industry and did not wage any real fight against the measures. Although opposition to these measures appeared broad, it did not give rise to any significant extraparliamentary campaign. When the third test of strength occurred, the congress of the TUC (the national trade-union federation), there was general confusion about who was going to oppose the measures and how that opposition would be expressed. Nevertheless, one-third of the mandated votes of the congress went against the measures; the opposition was led by the AUEW, and the breadth of this opposition was especially remarkable in that, once again, it was launched without any overall polifical perspective and without the opposition leaders being able to answer the main arguments of Jack Jones, leader of the Transport and General Workers Union and main adviser to the Wilson government. Jones's orguments got a real response among the least politicized workers. His main theme wos that any rejecton of the Healey measures would bring about the fall of the Labour government and would seriously worsen the economic crisis and unemployment, which already stands at 1,250, 000. At the time of the approach of the fourth step in the right tum, the congress of the Labour party, it clearly appeared that the Healey measures would reduce the average standard of living of the British workers by about 5-8 percent next year. Measures radically reducing social expenditures would lower the standard of living still further. If no real and massive struggle is waged against these measures, the relationship of class forces will be shifted in favor of the bourgeoisie, undermining the positions of strength the working class won after it brought down the Heath government in 1974. At this point, the number of strikes, while it has not fallen back to the level of the 1960s, is down from 1973 and 1974. The general conclusion remains: Because of the depth of the economic and social crisis and in the absence of an overall altemative solution credible to the workers, there is a risk that the bourgeoisie's ideological offensive - presenting the sacrifices the Wilson cabinet is imposing on the workers with the support of the bourgeoisie as inevitable under the given circumstances - will achieve success. Gravity of the economic crisis In fact, the crisis of the British economy is the gravest in capitalist Europe. Inflation is still running at 25% a year. It is generally estimated that the annual inflation rate will not fall to 15% until autumn 1976 and will not decline to 10% before the beginning of 1977. The budget deficit is on the order of E1, 200 million. 16
The number of unemployed is expected to hover around 2 million throughout next year. Investment has fallen 11% compared with last year and will fall still further next year. The decline in investment between the fourth quarter of 1974 and the fourth quarter of 1975 will proba so- ably by 17.5%. The pound sterling has lost 29.4% of its value relative to other international currencies, which MERC makes imporis more expensive and fuels inflation. Because of the crisis of the Tory party, which is presently dominated by the group around Margaret Thatcher and Sir Keith Joseph (the group that wants to abandon the welfare state, halt government subsidies to industry, and provoke even more massive unemployment, proposals that are rejected by the great majority of big capitalists), the Labour government is the only government possible for the bourgeoisie under present conditions. This is openly affirmed, for example, by the London Times. Hence, the struggle within the Labour party is of vital Importance for the bourgeoisie, which is now orchestrating a real witch-hunt in the capitalist press against the Labour and trade-union left, which is said to be "infiltrated" by Communists, Trotskyists, anarchists, and Maoists. Labour left avoids the struggle What is significant is the little aftention the Labour left has paid to the struggle against the Healey measures. The Labour left is avoiding the struggle on this point in order not to confront the union bureaucracy head on, since the majority of the bureaucracy supports the measures. So the Labour left prefers other fields of battle. The Tribune, for instance, hailed the "victory" won by the shoe workers, who got a motion passed at the Labour conference demanding measures controlling imports in that industry. Capitalist protectionism - that is the battle cry! The most radical speech at the Labour party congress was given by MP lan Mikado, a veteran of the Tribune group, at the public meeting organized by that newspaper. Mikado criticized the passivity of the trade-union leaders who, he said, should have demanded an increase in social expenditures and other concessions in exchange for the E6 limitation on wage increases. Jack Jones rushed to the platform and proceeded to denounce Mikado's speech, The Labour left did win some marginal successes of the congress. The most important one was the ouster of Denis Healey from the party executive. He was beaten by nearly 100,000 votes by Eric Heffer, a left MP who was removed from his cabinet post for his public opposition to the Common Market, Some left motions were carried agairst the opposition of the leadership. On the housing issue, current cuts in local government budgets were rejected; a resolution was passed in favor of free abortion on demand, the end of all private practice in the National Health Service, and the nationalization of the pharmaceuticals industry. A resolufion demanding the
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BRITAIN nationalization under workers control of the 250 leading monopolies, with "compensation according to need, " got 400,000 votes, that is, the majority of the constitvency section of the party. It was rejected because of the bloc vote of 5.7 million trade-union mandates; Wedgwood Benn opposed the motion. Overall, the balance of the congress was incontestably a crushing victory for the Wilson-Jones-Foot group, which leads the Labour party de facto. The incomes policy and the reduction in social expenditures were opproved. The bourgeoisie warmly applauded the apparent break between the Labour left around the Tribune and the trade-union bureaucracy. Crisis of Social Democracy The trade-union bureaucracy can allow itself the luxury of supporting the E6 limit on wage increases because it is not yet feeling the heat of a real attack from the rank and file. Since the gains that were won during the winter of 1974-75 and the spring of 1975, the working class has been taking a wait-and-see attitude, because of the gravity of the economic crisis. This has permitted a drift to the right on the political field. The passive acceptance of the Healey measures by the trade-union bureaucracy has even raised the threat of the bureaucracy's being attacked and even overthrown from the right. Already a campaign, supported by the courts, is being orchestrated against the AUEW leadership. The Labour left around Benn has based its whole strategy on making a bloc with the trade-union leadership. Consequently, the Benn group has been in turn drawn toward retreat and passivity by the aftitude of the trade-union leaders. Nevertheless, any new push from the rank and file would open up a deep crisis within the Social Democracy under conditions in which the bourgeoisie commands no real alternative government feam. That would be the gravest crisis of bourgeois power since the 1926 general strike. But a strong reaction from the rank and file of the working class depends in large part on a leap forward in class consciousness rejecting some of the central dogmas of the parliamentary, electoralist Labour reformism oriented toward class collaboration. There are some initial signs of such moves within the working class, or at least among the most politicized sectors of the class, which were reflected in the realignment of the left at the Labour party conference. For instance, some attempts to bar right-wing leaders and ministers who openly oppose the resolutions of the party congress from being Labour candidates in future elections, campaigns that have generally gotten no results in the past, have succeeded. Reg Prentice, a right-wing 18 minister, will no longer be a Labour candidate in the Newham North East constituency, Similar campaigns are now under way in the constituencies of Hammersmith and Heyes, two suburbs of London. Recently, during a congress organized by the Institute for Workers Control, some 500 delegates, Social Democrats for the most part, voted for a resolution supporting the Republica workers in Portugal and opposing Soares's right-wing policy. The same conference decided to launch a campaign to support the Election Manifesto of the Labour party, a campaign whose real aim is to irstall the group around Wedgwood Benn as the leadership of the Labour party. According to The Economist, the left has won a small majority (15 to 14) even in the party executive. These modest moves to the left among the organized workers movement are beginning to have some objective effects among sectors of the working closs, permitting struggles that have been fragmented up to now to be centered around the question of removing the Wilson leadership from the labor movement. The workers of the NVT motorcycle factory in the Midlands attracted the attention of the entire country when they occupied the factory to prevent layoffs; their leaders publicly raised the necessity of eliminating the Wilson leadership. The vanguard has waged actions and demonstrations in solidarity with the Portuguese revolution, challenging Wilson's support for his acolyte Soares. Some 25,000 people demonstrated in London against a reactionary amendment to the abortion law introduced by the Wilson government. On October 11 and 12 some 380 delegates, acting with the support of two national trade unions, participated in a conference organized by the Medical Committee Against Private Practice and decided to launch a campaign against private medical care and for the nationalization of the pharmaceuticals industry. The Institute for Workers Control will organize a nafional conference in 1976, which will attempt to assemble all the forces in struggle against these measures. It remains to be seen whether this conference will actually be able to coordinafe the beginning of a workers counteroffensive on the political level. The decisive response to the Healey measures can come only from the heavy battalions of the working class assembled in the trade uniors. Unity in action with the left trade-union forces opposed to Wilson, whatever their current confusion and hesitation, can create the basis for a struggle against the present leadership of the Social Democracy, a struggle that will mobilize sectors of the working class around a new action program. A massive struggle against the Healey measures will reflect an important recomposition of the British workers movement. For while the massive support of the trade-union rank and file is needed fo roll back the capitalist offensive against the working class being waged through the Wilson-Healey measures, the workers counteroffensive also requires a qualitative transformation of class consciousness among the working class, and that cannot be achieved without the strengthening of a new vanguard.