Calls for a coalition government and a wages freeze are now coming from every corner. The Tories have made it clear they will support any right-wing economic package proposed by The new demands for an openly anti-working class government spring from an economic crisis so severe that even one million unemployed, gigantic public sector spending cuts, and soaring inflation have not cut working class living standards by the amount that capitalism requires. An open war on the working class must be launched.
The new economic measures which capitalism demands are so drastic that bourgeois strategists feel that even Wilson cannot force them through the Labour Party. Tory votes must be used to put down any Labour opposition in Parliament. As this week's Sunday Times said 'it would be the Tory duty to sustain the government over the specific measures both sides thought essential. That would be a de facto voting coalition Wilson would carry on, with Tory support, with his government growing weaker and more demoralised until it founders.
In reply to these ruling class attacks, Wilson, in words, rules out collaboration with the Tories, but has already used Thatcher's votes to ram through measures on the EEC. Threats of a coalition are to be used to push the working class into accepting yet higher unemployment and wage controls. Obedient as lap dogs, the TUC leaders have been revealed as holding secret talks with the bosses' union, the CBI, while Jack Jones is carrying out an impassioned campaign for 'wage restraint'.
So far the Labour left has taken not one single serious step to deal with the policies and threats of Wilson. It is the capitulations over the social contract, the sending of troops to Glasgow, and the fadget which have opened the way for the new round of anti-working class measures and coalition threats.
Against this mounting campaign the working class movement must hit back. It must make it clear that it will not allow the economic situation or coalition threats to make it bear the costs of capitalism's crisis. This means rejection of the social contract, organisation of mass industrial action, a general strike, to prevent imposition of incomes policy or austerity measures; defence of the right to work and living standards through a sliding scale of wages, work sharing with no loss of pay, and nationalisation without compensation of all firms creating redundancies. It also means demanding immediate expulsion from the Labour Party of anyone advocating or entering into any form of coalition open or hidden, with the Tories or other capitalist parties.
Wilson has made his position plain-he stands four square with the capitalists and their interests. The workers movement must now make its stand clear. THE LEFT MUST UNITE AGAINST WILSON. INSIDE - Ernest Mandel on the EEC The shape of things to come? NEXT WEEK: Exclusive interview with ADMIRAL ROSA COUTINHO of the Portuguese Armed Forces Movement. DON'T MISS IT !!!
red weekly 22 may 1975