INSIDE: Report on mass abortion demo Page 4 1.8 To be perfectly frank, my next year of government will make last year seem like a holiday!' Jack Jones - looking forward eagerly to lower wages for all.
Last week the Social Contract took a hammering. The Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers by 39 votes to 30 instructed its four members on the General Council of the TUC to oppose the wage restraint of the Social Contract. The Scottish Miners gave the Social Contract equally short shrift. Fin ally the rail workers punched another hole into its tattered fabric.
But in the corridors of Westminster and Smith Square, the union bureaucrats were engaged in the politics of betrayal. As unemployment shot upwards, as inflation broke another record barrier, and Environment Minister Crosland threatened a 25 per cent increase in council rents, Jack Jones and his colleagues in the TUC were trying to find a formula for throttling working class struggle Although Wilson is intent on slashing wages and plans big cuts in social expenditure, he is fearful that the working class resistance this will arouse will destroy both his policies and his position as leader of the Labour Party. Every working class leader and organisation should be putting reality into those fears by campaigning in the working class movement for socialist policies, for mass industrial action against any expenditure cuts, and for the removal of Wilson from the leadership of the Party.
CLASS HOSTILITY
The AUEW vote, the NUR victory, the NALGO conference decision in favour of industrial action against cuts, and the rising working class hostility to Wilson all show the potential which exists for such a campaign Instead of mobilising the working class movement, Jack Jones and the TUC are desperately trying to head off the rising discontent against Wilson. Not only do they plan wage cuts, but they even advise Benn to skulk off quietly to the Ministry of Energy so as to avoid any clash inside the Labour Party.
These actions of Jones put him once more squarely in the camp of the agents of the ruling class. He is an integral part of that unholy alliance which stretches from CBI boss Camp bell Adamson through Harold Wilson to the Labour MPs and timid union bureaucrats who hang on to the coat-tails of capitalism. The Social Contract is the cement which binds this alliance together.
But the AUEW conference, the Scottish NUM, the railworkers and those 25,000 people who marched against the James White acti-abortion Bill show that there is an alternative Within the rank and file a movement is stirring. It is confident, undefeated, and prepared to take on the employers and the the right wing policies of the Government DIRTY SELL-OUTS The working class movement has a choice. Either it can grub in the corridors of power, implicated in the dirty sell outs, or it can turn to the mass movement. One offers the road of victory. The other offers the road of defeat and demoralisation.
This demands a break from capitalism and its servants inside the labour movement. It means fighting to remove Wil son from the leadership of the Labour Party. It means organising to bring into action millions of workers to fight for a socialist alternative. It means complete rejection of any form of Social Contract - including the one Jack Jones is preparing.
: mozambique red weekly 26 june 1975