Institute for Workers Control and the Tribune proposals to 'implement the Labour Party Manifesto', The reality, however, is very different. Absolutely none of the Labour left are really prepared to grasp the nettle of the Healey measures and the f6 norm. It is true that some of the Tribunites voted against Healey's measures - which is more than can be said for Benn - but it it clear that they regard the whole thing as really quite minor. For example, in the latest issue of Tribune Eric Heffer announces that while he opposes incomes policy, the Labour Party conference must not get sidetracked into false debate about a £6 limitation' a view fully in line with the fact that Tribune has not supported any of the struggles against the £6 norm.
Heffer is actually saying that we working class must not get drag ged into a debate over whether its living standards should be maintained or should be drastically cut by Healey's measures. He himself might well think that this is a false debate - out mions of workers this autumn and winter will find that the inability to pay the rent, to meet the food bills, the need to cut back even on the essentials of life, will not appear a 'false' question at "PROGRESSIVE"?
No better than Heffer is Clive Jenkins. Writing in the same issue of Tribune, he declares: "If we leave aside the £6 wage limit, last week's Trade Union Congress was a very progressive affair.' This is rather like saying that the patient is in excellent health apart from the fact that he's got cancer!
it we look at tne reasons given by Heffer, Jenkins and the Tribunites for declaring that the t6 limit is a "false debate', we find that their arguments are even more reactionary. Heffer says, for example: 'By concentraung on tnat quesuon tune un comes policy) and pretending that its acceptance or non-acceptance is of vital importance to the future of the Government, the movement is being led up a blind álley. As unemployment grows wage demands will diminish anyway?
But this view is at variance even with the most elementary facts. If unemployment were itself enough to keep down wages, then the Treasury and capitalists wouldn't be demanding an incomes policy any way. It is precisely because experience (notably 1971-72) has shown that large sections of workers continue to to fight to maintain living standards despite the bludgeoin of unemployment that this incomes policy has been pushed through.
Of course, if Heffer means that many sections of workers would be intimidated by unemployment, no one can dispute that - but it is not the point at issue. The question is whether the working class as a whole would today be in a stronger or weaker position with or without the £6 limit and the TUC's acceptance of it. The answer to that is absolutely obvious. The £6 limit weakens the working class as a whole, and it is for this reason that opposition to this is not a 'false debate' but an absolutely central question for the labour movement.
he same arguments are being used at present by virtually the entire Labour left. Indeed they even come now dressed up in a 'Bolshevik' wrapper - Lenin was opposed to 'econonism and to concentrate on wages is 'economist', so therefore it is really a truly revoluWhile the Tribunites and Benn are making no tionary attitude not to concentrate on the incomes policy. Such is the latest wisdom of the 'truly left' Labourite, which argues that we should register a sigh of protest over the f6 norm but really concentrate our attention on 'structural changes in the econony.
It is of course true that the left social democrats promise us all sorts of goodies in the future; and there. is no doubt that if the proposal to nationalise 25 of the largest monopolies, or Heffer's proposal to bring the entire finance system under public control, were implemented, then the concerns of militants might shift. But at the present time the call not to concentrate on the presthe fact that he's got cancer. ent crucial questions because of promised future benefits is simply a betrayal of the real concrete needs of the working class.
What is more, refusing to fight centrally against the £6 norm actur ally goes against fighting for the more radical policies which the Labour left, and those who go beyond them, want to fight for. What policies will be implemented is not decided by a polite discussion in which the working class agrees to incomes policy in return for radical nationalisation and other measures. It is decided by the relation of class forces. Acceptance of the t6 norm weakens the working class, and in doing so not merely strikes directly at its standard of ASTMS leader Clive Jenkins-says: "Leaving aside the £6 limit, the TUC was a very progressive affair. Rather like saying that the patient is in excellent health apart from living, but also limits the possibility that it will take up issues going beyond the wages struggle.
The reality of the Tribunite position is very clear. The choice is not, as Heffer would have it, between concentrating on unemployment and a 'false debate' on the £6 norm, but an understanding that a central struggle against both is necessary as part of the fight to take take the working class forward on all fronts. By attempting to play down the fight against the incomes policy - a capitulation made to get a supposed agreement with Jack Jones - the Tribunites in fact move away from being able to take the fight forward on any front.
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As the Labour Party conference approaches, the Labour left is getting increasingly worked up in its denunciations of tne Government's economic policies. Following nard on the heels of the Benn nas suddenly rediscovered his voice with his letter to his Bristol constituents. A veritable vattle royal might appear to be on tue agenda at the impending Labour Party gathering.