In February 1974 the Tory Government was swept from office. Its three-pronged attack on the labour movement - through the Industrial Relations Act, unemployment, and incomes policy - had been smashed by a wave of working class struggles greater than anything previously seen in postwar Britain. Behind UCS, behind the Pentonville Five, behind the miners, the working class swung into action - and won.
Yet today, barely twenty months after the return to office of a Labour Government — a victory guaranteed by the miners' refusal to call off their strike action despite the pleas of Wilson and the Labour leadership - the working class is facing an unprecedented attack on its jobs and living standards. Living standards for the low paid had dived by 5½ per cent in a year even before the introduction of the wage-cutting £6 limit. The dole queues are growing at the rate of a thousand a day. One and a quarter million people are now officially without jobs.
The leadership of the TUC has backed the Wilson Government right down the line. By policing the £6 limit the trade union bureaucracy has pledged itself to a 'social contract' to safeguard capitalism. Behind their crocodile tears for the unemployed lies the reality of their attempt to sabotage the SHARING WITH NO LOSS OF PAY This is what the workers occupying the Personna razor blade factory in Glasgow are demanding in their fight for jobs. It is a demand that should be taken up throughout the labour movement to defend the right to work.
In the engineering industry, even allowing for shorttime working, 1.6 million hours a week are worked in overtime. The abolition of overtime working alone, without any reduction in the 40-hour week, would lead to the creation of 40,000 more jobs. The situation is similar in the construction industry, where seven day working is still common even thougn there are more than 172,000 construction workers on the dole.
In industries particularly hard-hit by short-time working, such as the motor industry, work-sharing with no loss of pay must be enforced through the throwing open of the company books by workers' committees in every plant. These can calculate the amount of work available and divide it up equally between plants and inside the factories. 26 November demonstration by telling trades councils not to support it.
But so far the people in the best position to fight the betrayals of the Wilson Government and the TUC leadership - the Labour and trade union "lefts' - have not lifted a finger against the £6 limit or put forward the measures necessary to defend the right to work. Their campaign for import controls is both useless and reactionary. While trying to export 'our' unemployment onto the backs of workers abroad, they try to hide the fact that eliminating cheaper imported goods will simply push up prices. In a situation where wages are being held down through the £6 limit this will mean the working class is able to buy less -and jobs 'saved' in one industry will therefore be paid for by workers sacked in other industries.
While the International Marxist Group will fight for united action against unemployment and for the formation of Right to Work Committees in every area, involving all sections of the labour movement, we believe that the demands put forward by these bodies must actually be capable of defending the right to work. This is why the International Marxist Group fights within every organisation of the labour movement for the following measures to combat unemployment:
¡NATIONALISE ALL FIRMS CREATING REDUNDANCIES Capitalism is bankrupt, and every day more firms are going to the wall. The Labour Government's answer to this is not to take over these industries but to pour vast amounts of money into bankrupt capitalist firms. The £1,000 million being pumped into British Leyland is only the biggest example of this.
These vast amounts of money are being used not to defend jobs but to 'rationalise' the industry - meaning speed-up and mass sackings. In the same way, instead of nationalising Chrysler outright as a short step to taking over the whole motor industry, Wilson is desperately seeking a deal to get the American multinational to stay on in Britain.
The IMG says: nationalise all firms creating redundancies and place them under workers control to guarantee all jobs. No compensation to the exploiters, who will just re-invest their money in more profitable sections of the economy and thus increase their power!
STOP THE CUTS IN PUBLIC SPENDING - IMPLEMENI A PROGRAMME OF SOCIALLY T