Renewed tensions inside the Labour Cabinet, Healey’s mid December budget, the application for a 3.9 billion dollar IMF loan all signal the failure of the economic strategy of the Labour Government.
The Labour Government looked to cuts in real wages, policed by the TUC as a ‘social contract’, and cutbacks on government spending on social and welfare services to make available funds for new rounds of productive investment by private manufacturing capitalism. The Labour Government hoped to restructure and revitalise productive investment at the expense of living standards. The shift in investment patterns, if achieved, was to bare fruit as the world economy picked itself out of recession. Healey looked to a decisive upturn in the world economy to pull a more productive British capitalism in its tow.
The TUC has faithfully delivered the goods. Real wages fell by at least 5% in the year of the £6 limit. If the trade union leaders have their way they will fall by a greater amount this year. Successive rounds of cuts have decimated services and working conditions in the ‘public sector’. But neither the transformation of the British economy, nor a bouyant upswing in the world economy has materialised.
Despite wage and welfare cuts the Labour Government has not realised its plans for increasing and restructuring investment. In fact investment was 3% lower in the second quarter of 1976 than in the first. By increasing interest rates to record levels, the Labour Government has acknowledged the failure of its strategy for stimulating private investment.
But the problems of the Labour Government do not end there. Precisely at a time when Healey has been promising, and not doubt praying for, the start of an upturn there is no sign of significant growth in British production. Industrial production in the third quarter of 1976 was ½% down on the figures for the second quarter!
Neither have inflation rates kept within the limits predicted and promised to the TUC as the basis for agreement on wage control limits. The government ‘price index’ registered a 1.8% increase in October this year, the Treasury is now expecting an annual inflation rate of at least 14.5%. Over the last three months prices have risen at a rate of 19.7% a year! Uncertainty about inflation rates is clearly exacerbated by the position of the £ Sterling as a reserve currency. The sterling balances hang like an albatross around the neck of the British bourgeoisie.
Callaghan for one has made it public that he wants to be free of the burden of supporting Sterling as a reserve currency — as he put it on the television in October:
“I’m not sure that everybody in the treasury — or maybe the Bank [of England]- would agree with me, but from Britain’s point of view I see no particular advantage of being a reserve currency at all.”
The scale of international holdings in Sterling can only accentuate the vulnerability and volatility of the currency. Dramatic drops in confidence in, and the value of, Sterling (as took place in September) can only further push up inflation rates, increase the balance of payments difficulties of British capitalism and undermine further the prospect of securing deposit and investment funds.
New solutions
In this situation the employers and the Labour Government have to look for new solutions. Some, for example, Ronald Mc Intosh, ‘impartial’ head of the National Development Office, have called for further massive rounds of cutbacks. McIntosh is calling for an extra £300 million as incentive for investment. The Labour Government knows that its options are narrow. Callaghan expects unemployment figures to continue to increase into next year. High levels of permanent unemployment are a feature of all the sectors of present day capitalism. In West Germany unemployment figures topped the 1million mark in November — an increase from 899,000 in October 1976. Callaghan and Healey are already preparing themselves for a third round of wage restraint next summer when the present limit runs out.
Two major problems face the Labour Government in adopting new economic measures within a perspective of world stagnation, inflation and expected downturn. Firstly too stiff a dosage of cuts, of credit restrictions threatens to deflate the British economy into a nosedive. The CBI, the Labour Cabinet ‘doves’ are perfectly aware of this danger. Secondly there is a limit; however willing servants they may wish to be, to the ability of the trade union leaders to sell their members living conditions and working conditions year after year. Len Murray may have already declared his support for a third year of statutory wage control commencing next July. This is not surprising. He is opposed to “declining into disorder”, as this man calls free collective bargaining. But Murray, Jones and Scanlon know they cannot guarantee to hold their membership indefinitely.
Germany or America?
The Cabinet debates over the IMF terms have to be seen in this context. Capitalism is such an integrated world system that no stronger capitalism can afford to see British capitalism completely degenerate and stagnate at present. There exists a safety net, but not an inexhaustible one. Both US and West German capitalism have shown themselves prepared to aid British capitalism at a price! Both have different attitudes to British capitalism and its sterling balances. The ‘European’ project of German capitalism, the sharpening of competition for markets and outlets between the European capitalisms and America make make Germany more favourable to maintaining the value of the £ Sterling, more politically sympathetic than are important sections of US imperialism. Schmidt is prepared to accept softer terms for the IMF loan than the US Treasury.
But whoever the paymaster be it Europe or America, they will demand their price. They will demand their price in guaranteed wage restraint. Thats why Len Murray was speaking for the employers to the IMF when he promised wage restraint agreement between the TUC and the government next year. They will demand further cuts and mounting unemployment figures. And they do this knowing that there are no magic cures for a deeply sick British capitalism in a world economy moving from its feeble uneven ‘boom’ into recession.
The economic crisis immediately poses the problem of political rule for the employers, nationally and internationally. There is a consensus that recognises it as preferable to cut living standards through the Labour Government, to rely on the trade union leaders to sell measures the Tories never could. But that policy, that option, breaks down immediately the Labour Government cannot do its job. If the Labour Government and the TUC cannot hold back rank and file trade unionists and cannot prevent them from defending jobs, conditions and wages then new policies (governmental) will have to be embraced by the ruling class. When the IMG, for example, say jobs and wages can be defended and a Labour Government kept in power they forget that precisely at that moment workers defend their wages and living standards against the Labour Government, the bourgeoisie will look to other methods to maintain their rule. They will boot out the Labour Government.
The mechanics of this are not difficult, and it is no closed secret that the ruling class is chewing over its options with a national or coalition government. We do not have to believe, with Gerry Healey, in the impending restoration of an absolute monarchy to recognise that the brazen collaborationism of the Labour rightists, the spinelessness of the Labour Left, the slender majority of the Callaghan government and speculative power over ‘runs on the pound’ and the IMF terms render it fairly simple for the British bourgeoisie to force a crisis on the Labour Government, to force a more favourable governmental solution, should they need it.
The Labour Government is desperate to solve capitalism’s crisis. It is prepared to drop all legislative proposals unpopular to the employing class. The nationalist hold in Scotland, and less so in Wales, threaten not only to wipe out significant portions of the Labour Party’s historic base — it provides the context for the elaborate charade and smokescreen of ‘devolution debate’ behind which the Labour Government will continue its attacks.
Callaghan’s Queens speech expressed fully the paralysis of the Labour Government. It intends no legislative changes that would upset the Tories or the IMF. Callaghan announced the Labour Government’s intention of staggering on attempting to treat the diseases of British capitalism.
But how long can the Labour Government hold the line? The massive turn out on the November 17th demonstration against the cuts, strikes against cuts in the West Midlands and Scotland, are all significant pointers to the mood of anger mounting in the working class. The magnificent militancy of the Trico women, the Seamans’ vote to break with wage restraint, the mood at the pithead, all stand as a stark reminder to the Labour Government that they have not broken decisively the fighting spirit and organisation of the working class. It faces major battles with the working class in the year ahead.
In a contradictory way the by election defeats of staggering proportions point to a tide of working class disillusionment with the Labour Government. But, as Walsall demonstrated it is the racists, the National Front and National Party who are making the most immediate gains from the demoralisation and frustration felt by whole layers of workers. The swing from Labour, the revulsion felt by so many workers at the policies and attacks of the Labour Government will not automatically register itself in gravitation to the revolutionary left.
Options
The ruling class is not openly supporting the fascists and racists of the NP and NF. It does not need to yet. Such papers as the ‘Financial Times’, ‘The Economist’ still see Callaghan as their best prospect at present. They are deeply suspicious of attempting to rule through a Thatcherite Tory Cabinet. The present right wing Tory shadow cabinet would, if in power, commit the ruling class to policies of direct conflict with the Trade Union leaders which important sections of the employing class want to avoid at present. The divisions within the Tory Party between the Heath and Thatcher lines – divisions that embrace wage restraint, social service cuts and devolution denote a serious crisis of strategy in the direct party of big business.
In keeping its options open the ruling class is clearly attracted to the idea of coalition… a call for unity excluding the Tory ‘right’ and Labour ‘left’. Heath is clearly judged a potential candidate for such a move. Callaghan has the credentials too. The actions of Walden and McIntosh show that there is no shortage of candidates within the Parliamentary Labour Party. The option of ‘national’ government will be kept open. The ideological pump has been well primed in the ‘popular’ press for such a move should it be deemed necessary.
When, and if, the ruling class makes the move to strengthen its hold directly via coalition or the Tory party depends on the strength of working class resistance, depends on the leadership of working class struggles in the period ahead.
A decisive lead, clearly and vigorously argued by the revolutionary left is the only alternative to the spread of disillusionment, demoralisation and racist poison. Such a lead does not depend simply on calls to action and militancy. The crisis of British capitalism, the role of the Labour government pose to the militants in workplaces, unions and the Labour Party the question, ‘What is your answer?’ ‘What is your alternative?’ These questions have to be answered by the Left if it is to gain a hearing in the Labour movement, if it is to vie with the bankrupt collaborationist policies of the Trade Union leaders.
The Left bloc
The traditional ‘lefts’ in the Labour Party and T.U. leadership have been prepared neither to lead, to fight or to argue a consistent workers’ answer to the attacks. The Labour ‘lefts’ hold on the NEC was a result of their alliance with the Trade Union bureaucracy in the early 1970’s. Without the support of the Trade Union bureaucracy these lefts are particularly powerless to mobilise a fight even around their own limited and bankrupt programme. The bloc between the Labour ‘lefts’ and the TUC – a characteristic of the early ’70s anti-Tory struggles – has been severed by the Trade Union bureaucracy. The Social Contract deal, left the Labour left in decisive positions of authority within the party but without the T.U. base that pushed them into leading positions. The massive turn-out on the November 17th demonstration – called as a protest by the public sector T.U. leaders, mobilised by thousands of rank-and-file Trade Unionists – underlined the weakness of the Labour ‘lefts’.
The platform at the Central Hall, Westminster, on the November 17th demonstration brought together again sections of the Tribunite and Bennite ‘lefts’ with the Public Sector Trade Union leaders. The unity of the Trade Union bureaucracy has faced its sharpest test on the question of public sector cuts. The Healey-Callaghan drive for export leading manufacturing industry, the material and ideological campaign to cut back on ‘unproductive’ expenditure can open a wedge in the Labour Movement. The ruling class and the Labour Government clearly see it to their own advantage to open up such a division within the Trade Union bureaucracy. Hugh Scanlon, for one, lines up with this drive for manufacturing industry, for cutting welfare and social spending. He has graced the Labour Government’s plans with after dinner speeches to Engineering employers on the need to divert funds and investment from services into manufacturing.
The Public Sector Trade Union leaders are weak and spineless in their arguments against Public Sector cutbacks. After November 17th they have concentrated their fire on persuading the Labour Government not to introduce more cuts as a result of the IMF loan. Alan Fisher made it plain during the one-day West Midlands NUPE-led strikes on December 1st that he saw such action as a warning to the Labour Government not to make further cuts. The bureaucrats invariably argue only their own sectional ‘special case’, their indispensability of their own issues… logically an argument for chopping somebody else. Such arguments are occasionally put over, for example, by Alan Fisher, within the context of the reflation and import controls package of the Labour lefts – but they will not lead beyond token protests.
The NUT have already suspended for life members at the Little Ilford School for taking action to defend conditions. The CPSA leadership is attempting to climb down on its campaign of non-cooperation with statistics. The Labour NEC supported the November 17th demo, but they have not called on Labour Councils to refuse to implement the cuts as the Clay Cross Councillors did – they have not, therefore, even called for the implementation of Labour Party policy decided on at the Blackpool Conference.
The economic alternative of the Labour left is reactionary in part; utopian in others. The call for import controls is plainly reactionary, a purely nationalist response to a world recession, to a capitalist crisis. The demand for deflation, for lifting credit restrictions on British industry (a demand echoed by the Morning Star) does not challenge the dynamics of capitalism’s crisis. The caution and stagnation in British capitalism, the deep fear of inflation must, logically, be attributed, by the Labour Left and the CP, to the lack of patriotism of the employers!!
Such ideas were the predominant ideas, presented from the platform on the November 17th demonstration. Their currency in the class depends not simply on publicity, and certainly not on the mobilising power of the NEC ‘lefts’. The Communist Party plays a crucial role in maintaining the credibility of the Labour ‘lefts’ and their political programmes.
National reformism
The Communist Party’s economic programme is essentially indistinguishable from that of the Labour ‘left’. Their November 17th ‘stamp out the Cuts’ programme was a hotpotch of nationalist reformist schemes to prop up British capitalism while starting ‘the process of shifting the balance of wealth and power in favour of working people promised in Labour’s manifesto’. The platform which would ‘open the way to a Socialist Britain’ included:
‘As an immediate temporary measure, introduce a two-tier interest rate system to keep rates inside Britain low, but rates paid to foreign holders of sterling high enough to discourage them from taking their money elsewhere’.
it includes:
‘Take over the foreign shareholdings of British firms, estimated at over £6,000m, and sell them to raise’ foreign currency needed to clear the more volatile debts, like the sterling balances held by the oil-exporting countries, and so help stabilise the pound. This could be done in a relatively short space of time. Compensation could be via low-interest government bonds in sterling’
and:
‘Direct the funds lying idle in the banks and insurance companies into productive investment.’
Against the attacks on the working class, the Communist Party alternative is the old recipe of nationalism, of productive ‘British’ investment funded by selling of ‘foreign’ holdings with low interest compensation!
The CP have played a vital role in pressing for the token protest actions being called for by the public T.U. leaders. Their political strategy, however, has been facing increasing difficulties. The ‘lefts’ and ‘progressives’ of yesteryear, the TU leaders wooed by the CP (including Scanlon and Jones) have shown their true colours in the period of recession and social contract. But the CP is not capable of organising independently of them. Its industrial base enables it to initiate the Labour Assembly of last March, even to propose a call to action in the heat of the day. But it cannot carry such initiatives through. The Labour Assembly was put on ice by the CP in favour of renewed pressure on the Public Sector TU leaders and the Labour lefts. Quietly, virtually unannounced, the Liaison Committee for the Defense of Trade Unions has been revived this autumn. But it has not issued any calls for action or given any indication that it will organise active resistance independent of the Trade Union leaders. The political line of the CP, its strategy for a ‘British Road to Socialism’ prevents the CP from mobilising their industrial base as a force that can give a fighting lead against the Labour and Trade Union collaborators.
The revolutionary left
But, if the reformist left is bankrupt in programme and powerless to develop a real fight, the ‘revolutionary’ left has itself fragmented in the face of the employers’ crisis. The largest formation, calling itself the International Socialists, have shown that they can stand as a pole of attraction to a small but vitally important section of workers. The Right to Work marches, the representation at the Manchester Right to Work Conference, even Jimmy McCallum’s poll in Walsall, all testify to that. But the simple IS platform of more militancy, serves to positively disarm the workers drawn under its banner. The simple hash of militant demands raised by the IS remain a list of reforms to be fought for hard. The propaganda of Socialist Worker is a con. The ‘Socialist Answer’ (SW 16th October) is simple. Low wages are the cause of unemployment:
‘shoe workers are sacked because unemployed textile workers cannot afford shoes, and textile workers are sacked because unemployed shoe workers cannot afford to buy clothes.’
The ‘overseas debt’ of British capitalism is less than ‘our upper classes own abroad’… ‘if they were serious about getting out of debt, they would sell these possessions. But they are not.’ In fact, as Socialist Worker would have it, arms cuts and a soak the rich budget would have us all in clover:
‘… But if arms spending was slashed and the rich parasites forced to go without their unearned millions, there would be a huge surplus…’
Such is the ‘Socialist alternative’ offered by the IS. It is an alternative that fails to understand even the reality of capitalism’s crisis, let alone offer a revolutionary workers’ answer.
If the militancy of the IS and its verbiage can attract groups of workers, it cannot transform those workers into the solid political base of a revolutionary workers’ party. This was absolutely clear at the November 6th Right to Work Conference in Manchester. Longstanding IS worker members could only argue against the prosposals for ‘a sliding scale of wages’; for a campaign to ‘open the books’ – at the level of ‘I’ve never understood the sliding scale of wages’ (the stunning argument produced by Willie Lee against Alan Thornett); and Gerry Jones’ argument that if the Chrysler workers had opened the books it wouldn’t have done them any good!
The other side of the reformist politics of the IS is their increased breast beating and sectarianism fortified and maintained by a succession of stunts and sideshows. A sectarianism that is manifest in their ludicrous pretensions as the ‘only’ organisation fighting the attacks on the working class, their new self-designation as ‘the’ Socialist Workers’ Party, and their sectarian election campaign.
The ideological and organisational fragmentation of the revolutionary’ left occurs at a time of vital importance to the class struggle. This in itself is not surprising, is no accident or coincidence. The capitalist recession and the working class response sharply reveal the inadequacies of the major tendencies on the left.
Now it is not the case that without revolutionary leadership there will be no fight against the attacks of the Labour Government. The wage and differential battles in the care industry, the public sector strikes in Glasgow and the West Midlands, the mood for action in the mines all prove this to be the case. We can say, however, that without the direct intervention of revolutionaries, these struggles will remain under the leadership of either sectional trade union ideas, or the false programmes of the Trade Union bureaucrats and Labour lefts.
What are the tasks of revolutionaries in this situation? Our first task is to fight for a united working class response to the attacks on conditions and living standards of the Labour Government. Such a response must necessarily be prepared to organise independently of the Trade Union and ‘left’ leaders; placing demands on them but prepared to build independently to fight for those demands. Cuts Committees based on Trade Unions and the Labour Party in many areas show that such a response can be built. The moves in the NUT to build a new Socialist Teachers Alliance as an alternative to the sectarian IS dominated, rank and file, the Birmingham based drive for a new ‘Engineering Voice’ paper show that significant groups of militants, close to the revolutionary groups, see the need to organise at rank and file level to fight back the cuts.
But we cannot build a united rank and file response on the basis of organisation, of linking up rank and file trade unionists in cuts committees, in alliances and around newspapers. Rank and file groupings have three vital tasks: Firstly, to argue for direct action to defend living standards, working conditions and working class organisation; secondly, to fight uncompromisingly for workers’ democracy in the Labour Movement – to fight the bureaucracy to transform the Trade Unions in particular into fighting organisations of class struggle; thirdly, to hammer out a programme of action specific to the industry and struggle specific to the period of recession and stagnation in world capitalism and to a working class answer to the attacks.
None of these tasks is, in fact, separable. We have no interest in debating programmes in a forum situation of inactive unity. While rank and file groupings must tolerate the maximum degree of freedom for arguing out alternative political strategies, they do so within the strict terms of a clear committment to actively support all struggles against the government, to campaign to organise independent of the Trade Union leaders for direct action and Labour Movement democracy.
Spurious unity
We do not, therefore, support the IMG’s forum notion of unity portrayed vividly at the first conference of the Socialist Teachers’ alliance. The IMG were prepared to hold back on their own programme (in itself inadequate) to maintain the unity of a conference that did not even seriously discuss the attack of the NUT bureaucracy on the Little Ilford Teachers. Revolutionaries have no interest in subordinating their programme to preserve spurious and flabby unity.
We do not, however, seek to deliver our programme as an ultimatum to militants. We do not demand full support for our programme in exchange for joint action and struggle. But we will openly argue for our position within those rank and file bodies committed to an active fight against the Labour Government.
There are those who seek to dissolve the rank and file movement into a militant fighting organisation, maintained by organised links between militants, with a programme of militant demands. Clearly, the IS stand by this position, most recently revealed at the Manchester Right to Work Conference. Their offshoot, the Workers’ League, have not broken with that position. At the Socialist Teachers’ Alliance, they opposed all mention of ‘socialism’ in the declaration of the meeting in that it might put off imagined fighting militants who could be won to a rank and file movement but not to socialist politics. We reject this tradition too. Those who seek to limit the cuts committees, the rank and file groupings and newspapers either to information swapping grapevines, or to discussion groups without a clear and adequate programme are incapable of taking the working class movement forward.
Our platform
What then are the principle planks of our answer, our way forward?
The central problem lies in stopping the implementation of the cuts, of breaking through wage restraint limits. We must support sectional direct action and build a united movement that can force the Labour Government to drop its plans.
To those who argue that the Labour Government will be brought down by such action we have a simple answer. Labour is tolerated in power by the bosses for just as long as it carries out anti-working class policies, backed up by the Trade Union leaders. If the Tories bring down a Labour Government because we defend ourselves the responsibility lies with Callaghan, Healey Foot and Co. To do nothing while the cuts divide and demoralise the working class is to scatter the real forces who can defeat any future Tory Government, as the Miners did in ’72 and ’74. We are not trying to persuade the Labour movement of alternative ‘plans’ to cuts in the form of resolutions to be passed at local and national conferences and then forgotten. We need an alternative that can be the basis for action, and action now. ASTMS conference, for example, adopted many of the positions argued by Red Weekly, for a cash injection into the social services, and for the annulment of the cuts, but they have led no fight in the branches and workplaces to decisively implement these policies.
Such an alternative was spelt out by the Workers’ Power group in a leaflet produced for the November 17th demonstration; we reproduce the key extracts from that leaflet:
The cuts mean speed up and unemployment for public sector workers. We must commit the unions and workplace organisations to a campaign to CUT THE HOURS – NOT THE JOBS. The teachers’ ‘No Cover’ campaign must have our full support. We need a real fight for 35 HOUR WEEK NOW WITH NO LOSS OF PAY. Workplace committees must be formed to enforce NO REDUNDANCIES – WORK SHARING WITH NO LOSS OF PAY UNDER TRADE UNION CONTROL. Such committees must oppose all attempts at speed up, the leaving of vacancies unfilled. NO COVER FOR UNFILLED VACANCIES. In this way the employed can strike a blow for those already on the dole, and guarantee jobs and services.
We must fight, locally and nationally, for public sector unity FOR A PUBLIC SECTOR ALLIANCE to fight all cuts. Local Trade Union-based cuts committees drawing in Labour Parties, Women’s Organisations and Student Unions, must be formed. They must organise joint action and full support for all workers in struggle.
But such a campaign must have an answer to wage cuts, dole queues and cuts in the public sector. We need not only a fighting spirit, but awareness of the seriousness of the issues at stake. Cuts are central to the strategy of Britain’s Bosses to solve their crisis at our expense. They cannot afford decent housing, education and hospitals for us. For them it is a question of the profits that fuel their system, for us it is a question of our most basic needs. The fight over the cuts is a fight to solve the crisis at either their expense or ours. A working class solution means planned production for need, not profit, and, therefore, the destruction of the political and economic power of the bosses. We need to convince our fellow workers, step by step, in struggle, that an effective defence of their most basic needs leads inevitably to the fight for Socialism.
We must fight for:-
- No wage control, no incomes policy. For the automatic protection of wages against inflation on the basis of a working class cost of living index, not the phoney State index.
- Direct action to cut the hours, control the rate of work, fill vacancies.
- Direct action to open the books of the employers, the corporations and the banks.
- Cancel the crippling debts of the local authorities to the banks and finance houses without compensation. Nationalise the banks and finance houses without compensation.
- Restore all cuts in social expenditure. Protect it against inflation by sliding scale of social expenditure.
- For a campaign of socially useful works under Trade Union control to extend and develop the hopelessly inadequate social and welfare services. Hospitals, Nurseries, schools, housing, transport are all areas of immediate need. We demand the nationalisation without compensation of all industries necessary to carry this out, e.g. building industry, drugs industry.
- Local, Trade Union-based anti-cuts committees should fight to force Labour councils to refuse to implement the cuts, to deliberately overspend to maintain services. Force local Labour MP’s to vote against proposed cuts.
Threats to unity
The employers will use the cuts to divide and weaken the working class. Women are particularly hard hit by the cuts. Their’s are often the first jobs to go, they are hardest hit by the loss of nursery places. FOR A WOMAN’S RIGHT TO WORK.
The Labour Government, supported by the ‘Left Winger’ Scanlon, argues that the cuts favour workers in the manufacturing industries. This is not true. All workers rely on the services provided by the workers of the public sector. A cut in Social expenditure is a direct attack on the living standards of all workers. The Healeys and Scanlons are trying to drive a wedge between the unions in the public sector and those in manufacturing industry.
From the Fascists of the National Front to the ‘respectable racism’ of the Tory and Labour Parties’ anti-immigration policies, comes the threat to turn white workers against black, blaming the latter for unemployment, shortage of housing and all the other symptoms of capitalism in crisis. NO PLATFORM FOR FASCISTS, RACISTS OUT OF THE LABOUR MOVEMENT, TRADE UNION SUPPORT FOR BLACK SELF DEFENCE AGAINST POLICE AND RACIST THUGGERY.
The fight against the cuts must ensure that the employers and government cannot open up such disunity in our ranks.
Local anti-cuts committees must draw in the support of Working Women’s Charter groups, anti-Fascist committees, immigrant organisations and the unions in the manufacturing industries.
To do this, however, they must demonstrate that they are leading a militant united fight from the outset.
The Labour government is compelled into further rounds of confrontation with the working class movement. Compelled as a capitalist government to further cut-backs on welfare spending, to compulsory wage restraint. In the battles ahead the future of the Labour government depends on its success in implementing the policies of the employers and bankers.
In the class struggles of the coming months the openings exist for revolutionaries to relate to important sections of workers in struggle against the effects of the cuts and wage control. It is in the fight for revolutionary politics, for the method of the Transitional Programme linking these battles of today with the struggle for working class power, that a revolutionary leadership can be built. A leadership that can mobilise workers behind a revolutionary alternative to reformism and overcome the fragmentation and isolation of the revolutionary left.
