HODGE-PODGE Instead a hodge-podge of measures have been proposed, none of which provide a classwide response to unemployment. In fact, the increasingly popular demand for import control to curb foreign conpetition, now being advanced by most sections of the TUC and the Tribune group, does exactly the opposite.
This demand has the notable advantage of being at once absurd and reactionary. Unfortunately some workers facing a desperate job situation - as in the textile industry have taken it up, so the implications of import controls need to be spelt out.
The only parts of the world from which imports could be excluded without massive retaliation would be those crushed by imperialWith export outlets cut off, the econonc crisis would get worse and unemployment would soar; living standards would fall still further as more expensive home-produced goods were substituted for cheaper imports.
The only situation in which import controls would benefit the working class would be as part of a state monopoly of foreign trade following the creation of a socialist planned economy. Import controls would then be, used as one method by which the working Over the next few weeks Red Weekly will be running a number of features on how to defend the right to work. Although demands will vary from industry to industry, and a multitude of tactics and forms of working class organisation will be needed to implement them, we believe the following demands are the basic measures necessary to combat mass unemployment:
* For the right to work;
* Immediate reduction of the basic work week to 35 hours without loss of eurings;
teed and the nationalisation of the major construction firms;
tion that defends jobs.
class sought to take advantage of, and refine and extend the world division of labour created by capitalism over centuries of development. This would help to create the most mutually beneficial division of labour and pattern of trade on a world scale, aiding te growth of living standards of all humanity, and preparing the way for a planned socialist economy on a world scale.
This is hardly what our reformist "lefts' have in mind. The measures which the Tribunites propose that the Wilson Government nd measure through the capitalist state apparatus The 'best' the workers will get out of this is a few people on the board - - as in the British Steel Corporation - and a bit of worker participation' in productivity drives and sackings Not surprisingly the lefts are rather quiet about the massive redundancies being carried through in the British Steel Corporation and the Post Office Red Weekly campaigns for the nationalisation of all firms declaring redundancies not because it is better for the capitalist state rather than private firms to run certain industries, but to guarantee jobs. We are against compensation to former owners, because it allows the capitalist class to increase its power by investing in more profitable sections of the economy. Such money should be spent defending jobs and wages and carrying out the necessary reorganisation of the industry to serve the needs of the working class and not the dictates of the capitalist market. That, of course, can only be guaranteed by the op eration of workers control in nationalised in dustries.
Nationalisation for us is part of an anticapitalist offensive against unemployment implemented by the working class through its own organisations - factory committees, occupation committees, national action com mittees, and so on. As such, the school of workers' control is the working class's preparation for the management of a socialist planned NEXT WEEK: Unemployment in the building industry and the fight against the cuts in public spending
red weekly 4 september 1975 tuc/"militant' 3-