million. Each day a further 1,000 jobs are lost, to add to the already staggering total of 1¼ million workless.
The crazy anarchy of the capitalist system is revealed most blatantly by the desperate shortage of schools, houses and hospitals at the same time as unemployment is escalating. there are 160,000 people out of work, a figure which according to the 'experts' could well rise to 300,000 in the coming months. At the same time 748 million bricks — 70,000 potential homes — are lying in stock piles. Building workers on the dole, and a growing number of homeless - these are the fruits of the capitalist crisis and the deliberate policies of the Labour For the working class the situation is serious. A return to mass unemployment means suffering and poverty for millions of people. It also means a weakening of the organised labour movement, strengthening the bargaining power of the employers against the trade unions. Unless a fight back is begun now, there is a real danger that the employers and their agents in the Labour Government will gradually erode the strength of the workers' movement.
The 'left' MPs and trade union leaders have protested In the construction industry alone The massive jobs demonstration on 26 November can start a fight back in in words, but they remain passive when it comes to organising a struggle outside Parliament. Yet nothing but a real counter-offensive organised at both national and local level can meet these attacks. The 26 November lobby is an important start Every fight against redundancies demands the support of of all the forces of the left. That means mobilising the widest possible support for workers refusing to accept sackings, and insisting that the Labour MPs and the trade union lefts take practical steps to win support for these struggles.
The 26 November demonstration must be the start of a campaign throughout the labour movement to implement socialist solutions to the crisis of unemployment:
No redundancies; work-sharing with no loss of pay;
For a 35-hour week;
Nationalise without compensation all firms creating redundancies and place them under workers' control to guarantee all jobs;
For a programme of socially useful public works;
Open the books of the bosses and prepare a workers' plan for production that defends jobs;
Full pay for the unemployed;
Smash the £6 limit. • but it is not enough.
G Over 5,000 workers packed into the Precinct in Coventry last Thursday for a mass demonstration against redundancies.
pay for it. If their struggle is won it could well ignite a movement right across the country for work-sharing with no loss of pay - a movement which could stop the Wilson/ Healey clique in its tracks, and begin to impose a workers' solution to the crisis of unemployment through real measures of workers' WORK AGAINST THE WILSON Price 10p New IMG pamphlet, available for 17p (inc. postage) from: RED BOOKS, 97 Caledonian Road, London N.1.
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Report by MICK GOSLING DEFEND THE RIGHT TO