The real proposals are kept in the background.
What, for instance, are the Tories going to do about the 7 per cent threshold in Phase 37 Since October, when the threshold was introautomatic thresbold increases to be triggered. After all their huff and puff about defending Phase 3 and the rule of law, Phase 3 will have to be amended when it comes to something which might benefit the working class.
If Heath wins the election, he will have to settle with the miners. But he can take advantage of the collapse of working class morale which his victory will cause to foroe harsh conditions on the miners. The price demanded From the TUC will be high. Sooner or later, a total wage freeze will be given consideration by a new Tory Cabinet.
The red scare is an attempt to divide the working class movement and disarm it in the face of the coming economic attacks. On all the central economic questions of concern to the working class, the Tories remain completely silent.
Barber has refused to give a guarantee that he will nor institute a total wage freese, abolish threshold agreements, or extend VAT to cover food. On prices, they say nothing can be done by a Govemment in Britain in the face of rising. world commodity prices. They remain silent Labour has conducted an uninspiring cumpaign but not because Wilson is a tired old man. It is because the Labour Party is buffeted between the conflicting needs of the working class and the capitalists, In the 1960s, this caused some seasickness. In the present crisis of British capitulism, it can only cause shipwreck.
Not since the 1920s and 1930s has it been so difficult for Labour to conceal the scale and sericusness of the class confrontatión behind a paper mask of national unity" and new social COUNCES If Labour wins the present election it will not be because it is able to convince either workers or capitalists that it has positive policies but only because the working class understands the urgency of petting rid of the Torics. MINERS AS 'SCAPEGOAT To the capitalists, Labour is ducking all the main issues. Walson's analysis is that the miners ure Just a scapegoat for the Government; a device for diverting attention away from Heath's "mismanagement of the economy. The whole confrontation with the miners was "unncoessary'. The problem flows from Heath's personality -the man who stirs up militancy wherever he The capitalists understand that State regulation of wages is crucial. To abolish the pay laws, the Industrial Relations Act, and try to turn the clock back to 'free collective bargaining would mean only that the working class offensive would get under way acain, making it even more difficult for the capitalists to shift the burden of the deepening economic crisis on to the working class.
But Wilson now appears even more ridiculous, for Reg Prentice virtually conceded on television that some stututory backing to incomes policy would be necessary if the voluntary policy broke down! So Labour's policy amounts to "giving another try" to policies already known to be useless.
LABOUR 'WRECKERS To the capitalists, Heath is right when he says: "The total effect of Labour's present policies would be to wreck the economy, under mine the free society, and accelerate the present inflation beyond the point of no return.' The return of Labour would be a national disaster Labour's posturing before the big bosses and the financiers is absurd. But Labour's attitude to the working class involves outright lying. scabbing, and distortion. The first big lie is Wilson's attempt to blame the Tories for the economic crisis. In a month where the output prices of industry rose by 2i4 per cent, whule input costs rose by 17 per cout (having yet to be passed on to the consumer), and in a year
ous bourgeois leaders when what is required is an entirely different system of political power. and manoeuvres of the three major parties in the election campaign AMENTARY TRICK where unemployment is expected to rise to two million. Wilson's prattle about the crisis being 'brought ahout by a Government which has consistently sought to govern against the will of the British people and not with their consent", is sheer dishonesty.
It can only disarm the working class move. ment. It is not Government polcy which has brought about the cconomic crisis. It is a crisis of the system. No amount of talk about Heath's petulant personality will change that, These lies allow Wilson to obscure the main issue: what decisive solutions are needed? Not even the Labour left has been wheeled out to spout on about nationalising the hig companics and instituting 'workers' control', It is the Labour right who have conducted the national campaign, while those like Benn have been shovelled off to their own constituencies.
ANOTHER BIG LIE Labour has concentrated instead on the need to control prices and to introduce mild social reforms on such matters as pensions and housing. But here again there is a big lie.
Labour promises to 'exercise firm control over prices. What they have not identified are the items which are to be subsidised and by how much. Tney have not even promised a price freeze! With the current rise in world commodity prices, any serious control over prices by this means would soon cut into the other items of Labour's programme.
Labour refuses to spell out the implications of this. The real issue is which class will pay.
The debate between Healey and Barber about financing Labour's programme was thoroughly false. It is not a matter of how much money can he raised by taxing the rich, but the reaction from the rich that this will provoke. Investors will save or export their capital rather than invest in the face of higher taxation, Production will decline, unemployment rise, and the working class will once again bear the cost, The contral issue is: How are the ruling class to be made to pay? the rise in imported raw material costs to the working class, the result is a cut back in in vestment and production and a rise in unemployment. Under a socialist planned economy resour ces need not be wasted in this way. But it is not possible to buy out the capitalists without yet again impoverishing the working class.
Only expropriation will do the joh. This involves breaking the law, and it involves consciously mobilising the workers to smash the legal and extra-legal violence with which the ruling class will reply.
Wilson has eroded this question also. Instead, he has sided with Heath in attacking the militants in the unions and condemning the 'extremists-who have no respect for the rule of Parliament".
This is Wilson's third big lie. He says that the main issue in the election is not the miners, the militants and the power of the unions". Yet he admits that the whole social programme of Labour is designed to 'create the atmosphere" in which the Government could get the consent of the TUC" for a voluntary incomes policy.
In other words, the programme is a big con, designed to trap the working class movemcht into accepting further cutbacks in its standard of living while prices soar.
COERCION Far from the power of the unions being irrelevant, it is only the power represented by the trade unions, the power of the working class, which will be able to shitt the burden on to the backs of the ruling class. This must involve the workers' movement taking a determined stand against Parkament and the rule of law and crcating its own organs of violence and coercion, being squeezed by the capitalist crisis. They hope this strategy will win to them former Labour voters, particularly amongst unorganis ed workers and sections of the middle class. BUILDING CONTRACTORS The vaunted Liberal concern for community politics has not meant that Eiberals have become militant proponents of extra-parliamentary agitation. Peter Hain discovered this when he sought to mount a campaign of harassment against the juggernaut lorries. He was repeatedly and vigorously denounced by almost every section of the Liberal Party.
This slogan really refers to the use of local government resources and powers to defend and advanoe local privileges and interests, In areas of Liberal advance like Liverpool many of the Party's councillors are Jocal businessmen especally building contractors. The local progranimes they conveniently prosore boost expenditure on such items as street repairs and sanication.
The Liberal campaigt seeks to transalte into national terms the secret of their successes in Jocal government. They insist that the State. and especially the taxation system can be used to defend those who are threatened by the "monopoly power of large companies and large unions. The Liberal manifesto outlines a scheme whereby the tax and social security systems would he merged. This would be used both to distribute tax credits to 'the needy and to penalise 'inflationary wage settlements', There are also many proposals tor enlarging the powers the middle class become less convincing of local government. The morgage holder pay. ing penal rates of interest is promised relief and students are offered larger grants through. the new tax system.
CLASS COLLABORATION Liberal policy secks to institutionalise class collaboration at every level from the board room capital and orgnised labour. to an incomes policy enforced by wide-ranging fiscal powers. The election by employees of company ditectors and a profit-sharing mechancharge on their graduated National Insurance contributions, on a sliding scale according to the amount by which earnings had exceeded the norm."
Implementation of this scheme would be hard to reconcile with the Liberals declared policy of cutting down the size of the civil service. But this device for using the resouroos of the State and the taxation system for curb ing trade union action could well be taken up by future Governments, whether the Liberals participate in them or not.
In hoth by-elections and local elections, the Liberals have shown that they can cut into Labour support. Labour's electoral support has traditionaily rested on mohilisation of its trade union buse and promises that the bourgeois State machine can be used to improve, or even transform, the cupitalist system. The failure of the last Labour Gorernment to bring about any siguificant improvement in the welfare services has undermined this appeal CHAMPIONS OF THE STATE But the rise of trade union militancy has forced Labour to cultivate its traditional base more closely, In particular the Labour leaders have been forced to abandon any open commitment to a statutory incomes policy. The prob lem for the Labour leadership is that as the Party becomes more identified with the trade unions, Labour's reformist appenis to the inorganised sections of the working class and caving openings for the Liberais.
The whole welfare side of traditional Labour policy was lifted from the Liberals in the first place, from the so-called 'gas and water socialism' of the Fabians to the Beveridge Keport. The Liberals are now in a strong position to present themacives as the more convincing champion of a State machine lifted above the sectional interests of big The attempts made by the Labour Party to project itself as the apency of voluntary class collaboration and national harmony