speaks to RED WEEKLY What are the problems posed for the labour movement by Healey's Jarest budger?
To be disillusioned with the current Labour leaders you have to have illusions in the first place. I lost mine five years ago.
Healey is typical of previous Labour Chancellors. For Labour to do anything radical for the workIng cinss would mean upsetting the whole establishment, Parliament and the lot. It would mean having all the media against you.
'It's the Parliamentary Labour Party that's the problem. The split between the PLI and the Party, and the same at council level, is all wrong. Here there is need for radical change to get the idea of mandates accepted into the organisation, For example, with trade union sponsored MP's, the union becomes subordinate to the purty. The Labour Party, in fact, should be subordinate to the unions.
Democracy inside the Labour Party and throughout the workers movement is essential if we are to prevent another bosses budgel This must include putting the PLP under the control of conference, and all Labour MP's responsible to the party and the unions who put them there.
What do you think should be the response of the workers movement in general now?
One of the things which has to be fought is that as a result of the budget millions of pounds are again One delegate to the Labour Party Conference who will be putting the Leeds workers' views forcefully is TERRY JACQUES, President of Leeds District AUEW and Convenor for Hoe-Crabtree. Here he going to be doled out to the empl oyers with no control over how that is to be spent by those directly affected on the shop floor.
Everyone agrees that investment has just got to take place for the economy to improve, but do you know that E2 million a day, even before the budget, has been going from the state to private industry with no public accountability whatSoever? personally think that if Benn wins against the Lever lot in the Cabinet over his Nationa! Enterprise Board proposals this could provide us with new scope, For the first time ever, there will be legislation enabling workers at the rank and file level through their shop stewards committees to veto investment plans involving loans or handouts to industry.
I think this will assist the development of struggles of the workers movement to progress to the point where we are really beginning to challenge what the employers beljeve to be one of their 'inalienable rights where they will invest.
Another aspect of the budget which will have to be confronted head-on by the labour movement is the provision for price rises to allow companies to increase their profits and pass on wage increases.
One of the things that has to be done here is to build up a canpaign for the conlinuation of thresholds, Who would have thought by making cuts in our living standards. Instead, industrial rates should be raised to meet the incresend costs, with no allowance for pessing this on by increasing prices, Let them, instead, raise the funds from their bankers and speculators.
La year ago that thresholds alone would be worth nearly a fiver? If we had got a fiver and no threshold we would have thought we were doing quite well! Instead we've needed that just to stand still.
In fact thresholds themselves understimate inflation because the official Retail Price Index excludes rent, rates and mortgages. So we should be fighting not only for the continuation of thresholds but for their extension to cover all increases in the cost of living. Then any wage increase we win will actually be an A yeur ugo last May, the Tories introduced the threshold idea bee. ause they never dreamed inflation would take off like it has, Well this time it's backfired in their faces and I don't think we can allow a Labour Government to wrigle off the hook just like that! Increasingly over the last few ycars we have learned that the positions of the PLP have been decided by the actions of the workers' movement, both in and ourside the Labour Party.
This is the result of a trend areong the people who actually face the problems - the rank and file - towards breaking from the deeply ingrained idea that those in power 'know what's best'. In fact it is the other way round, and the workers movement is beginning to show it.