year after-and the cutback of grants to nationalised industries will further increase unemployment Healey's subsequent attack on the milway workers has made his policy solutely clear-hammer jobs to curb ages, as workers fight to defend their wing standards against an ever increas ng rate of inflation, While claiming to attack inflation, Healey himself admitted that his tax increases will raise the cost of living by 2% per cent in a matter of weeks.
But 'in practice, the totality of his Budget will raise prices by more than twice that', wrote the bosses' maga zine The Economist (19.4.75), It added that unemployment and shorttime working will rise "further and for longer' than the peak of one milBon predicted for the end of 1975 by the Chancellor.
Verbal reaction
Purely verbal reaction to the Government's viciously anti-working class budget has been swift. An emergency solution at the Scottish Trades on Congress on Wednesday 16 pril, calling on the trade union wement to react sharply to protect the living standards of their members, ind pledging support to all unions eking wage increases designed to prove the living standard of their embers, was passed overwhelmingly.
Even Jack Jones, the staunchest defender of the social contrict in the trade union bureaucracy, has ques tioned its continued viability. Several left? Labour MPs have also denounced the budget, and Tribune, the paper of the Labour left, has attacked Healey for "budgeting for more workless', But what do the Labour left and the trade union bureaschrcy intend to do about the budget? The Government's fig-leat-the social contract - is more and more revealed as an anti-working class fraud. The question isn't if but how the Labour Government will impose a wage freeze. A statutory incomes policy might lead Wilson to a dangerous clash with the unions, unemployment will be allowed to rise in an attempt to deter workers from wage strupales.
Expenditure
Secondly, by insisting that Govemment expenditure-which already requires a public sector borrowing debt of over C10 billion-does not rise even in money terms, the Government could force public sectar employers to operate a nil-norm for wage rises except where jobs ure cut proportionately. This wape freeze in practice could then be extended to the private sector. 1 absolutely reject the use of mass unemployment as an instrument of policy,' claimed Dennis Healey in his budget speech last week—a budget that will help put a million out of work by the end of the year. The slashing of public expenditure-£900 million this year and C3,000 million the at a time when 800,000 are already without jobs and another 220,000 on short-time.
hardship for many workers!
the Government are on the 1964-70 road.......
day when the house divides""
Photo: MICHAEL TULL (Reporti 'Healey and the cabinet are trying to act as the stretcher-bearers for the ailing capitalist system." - Dennis Skinner, Labour MP for "It is a draconian budget which will lead to increasing unemplyment and - Stan Newens, Labour MP for Harlow.
"Socialist views have again been rejected by a Labour Chancellor. Already *Unemployment is not what my members voted for, it is not what the people of Preston voted for, and it is not what I shall vote for on Mon- Stan Thorne, Labour MP for Preston South., going to DO about it? Bolsover.
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