The battle for jobs: import controls or mass action
Socialist Challenge1980sPaul LawsonScanned print read by OCR, and not yet proofread: expect run-together words, dropped letters and, where a piece began partway down a page, a few lines of its neighbour. The printed page is the authority.
demands.
Thus unemployment is result of a combination crisis of world capitalism, decline of British capitalism, and deliberate policies the government This shows the absurdity of the argument lal damental cause of job loss is a flood of imports. time, as the volume of world ane canc. imports are ports are falling faster than ex. ports. Threats The most popular demand in the labour movement to defeat unemployment is the call for import controls.
fact that this demand fails to ad dress the real unemployed, there are major objections Irom a point of view in the long term, port controls cannot work. Any attempt to substantially reduce would inevitably result in retaliathe other capitalist countries possibility of a new trade war. I consequents disastrous etwith consequent fects on Labour government 1964-1970 did implement what amounted to an import control LIC charge of 15 per cent introduced in 1967. This had to be dropper because of the Wilson received of INLIV was Labour Today the the pursued the funAt the present both exports and but imApart from the working class imMorning Star with the disastrous The of impending workable, the OLIC aimed at other Ford workers in Europe capitalist countries. port control strategy. It is an atApart being un- tempt to save British jobs at the expense of foreign workers. It , lnere is a morc run damental objection to the RIGHT T
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RIGHT to Workers stop for a minute's silence in Southall at the place where the cops killed Blair Peach Ford Dagenham workers lobby the TUC for im- port controls -
had real number people, Illally The entitled the increase The rate depends fundamentally rate of profit. When profits high, industry are built, put back into workers are hired.
or building societies, abroad.
As profit weaker firms go bankrupt. firms start to less profitable Unemployment in Britain seven years.
According the lowest ever recorded points VUL.
ding stocks. Employment sharply.
drastic the economic historic decline of British and tor over a nunarca ycars.
story. The using policies of as a desperate the working class.
the cessive the organised Fear introduced proposals for The Thatcherism savage use the restricting was firms and individuals -firms will bankrupicles the stronger, firms.
w1l weaken organisation been lost in the last week alone).
These figures are well kno to be gross underestimates of thi out of work particularly women, who are unemployed do not sign on because they are not Whatever the precise figures, unemployment has been huge. What is the cause of on the are expands idle blant Is action, When the rate of profit goes down, industrialists and owners it becomes more profitable to to the government or invest down, Big close cown inel operations.
Hould. Prot11 have fallen dramatically over the past six or to the Bank of pany profits in Britain are now mere 3.5 per cent. As the review have responded by curbing their spenfixed investment and fall profits result from a combination of the crisis tialism, which has been going on The collapse of British firms' profitability is not the end of the Tory government is unemployment weapon against mid-1960s governments have attempted to break the power ot workers movement. in order to busn down Ilving standards and boost profits.
Harold Wilson's government treezt 1966. It followed it up with Barbara Castle's 'In Place of Strife' curbing Since then there have been a sorry succession of wages policies and attempts to reform distinctive feature of particularly of 'monetarist' policies. The Tories hope that by credit he availability of bank loans t weaker Photo: PETE GRANT go to the wall. As rocket, they hope capital will be concentralca more profitable At the same time the Tories are keeping their fingers crossed that the fear of unemployment trade union and
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WHEN the last Tory government left office in 1974, the official unemployment figure 600,000. In 1979, at the end of the government which followed, unemployment climbed to just under 1.5m.. unemployment is over 2m (8,500 jobs having
Such proposals reach a high oint of absurdity when workers rom multinational company ke Ford simultaneously agree rith the proposal to build inter. ational links with other Ford orkers in West Europe against ontinent-wide attacks by Ford management — and at the same me call for import controls, resumably to keep out cars made by those Ford 'orkers! pay, coupled with a ban on over The trade unions demand that bankrupt firms be nationalised under workers' control.
and imp emented. mediately create the basis for a class-wide fight unemployment. But that can only happen if we start from the position that unemployment 1s caused by their crisis; the crisis of capitalism which no worker is responsible for.
Fiat workers in Italy have responded in way so ferocious was reaction to the threat of redundancies that in the past. week brought LuCy have government!
Struggle capitalism's crisis. then and the 3-or LICal azallist plannea economy worked JuSt trade union organisation, divide working against employea full-time against the part-time, against men, unskilled. This is what can happen unless we unite and fight.
the demands outlined above we should emblazon on our banner the fight against discriminatory lay-offs — no selling of the jobs When the employers women, part-time prentices and school leavers, but begin threatening every worker's job.
should against exactiv the right their down the GARDNER & SONS LTD Photo: KEVIN COEN