In fact data on graduate unemployment tends to understate the problem. For one thing those graduates without work are taken as a percentage of all graduates; however this latter figure includes a considerable number about whom nothing is known - many of them may be without work, and it certainly cannot be assumed that all of them have found jobs (as this procedure does). Moreover the total also includes many students who were probably never prospective entrants to the labour market-foreign students who returned home, students on leave from their companies while at university who then returned to their former jobs, and others classified as "not available for employment".
In interpreting these figures a number of things should be kept in mind. First of all, 1963 was itself something of a crisis year in graduate unemployment. It came at the end of a long period of declining job opportunities, and, with the improved overall economic conjuncture, graduate unemployment declined considerably in 1964 and '65. The 1963 level of unemployment was not reached again until 1967. The figures, moreover, indicate only those graduates who are still "seeking employment"they tell us nothing about the type of work which those in employment have found. It seems very likely that the lower unemployment rate among women can be explained wholly by their greater willingness to accept lower paying, low-status, jobs: for example, in 1969 over 10% of those women science graduates who entered the labour market took up jobs in schools; for men the corresponding figure was less than 4%.
PATTERNS AND PROSPECTS The immediate sources of this rising trend in graduate unemployment are several. For one thing, the number of university graduates expanded more rapidly than the number of postgraduate courses, so the proportion of graduates able to continue their education beyond a first degree fell. Secondly, the years 1965 and 1966 were associated with significant expansions in the education system (especially further and higher education) and the social services; as a result education, the civil service and local government become expanding fields for graduate employment. After 1965 this slowed down quite markedly, producing a serious surplus of graduates, particularily in the most rapidly-growing area which had most benefited from these expanding opportunities-the social sciences. However in this phase of declining graduate opportunities the demand from industry and commerce continued to grow, and these areas actually managed to enlarge their relative shares of a rapidly growing output of graduate manpower. What this has meant, however, is that since 1966 graduate employment opportunities have been closely bound up with private business needs. This was always fairly true of science and technology. What is new about 1970-and far more so 1971-1s that private business demand for qualified manpower has begun to taper off very rapidly. This has produced Three anecdotes can best sum up the Anti-Common Market demonstration in Trafalgar Square on Sunday 13th October. Firstly an inordinate number of faithful social democrats attending the demonstration went slightly apopleptic at the sight of my bundle of Red Moles which boldly proclaimed solidarity with the I.R.A. Secondly, there was the sort of shock that familiarity has still not numbed one to: beside me in the thick of the crowd a worker had been shouting loudly during the speech of Tory M.P. Edward Taylor that his crowd couldn't even find jobs enough for the few men at UCS. When Labour M.P. Judith Hart came to speak he listened attentively as she pleaded that in this matter of Britain's destiny it was the British people alone who should decide their own fate. Then he turned to me, as would a man who had dwelled long and hard on the destiny of his class and gave me his verdict. "Yes", he said as if translating the real message of Mrs. Hart, "the trouble is that there are too many darkies over here". The third incident was the sight of a demonstration leader of the National Front, unmistakable by his silver badge and equipped with a loud hailer directing his union jack carrying supporters in the midst of several thousand Labour Party and trade union members who raised not ever their eyebrows, never mind their fists. In themselves such random incidents might be brushed aside, and discounted as isolated or even quite accidental events. There is however no precedent, save the jingoism of the two Imperialist World Wars for such a unity of purpose as was displayed in Trafalgar between Michael Foot, and Tory M.P. Sir Derek Walker Smith. Both made indistinguishable nationalistic speeches in defence of national sovereignty and the time-tested institutions of British democracy, now alleged to be threatened, in front of a mass of allied trade union banners and Union Jacks In the light of such an extraordinary fact, the extremities of the Anti-Common Market demonstration suggest that a In Britain today this has a very concrete meaning. The sgruggle of the Irish people against a British imperialist occupying army remains virtually undefended in the ranks of organised labour in Britain because of this same chauvinism And by no means least, the government is this.day putting on the statute books vicious new legislation directly aimed at the elementary liberties of the black and immigrant population with virtually no opposition from the traditional labour organisations.
How is it possible for the working class to forge a programme to defeat the Tories and advance on the road to defeating capitalism without breaking away from chauvinism over the right of Irish self determination, the immigration policy of these last years, and the Common Market? The answer is simply that it is impossible because everytime chauvinism will take you down a blind alley to beat your head on a wallor some other worker's head—in impotent frustration.
The reality is that the enslavement of Ireland stands directly in the road of the defeat of capitalism and the destruction of its state and army in Britain: so too the repression of black people is the example for British workers of what they can expect should they discard their false sense of superiority: and the Common Market is the means for rescuing and continuing a declining British capitalism.
Racism and chauvinism must therefore be fought without quarter. Proletarian internationalism must be the first and not the last banner to be raised in actual class struggles of every description. Above all we must expose these matters for those deluded workers who followed behind Michael Foot's bandwagon in Trafalgar Square and tell them very plainly: chauvinism has a very specific purpose in the hands of the Labour leaders: the betrayal of the coming struggles of the working class -Ben Joseph