NO OPEN CALL | IMGpapers

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Benn's policies mean that he cannot even defend himself —let alone the working class. He has organised no forces inside the labour movement. He has not made an open call for the removal of Wilson from the leadership of the party. Very likely he will quietly move to some other Government post if Wilson gives him his orders. Certainly he will make no call for mass working class action to defeat Wilson's attacks.

On the surface it may appear as a squabble about who shall be Minister for Industry. But the issues that lie behind the ministerial shuffles go deeper than simply who shall do what job. Right now Wilson dare not come out openly for a formal coalition. He knows that such action would so incense the working class that his political career would be ended for good.

Instead, Wilson uses the capitalist economic crisis and the threat of a coalition to swing the trade union leaders behind a new and even more vicious Social Contract. This will not just drive down living standards, but it will bind the trade union bureaucrats even more firmly to the Government's anti-working class policies.

By presenting a 'new' Social Contract as a 'concession', compared to an immediate incomes policy or a coalition, Wilson hopes to neutralise the unions while he deals with •the Labour 'left'.

He is well aware that a 'new' Social Contract will probably collapse within a few months. But he is banking on the hope that during that time he will have begun to demoralise the working class by unemployment and wage cuts, and that a capitulation by the Labour and trade union 'lefts' will deprive the workers' movement of an obvious opposition leadership. This will prepare the ground for the introduction of a compulsory incomes policy.

In the face of this attack the Parliamentary and trade union left signs its own death warrant by refusing to oppose the Social Contract or to fight to remove Wilson from the leadership of the Labour Party by organising forces within the working class movement against the present Govern**********

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(BUT LEADERS OFF THE TRACKS) red weekly 12 june 1975