THEY HAVE HAD A GOOD STAY. When the IMF team fly out this weekend they will have had the advantage of chatting to Treasury officials who disagree with the Labour Government and fourteen leisurely days of looking through the books at the state of the economy.
They will have established that Healey was spinning a yarn to the working class when he promised that:
* Inflation would be reduced to single figures. Living standards are likely to fall by 10 percent over the next year unless there is an end to wage control.
Unemployment would fall to only 1979. movement fights for workers control over hiring and firing unemployment will continue to top the million mark until 1981 at least.
* Money saved through cuts would go to investment in industry to provide jobs. It has gone instead to pay off the huge rise in interest due to the financiers.
The IMF team will have absorbed all this and drawn up their plan of action for Britain in Denis Healey's 'Letter of Intent": further cuts, higher housing costs, more wage cuts. The Tories add their postscript of cutting unemployment benefits. The message is 'Back to the Thirties'. Unless the workers inflation on wages, social need.
redundancies.
Now's the time for the trade unions to demand that the same privileges accorded to the IMF are given to them. Open the books. Let the working class draw up its own Letter of Intent. Let the message be:
* Full compensation for the effects of benefits and social expenditure. No to wage control.
* For a useful programme of public works to employ the jobless and meet Freeze interest payments.
Nationalise the banks. No to the cuts.
* Work-sharing with no loss of pay. Nationalise all firms and industries unable to guarantee this basic right to work. No to NO RETURN TO THE THIRTIES! Now open them to the workers! For their eyes only! The IMF private dicks leave 11 Downing Street after examining the