running at a rate of 2.7 per cent but in the North West working class solution to the problem of unemploy of capitalism, so that they can then throw a few more Government to rethink" its "lame duck" policy whereby responsibility for the capitalist crisis. They are But if militancy and gut-rejection of unemployment working week with no loss of pay under the direction and one or two small unprofitable firms which are now fight on an international scale. The story of both This is the nub of the problem: workers have fought economy: the only solution to the capitalist crisis. Employment Secretary Michael Foot, once the darling of the Labour left, is not having a happy new year. Nor are the steelworkers at the axed Ebbw Vale works in his constituency. Last Friday 6000 of them shouted him down at a mass meeting during a 24-hour protest strike against the phasing out of their works, where half the workforce are due to lose their jobs by 1978.
Mr Foot and the Labour Government have no answer to their problems. Foot told the steelworkers that they had to be 'realistic" and understand that the British Steel Corporation was not going to alter its plans for the industry.
At the same time his colleague-Chancellor Denis Healey -has been waving the sword of mass unemployment over the heads of the working class, threataning the worst if workers refuse to abide by the social contract and take a cut in their living standards.
The attitude of the Labour Government is easy to explain. First they want to put right the problems crumbs from the table to the working class. Meanwhile jobs are cut, living standards decline and the welfare state crumbles. This is the inevitable result of any policy which seeks a solution to the economic crisis within the framework of the capitalist system.
The working class cannot afford such solutions. The latest unemployment figures available-December 1974-show almost ¼ million out of work-an increase of 120,000 in one menth. About 150,000 of these are concentrated in the construction industry alone.
Since then Imperial Typewriters has announced 3000 redundancies at its Hull and Leicester factories and a rash of smaller closures have taken place. On 3 February, 420 workers out of a total of 700 at Texas Instruments, Plymouth, were declared redundant with less than half an hour's notice!
But the crisis doesn't just hit workers by creating outright unemployment. Between November and December the number of workers on short-time more than doubled-from 81,000 to 170,000, Much of this was centred in the vehicle industry where, as early as the week ending 19 October, 18,200 workers were on short time, losing a total of almost ½ million hours between them-an average of 27 hours per worker for the week.
Unemployment has hit some regions like a ton of bricks. In November unemployment nationally was and Wales it was 3.7 per cent, in Scotland 3.9 per cent, and in the North 4.6 per cent. On Merseyside almost 50,000 workers found themselves without jobs-6 per cent of the workforce.
By this winter, for the second time in recent years, unemployment will pass the million mark. Last time the fight-back was begun by the militancy displayed by the workers who occupied Upper Clyde Ship builders in the summer of 1971, This forced the Tory whole areas of unprofitable industry were driven to the wall.
Since then workers at IPD, Kirkby have twice occupied to save their jobs. Meanwhile the car giants cannot simply introduce large scale redundancies but have to resort to short time and layoffs because they fear a wave of factory occupations would hit them. has so far held back the flood by itself, it will not be enough. It is not just a few workers here and there in trouble, but whole sections of industry. Right-wing Labour hack, Brian Walden MP, was actually right when he said that the British car industry can only survive with a much smaller, competitive set up: therefore there must be large-scale closures -if you accept the framework of the capitalist system. hard to defend their jobs and living standards but as yet have not begun working out solutions to the crisis which go beyond stop-gap measures in their own plant or industry. Even the left-wing of the Labour Party, tail-ended by the Communist Party, only offers verbal opposition to the Government's policy. com bined with dream-world alternatives based on the mistaken befief that the prosent crisis isn't as serious as the bosses make out. That is why this Ree Weekly "Special" gives particular attention to the need for g ment.
Unemployment is an international problem-and so is the tight against it. British workers can learn a lot from their conrades in other countries Although small-scale by comparison to some of the occupations that have taken place in Britain, the struggle launched by 86 workers at the Piron factory in France is politically far more advanced. The workers have explicitly stated that they bear no fighting in defence of their jobs and for workers controi over production, regardless of who manages the factory, and are attempting to link their fight directly with that of other workers fighting unemploy ment in the area.
In Belgium glassworkers are demanding a shorter of workers" committees, in reply to the bosses attempts to carry out sackings, and aim to extend this these important struggles is told inside As our final article argues, the defence of jobs caninceed, to be successful must -be turned into an offensive for workers control over production. Only by planting this seed in the struggles of today, can we tomorrow reap the harvest of a planned, socialist