In reaction to 13 years of Toryism, British workers elected a Labour Government in 1964. Its policies weren't very exciting, but it looked as if things might improve a little. THEY HAVEN'T EVEN STAYED THE SAME!
Prices have gone up - wages have been controlled. Unemployment has reached levels not exceeded since 1940. Employers have got richer in comparison to the workers. (In 1966 the top 10% of the population owned [illegible] of the personal wealth, while nearly half the people over 21 have less than £500 to their name.) AND THE GAP HAS BEEN GETTING WIDER, NOT NARROWER, SINCE LABOUR CAME TO POWER. Now, even new house building is cut back, with the slum problem in the cities still unsolved.
From the incomes policy, to the wage freeze, to the Donovan Report, to "In Place of Strife", there have been more and more powerful attempts to attack the rights of workers' organisations.
IT IS QUITE CLEAR THAT LABOUR GOVERNMENT POLICIES BENEFIT THE EMPLOYERS, ESPECIALLY THE OWNERS OF THE BIG COMPANIES, AT THE EXPENSE OF THE WORKERS. THERE HAVE NEVER BEEN SO MANY TAKE-OVERS: PROFITS HAVE GONE UP AND UP; THE MARKET IN SHARES HAS REACHED AN ALL TIME HIGH.
There is nothing in George Brown's discredited "National Plan" about any move towards removing the employers. Nor in the Donovan Report. Nor in "In Place of Strife". Nationalisation of steel has left the profitable sectors in private hands. The docks are to be taken over because owners of big firms are fed up with the inefficiency of the port employers. NOWHERE HAS ANY PROFITABLE INDUSTRY BEEN TAKEN OVER. None of the huge sums of public money spent has gone into building publicly owned factories - all of it has gone to help private employers out of their problems.
Anger and resistance has been slowly growing at all this. It has been aroused by "In Place of Strife" which attempts to curb workers' rights. But workers have no real political choice any more. Neither Tory nor Labour are working in their interests. Workers are having to use their INDUSTRIAL strength to defend themselves.
It all comes to this: IN A COUNTRY WHERE THE PRODUCTION OF WEALTH IS IN THE HANDS OF AN UNDEMOCRATIC GROUP OF IMMENSELY POWERFUL, OFTEN INTERNATIONALLY BACKED EMPLOYERS, WORKERS CANNOT PROTECT OR ADVANCE THEIR INTERESTS THROUGH PARLIAMENT ALONE.
If we have to use industrial strength to defend the rights we have, we shall also have to use it to INCREASE those rights. That means to challenge the power of the great employers FROM THE FACTORIES as well as by voting. We need a campaign for WORKERS' CONTROL so that we can increase our rights as well as defend them. Unless we fight to control the production which creates the wealth of this country, any government we elect will, in the end, serve the interests of the people who do control that wealth.
* Text of leaflet (slightly shortened for space reasons) distributed by the Glasgow branch of the International Marxist Group to demonstrators on the Anti-Incomes Policy march in that town on February 27th.