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When Jack Jones first unveiled his blueprint for recovery the Social Contract to the TUC, he explained that it meant a moderation of wage demands in return for realconcessions to the labour movement; the Labour government, he explained, would be able to safeguard employment and maintain social spending by reducing inflation.
Today, Jack Jones blueprint is exposed as the most gigantic, and successful, fraud ever perpetrated against the British working class. In return for accepting a cut in real wages of 6%, what tangible results can working people point to? ***Spending Power?: The annual rate of inflation was 19.7% in October, 1976. *Employment?: The jobless total according to official figures has just about doubled to 1½ million. Hundreds of thousands of workers (mainly women are not even counted in these figures. 20,000 teachers are on the dole and thousands of public sector workers are now facing the sack. ***Healthcare?: 75% of hospital beds are in pre-1918 hospitals: this year the Government cut £80 million off the hospital building programme **Education?: Between 1973 and 1975, capital spending fell from £610 to £365 million in primary and secondary education and from £207 to E152 million in further and higher education. Plans are under discussion to close all but two colleges of education in Scotland. The school slum clearance project has been stopped alto- ***Welfare?: In the period 1974-76, capital spending on social services has been slashed by 38%. Local Government spending in 1976-77 has been cut to £61.8 million half the figure for the previous year. As the cuts and unemployment increasingly strike home, the beginnings of a response are emerging. On November 17th, 60,000 workers from all over Britain, mainly from the public sector unions participated in an anticuts demonstration and rally in London. On the Same day, there wasa large and militant demonstration in Edinburgh.
The response so far has generally been localised and episodic, lacking in a clear set of policies and demands. The trade union leaders, even the
"lefts like Alan Fisher of NUPE who addressed the November 17th rally, set their sights on convincing" Jim Callaghan to change course.
At its conference on November 14th, the SLP adopted as official policy the demands of Resolution 17 at last year's STUC conference and pledged itself to united action with all those fighting for these demands against the government's Social Contract fraud: ***Immediate implementation of a 35 hour week without loss of pay. ***Longer holidays with no loss of pay. ***An opening of the books of all companies declaring redundancies. ***Nationalisation without compensation of any company unable to ensure employment at a living wage for its workforce. ***An end to cuts in public expenditure and a new programme to restore the cuts in housing, education and health. *** An end to incomes policy measures like the 4% limit and all similar schemes. ***Full cover of all wage agreements against inflation by cost of living Clauses. ***Full cover of all state benefits and grants to individuals for cost of living increases.
These demands, which mustered considerable support at the STUC against the block vote of the TGWU and GWU, lay the basis for a unified campaign by all the victims of Labour's social contract with the IMF: employed and unemployed, public sector and private sector workers, pensioners, students, the sick and the disabled.
At the same time as mobilising for all actions against the government's attacks, it is necessary to begin now the fight for these policies at all levels of the trade union and labour movement. Now is the time to seck their endorsement by trade union branches and trades councils as the first step towards organising the fight at the 1977 STUC Congress. At the same time it is necessary to organise public meetings like the SLP raily in Glasgow on December 11th.
Finally within all existing campaigns and initiatives in which supporters of Resolution 17 participate from the STUC youth unemployment campaign to Labour Against the Cuts and the Right to Work Campaign, these policies must be debated out to win the maximum support for a meeting of STUC delegates to coordinate the fight at conference.