British Smear Politics

" 3 British Smear Politics 3H 9 U.K. backs Vietnam build-up is 4 Scottish Developments "10 North Sea Gas tw 5 Attacks on Incomes Policy " 11 Sheffield/Bristol/Hackney vd 6 L.P. Report on Docks "12 Forthcoming events aa rr nr ee ore eee ee 5 ened A Resignation and a Non-Resignation Sharply following on Mr. Cousin's very proper decision to rejoin the ranks and quit the Wilson team, we got the crisis measures. Nothing could more firmly underline Mr. Cousin's charge that the bankers are determining the government's priorities. A wage-freeze, coupled with severe attacks upon the spending power of the workers, amounts to a serious cut in living standards. Mr. George Brown, whose non-resignation was the phoney scoop of the season, is reported as saying "It was not unknown for doctors to get heated about diagnosis and prescription .... one thing that doctors and politicians had in common was that when diagnosis was made and prescription prescribed, they had to see that the patient got better." The patient which George Brown is worried about is British Cepitalism, and his unrewarding argument with Mr. Callaghan is about which whizz-fizz powders to inject into the flatulent beast, and how much of which soggy limbs to plaster up. The diagnosis is wrong: the cure absurd. The Labour Government has a clear task to begin on the painless ecuthanasia of capitalism, starting with anti-capitalist structural reforms, extending nationalisation and encouraging the development of workers! control, liquidising imperial commit ments and, if necessary, scuttling the pound as an international currency. The fact that Messrs. Brown and Wilson could have a thumping great row about diagnosis, recommend opposite prescriptions, and then, after publicly breaking up, reunite "to see that the patient gets better" can only seem to intensify the feeling that these physicians are quacks, for whom an amputation is as good as a pep pill, provided it keeps the patient quiet. More significant than George Brown's much publicised non-resignation was the news that Mr. Richard Pryke, the young fabian economist who had just joined Mr, Balogh's Cabinet office as a research assistant, felt compelled to resign because the Government had seriously underestimated the degree of unemployment which would result from the cuts. He forecast up to a million on the dole by the end of next year, in conditions of a recession in which there would be no new jobs to absorb them. This view has also been expressed by the Confederation of British Industries: "The net result could be that when the Selective Employment Tax begins to pinch, the economy will not just 'stop' but 'pancake! and have the greatest difficulty in picking itself off the floor again." Perhaps the critics are a litile pessimistic, but the plain fact remains that the intention of Wilson's team is to squeeze the economy into promoting unemployment. The misguided aim of reviving a sick capitalism has once again possessed a Labour Government, to the point where again it has agreed to attacks on its own people. The results will be rising discontent, disillusionment, enervation and apathy among the workers, unless the Left can meet the challenge by uniting to hammer out a broad alternative policy, based on the need to advance beyond capitalism, and to harness the tremendous creative potential of the working class movement to the task of building a socialist society.