The Government decision last Friday, to extend and aggravate the freeze still further, calls for more than denunciation. It is becoming perfectly clear that while the unions merely complain, the depredations of Mr, Gunter and Mr, Stewart will continue to escakte, Of course, complaint is abundantly justified, Mr. Gunter's Christmas bonus, which has deferred the Confed. settlement, of 4 to 5 shillings a week, which was to affect three million engineering workers from March onwards; which has shunted the proposals of the Agricultural Wages Board and the Retail Drapery Wages Council into the office of Mr, Aubrey Jones; and which threatens a settlement affecting 55,000 electrical contracting workers, has already stung union spokesmen to vigorous opposition, Pay increases to all these groups of workers are overdue: continued price rises throughout the period of the freeze have inflicted serious cuts in their standard of living, which are now to be pushed even further and deeper, "A quite unjustified and massive extension of the freeze which will delay badly needed increases for some of the lower paid workers", said Frank Cousins, when he was asked to characterise this latest blow, Quite rightly, he continued "Many trade unionists who have previously accepted Government policy will join the wave of indignation against the way things are going." Hugh Scanlon, pointed out that "this shows the invalidity of the Government to predict the state of the economy under capitalism for six months, let alone three years," Naturally one side-effect of the ministers' ruling will be innoculate trade unionists against the blandishments of long-term agreements, and Mr. Scanlon did not draw back from implying a strong criticism of his union's President: "this is a warning not to repeat the mistake of the much-criticised package deal," he said,(The engineers' package deal, of course,was Sir William Carron's very own original contribution to "a new pattern of industrial relations, )
Yet justified as these sharp comments are, they are not enough, It is becoming quite obvious that the Government is perfectly prepared to defy Labour Party and trade union opinion: the Conference motion on worksharing has been set aside by Mr, Wilson, none of the promised cuts in arms expenditure have materialised, and now the freeze is to be carried over without as much as a by-your-leave to the trade unions who placed all those who impose such unsufferable burfiens on their members in their present elevated posts. It is becoming imperative that the unions begin to meet these attacks with a co-ordinated answer, A clear alternative policy is needed, which can mobilise the whole movement for a policy of socialist reforms and economic growth, Among the ideas being canvassed in the TGWU, the five technicians! unions and elsewhere, there is a hard core of proposals which can unify the movement and give it the programmatic strength to oppose and overcome the present drift of Government action, But these proposals must be quickly elaborated, agreed, and brought befroe the public eye, ‘his surely requires that there should be a conference of all those wnions which oppose the freeze - called with the sole objective of co-ordinating the struggle, Armed with such @ common programme, the opposition could quickly win the movement for its policies, The present Government has gone back on so many of its firm election commitments, that there are already very large numbers of people who are waiting for a lead. Such a lead, if it came from the progressive unions in time, could save the Labour movement,
planned by December 1967, to have two simultaneous berthing
facilities for ocean-going ships. In 1963 the Americans
conducted me over the port of Kismayu which they are improving.
"Tt does little service to peace when distinguished politicians
like Sir Alec and distinguished journalists like Mr. Beeston
boom around the globe the highland hysteria of a moribund
Empire.
Lytton
House of Lords."
There was no editorial comment nor a retort by Richard Beeston.
It is a pity that this reproof to Sir Alec's anti-Soviet
hysteria had to come from the House of Lords.