Rea Ar SENET EE: EEE PIO ANE eS Stand Fast: Fight the Mussolini Labour Laws As we go to press, two dozen members of Parliament on the Labour back benches have just abstained for the second time running in the crucial divisions on the new Prices and Incomes Bill, The whips! office is bubbling with dark hints and imprecise leaks, to the effect that sanc-’ tions will be taken against the mutineers. True, these threats are carefully calculated to lever apart the new intake of new left wing members, and the old guard: but for all their tactical suppleness, they fit into a most menacing strategy. Mr. Wilson has no mandate whatever for his bankers! stop budget: and the whole left must rally to prevent any attack on the parliamentarions who have refused to endorse this reaction-~ ary policy. ll this, we fear, fits too plainly into the pattern of events in Nottingham and Croydon, where disciplinary sanctions were fiercely imposed on the
advocates of trade union ndependence and socialist structural reforms. Today, no-one on the Left can fail to see the drift of the Wilson administration. It was no left-winger, but Reg Paget, who rightly likened the new Bill to the Statute of Labourers, which directly provoked Jack Cade's Rebellion. Even more appositely, Ian Mikardo has characterised it as 2 horse out of Mussolini's stable. The whole measure can only be construed as the culminating attack in a whole series of forays against the basic freedom of Labour in this country. Of course, Frank Cousins is entirely right to insist that events in Westminster will not determine the fate of Benito Brown's new Bill. But this fact should not make socialists indifferent to events in Parlianent, The factories will decide the issue, but they will decide it much more effectively if, from the beginning, there is serious political resistance, The mutineers in Parliament can act as a focal lens, through which the mounting trade union discontent can be brought to white heat at the exact point where it can be effective. Out of Parliament, many unions are already taking preparatory steps to meet the new threat. But if the new MPs will stand firm, they can act as an inspiration to the activists who will have to bear the main brunt of the fight. For this reason, socialists must welcome the mutiny and urge its participants to stand firn, and fight on. All support must be given to those who defy the whip. Mussolini's road.is no road for British Labour to tread. Those who criticise the present unseemly wanderings of the Wilson team may be temporarily unpopular, but as the issues become clear, they will rapidly assemble substantial forces for the fight which is coming.
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