Jenkin's budget takes this Labour Government to a new low in its servility to the ruling class. The budget is one of the severest and worst anti-working class meacures to be implemented. It is designed specifically - and openly
- to reduce our living standards, and increase the profits of the boss. Gold played the decisive part in determining its shaye. It is a bankers! badget and has been welcomed as such by them. The stock market understood well its purpose and responded accordingly with two of the most profitable days in trading for months. Some shares hit a new high in value. The threats of compulsory legislation against the unions to keep wages down while prices riseshows where the Government's hopes lie: if they can keep the working class in line through the trade unions they can count on winning time and a measure of stability for their discredited rule. TIf the trade unions buy this budget, and its anti-labour ramifications, then it will only be a matter of time before more will be demanded. This Government is a failure. Its efforts are a disaster and it should be made aware that no one believes it when it pretends to be interested in raising living standards. The £100 million extra taxation on the rich is @ sop - sugar-ccating on a bitter pill of vicious attacks on the working class. We ask: if the c country is in such dire difficulty, can we afford the rich at all? The budget is a logicial consequence of the long downward path travelled by the right wing leadership of the Labour Government since assuming power. It is also a dramatic illustration of the fact that capitalism does not and cannot work. Those who would patch it up can take no path other than that of defending captialism'sz overall interests at the expense of the working class and the abandonment of any pretence to fight for reforms. The Labour Government now seeks to do a job which the Tories - the traditional party of big capital - would have found impossible to even attempt. The next line of defence for the wowking class is in resisting attempts to curb their just demands for wage increases. Prices are going to rise drastically. Workers would be absolute fools if they felt any loyalty to this monstrous cabinet qhich still calls itself "Labour". We don't think they will. The wage freeze will be rejected by all conscious workers. In the next few months we could see in Britain social struggles which could inflict decisive defeats upon the right wing. Anyone who considers himself a soc socialist must vote against this budget. No one should be fooled by the increases in taxation on the rich: they have teams of lawyers specifically for the purpose of dodging taxation. Our message is that all sections of the movement must work out how they can wage a united all-out struggle against this budget and the Cabinet; any other response to this terrible state of affairs is a nagation of socialism.
March 17th - A Big Step Forward. The organiscrs of the massive March 17th mobilisation in London, the Victnam Ad-hoc Committse and its component parts, have every reason to be proud of their efforts: they. have shown the world that a sizable body of people in this country are hostile to tho Labour Government's obsequicus~support for Johnson's war of gonocide in Victnam, in a way that has created an intor-— national sensation. We hope, by their action, they have totally discredited all those who pose as left-wingers but who justify the supporting of unprincipled positions such as "negotiations" by the argument that this is the only way of winning popular support. Furthermore, the organisers have taken a giant step forward in helping to revitalise the whole of the left-wing movement in this country, by introducing methods of organisation that allowed the Left to overcome some of its fragmentation and sectarianism. Indeed, Sunday's action can be scen as a victory for the Left gonerally, because all segments participated, oven if sometimes somewhat reluctantly. The organisers, right from the beginning, 2 stuck firmly to the tactic of building a "united front". They emphasised repeatedly, in the build-up to March 17th, that anyone who was opposed to the war and who agreed with the two minimal positions of the Ad-hoc Committee .- -~ "Solidarity with the Victnamese people against American aggression" and "End British Complicity" could participate in its deliberations with full voice and vote. Convinced that the best way to help the Vietnamese people against imperialist aggression would be the building in Britain of one, massive, unitcd and all inclusive opposition to the war, they argued that anyone who opposed the war, from whatever viewpoint, should participate and carry the slogans of their choice. Sunday demonstrated that we have come 2 long way and there is no turning back to the pacifist and rather quiot Victnam demonstrations of last summer. Indacd the whole apolitical and "neutralist" tradition of the CND scems to have been interrupted - a casualty of the war itsclf. It would be wrong to think that the whole operation was an unqualified success. The biggest Single social force were the students, who, in Britain today, are undoubt— edly in the vanguard in their militancy and hostility to the Labour govern— ment. The average age level of the domonstrators was low and significs that a whole new gencration of young people are finding thoir way to socialist politics on the Vietnam issue. But a decisive opposition, once that is capable of turning the Government off its course, cannot confine itself to support from this milicu alone. And although Reg Taylor, the trade unionist and CLP leador from Middlesex expressed the sentiments of thousands of working class militants, we note that there were still only a minority of bammers from * the mass organisations of the working class in this country, the trade unions and the Labour Parties. But it would be wrong for the organisers of the Sunday action to ignore these forces and consider them inessential, and perhaps thoreby devising tactics which will make it difficult for larger sections of the working class to participate at a future date. In the weeks ahead, all efforts mst be made to include all the tendencies on the left, and the working class movement, cither officially or unofficially, in planning fcr the next mass action against the Victnam war. If they stick to their guns, there is no reason why the organiscrs, the VSC and all the other left groups cannot be successful. Sunday should be seen as a step in that direction.