NEC struggles to throw out left as SHORETHROWS OUT LABOUR POLICES

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luckily discovers that this and 1970-74, sought to honprogress can be achieved by our that commitment, just as economic policies similar to Labour governments did" those used by the Tory gov- declares Shore, advocating a ernments in 1951-64 and return to "the demand-man1970-74. agement approach developed "What ... sets the Labour by Keynes and applied by Party apart is its central governments of both parties commitment to full employ- in the first three post-war ment ... The Conservative decades."

Healey: pioneered monetarism years before Howe ter ten years ago, Shore's plan published this week governments of 1951-64, cies of what used to be called the thirteen wasted years of Tory misrule served up again as a socialist programme!

And what's happened to the policies of Labour Party conference? Squeezed out.

The economic projections contain no reference to So here we have the poli- the surely significant effects of nuclear disarmament. Public spending is scheduled to rise, but there are no calculations at all relating it to Labour's policies for restoring Tory cuts, improving welfare services, and building new council houses.

A 35 hour week without loss of pay is proposed in Labour's Programme '82. It is not mentioned in Shore's document.

Withdrawal from the EEC is overwhelming Labour policy. Many of us in the Socialist Organiser Alliance would argue that the policy is a nationalist diversion, but policy it undoubtedly is, and it should be reflected in the proposals of Labour spokespersons. It is nowhere in Shore's plan.

Even import controls - a policy which Socialist Organiser energetically opposes, but majority Labour policy - are mentioned only in passing.

*An extension of public ownership' is referred to on page 7 - and not once again in the remaining 64 pages.

Another major Labour conference commitment is opposition to incomes policy. What does Shore say about this?

*We cannot raise the living standards of those in work as fast as we would wish."

He continues: It will be necessary ....to contain the costs which prompt the increases in prices .. (in particular) wage and salary payments." How? "The alternative to rigging the market against labour is to intervene in the operation of market forces ... (through) a National Economic Assessment."

Here the role of the National Economic Assessment is defined plainly as 'containing' - i.e. keeping down -wages. Formal (?) command (?) incomes policies' are later rejected. But clearly a new 'social contract' is the first stage of Shore's programme. And since 'containing wages is central to the programme, incomes policy of some sort will follow if the social contract doesn't contain them.

An appendix gives Shore's estimates of the rises in real wages on his scheme - 3% in 1982, 1983 and 1984, 1% in 1985, and 0% in 1986.

After all this, we only have the word of Peter Shore and his messing around with computer economic predictions that unemployment will be cut. All that is promised definitely is that public spending will be raised - and the pound will be devalued by 30%.

Devaluation is supposed to make Britain's exports more competitive. What it will certainly do is raise average prices in Britain by about 9 to 12% (on Shore's own figures). Price controls are promised, but who believes they will check the inflation? (Moreover, announced plans for 30% devaluation would surely mean a run on the pound if a Labour government got elected - and so even greater devaluation, even more inflation.)

So Labour's right wing is not only trying to purge socialist activists from the Labour Party. It is also trying to purge the policies decided by Labour conference.

British capitalism is in dramatic decay, in the midst of a capitalist world in slump. The slump will turn into recovery, even temporarily, only as and when the capitalists have stalled wages and imposed speed-up suffiShore: Butskellism is his alternat ciently to make it profitable for them to expand production.

The working class needs to rally all its resources to resist, to fight to seize control of the means of production, and to rationally reorganise society.

This decay, and this need form the pressure behind the efforts and strivings of the labour movement over the last three years to reorient itself.

But the same pressure drives Shore and his like to ever more explicit abandonment of any prospect of real social change, ever more abject acceptance of the status quo.

All pretence of socialist criticism of capitalism is absent from Shore's document. "The major cause of instability and recession" says, is nothing to do with the nature of the system, but just "the pursuit by the Reagan - Administration in the USA of monetarist policies"

*And Shore is far from suggesting that the cause of these monetarist policies ive to Thatcherism might be class interest. No: they are apparently pure perversity, because Shore 1S certain' that his policies would improve profits - far more certain than he is about their benefits for jobs and wages!

Shore also says nothing about why the oh-so-beneficial-to-everyone Keynesian policies of 1951-74 • were junked by the Labour government after 1975 in favour of monetarism!

Peter Shore and his fellow witch-hunters are proposing that Labour's manifesto should be a miserable re-run of the 1974-9 Labour government's record. If they get their way, they will probably lose Labour the election - or if not that, create a Labour/SDP coalition government or a Labour government that might as well be SDP for all its policies are worth.

That's what the witchhunters are driving for. That's why every worker has an interest in joining the fight in the Labour Party and unions against the witch hunt and for socialist policies.

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Socialist Organiser 110 November