Neither Hart nor Mondale!

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Hart with a hatchet. He wants to use it against government spending FACTS& FIGURES THE seasonally adjusted official figures for unemployment rose by 28,600 in February. So much for the Tories' economic recovThe official total is about 3.2 million. But that is an artificially low figure, and trade union estimates put the total over four million. Just using the official basis of calculation employed before November 1982 increases the total to over 3.5 million.

660,000 people are on the government's Youth Training Scheme and other 'funny jobs' projects.

A NEW report gives further facts on the use of microelectronics in British industry.

In 1983, 95% of manufacturing companies with 1,000 employees or more used microprocessors (tiny computers). But nearly 90% of them already had microprocessors in 1981.

In small companies the increase in use is more visible: over 30% of manufacturing companies employing 20 to 49 workers, for example, now use microprocessors. it was only 17% in 1981.

But the intensity of use is also rising in big companies: "Use of micros rapidly gathers momentum. Once a company does take the plunge, it generally finds the advantages greater (and the FORMER US Vice-President Walter Mondale seemed set to win the Democratic Party's nomination for Presidential candidate in the US election later this year - until last week. In the primary election in New Hampshire, a relatively unknown contender, Gary Hart, won the party nomination. He seems set to be the big competitor with Mondale to become the man who stands against Reagan.

The United States' bizarre system of choosing candidates for elections is not really a democratic process. The Democratic and Republican Parties do not have a proper membership structure. A series of "primaries' and 'caucuses' are held in different states to decide which candidate to nominate. It is not unusual for people to attend the primaries of both parties, so loose and vague is their organisation.

But winning nominations in primaries is no less important for that. The New Hampshire primary has a special - if rather mythological - significance, because no one who has lost the primary in New Hampshire has won the actual Presidential contest for the last few decades.

Mondale's Gerry machine is well oiled and run by the trade union bureaucrats in the AFL-CIO. Their campaign to get him elected is described by Newsweek as "simply the biggest and best in the history of US politics.

But like all US election campaigns it has more to do with show business than politics. Saatchi and Saatchi's swish PR job for the Tories last year would seem mild in comparison. In the final election play off, the Presidential candidates have special jingles, their families have to come over as charismatic as does the candidate himself (so far it's always himselt in presidential elections), and so on.

On major policy questions, Mondale and Hart are in general quite similar. Both are against the MX missile and BB-1 bomber. Both are for a nuclear freeze and for reducing the arms race. Both are against aid to the Nicaraguan contras, against aid to the El Salvadorian regime . (while the death squads are still active). and against US troops in Honduras.

Both are in favour of maintaining the existing US policy of total support Israel; both are for a total withdrawal from Lebanon.

Both are for an equal rights amendment for women; for equal pay; for abortion on demand. And both are for health cuts.

They differ slightly in those areas where spending should be increased. Mondale is for a degree of state intervention in the economy, but Hart is in favour of the free market. Mondale is in favour of protectionism, but Hart is against it.

And Hart is in favour of a 4.5-5% increase in defence spending a year; Mondale only wants 4%.

While on some issues they would both seem preferable to the Moral Majority reaction of the Reagan administration, it would be a mistake to believe that any of the differences are fundamental ones. Democrats and Republicans alike, of whichever shape or form, are firm defenders of US capitalism, at home and abroad.

The US working class should not - though it will - be conned into voting for any of them. What is needed instead is an independent party of American labour committed to fighting all sections of the ruling class. on health