Our fifth article to mark the 40th anniversary of the CPBML by looking at the past four decades through the eyes of Workers and its predecessor, The Worker. This month we look at Labour's 1970s attempts to bring in state control of wages...
1974: The fight against the Social Contract
WORKERS, MAY 2008 ISSUE
As part of the celebration of our 40th anniversary, we look at our party's warnings about the dangers of voluntary emasculation inherent in the Social Contract introduced by the Labour Party in 1974. Following a series of confident working class struggles (including that of the engineers' toppling of the Tories' Industrial Relations Act and the miners' victory over Heath and his three-day week), the Labour Party launched its political counterattack, control of wages.
The lead article in The Worker issued on 21 March 1974 (see below), headlined "Who are they kidding?" and presciently subtitled "Labour's Social Contract – Accepting a clampdown in return for what we have already won", clearly and cogently outlined the threats posed.
21 March 1974: The Worker takes on the Labour government's Social Contract. “The Labour Government pretends that it ended the miners' strike and in return is expecting other sections of the working class to refrain from pressing comparable claims.
The miners had already won their battle for justifiable increases in pay before Labour took office.
Labour is making a big thing of tearing up anti-working class legislation like the Industrial Relations Act. In exchange restraint is expected on the part of trade unionists. But workers had already made this legislation inoperative by their own organised action.
Labour is apparently abandoning a wages policy and wants 'voluntary' self-denial on the part of workers as a fair quid pro quo. But workers had already made the Counter-Inflation Act unworkable by their mass industrial action.
In other words, workers are being told that what they have won by their own struggle is a gift from a labour Government. Then in exchange for this 'gift' workers are being asked to accept more intense exploitation.
The TUC has its usual role to play in this attempted deception. The TUC General Council said in a statement on the political and economic situation that 'in response to the policies of the new Government it would be possible to influence the size of claims and settlements achieved.' In return for the Government's giving 'priority to the immediate repeal of the Industrial Relations Act, the Government is entitled to understanding and support in its efforts to produce a solution to grave economic and social problems.'
This is the line taken by certain labour 'leaders' like the Secretary of the TGWU who has said that 'A government which is prepared to tackle these problems will certainly get the co-operation of the trade union movement and there will be moderation.'
There are millions of workers with claims outstanding – railwaymen, engineers, building workers, Ford workers and merchant seamen to mention only some. If they did fall for the deception the Labour government is trying to practice on them with the help of these so-called 'leaders', it would mean a punitive cut in workers' wages and even higher profits for the employers.
The National Institute of Economic and Social Research has predicted that there will be further rises in prices this year from 14 to 18per cent, more unemployment of over a million, falling production and a wider trade gap. The CBI is calling for a spirit of sacrifice – on the part of workers of course.
This critical situation will be used by the Labour Government to smuggle back its own version of wage-freeze and anti-trade union measures. The blueprint for them already exists.
We workers will not have it. We will not let them use the fruits of our own victories as bribes to get us to renounce struggle.”
Later that year, in the 27 June issue, The Worker returned to the risks facing workers from the Social Contract and we re-print the perceptive opening and concluding paragraphs.
“The Labour Party is the major vehicle for the advancement of the corporate state; a fascist state rule which seeks to destroy the weapons of workers' struggle and to subjugate the working class. The Labour Party's pernicious role is to attempt to secure the acquiescence of the working class to its own enslavement. Every struggle in which British workers are involved today must be seen as not only a particular fight to defend their standard of living in a situation of capitalist-induced inflation, but also as part of the whole class's general fight against the imposition of the fascist measure of wages fixed by government fiat.
The substitution of a government incomes policy for collective bargaining was itself a major step in the developing of the corporate state. However, there can be no doubt that the Labour Government wants something much firmer in the way of guaranteed wage restraint.
All these moves, TUC strengthening of the 'social contract', 'concern' for the lower paid, cunningly devised threshold agreements, are just so many attempts to rob workers of a right they have to defend – the right to use their collective strength to wrest a living wage from those who exploit them. The right of collective bargaining, like emancipation of the working class, is not something which can be bestowed on us from high. It can only be won and maintained by our own continuous struggle.
Because of the growing strength of the working class and the increasing weakening of British capitalism, collective bargaining is a right the ruling class can no longer afford to concede us if the profit system is to survive. The struggle for it, therefore, is a revolutionary struggle – a necessary phase in our protracted war to smash a system based on profits rather than on human needs.”