But if the prospect for savage cuts in jobs is clear, unfortunately those who still want to work in a "mixed economy -the Labour lefts and the Communist Party —have no alternative answer. Their supposed solution to unemployment is import controls.
The TUC has called for import penetration ceilings' for each sector of industry, demanding import controls to save £1,350 million on the balance of payments. This, it is claimed, would save 250,000 jobs. The Cambridge Economic Policy Group has called for import controls to cut the rate of increase of imports of manufactured goods trom 10 per cent to 5 per cent a year. The saving on the balance of payments, it is claimed, would ensure that unemployment would fall to 900,000 by 1980.
The reality is that import controls provide no solution whatever and are a reactionary diversion from the real problems. The first and jobless. The principle of work-sharing with no loss of pay is a direct challenge to the union leadership, who will not even fight for their declared policy of the 35-hour week. Public works Against useless pleas to the Government to save jobs, workers can begin to initiate this process themselves through the opening of the books to impose a systematic work-sharing project and nationalisation on the basis of plans which controlled by the workforce themselves. books, nationalisation, workers public works; these are the real alternatives to the pro-capitalist polices of Healey and the reactionary utopias of the Labour left
Red Weekly 15 April 1976