THE CURRENT wave of student occupa aic vorce uvason. munc erminer respass Bill - which is backed by the Labour Government - becomes law in November.
The Campaign Against a Criminal Trespass Law responded swiftly to the occupations with telegrams of support and speakare urging occupations to make 'Kill the Trespass Bill' a public demand; and the CACTL National Committee meeting on Saturday decided to print a special leaflet suor-Borovo aur or uonnauso euoneu or The Bill would mean that anyone in a student or worker occupation could be arrested - and imprisoned for up to two years — if they entered the occupation against the wishes of a security guard. The offence would be called violence for nitions of English this includes simply outnumbering the security guard.
The Bill makes all occupations and tions would be illegal and subject to immed- squats public places for the purpose of police searches and arrests without warrant for 'trespassing with an offensive weapon.
With this offence the police could frame anyone and put tem inside for two years The Bill is being smuggled onto the ers at occupation meetings. CACTL speakers back of the working class behind a smokescreen of squatter-bashing. The Bill ever has a clause to stop squatters from moving in to ved in nomes. when the tacts o that matter are that every one of the press horror stories claiming such things have turned out to be lies. They are lies that the labour movement must take up and expose as part of a campaign to 'Kill the Trespass Information/speakers from CACTL, c/o 6 Bowden Street, London SE11 (01-289 3877). duce a retraining programme for teachers without jobs.
Jarvis was trying to these teachers could be given jobs if they were retrained for "shortage' subjects like technical studies, etc.
are 3½ million children being taught in classes over 35 and 58,000 teachers are heeded to bring down the class size to 30. The Jarvis plan could at best find work for 3,000. It is a pathetic attempt to cover up the NUT leadership's spinelessness.
provide the basis for winning jobs for the student teachers. They should act on it.
BERNARD REGAN
The endless cry of the Labour Government, of the press, and of the employers is that high wages cause inflation. According to this argument, wage increases are self-defeating as every extra penny in the wage packet is put onto prices, and so workers are no better off. The sensible policy is supposedly to accept wage controls and then watch prices go down. As this is the most widely used argument in favour of wage controls, it is vital that militants are able to nail the lies of this argument.
Actually, even the slightest moment's or ne calm unar ware increases are seldefeating because they push prices up as fast, or faster, than pay packets. Wages are not at all the only cost price making up the price of goods. In fact the economists Glyn and Sutcliffe calculate that the price of goods is made up roughly as MOLLOWS Imports and purchases from agr culture Purchases from nationalised industries Depreciation Profits Wages Thus wages only make up about £60 of the cost price of every £100 of goods.
in such a suRdon suDe waze mcreases could never push up prices as rast as (let alone taster tan) wage rates A 10 per cent increase in wages, for example, would at most only push up prices by 6 per cent. Even if the price of everything else, including imports and the held-down prices of nationalised industries, went up by the same amount as wages, and the amount of profit remained the same, then a wage increase of 10 per cent could only put up prices by 9 per cent and workers would still DC DCLICE DEL MYTH But in the recent period it hasn't been une case tnal wages nave been going up and prices also going up but by less 60% non is much rigner in britain tan any Omer SmEar CoUnTy in March this year inflation was running at 21 per cent in Britain compared to 14 per cent in Italy, 10 per cent in France, and 5 per cent in West Germany. 3 Interпалопи companisons aosoruter rerute the argument that high inflation in Brimain is aue to nen waees But, it is sometimes argued, the problem is not that the absolute level of wages is too high but that workers are demanding too great an increase in wages. This is the line taken by Callaghan, for example, when he claims that sacrifice now' will make Britain a high wage economy. According to unis argument, intation is causea by waves axine too muen ormne nationa cake We're all in the same boat, chaps!
Wing of all in its horror is Chile, where for example, aner te coup to overtnrow Allende wages were savagely cut but price increases soared by more than 600 per cent6.
same picture, ror example, In August La wage treeze and inen, unt Decemer 1973, successive incomes policies. In According to the propaganda of the American Government, such falls in wages should have kept down prices. Instead, Red Weekly 10 June 1976 due to wage increases!' The United States shows exactly the keep down prices 1971 the Nixon Government introduced successive years wage settlements tumbled from an average 12 per cent in 1971 to 7 per cent in 1972 and 6 per cent in 1973 arus or the work ne Cass States to explain that this scale of price rises is But if wage increases are not responsible for inflation, what then is the purpose ol wage controls? As wages don't cause inflation, the aim certainly can't be to The real purpose of keeping down wages is to put up profits. The Government no longer even seriously bothers to conceal that this is the case. Callaghan has already announced in the House of Commons that the basic core of the Government's economic policy is the recovery and profitability of the private sector of British industry 10, It is to foster this increase in profits and not any supposed tall in prices. that the 1975 Government has slashed the living standwould increase six times as rapidly as Figures coming from abroad also show what is possible for capitalist pronts Dy holding down wages. In West Germany, where real wages have declined by 2-3 per cent in the last two years, it is predicted that profits will rise by 15 percent in 1976. In Japan, where living standards have also dropped sharply, profits are up by 50 per cent.
Most striking of all is the United - which shows with great elarity what the real aim of an incomes policy is. Here, as we have seen, wages under the Nixon incomes policy fell continuously while price increases shot up to lu per cent a year. While holding down real wages aid not noid down prices, nevertheless the incomes policy did its real capilaust loo ver wen which was to increase capitalist profits.
TRUTH While real wages plummeted, profits soared from soo billon in 1971, to $98 billion in 1972, to $127 billion in 1973.12 Furthermore, after the interrup tion of the slump of 1974-75, we can see the same process operating today. Ine wages or Cued states workers nave l gone up in the last year less than those -m any orner maor nauon m the wore It is American capitalists who have reaped the benefit, with profits this year up 85 per cent since mid 1975.1.
As always, wage controls have nothing to do with keeping down prices. But they have everything to do with keeping up ware contortes NEXT WEEK: Money - the mechanism KEFERENGES 1. Glyn & Sutcliffe, British Capitalism, Workers and the Profits Squeeze 2. Financial Times, 21 October 1975 3. The Economist, 22 May 1976. 4. Politics and Money, January-March 5. Gamble & Walton, Capitalism ir Crisis, p16.
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ASSAULT But why do we to do the
always have rowing?