If you thought Labour's 12 million unemployed was bad just wait until Tory policy gets going.
First it was the three month ban on civil service and local government hiring. already a 5 per cent cut —a loss of 22,000 jobs in the civil service alone, Next for cutting are almost certainly the [460 million in regional development grants. For Scotland, the North West, Wales and many other areas this means the loss of tens of thousands of jobs. This is in a situation where unemployment, even on official figures, is already over 7 per cent in Scotland, 7%a per cent in Wales, and & per cent in the North and North East:
Next in line for attack are the job creation schemes. Over 170,000 workers are directly dependent on these. Tens of thousands more are kept off ihe dole queue producing the goods bought by workers on the joh chemes. These will all be under arrack Given job turnover that is For exumple, the last Labour goverument put E85 million into the intervention scheme for shipbuilding. This will how be for the chop All this is over and above the massive unemployme bill into the monetarist economic policies of Josep Howe, Thatcher and the other Tory Icaders The Tory alternative is supposed to be job creation ir the private sector. What private industry chinks about unemployment was shown very clearly in the last three months. Investment in machines and capital goods fell by 4 per cent and construction investment by 7 percent, The private sector will cut back jobs in the years to come, nor create them.
Labour's state handouts to private industry and their cuts in public spending were no solation to the crisis Only a massive programme of pubhe spending and nationalisation could restore the right to work. But under the Tories workers will be deliberately pushed onto the dole queue. That lesson has to be rammed home -between for that they involvement fighting for the Improvement of conditions in schools as falling rolls made that possible, the NUT shuts its eyes to school closures.
Instead of resourcing all schools so Could provide curriculum, the Labour Party allowed parents to be diverted into making choices based on school reputation.
1 hose ate policies we have to reverse in the battle against the Tones. Socialist Challenge 31 May 1979 page 5