Editorial: The Crisis and prices and incomes (1966)

Editorial from the September 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

It was clear at the time that many Labour supporters, in their jubilation at the victory last March, were overlooking an inconvenient fact. Coming back to power with a decisive majority meant that they had to carry the can; there could be no more excuses.

But of course excuses have been made; they have been falling' thick and fast in the latest financial crisis which British capitalism finds itself in.

Harold Wilson has blamed the panic on to the seamen’s strike; the increase in the price of copper; the Vietnam war; the activities of foreign financiers. He summarised all his excuses in the most famous of them all—the government, he said, had been “blown off course”.

This must have reminded many people of the excuse used by the lamentable Labour government of 1929/31— that they had been struck by an economic blizzard. It is true that capitalism is like a treacherous sea where sudden tempests sweep from over the horizon. But no one should forget Labour’s persistent claim that they could control the economic weather and navigate the ship into blue skies and calm waters.

The facts stand clear. The Labour Party won power in 1964 on the slogan Let’s Go; now they stand for stagnation and recession. They said they would organise a “planned growth of incomes”; now they are imposing a wage freeze. They are the successors of the Labour Representation Committee, which was formed to promote the interests of trade unions in Parliament; now they are pushing through the first openly anti-union legislation in over forty years.

Many union leaders have expressed angry astonishment at the Prices and Incomes Bill, as if this was something the Labour Party had only just thought of. But they had the experience of the Attlee government to guide them, as well as the speeches of Labour leaders when they were out of power:

No one can afford to dodge the issue. Some people prefer to call it wage restraint . . . Labour wants to be able to prevent the total money income rising faster than the total production . . . (James Callaghan, Labour Party Conference, 1962).

We in the Labour Party have the right to ask for this (incomes) policy because we are willing to create conditions in which it can be established . . .We can make the national appeal that is needed because, for us, an incomes policy is the condition of sustained growth . . . (Harold Wilson. Birmingham 19/1/64.)

It is now up to the union leaders to ponder on their continued support for the Labour government—and for their, members to judge them on it.

What of the future?

Whether the unions accept the provisions of the Bill, or whether they try to lake advantage of the same sort of market forces which the government say will be allowed to work unhindered on prices, it is clear that more storms lie ahead.

Perhaps the officials of some of the big unions which have declared that they will ignore, or oppose, the Bill will find themselves in prison for contempt of court after refusing to pay fines imposed under the Bill’s provisions.

It would be fitting if a Labour government, with a long history of anti-trade union activity behind it—including the prosecution of strikers—should end up by making a martyr out of Frank Cousins.

We can look forward, in the days ahead, to the similarity between the Labour and Conservative parties becoming more and more obvious. In the current crisis, this similarity has already impressed almost every political commentator; perhaps it will also get through to some of their readers, and encourage them to grasp some important facts.

Both Labour and Tory parties stand for capitalism. The differences between them are superficial: both aim at running the capitalist social system.

One difference between them is that the Labour Party have claimed to be a Socialist organisation. Events have exposed this notion for all time.

Socialism will be a society of co-operation and freedom, where men will control their environment and really be able to plan their affairs. This is a world away from the sordid turmoil of class interests and economic anarchy in which the Labour Party are enmeshed.