Up, up and up goes the cost of living

HE TIMES' has called for a 4-per-cent increase in income tax in next Tuesday's budget, with no increase in company taxation. wants a cut in the budget deficit of at least £1,000m with further retrenchment over the next two years, and also a 'rein back' in the growth of home demand by the equivalent of about 1.5 per cent of national output. lis is to be taken out of the pockets of the working class and would also create a minimum level of unemployment_ot between 500,000 and 600,000. 'The price must be paid for the self-indulgence of the last two years,' says the leading Tory newspaper. orkers who have been struggling against rising costs, unemployment. and low wages are aware of little "self-indulgence' on their part. 'The Times' call is an intensification of the capitalist attack on the working class. Workers' real wages are being deliberately driven down. sing interest rates over the past 12 months now amount to an increase of f1 a week per family in the cost of living. And worse is to follow. In 1972 the banks' base lending rates rose from 4.5 per cent to 7.5 per cent. This year they have moved up to 9.5 per cent and the chief executive of one of the big four banks-Natwest-has forecast a further rise. North Vietnam seking 'ceasefire' assurances US keeps GIs in Vietnam THE UNITED STATES yesterday halted all further troop withdrawals from South Vietnam after Hanoi had said it would release no more American prisoners of war until it received assurances about the cease-fire agreement.

The dispute, coming only one month after the agreement was signed in Paris, indicates that the deal is close to breakdown. US Secretary of State William and North Vietnam's Nguyen Duy Trinh held crisis talks with Saigon and NLF representatives the question in Paris yesterday.

Outward flights of US servicemen from South Vietnam were stopped dawn yesterday, according to US military sources Saigon. There are nearly 12,000 GIs still in the country.

North Vietnam has SO far freed 163 of the 562 American prisoners of war due to be released under the ceasefire terms. But it has pointed out that release of North Vietnamese and National Liberation Front prisoners and civilian detainees in the south is not going ahead as planned.

Hanoi has also accused the South Vietnamese forces (still effectively commanded by American 'advisers') of making 'nibbling' attacks on areas held in the south by the liberation forces.

Many villages which raised the red, blue and gold NLF flag at the time of the ceasefire have been bombarded by government artillery and attacked from the air by the US-equipped South Vietnamese Air Force.

The US claims that the release its prisoners from North Vietnam is conditional only on withdrawal of American troops from the south.

Hanoi points out, however, that the South Vietnam regime is a puppet of the US and that the US must take responsibility for its ceasefire violations.

The clash between the main signatories has created animpossible situation for the 13-party conference Paris which supposed to guarantee the terms of the ceasefire in Indo-China.

The North Vietnamese and NLF have apparently succeeded in excluding the United Nations, one of the 13 parties, from the talks. When the drafting committee tative, ester daom North the UN representative, Vietnam had strongly objected, absent.

BY Hanoi has rejected a Canadian proposal that Kurt Waldheim, the UN secretary-general, should be empowered by the conference to circulate reports on ceasefire violations and to have the right to reconvene the international meeting.

The fate of the Vietnam ceasefire terms now looks almost as murky as the agreement reached in Laos on February 21. Within 20 hours of signing, it was announced in Vientiane that US planes had bombed liberation forces' positions.

The raid was flown in response to a direct plea from Laotian puppet• ruler Prince Souvanna Italy: Union bureaucrats play down strike One of the 'General Strike' demonstrations in Italy on Tuesday-this one's in Mian. THE 14 million workers who participated in the staggered General Strike and demonstrations throughout Italy on Tuesday were told quite bluntly by union leaders that the only sure driven e Andressi on the Andreotti government for a better deal.

In Firenze, CGIL union secretary Lama accused the government of 'supporting the actions of the employers'.

Storti, the CISL general secretary, told a mass meeting in Terni the workers' struggle Yet last year all the big four-Lloyds, drawing its bacon subsidy-again under Barclays, Midland and Natwest — re- EEC arrangements.

ported record profits, up by 30 to 50 Meanwhile cheese prices are being kept per cent. artificially high in order to maintain This week the base rate of interest of profits. Prices are still as high as last the finance houses went up to 10 per summer's peak, even though stocks are celll, tourth COTSCCIUVC monthly at a record 84,700 tons. Some English rise. The base rate has doubled from because it has been held off the market Societies are almost certain to follow in order to keep the price up. English suit. cheddar is now selling at 33p to 38p This means an increase in hire purchase months ago.

payments, mortgages and bank loan 1 April 1. with the introduction of interest charges. Prices are being consciously forced upwards by government policy and by gross profiteering. The latest food price rise is in the retail price of sugar. It will go up by tp per 2 lb bag in the next few days because the Ministry of Agriculture has cut the sugar subsidy from £15 to £10 per ton. This is the first of three steps for phasing out the subsidy altogether by June 30 in accordance with the agreement made by the European Common Market Agricultural Ministers in January. he wholesale price of bacon will go up by at least Sp a pound because the Ministry of Agriculture is also withEDITOR offered a solution to the 'difficult economic situation' by increasing demand.

At Taranto, CISL secretary, scalia called for the 'collaboration of all the active forces in the country to help economic and social development.

The economic crisis in Italy, the growth of fascism and the grave dangers facing the Italian trade union movement were far from the lips of union bureaucrats intent on restraining the mass movement.

They take. their Phouma who clearly realizes that there is now no other way he can cling to power except under a huge US air umbrella.

The fact that the US so rapidly broke the Laos ceasefire is not really very surprising. According to "Time' magazine, the agreement 'gives the communist Pathet Lao just about everything it has asked for ending the shooting.

'The communists will be allowed to retain the land they now control, which is about thirds of the country (but only one-third of the population) other third of the land wi ill be governed by a new regime tiative from the class-collaborationist, • counter-revolutionary policy of the Italian CommunIst Party, the architect of the one-day protest strike and the pursuit of structural reform.

Enrico Berlinguer, Its secretary, told a Press conference at the King Street headquarters of the British Communist Party on Tuesday that there were no basic differences between the communist parties Europe.

The CPs were all against the multinational companies, even though the British CP disagreed about the cheddar is in danger going bad a pound, nearly twice as much as 18 Value-Added Tax, basic necessities like shoes and clothes will increase in price by about 10 per cent. And the government has the power to increase the rate by 2.5 per cent in the first year of operation and then to make changes of up to 20 per cent in any subsequent year. " driving up the cost of living in this way, while holding down wages under its state pay laws, the government is seeking to provoke confrontations with the working class. Yet Labour frontbench spokesman Mr Peter Shore said on Tuesday that it 'would be wrong to dismiss out of hand' the government's pay and prices policy! Inflation had to communists holding half of the key offices. Each side will have veto power. ..:

The magazine quotes one top puppet administrator to the effect that Souvanna capitulated on every point except one—that he should be Prime Minister-and he didn't even get that in writing.' It adds: 'As the agreement was signed at Souvanna's residence, only the communists were smiling, and the chief communist negotiator sardonically "thanked the American ambassador for all his help"!

This agreement lasted a day. How long can mains of the Vietnam continue to operate? acceptance of the mon Market. 'Fifteen years the Italian CP against the EEC, today it accepts de facto reality. 'But the acceptance of a de facto reality does not mean that we do not want change, and that the communists do not want to go beyond the limits of the EEC for co-operation throughout Europe.' British CP secretary John Gollan replied: 'We are completely against the European Community, but we are not against Europe are less than what receasefire ago, was which as a be stopped, said Shore, and the government 'had taken the first step'. Its state pay laws, according to this former contributor to Universities and Left Review', , marked 'an important advance in government thinking' hile the Labour front-bench lines up with the Tories, the trade union leaders and the Stalinists play into Heath's hands by permitting the working class to dissipate its strength and confidence in isolated, piece-meal battles. Socialists and the International Marxist Group, who shout for militancy while leaving out the political question of a united struggle to bring down the government, assist the Stalinists and Labourites to divide and mislead the class.

In the chaos that such misled, isolated struggles would create, the Tories would seize on the alarm of the middle class to build up right-wing forces for smashing the working class altogether. The urgent task now is to unite the working class by demanding that the trade union leaders mobilize a General Strike to create the political and industrial conditions for forcing the Tory government to resign. That is why the Socialist Labour League has called for a mass lobby of next Monday's special TUC. We urge all workers to join this lobby BRIEFLY • BRIEFLY GOLD increased by over a dollar an ounce on the London bullion market yesterday, continuing the rapid rise which began on Tuesday. It was fixed in the morning at $85.30 an ounce, almost $5 up on the price when the markets opened on Monday. The rise in the price is symptomatic of a general flight from paper money.

VIOLENT tension in the campaign leading to next Sunday's Congressional elections in Chile broke out on Tuesday evening in the southern town of Puerto Varas in clashes between the police and left-wing organizations. In the two months run-up to the elections, 1,000 people have been injured and seven killed.

The Christian Democratic and Socialist Parties have announced that they will both organize victory, rallies after the polling booths close on Sunday, thus contravening the ban imposed by Interior Minister General Prats.

SPANISH military court has sentenced a young Basque, Venancio Luluaga, to 15 years imprisonment on charges of damaging the Candy Club Bar in San Sebastian in a petrol bomb raid. Luluaga has also to pay a £12,000 fine. His defence told the Santander court the charge was a complete frame-up.

AMERICAN diplomats are expected in Peking shortly to open the 'liaison office' agreed upon during Dr Henry Kissinger's visit. It is expected to be located in a new embassy quarter built since the "cultural revolution'. The mission will be headed by a diplomat of ambassadorial rank. 'We're setting up an embassy in Peking and simply calling it by another name an elated American offc! al exclaimed.

LISBON'S criminal court sentenced five young Portuguese to prison sentences of from two to six years on Tuesday. They were convicted of being members of a secret cell of the Portuguese Communist Party. The prosecution claimed that they were planning 'armed insurrection with Portuguese emigrants in Europe.

FRENCH airline pilots continued their two-day strike yesterday in protest against the military take-over of air traffic control. Air traffic controllers are demanding the right to strike-denied by a law of 1964-and wage increases. The government refuses to negotiate and has declared the strikers 'outlaws'.

THE DOLLAR was at its parity floor in Holland, forcing the Dutch central bank : to buy dollars to support the guilder rate. There was also some selling of dollars on the Frankfurt and Paris exchanges.

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