PRICES & INCOMES ACT

the war, laid the basis for a post-war boom period. When the war ended the United States proceeded from this powerful position to print, on the basis unprecedented gold reserves in Fort Knox, billions of paper dollars.

UNPRECEDENTED With these paper dollars, through the Marshall Plan, the United States extended her financial political influence throughout western Europe by propping up the nations ravaged by war. The result of all this was an unprecedented boom period from the early 1950s to the mid-1960s.

During this time the working class in Britain was not asleep; they took advantage of the clamour for production to organize in the factories, consolidating their trade unions and building a powerful movement on the shop floor geared to the drive for wages. As a result of this the standard of living for large sections rose more rapidly than in any other period. But this was system of boom, it is a system of booms and slumps.

Under capitalism the slump is a normal part of the system and already by 1964 the boom was slowing down. The flood of Us paper dollars, which had engulfed the capitalist world and generated the boom, now turned into its opposite. No longer was it the stabilizing force. Massive inflation had drained Fort Knox of vast quantities of gold. Now this flood of paper dollars which was providing the bulk of currency for international trade had no value behind it. In fact the stabilizer now became the main source of instability.

A piece of paper with 'I promise to pay' written on it retains value so long as everyone believes sneezes and the spectre of a massive slump again begins to haunt the capitalist world. Capitalism now faced the question how to attempt to stabilize itself.

The answer on the face of it is quite simple. Since the root of the crisis lay • in the fact that the working class, through their union organization, had taken too much away from the employers in the boom period, all the employers had to do was take it back with a bit more besides, and transfer it back into the banking houses of capitalism. This, of course, while being a simple answer in theory is the tallest order of all in practice. Large sections of the working class in Britain had tasted the fruits of the boom period. The fruits of what the forces of production could do when released even for a short period of time and even though remaining distorted by private ownership. These sections would not let go easily the things they had gained in struggle and the organizations built to win them needed to be turned to their protection.

When the Labour government came to power in 1964 our movement the Socialist Labour League and the Young Socialists—was alone in saying clearly that a massive crisis of capitalism was developing and that the Labour government would be a government of crisis and would attack the working class in order to attempt to solve the crisis on behalf of the employers and make the working class pay. This analysis proved to be absolutely correct. As soon as Wilson came to power he began the job and set out to reduce the living standards of the working class. The problem was how could it be done.

SUBTLE METHODS

Ideally, capitalism would like to use force to do this job, that is the simplest and most effective way. But capitalism can only reduce wages by THE PASSING of the Prices and Incomes Act in 1966 instituted the wage freeze which held down workers' pay while the cost of living rapidly rose. At the same time, the Act put on a statutory basis the National Board for Prices and Incomes (PIB). This body, consisting of employers' representatives, trade union officials and labour relations professors from the universities, was to examine wage claims and to report as to whether or not they were justified.

In each case the PIB rejected the demands for basic increases, saying that they did not conform to the wage freeze and that they did not conform to the government's ruling that the workers could only get increased pay by accepting more exacting work or major changes in working practice. The PIB went on to publish reports recommending the introduction of all the most recent methods of exploitation under cover of 'productivity deals' for every industry.

Railmen were to be prepared to overlap jobs and do any kind of work on railway stations; busmen were to drive faster, spend less time at stops and to agree to the single-manning of buses; all craftsmen were to accept an end to demarcation between jobs and the elimination of mates. Airport workers must accept re-grading and 'realistic manning standards'; firemen were to be put on call for longer periods; factory and power station workers were to accept flexibility and mobility; journalists were to undergo job analysis to increase their efficiency. Nurses were to be paid on an hourly basis, to work revised shifts and accept that numbers be made up with part-time labour; university teachers were to accept a payment-by-results system; and piecework was to be driven out of the motor industry completely, and replaced with Measured-Day Work.

In effect, the Labour government has set out to change the work and increase the speed of the job of every worker without exception. In every one of these reports on 'workers' pay' and in the last five-year period this official government backing for these systems has given immense impetus to the rapid development of work-study consultancy firms. National conferences and seminars are held constantly to devise new methods of regulating the worker at work. This is nothing more than the spreading of intensive methods of working into every aspect of work and into every second of the working day.

Large numbers of psychologists and professors of industrial relations have been employed by the government to develop ways of talking these