CHEAP LABOUR

EDITOR OF 'KEEP LEFT' Strong police action coupled with degrading and diciplinary treatment is on the way for thousands of unemployed youth in the country.

This can be the only concluSIOn drawn TONI government from experimental plans to put its work scheme into operation.

The scheme, initiated by the National Association of Youth Clubs, starts working this month in eight of Britain's high-unemployment areas.

At the same time London magistrates have called on the Tory government to break the 'Saturday afternoon routine' of youth and open up temporary detention centres at weekends in all major towns.

They say the centres would be one of the 'most valuable and east costly weapons the limited armoury provided by the penal system for dealing with young offenders.

And on Merseyside an appeals court judge has said youth should sent to prison for long periods, regardless of their Lord Justice Lawton said youngsters would not be excused from prison because they were under The sooner realized they were in grave risk of being sent to prison 'for long time', the better it would be for "law and order' in Britain.

The experimental work scheme was announced towards the end of last year when the Department of Employment agreed to inject £|m to make the idea possible.

Cynically referred as the 'community industry', it will employ around 60 youth in each area to do work of 'social value'.

The operation not to provide employment for school. leavers jobless youth. Its object is to train them to accept the situation created by the Tory government.

E. Balmer, deputy co-ordinator of the scheme, says the operation is aimed at stimulating youngto do 'reasonably imaginSLeIS ative' jobs.

'It is not going to solve any unemployment The told Worker that's for sure, Workers Press. "This was not the reason TOr choosing high-unemployment areas. We want youth, both boys and girls, to work in "real industry"

'A great deal of work needs be done on the environment.' So local authorities in some of Britain's most depressed areasgovernment calls them 'development areas—will be provided with a cheap labour force to do work which other workers have refused.

The scheme will ensure the streets are clean and the gutters cleared of filth.

All the 'community' work will be done in co-ordination with a The industrar will be ruin uke any other, with a 'code of LUll industrial practice similar to that of any good employer'.

The eight areas chosen are Newcastle, Sunderland, Teesside, Liverpool and Mexborough dred f S Yorkshire. In Wales it wil e centred on Newport and SV Monmouthshire. Iwo more areas for. Scotland have not yet been announced.

OFFENCES National co-ordinators were chosen last month. This month they will move into the regions to appoint administrators and 'group leaders'.

he fact that the scheme wil mploy only about 400 youth i each locality is itself dubious. What it could create is a small group social conscience and isolated Social conscience ana Isolated from the militancy which prevails in places with soaring unemployment. Compulsory labour service is a reminded of Hitler's method of dealing with youth (top) In the 1930s. Bottom: Saturday mornIng police.

And this operation is to become effective within " an atmosphere of increasing police harass of the speh of cettres réferred to by the London magistrates are already in operation in London and Manchester.

This cheap form of detention 'caters' for youth who have committed 'anti-social' offences. These, according to the magistrates, include breaches of probation, hooliganism, breaches of peace, failure to pay fines and some traffic offences.

In short, the Tories are out to enforce a violent discipline on streets and a humiliating servility in the factories and the public schemes which they create.

The work scheme reminds one of the compulsory labour service created by • Hitler for German