TORY REFLATION WILL FAIL

THE HUGE BUDGET handouts to industry make impact the growth of mass unemployment in Britain. By allowing the free export of capital to the Common Market countries and other areas of cheap labour, the Budget may, in fact, eventually increase unemployment considerably.

March jobless figures out today are almost certain to be over the million mark and nothing Tory Chancellor Barber has done will bring them down.

Unemployment in Britain is part of the growth of recession throughout the capitalist world. It is the direct result of the international capitalist crisis and the breakdown of the post-war Bretton Woods monetary arrangements which tied the dollar to gold.

The possibility of reflating the economy through fiscal and monetary manipulations has ended as a result of President Nixon's August 15 decision to cease selling gold for dollars at the rate of $35 an ounce.

The 'stop-go' cycle of the 1950s and 1960s could take place because. there was an expanding international market and the value of paper money was, in the last analysis, guaranteed at the US Treasury.

But the enormous export of dollars which fed the boom finally devoured the US gold stock and Nixon was forced to cease gold sales.

In fact, it was Nixon's 1970 budget—a desperate attempt to inflate the US economy by running an unprecedented deficit -which finally brought the dollar down.

There is no longer any cermoney, with the result that tainty in the value of profits are falling or non-existent and far from increasing their investment employers are cutting it back.

Tuesday's Budget only makes it more certain that Britain will face a severe sterling crisis as the increased consumer-spending attracts more imports and the balance of payments and the foreign currency reserves are pushed into deficit.

This provides the Tories with an additional reason for contemplating an election in the next period. In order to win over sections of the middle class, Barber has adopted the traditional Tory stand-by of tax cuts.

But big-business circles remain sceptical about the prospects of economic recovery - a scepticism which is clearly SUBSCRIBE TOIWORKERS PRESS reflected in the columns of the capitalist press.

'The Guardian's' Victor Keegan wrote: 6 ...the last two Budgets, which were similarly welcomed by industry, have failed so far to bring about a significant increase in capital expenditure.' He adds: With industry generally... still faced with substantial surplus capacity, it is still an open question : whether companies will find it in their shareholders' interests to lay down more investment...

The balance of payments outlook is deteriorating, the international situation uncertain and the possibility of a stop period after the present go is still real. Industry has never had a greater incentive to invest. It remains to be seen the extent to which it will be taken up' Stock Exchange prices actually fell back when trading opened yesterday and there was no rush to buy shares.

The international crisis is also behind the desperate urgency of Tory preparations to enter the Common Market and gang up with the monopolists of W Germany and France against the workers of Europe.

Barber said his Budget was aimed at encouraging British industry to be 'efficient and forward-looking' in order to All organizer John Gray, press compete in the EEC. He laid heavy stress on the Hoey at yesterday's press conneed to increase productivity to ference. meet the Common Market. 'Our potential growth in productivity is greater than it was on any of those earlier occasions,' he said.

Perhaps the most importan art of the Barber package i the virtual abolition of controls will will give British capitalists free over investment overseas. This access to the low-wage countries of the Mediterranean, the Common Market, S Atrica and other extremely lucrative capital outlets.

British employers will now join the stampede to take advantage of cheap labour in these countries, using the threat of capital movement to intimidate the workers in Britain through the creation of more unemployment.

ENGINEERS at the Birmingham Battery factory have entered the second week of a strike in demand of the abandoned national claim. The 300 men walked out at lunch time last Wednesday when management failed to come up with an answer to their demands for a £6 a week rise, a 35-hour week and improved holiday and overtime payments.

Trafalgar uare bal trapAIL officer Eamonn McCann and Kate ANTI-INTERNMENT League organizer John Gray announced yesterday. that the League has decided not to try to break the Tory government's ban on the use of Trafalgar Square next Sunday.

Instead, he said, the upwards of 20,000-strong demonstration Will march past the Square into the Strand to a meeting at the Temple.

The reason for the decision not to become involved in a confrontation with the police is because the AIL believes that the 1 Ministry of Environment's ban raises much broader issues than just the Irish question.

The fact that the government had given only nine days' notice of the ban was a crude attempt to lure demonstrators into a trap, Gray said.

Eamonn McCann, All press officer said: 'This is part of the growing pattern of repression under the Tory government.

He added that he could see a situation in Britain in the future where the Tory government would be initiating a ban not just on Irish organizations, but on other anti-Tory organizations. • SEE DEMO ADVERT, p. 12.

JOIN THE'SLL FORMS P. 11 WE STILL have not yet reached our half-way mark. We must not waste a moment in the struggle to raise our Appeal Fund this month. Let's take action immedlately.

One thing remains clear about Barber's budget. Nothing s ottered to assist the over a million unemployed. The Tory government continues to launch its attacks against the working class.

vital than ever in this fight. Help us therefore with a great effort to raise our March Fund. We know you have never let us down, 80 go all out today. Raise as much as you can. Rush all your donations to :

March Appeal Fund 186a Clapham High St London, SW4 7UG.

BOOK ATTACKS WILSON Lord Robens, the former Labour minister who presided over the wholesale pit closures of the 1960s, attacks Harold Wilson and other leaders of the last Labour government in his book out today on his ten years as NCB chairman. Robens, who has now moved into big business as director of a number of firms, says: 'When the knives are out in the labour movement they are used with some force and that is when you need friends to protect your back from your supporters of yesterday.' A review of his book-'Ten Year Stint' -turn to the centre pages.

CLASS JUSTICE THE JAILING of 34-year-old Matthew Lygate, the former chairman of the Maoist organization in Scotland, for bank robbery was a vicious act of class The Socialist Labour League does not condone adventures such as bank robberies, because they tend to separate and isolate leadership from the mass of the working class and thus play into the hands of the class enemy. We couldn't care a moral hoot, however, if every bank in the country were robbed tomorrow, because the essence of all banking, like capitalism, is legal robbery. But such robbery wouldn't solve a AROUND-THE=WORLD