LABOUR GURUS BACK THE TORY PAY CONTROLS

I view this (state pay) plan with admiration. For these new proposals in structure and conception are far superior to anything thought of, let alone put forward, in the days of George Brown or during the whole administration of Harold Wilson?

Professor Nicholas Kaldor Labour Party member and economics adviser to the Wilson government, "The Sunday Times' on October 8, 1972.

I hope that this bold government, which has already brought about more beneficent fiscal reforms than any since Gladstone's, will see it as an opportunity for constructive policy-making?

Professor John Vaizey, Labour Party member and education adviser to the Wilson government, in the 'Sunday Telegraph' on October 22, 1972.

Think of the academic luminaries who advise the Labour Party on economic policy and you think of Professor Nicholas Kaldor, Lord Balogh and Professor John Vaizey.

This trio have written more words of bourgeois economic 'analyses' than one cares to remember. As economic gurus over the past ten to 15 years they have filled hundreds of Times Publications like "The column inches in newspapers "Telegraph', 'Sunday Times' 'Observer, 'New Statesman' and 'The Listener'.

There was a period when their faces were rarely off the television screen and their views on the state of the world were heard from one end of Hampstead to the other.

When the Wilson government was elected in 1964 they moved into official and semi-official positions in Whitehall to bring about 'the white-hot, technological revolution'.

Kaldor and Balogh advised on taxation and the economy, Vaizey was at Anthony Crosland's elbow imparting various chunks of genius on 'education economics'. on the Today Kaldor and acesh sid economic affairs sub-committee chaired by shadow Chancellor of the l Exchequer Denis Healey and Vaizey belongs to the science and education subcommittee along with former party chairman Anthony Wedgwood Benn, deputy leader Edward Short, shadow minister and pro-Marketeer Shirley Williams, and Andrew Cunningham, Workers' the General and Municipal Union official named in the Poulson bankruptcy case.

In the past three weeks, two of these academics have emerged as vociferous supporters of the Heath state pay First of all Kaldor took a page in the 'Sunday Times' to propound the virtues of this Heath move towards corporatism. I view this plan with admiration, Kaldor said He went on: For these new proposals in structure and conception are far superior to anything ever thought of, let alone put forward, in the days of George Brown or during the whole administration of Harold Wilson.' Since this article appeared the Tory editorial writers on every capitalist newspaper have enthusiastically referred to the Labour adviser's remarks. He is being quoted up and down the country as the voice of reason to justify this vicious attack on the standard of living of millions of working-class families.

Kaldor has now been joined by Vaizey. In the extremely reactionary 'Sunday Telegraph' last weekend, Vaizey, Professor of Economics at Brunel University, lavished praise on the government for its economic policies — policies, incidentally, which have created the highest post-war levels of permanent unemployHe wrote about Anthony Barber's 'brilliant achievements' with the economy which 'means a very substantial rise in the standard of living for most families'.

Piling one ludicrous assertion upon another he goes on to welcome •Mr Barber's brilliant new tax scheme'-a reference to the pie-in-the-sky tax proposals which the Tories five years' time! into effect in Vaizey calls for a stepping up of the Tory policy to smash existing basic industries like coal, iron and steel: 'If modern methods were more widely adopted there would only be a third of the present labour force in iron and steel' and by the year 1990 only speleologists (cave men) need be the only people to go underground In these 'sensible' policies sees that 'alas, the dear old Labour Party is the reactionary party trying to save nasty jobs in disagreeable places, instead of reacting instructively to change'.

Vaizey has got so many things wrong in this single outburst. The Labour Party is not in principle opposed to the mass attack on the pits on the steel industry: witness the massive closures carried out chairman Lord Robens Boder ex-National Coal Board Labour and the 'reorganization' of the British Steel Corporation, which has meant the axing of more than 30,000 jobs.

The 'reactionaries' Vaizey is talking about are workers who are desperately fighting for the right to work. Vaizey would take away this right to work and thus take away their right to live. His cave-man economics end on a note which politically appropriate.

He says: 'By the way, the late and evil Hitler had a good Eschemie advisers to the Labou Party-Nicholas Kaldor (top) and John Vaizey. economic adviser. Before rearmament got under way in 1935 Schacht had reduced unemployment from 6 million to 2 million and strengthened the external balance by price and wage controls and expanding demand.

'Mr Nixon has done the same in Vietnam while ending the Vietnam war. So can Mr Barber here if he keeps it up.' Vaizey glibly tells us how Hitler brought down unemployment. He does not tell us the precise way he did it.

By 1935 the trade unions no longer existed in Germany. Hitler had destroyed all the basic workers' organizations. He had herded the workers into Nazi Labour Front headed by Dr Ley and the 'leaders' and militants into the concentration camps. The penalty for striking was death and wages