Rank and file must press for nationalization

The Newsletter, vol. 8 no. 332, 8 February 1964 · scan page 1

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THAT is Labour going to do when it becomes the government in a few months time?

No socialist expected the Tories to do anything other than they have done over the past 13 years. They represent big business and have little interest in the future of the working class, apart from exploiting them for profit.

The Labour Party represents the working class and its organised section within the trade union movement. problems facing the movement are very real.

Working people need more houses, reductions in rents, full employment, control of industry and planning, in short, a socialist society. To get more houses would mean nationalizing the building industry and the land. To reduce rents would mean not only getting rid of the Tory Rent Act, but legislative measures to put an end to landlordism altogether.

Grabbed

There are over half a million unemployed and the Tory election boom is fast fading out: Industry after industry is being grabbed by the monopolists, a handful of whom hold the country to ransom.

Planning is impossible unless a Labour government nationalizes the basic industries and legislates for a system of workers' control, to operate a socialist plan in the interests of the nation as a whole.

Wilson will have none of these policies. He hedges on the question of nationalization, but everybody knows that he has no intention of extending it to any major industry.

Explosions

The Tory crisis at home is rapidly leading to explosions in the former colonial countries. Regiments of troops are now being flown to distant parts of Africa to suppress the struggle for freedom and independence which is gaining momentum as each day goes by. It used to be known as gunboat diplomacy in the old days. Nowadays is it known as 'aircraft carrier diplomacy.

It is well known that the Service Chiefs are preparing for conscription after the election, but, of course, neither the Tory nor the Labour Party will talk about it before the election. Wilson again evades this vital question.

Rejects

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