Sharp rise in cost of living ...and worse to come

decadence. It is backed up by a prostitute press, whose millionaire owners year after year vie with each other in order to get their names on the honours list.

As the Queen and her husband took their plane for Western Germany, this millionaire press rapidly switched away from the Tonypandy mine disaster to a spate of patriotic propaganda. From being news on page one of the morning newspapers, Tonypandy slipped into pages 12 and 14 of the evening dailies.

Of course, the miners of Tonypandy in 1940 had no plane transport ready to take them to Canada. They would have had to languish, the same as other members of the labour movement, in concentration camps, and perish as millions did in Eastern Europe and Germany.

So far as the Fleet Street monopolists are concerned the Tonypandy disaster is now forgotten. All they can think of at the moment is an obscene glorification of the old Nazi and British Royal family fraternity.

Now, as in the Second World War, it is class against class. The ruling class and its royal servants against the working class, both of Britain and Western Germany. THIS week the official index of retail prices showed its biggest monthly increase for ten years—a rise of 2.I points.

Brown, Gunter and Co., with their friends in the trade union official machine, are busy insisting that workers must moderate their wage demands, keeping them below 34 per cent, while price increases have already increased the cost of living by more than that amount since the Labour government came into office last October.

The real meaning of the government's 'incomes policy" is now making itself clear. Wages are to be held down while prices increase to ensure the maintenance of high profits.

Index rising

One building workers' leader at the union conference this week acclaimed the incomes policy as 'socialism', because it helped to bring up the lower-paid workers.

On the contrary, the Labour government's policy helps the operation of capitalist profit-making.

Prospects for the future are luch worse, if the employers nd their government are llowed to proceed. The Financial Times' of Wednesay noted:

'All the signs are that the Trades Council condemns YS expulsions MEMBERS of Southall Trades Council have conemned the expulsion of trio 'oung Socialists by the SouthIl Labour Party.

Gwilym Evans, Trades Council 'resident, opposed . the expulions, which he called undemoratic. Other members said: Today we need these young ellows, who in their opinion had ieen steamrollered out of the arty.

The Trades Council meeting vas an indication of the growing pposition in the unions to the olicies of the right wing and of he growing support for the foung Socialists.

The two Young Socialists were xpelled without notice. They vere not informed of the Labour ›arty General Management Comnittee meeting which expelled hem, although both were delesates.

At the following GMC meeting hey, and another Young Socialist who was a delegate, were refused idmittance. A reference back of he Minutes of the previous neeting dealing with the expul¡ions was defeated by 4 votes to 3. All the other delegates ibstained.

Roy Smith case

man acquitted TWENTY-FOUR-year-old fitter, Richard Hughes, of the White City Estate, Shepherd's Bush, London, was found not guilty at the Old Bailey on Thursday of wounding 17-year-old Roy Smith with intent to murder him outside a Young Socialists dance in Barlby Road, Kensington, in February.

index, which paused momentarily in February for the first time since last autumn, will continue its upward rise.

Among dearer items yet to be reflected are postal charges, electricity, tyres and footwear,' In other words, the figures do not tell the whole truth. At the same time the bus companies announced that in response to the recent busmen's pay award they will increase fares.

All these are basic items which affect the working class directly, but make only very petty differences to the upper classes.

Burdens

These burdens upon the workers and their families must be fought tooth and nail in the trade unions and factories, in the context of a fight for socialist policies in every section of the labour movement. So long as the capitalists own the property, and the state machine is used on their behalf, then the system of exploitation must come first.

By the end of the year a growing measure of unemployment, resulting from the recent drastic credit restrictions, will be used to hold down and even reduce wages.

On Tuesday the leading AP firms met and announced that rigid restrictions would be placed on instalment buying of cars, electrical goods, and so on. Quite apart from the direct blow at the working-class buyer, this will cut down the volume of production, and hundreds of thousands of industrial workers face the sack by the winter.

Printing inquiry

Meanwhile Brown orders an inquiry into the pay award to printing workers, and does not even mention in the terms of reference the profits being made in the industry. Minister of Labour Gunter agrees with the Tories in the House of Commons that the closed shop is an interference with individual liberty - liberty to weaken the working class against the boss.

Every day brings home more clearly the need to sack these capitalist agents who occupy the seats of governmental power in the name of the working-class movement. An emergency Labour conference must be called, to decide on policies to take the wealth from the bosses and to forge a new working class leadership.