THE CITY went into deep gloom after Norman Lamont's budget, both because it was not an election winner and because it does nothing to get British capitalism out of its slump.
The economic tigures are catastrophic. There are now officially 2.6 million people out of work, and in reality many more.
Two thousand people lose their jobs every day. Investment is at an all-time low, making eventual recovery much more difficult.
The recession is estimated to have cost £100 billion in lost production. And in a few years the public borrowing account has gone from a surplus, to a deficit or an astoundink ceo outlone The real balance sheet of 13 years of Tory government can now be seen. When the Tories 300 Club came to power in 1979, unemon, or 4.1 per cent, as opposed to 9.4 per cent today. Average economic growth has been a meagre 1.7 per cent per year.
These figures have to be seen in the light of two things. First, during the mid-1980s the economy went through a speculative boom, as a result as the expansion of the US economy and world trade.
Oil revenue
Without that the economic figures would have been truly catastrophic. Second, Britain has been the beneficiary, North Sea oil, bringing in billions of tax revenue each year.
The Tories can claim to have achieved two things. First, productivity i per worker has creased dramatically. But this has been achieved mainly by cutting the number of workers, and not by expanding produc Between 1979 and today the number of workers in manutac turing industry has declined from 4.7m to 2.4m.
But the Tories have achieved one trunk - a arastic cut in th number of days lost through strikes. Last ycar it was 800,000 ays, as opposed to nearly 3l million in 197% What all this adds up to is that the successive Tory strategies - privatisation, anti-union laws, monetarism, tax none of them has stemmed the decline and crisis of British capitalism.
Overall Tory economic polLeading anti-poll tax activist Tommy Sheridan was jailed last week for six months, when three judges upheld a sentence meted out in January. Sheridan's sentence does not arise from non-payment of the poll tax, but from his attendance at a warrant sale organised by Strathclyde's Labour council.
The council ordered sheriff's officers to carry out the sale of a non-payer's property, but fearing mass protests got a court order banning Tommy Sheridan rom attending Undeterred, Tommy Sheridan attended the warrant sale and tore up the court order in front of the crowd. The judges said that he had carried out a Taorant and aculated breach of the court order banning him from the sale.
Campaigners have already colected thousands of signatures calling for his release, and plan a big Semonstration in Glasgow on 28 March Sheridan is continuing with his plans to be the Scottish Miltant Labour candidate in Glasgow Pol ock construency Meanwhile four people have been convicted of riot or violent disorder as a result of an anti-poll tax demonstration in Colchester two years ago. The four wil be sentenced on Monday 6 Apri at Norwich Crown Court; and 13 others have yet to be tred on riot charges.
The case arises from a demonstration of over 2,000 in March 1990 which was attacked by police asing horses and dogs. Activists claim é was a premeditated and deliberate assault.
• Picket Norwich Crown Court on sentenc. ing ody, o april, swim, bishopsgere, norwich • Messages of support to Tommy Sheridan should be sent to Civil 292, Saughton Prison, Edinburgh: fax 031 455 7247. icy has been deeply recessionary. This was disguised in the mid-1980s by the financial and housing boom, itself dependent on the US debt-led economic exPansion But once that receded, after the November 1987 stock market crash, the recessionary charemerged. emerge from slump in the fore secable future.
Tory attacks on unemploy ment and social security benefits have made each downward people become unemployed they have been thrown into ever-deeper destitution, with ployment benefit to spend than they did in 1979. spending and industrial production have been forced British memberAddress. ship of the Exchange Rate Mechanism reinforces press ures towards slump. By being in the ERM Britain is forced to maintain the value of the pound by attracting overseas financial Todo that it has to keep interrowing for investment and spending very expensive, thus holding back economic re The mid-1980s boom made sure that the downturn which followed would be very severe. Because it was based on low interest rates, huge borrowing ana the nouse price boom, pud licand private debt rose to enormous proportions.
repayment is now an and local government, firms and houscholds. Once again, the burden of debt inhibits economic expansion.
If the Tory economic experiment has led to greater slump and decline, what is the under lying reason?
course, Britain has suffered from economic crisis world-wide, in 1975-5, 1979-81 and again since 1989. But that is the not the essence of the matter. British capitalism has been in decline vis-a-vis its main capitalist rivals for a century Indeed Thatcherism emerged because it proposed a radical new way for the capitalist class to break out of that dechine, but a combinaton of so cial engineering and economic restructuring, all based on inflicting big defeats on the labour movement.
John Major is in trouble be cause the balance sheet of Thatcherism is economic failure Please send me my EREE election special copy of socialist including my "Maggie Major poster. Return to: socialist, FREEPOST, London N1 9BR
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