those policies which can lead the way to a society which answers basic human needs. Socialism is not an old discredited idea; it is an idea which has never been tried the only one which opens the way to a radically different A Programme of Action How could a Labour start the process of breaking the long crisis which Britain has been living through? The first thing it would need would be a programme of economic and social reconstrucSuch a programme would have to be baseu on a natonal economic plan or investment, industrial rebuilding and This ras eu reconstruco. would require the mobilisation of biltons or pounds. Inus any Labour government intent on a break with the nortes of capitalism woula nave to answer this first question: where would the money come from?
There are two answers: first, it is a HOS: damaging and socially irrational use Britain's telecommunications network is antiquated by modern standards. British Telecom should be renationalised, and Mercury nationalised, and a fibre optics national grid structed - capable of carrying all television, broadcasting and telecommunications signals.
The country's housing stock is inadequate and crumbling A vast programme of constructing local authority nousing is needed to smash the housing Thousands of schools and hospitals are talink to outs. Many need to be com pletely demolished and rebuilt. mous scheme. But the capital already Millions of new jobs would be created by such a programme, including hundreds of thousands of new obs in industry. Living standards The first requirement to solve the crisis of living standards isa national minimum wage at a level to ensure a decent standard of living and freedom from crippling debts. FALS first place the introduction of propor tional representation, the abolition of the Fiouse of Loras, and meastres to oring the police and legal system under demoRights of the oppressed Capitalism's crisis hits hardest the oppressed - women, black people, lesbians and gay men, people with disabilities. A socialist government would have to immediately introduce sweeping measures to break discrimination. These include:
• equal pay for women people and people with disabilities in education and employment • free abortion and contraception on demand • abolition of all immigration laws • measures to promote training and employment for people with ities, and to make transport and all public buildings and open spaces acessible • outlawing of discrimination of all cinds; on grounds of race, gender, sex ality, physical or mental : lisability or A Labour government with the most radical policies would be a broken reed bour movement. Addressing basic ist measures; they would be resisted every inch of the way by the capitalist class and its allies.
A socialist economic procramme would above all need the fight for wor kers owtny in the factories and workplaces; workers' control means first of all working cais supervision over the th plementation of an economic plan.
Dur capitast opposinon woura not De the only obstacie. At each stage the right wing and bureaucracy of the labour movement would try to sabotage socialist advance.
For this reason it is a major strategic task to fight for the renomation of the labour miranter around class struggle and anti-capitalist policies. This is inconceivable without generating a tradition of united action on a class struggle basis by the left and the most militant sectors o the working class.
Breaking with capitalist policies means not just building a powerful class struggle left wing but forging an allance which includes the self-organisa-