policy in the run up to the next General Election. increasingly flexible, de-unionised, job market. MEDIA darling TONY BLAIR believes full emploýment is a Labour goal, but 'no-one is suggesting that there is a quick fix; that you. can wave a magic wand; that it's possible to get back to : full employment overnight'.
He is sceptical about national solutions: 'International co-operation is replacing the possibility of any country i going jit alone". He is opposed to the closed shop and in favour of restrictions on picketing and secondary industrial action.
MARGARET BECKETT believes in public spending 'as resources allow' and concentrates on 'supply side' labour market measures as the basis for economic policy. She wants 'a simpler, fairer, more logical tax and national insurance system' and a "new social insurance scheme' to replace existing JOHN PRESCOTT says in his report to the Labour Party NEC in May 94, 'It took the courage of Labour government in 1945 to show Europe the road to economic and social prosperity based on full employment and social justice, and it is Labour, 50 years on, that has the vision to restore these twin principles to the national conscience."
TORE FULL EMPLOYMENT must become a central plank of Labour's economic A list of wishes will not win Labour the general election, get to grips with the ravages of 15 years of Tory vandalism, or change the deregulated, As Jeremy Corbyn said in Socialist Outlook last week: 'the problem is that we're not being offered an economic policy that is anything other than demand management within the economy. That isn't going to lead to full employment...It's the one issue which could win us a general election...But if we only half-heartedly put it and don't add the details of how we're going to achieve it, it will just be laughed at during the election campaign for being a cynical election manoeuvre' The forthcoming leadership contest allows us to see where the main protagonists and their backers stand. HELEN SHAW reports.
But Prescott has failed to outline how this can be achieved and cannot do so without breaking from the economic consensus on Labour's front bench -which he has consistently failed to do. TUC leader John Monks "passionately believe(s) full employment is desirable' and that, 'We shall only tackle the evil of unemployment if we act together - that is what Social Partnership is all about. I am laying down the challenge and asking people form every walk of life to join a great national coalition for full employment'. Many of the proposals including a shorter working week, a minimum wage, an end to rabid privatisation are worth fighting for: but what is missing is how these changes would be •achieved. They all have the illusion that it is possible to temper and reforin the excesses of global market. Blair in particular believes that a programme of education, training and co-operation between government, the unions and industry will eradicate poverty, social injustice and unemployment. The fundamental flaw at the heart of all the solutions prof fered is a failure to understand that all the gains made by the The free market generates side by side with poverty working class in this country have been a result of struggle such as the miners fight for the nationalisation of the coal industry.
Furthermore the 1945 Labour government introduced the NHS in the face of massive resistance from the Tory party and the bosses. But now it appears that Labour does not even have a strategy for defending the gains made with the creation of the welfare state.
Blair dismisses the idea of Labour having a radical domestic agenda to redistribute wealth and create full employment and prefers to substitute the legal framework of the European social chapter as a mechanism to defend workers rights.
The TUC's position was made clear by Monks speech to the RSA on May 26. He vividly outlined the human misery of continued unemployment and lack of job security. In the 50 years since Beveridge's famous report 'Full Employment in a Free Society' he recognised, like Prescott, that little lasting progress has been made and society is still plagued by the five evils of misery, want, disease, idleness and squalor.
Despite acknowledging the change in the composition of the workforce (more women and part-time workers) and spelling out some of the technological and structural changes in the economy his speech was short on solutions to the global problem of rising unemployment.
The emphasis was on training, creating a flexible and more POOR VAD highly skilled workforce - selling flexibility as a method to give trade union members 'more in control of their lives' to have the time to study, care for children, parents or the long term sick!
These views are common currency on Labour's front bench.
The problem is that in reality 'flexibility' is central to the Tory offensive and has meant more work for no more money, the proliferation of low-paid casualised jobs, derecognition of unions, no strike agreements and constant fear of unemployment.
Labour must grapple with the complexities of the global market, the changes in the workforce, the devastation of the last 15 years but fundamentally it must present itself as the party of the people, fighting for the interests of ordinary workers, the unemployed, pensioners, PULL-OUT SPECIAL women and young people.
It must bring forward bold policies to tax the rich, cut defence spending and really begin a process which gives people the opportunity to work.