March 1, 1974
LONDON - The coming general election, scheduled for Feb.
28, will be held in the most turbulent period of class
struggle in Britain since the general strike of 1926.
Tory Prime Minister Edward Heath called the election in response to the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) decision to launch an all-out strike by its 270,000 members. The strike decision by the NUM leadership followed a national ballot in which 81 percent of the country's miners voted in favor of strike action. No less than 22 of the NUM's 23 areas endorsed the strike call.
The miners' overwhelming backing for strike action showed their determination to stand up to the Tories' Phase 3 wage controls and take militant action to defend their standard of living. A prostrike Durham miner, told by a journalist that Durham miners were considered moderate, replied, "We were, but the prime minister changed all that."
Another threat to the Tories is the growing support for the miners.' Only one day after Heath's election announcement, more that 35,000 students marched through London in solidarity with the miners and in support of their own demands for higher grants.
February 28, 1949
Except for the Truman administration with its inaccurate
statistics and the union leaders who are keeping mum,
everybody acknowledges that unemployment has become a serious
problem. The time has come for nationwide labor action to put
into effect a realistic program to protect the working class:
1. For a 30-hour week, six-hour day with no reduction in take-home pay. Almost every union has endorsed this program in the past. Take it out of cold storage and fight to make it a reality right now....
3. For an all-out wage campaign to raise mass purchasing power by boosting real wages to the level before June 1946 when run-away inflation began.
4. For unemployment insurance equal to full weekly union wages for all unemployed and for the entire duration of unemployment.
5. For public works of a socially beneficial character, including government-built low-rent housing, to provide jobs for the unemployed at union wages to be financed from the billions now going for war preparations.
6. Call a United Congress of Labor of all unions to mobilize a militant, determined fight for this program.