i e aalaeiimmmiemenentn bret Lene ne ll ub oe oe Tare actrees ott tt eee Poverty in B HILE not yet reaching the Proportions of North Ame- , Tica, the outcry about Poverty’ has in recent weeks been increasing. The ‘Observer’ (Oct. 16th) headed its main Editorial “Our Poor’ and says © Coming recession is likely to destroy the comfortable illu- Sion that the Welfare State has suminated poverty” while ‘The «imes” (Oct. 10th) writes that et €n the lowest-paid British Working man have several chil- ren they live in poverty”. oe is strange language from ©S€ quarters. The whole estab- ae ament, supported in its own ay by whatever party was in Bp cuument, have talked loudly 4bout ‘the affluent society’. The Tories developed the slogans of You Never Had It So Good” _ 4nd that Britain was a “Property iN wing Democracy” while the abor Party promised a “New one with “a new way of € and a “national plan” that _ Would give us “a dynamic and €xpanding economy”. All these Promises are t j Oday in the gar- bage can, 7 z A ccaee Class lines in Britain always been more clearly may CUtlined than in North America og Ment’s SUE Of ‘pov — Povert A - North y | Uni a 4nd three f and everyone “ % e ... new their place” _ Without illusi gives an sions of crossing to social er side of the tracks’ — y speaking — the issue of rad Was never allowed to € a public issue. Ironically, the Labor Govern- freeze and squeeze’ backed up by legislation Hips of new measures aay ng workers to specific Stries” have brought the is- Poverty’ sharply forward. The Observer’, ‘Times’ Policy, and th “ While ce By JOHN WILLIAMSON and others, together with the Tories, have their own partisan reasons for this, the reality. is that poverty has always been with us. It is inherent in capita- list society, although by their organized strength and struggle, the workers and trade unions can and have improved the con- ditions and wage levels of sec- tions of the workers. Despite the so-called Welfare State and the Labor Govern- ment, the class structure in Britain is still firm. Half the na- © tion owns nothing except its personal household effects, while five percent of the nation owns nearly 75 percent of the coun- try’s wealth. There are about 290,000 capitalist firms, but 500 of them rake in half the total yearly profit made in Britain. There are approximately 100,- 000 large employers, 300,000 small employers and about 600,- 000 managers, who get carried on the backs of the 24 million workers who produce the wealth, : The Big Five banks — Bar- clays, Lloyds, Midland, National -Provincial and Westminster — chalked up £51 million profits in 1965 against £32 million in 1964 — the bulk of this from interest on money loaned to people for mortgages, hire purchase or to local authorities for building new houses or other services. Ownership of land has still many hangovers from the days of feudalism. Out of Britain’s 56 million’ acres, individual Dukes, Lords and other nobility own large tracts of land. The Crown Estates amount to 285,- 000 acres. Two other huge land- owners are the Church of Eng- —=, Ground the world TOTAL of 1,519 U.S. planes had been brought down ietnam as of Oct. 21, according to a Hanoi report... Color over ee of ‘Shakespeare’s play will be produced jointly by two U.S. R "8, Columbia Broadcasting System and Filmways Inc., and the ®yal Shakespeare Company in Britain. The ng Lear, Macbeth and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. eK * first three plays will * ALGERIA is to get 200,000 tons of wheat from the Soviet © as On over the next three months. The shipment, made necessary or 1 result of the worst harvest Algeria has had in the four years 5 ‘er independence, will be within the framework of the Algerian- Viet trade pact ... Beginning this month, TV viewers in Prague other Czechoslovak cities will be able to rent a TV set wa Of buying it. Though the eventual cost to the subscriber is Same the advantage is he can exchange the old set for newer Models as they appear. * esta Would * URUGUAY has rejected a plan proposed by the Pentagon to ru Plish a permanent inter-American armed force on its territory. Buay’s foreign minister, Louis Vidal Zaglio, said such a force, result in greater arms imports into the smaller countries Bradually get them used to the idea of war. land with 170,000 acres and the Universities of Oxford and Cam- bridge, who between them own 275,000 acres. An overall picture of exploita- tion and distribution of wealth are these figures from the 1965 Government Blue Book. After deducting reinvestment of ca- pital for the year, the National Income amounted to £28,279 mil- lion. The percentage division of this was: To National ond Local Government (after deducting interest paid to capitalist and social service ben to workers) To Capitolist (after tax). To Workers (after tox) These figures are weighted in favor of business and against workers because under ‘“‘work- ers” are included all salaries as well as the pay to the armed forces, while capitalist share is underestimated because of falsi- fication of figures for tax eva- sion, exclusion of capital gains and personal expenses income. Put in a different way the dis- tribution in every £100 of in- comes between wage and sala- ries on one hand and profits and dividends on the other has been as follows over the last 26 years: Year Wages and Surplus Salaries volue 1938 £68 £32 1951 £66 £34 1964 £71 £29 i When statistics are broken down, what do we find? An authoratitive survey shows that in 1960 seven and one-half mil- lion people were poor — “poor” being defined as less than 40 percent above National Assis- tance Board levels. Of these, 35 percent were old age pensioners while nearly 30 percent were children. A significant feature was that 30 percent were in households ‘“‘whose head was in full-time work’. Even more dra- matic was the fact that in con- trast to 1953-54 the proportion in this poverty bracket who were full-time employed, had doubled by 1960. No wonder ‘The Observer’, after excluding the aged, sick E. "BORN FREE’ and crippled, can write that “at a very conservative estimate, there are something like 1,250,- 000 men, women and children who are living below. the stand- ards thought tolerable for social casualties under the State’s own, by no means excessively generous, system of aid. There are another two million who are living only just above it”. While the Tories talk a lot about ‘high pay’ especially for the motor car workers, and the newspapers give headlines to “rises in average family weekly income to £23’, it is necessary to note two things: (1) this re- fers to earnings with overtime and not the rate pay and (2) this is a family income divided into —husband £17.12.0, wife £2.12.0 and others, .meaning children, the balance. - Before the ment’s measures, seriously worsened the situation there were 11 million with after tax earnings of £10 or less a week: and a further 6 million with between £10 and £12 per week. These are your low-paid workers. There are some 8 mil- lion women at work and on the average their wages are just one-half that of the men. At the last T.U.C. one woman delegate arguing against this, commented that irrespective of how attrac- tive mini-skirts were, “our girls are not mini-minded . . . and do not propose to continue accept- ing mini-wages”. In the low-wage category are also most of the nearly one mil- lion colored immigrants and the youth, who if they are lucky enough to get a job, must start at ‘boys’ and ‘girls’ wages, with the latter below the ‘boys’. latest Govern- To meet this situation, which can only get worse with Wil- son’s “freeze and squeeze” po- licy, Mr. Frank Cousins, the ge- neral secretary of Britain’s larg- est union, Transport and General Workers, ‘proposed at a union rally of 2,000 of his union, the beginning of a campaign for a which have. Nevember 18, 1966—PACIFIC TRIBUNE—Page 9 ritain- Eccles in MorninalStar 1londan) national minimum wage of £15 a week. While the battle over the wage freeze — backed by that of fines and prison penalties — goes on, and while unemploy- ment js already over half a mil- lion and expected to go steadily upwards, the ‘wise men’ of the Labor Government’ are already’ projecting proposals for the next period of “restraint”. Some, like Mr. Stewart and Labor Lord Peddie, have the effrontery to talk of what happens “after August 1967”. Mr. Stewart says there must be a third party in all. wage bargaining while Lord Peddie slanders the trade unions by saying “The strong arm method of wage negotiation that carried the illusion of equity and demo- cracy is on the way out.” Even. more outspoken and brutally frank were former Tory Minister Aubrey Jones — now. chairman. of the Prices and In- comes Board — who said there can be no return to the volun- tary system of collective bar- gaining over pay that existed prior to July 20; or the Ford Motor Company director of: labor relations, Leslie Blakeman. Speaking before the motor car managers, Blakeman, cor- rectly accused the results of the Labor Government policies. He said “the changed climate had brought about sudden changes in the respective power positions of management and labor.” The previous “restraints on manage- ment” were “likely to be with- drawn,” while “the freedoms. of action enjoyed by work people and their shop stewards’ were “likely to be restrained”. All these gentlemen should not “count their chickens” too early. The British workers and the trade unions, despite tem- porary confusion thrown into their ranks by the latest evi- dence of right wing Labor policy, are already demonstrating their will and determination to fight back. : :