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EDITORIAL

Cold war fantasyland

On Dec. 7 Soviet leader Gorbachev will visit Washington for a
three-day summit which will not only see the signing of a treaty to
eliminate Soviet and American medium and short-range (INF) mis-
siles, but which may also lay the groundwork for deep cuts in long-
range strategic weapons.

Other basic issues will also undoubtedly be raised, including discus-
sions on Reagan’s Strategic Defence Initiative (Star Wars) and the 1972
Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty, both of which are closely linked to
continued progress toward arms limitation and disarmament.

The long road back from the nuclear brink may have begun with the
INF agreement which, as we know, involves only five per cent of
existing nuclear arsenals poised to blow our planet into oblivion..

But, as we also know, a long journey begins with the first step.

There is, then, cause for hope. But there is also cause for concern.

While the two major nuclear powers meet next month to talk
disarmament, the Tory Mulroney government continues its march to
war. .

The Tories still test the Pentagon’s first-strike cruise missile, despite a
promise these would stop if an INF agreement was struck.

Even worse, they have introduced a Defence White Paper based on
a 1950s, cold war mentality, complete with the old, shabby “Soviet
threat” lie but have updated it with a multi-billion diolar program for
state-of-the-art weaponry, including a nuclear-powered submarine
fleet.

Along with the “free” trade package, the Tory White Paper on
defence would move the process of Canada-US. integration along
with giant steps. At that point, with economic and military independ-
ence gone, political independence would quickly vanish.

But Canadians are making it abundantly clear that the Tory agenda
won't be accepted. We want a safer, more peaceful world — not one

with more weapons. We insist on more, not less, say in which direction
Canada will take in international affairs.

The work has begun in an organized way to put the issue of peace
and independence at the very centre of the next federal election. The
Voter Peace Pledge Campaign aims to reach every corner of Canada to
ensure the next Parliament is filled with members dedicated to defend
Canadian independence and survival.

It deserves and needs everyone’s active support.

nothing bul,
the footh

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A grim future for Britain’s poor, its in this country.” The aim is to “move

unemployed, its elderly pensioners and
disabled has been projected with un-
abashed frankness by one of the leading
figures in the cabinet of Prime Minister
Margaret Thatcher. It is made quite plain
that her government’s objective is to dis-
mantle or do entirely away with the wel-
fare state.

This perspective has been put forward
in a major speech, well-advertised in
advance for maximum press coverage, by
Secretary for Social Services John Moore,
delivered to a Tory Party meeting in Lon-
don on Sept. 26. Moore assailed the entire
system of government benefits paid to the
needy, charging that it made people
dependent on the state.

According to Moore, welfare payments
of whatever kind tend to corrupt. the
human spirit. “Everyone,” he said,
“knows the sullen apathy of dependence
and can compare it with sheer delight of
personal achievement.”

Claiming that “life has changed” since
the postwar period when the Labour
governments introduced a broad program
of welfare state measures, Moore asserted
that he and his fellow Tories “have a dif-
ferent vision of what it means to protect
and promote economic and social welfare

welfare recipients away from dependency
and toward opportunity,” in an atmos-
phere “where people have faith in their
own ability, and with that faith take
action.”

Since it came to power eight years ago,
the Thatcher-led Tory government in Bri-
tain has steadily whittled away at social
services and welfare benefits, ina program
of restoring full-blown unrestrained capi-
talism, with no responsibility for capital-
ism’s victims. In the last session of
parliament, a new Social Security Act was
adopted by the Tory majority that has
carte blanche to reduce the levels of wel-
fare benefits, the extent of which will not
be really known until implementation by
the end of October. The Moore speech,
coming on top of this, points to far more
savage future cuts

Significantly, before Moore delivered
his anti-welfare state speech he made a
secretive visit to the U.S., where he con-
sulted conservative welfare policy advisers
in and around the Reagan administration.

British Labour Party leaders, and even
a number of worried Tory figures
promptly struck hard at the outline for the
future sketched by Moore (who had tried

to evade such reactions by claiming the he
was only voicing “philosophy” and not
practical proposals). Said Neil Kinnock,
the head of the Labour Party, “When a
hand-out is given to the very rich, it is
called an incentive; when some kind of
necessary help is given to the poor, we call
it dependency.

The Labour shadow secretary for social
services, Robin Cook, pointed to the fact
that. unemployment had more than
doubled in the Thatcher years, throwing
four million unwillingly into dependence
on a welfare income. Cook said he found
Moore’s argument that it is undesirable to
encourage dependency on benefits “‘a bit
hypocritical when it comes from a
member of the government that has
doubled the number on social security
since it took office.”

A recent survey has revealed that during
Thatcher’s eight years, an historic trend,
begun by the post-war welfare state, of
gradually shifting a share of the wealth
from the very rich to the poorest sector of
the population, had been reversed, and
that the share now going to the very rich
has significantly increased, while that to
the poor has declined. The need for the
welfare state, in other words, is becoming

Thatcher gov’t taking hatchet to welfare

greater, rather than diminishing as
Thatcher and her protege Moore claim.

While such a Tory government view is
promulgated, one study after another has
been published in Britain which makes
nonsense of the Moore outlook. The Uni-
versity of Warwick’s Institute for Empl-
oyment Research released a review Sept. 6
which forecast that mass unemployment
“is here to stay” and would continue at
close to its present official level until
beyond 1995.

On Sept. 16, the assistant editor of the
British Medical Journal, Dr. Richard
Smith, published a careful study, ‘““Unem-
ployment and Health: A Disaster and a
Challenge,” which contains evidence that
3,000 people a year are dying prematurely
due to the effects of unemployment and
that 40,000 would die from that cause by
the end of the century. “The deaths will be
from suicide, cancer, accidents, poisonings
and violence, provoked by the impact of
unemployment on mental and physical
health,” wrote Dr. Smith.

If the Thatcher government has its way
with the welfare state, those figures will
certainly prove to be a sad underestima-
tion.

— William Pomeroy
People’s Daily World.

4 e PACIFIC TRIBUNE, NOVEMBER 11, 1987