T the Labour Party Conference Mr. George Brown was warmly applauded when he gave voice to one of the oldest fallacies in the repertoire of the advocates of incomes policies, He told the Conference that they could not have planning for higher production, higher investment, higher exports, regional development, full employment, and stable prices and still keep an oldfashioned free-for-all in wages and other personal incomes. It is high time that this silly and inaccurate analogy was dropped. There is no genuine overall plan for the British economy being elaborated by the Government and I venture to predict there never will be. There is no plan for higher production in operation. Perhaps, sometime in the future, there may be an attempt to stimulate higher production. In the meantime, it is encouraging the banks to operate a restrictive credits policy which will discourage production, There is no plan for higher exports; not the vestige of a suggestion that the great firms will be organised to export more; nor is ublished by THE
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Another View there anything in the offing which suggests that there is to be real planning for stable prices. Indeed, the situation is the exact opposite of what Mr. Brown indi-
Wages and salary increases will be kept within the straitjacket of the so-called “guiding light” of 34 per cent. Neither the rise of dividends, profits, or ground rents are to be kept within any such limit at all. It is, in fact, only wages and salaries that are to be planned. I notice that Mr. Leslie Cannon, of the E.T.U., is wondering. what will happen to low-paid workers under an incomes policy. He need not. The lower-paid workers will be left out in the cold. The essence of an incomes policy with regard to wages is to keep them within the “guiding light”. If 34 per cent. is the “guiding light”, then that is the limit for an upward increase of wages. The idea that an incomes policy will hold back the higher-paid workers in order to give the lower-paid something above the 3} per cent. is an absolute fantasy.
Feb, 17, 1965 — THE WEEK