Jones supervises Spanish apprentices

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In place of 'Auld Lang Syne'-the Internationale troyed after the end of the this development but its excivil war. tremely rapid growth since It was not until the 1975 reflects not only the 1960s that there was a desire of workers to rebuild serious growth of working one of the historic unions In this movement the but also a wish to join a increasingly Stalinist domi- union in which, at least in nated Workers' Commis- theory they had democratsions were the most impor- ic rights as members.

Out of these the Spanish forcing the Workers kers' control.

Nothing revolutionary, however, was visible in their four-day conference in Barcelona, the town where the UGT was founded by Pablo Iglesias.

And it was not much easier to find anything democratic, unitary or internationalist.

In fact, despite an intentionally confusing tendency for leadership resolutions to begin with phrases like "looking at unemployment from a Marxist viewpoint' it was hard to find much difference in spirit between the Congress of the reborn UGT and the annual British TUC conference.

Same techniques

From Scarborough to Seville, from Brighton to Barcelona, reformist trade union bureaucrats perform their treacherous role with much the same techniques.

It was not at all incongruous, therefore that the familiar face in the fourth row was not a dream it was indeed the real Jack Jones.

Though more expensively dressed than the majority of delegates Jones looked very much at home.

He knew that. though the language might be different, he was among friends who took their task of holding back the strength of the working class as seriously as he did.

Nicolas Redondo, who was reelected without serious opposition as the UGT s General Secretary, is still, however, unable to act with quite the same arro gance as a Jack Jones even if he is learning fast.

ror Kedondo is a trage union leader in a movement whose structure is still in a state of rapid change.

Massive growth

Within Franco's Spain the "UGT was all but des class organisation.

tant organisations.

Gonzalez CP has been attempting to build 'trade unions of a new kind ' in which local bureaucrats would base themselves on occasional mass meetings of all workers rather than face a constant struggle with an active membership of a union in which members would have constitutional rights ..a... LUJINLAL The UGT arrived late in of the Spanish working class This manifest desire is Redondo Commissions, also to start looking more like a trade union of the old type though it has not yet got as far as holding national congresses.

At the time of its illegal but just tolerated Thirtieth Congress in 1976 the UGT claimed 15,000 members (the same number as it had in 1899). Today it has over 2 million (twice as many as it had in 1932)

Manoeuvres If these members expected even some formal representation at the. UGT Congress, then tens of thousands of them were disappointed The weeks before the Congress were marked by a series of unscrupulous manoeuvres by the bureaucracy to disenfranchise the "dissident" sections of the union and prevent the growing discontent with the policies of the union leadership from coming to the surface in the form of a serious challenge at the Congress.

The most blatant and scandalous case took place in the Basque province of Navarra.

There left wing militants in the UGT put forward a resolution for the UGT Congress demanding working class independence, no social pacts. and a socialist government with socialist policies.

The local bureaucracy once it was evident that this resolution would get majority, support gave it hypocritical support but only to gain time for a massive witchhunt and bureaucratic attack The attack was led by Isaias Herrero (later elected as Organisation Secretary the No. 2 post, at the Congress), Jesus Mancho and Jose Maria Zufiaur-also members of the UGT National Executive.

Congress dissolved

Jack Jones and the witch-hunting TGWU leadership would have been proud of them. In the first place they dissolved the local Congress in Pamplona (which has 50% of the Navarra province membership) on the pretext that not all members had received a letter summoning them to the Congress.

At the same time 12 members (including elected local Committee members) were expelled altogether.

When the Pamplona members called another congress, the bureaucracy summoned a provincial Congress at exactly the same time at a meeting place kept 'a secret from most of the membership.

Other dissident union locals were prevented from voting by the device of the bureaucracy refusing to receive their subscriptions and so "invalidating' their membership.

As a result of this shameful procedure the final positions of the Navarra delegation to the UGT national Congress were decided by about 25% of those who had a constitutional right to representation.

Prevented

The one delegate who tried to raise the question on the floor of the Congress was bureaucratically prevented from doing so.

This was certainly the most flagrant instance of a method which is nonetheless being increasingly practised throughout Spain not only in the UGT but equally in the PSOE and the Young Socialists.

It made the political outcome of the Congress a certainty.

Amendments to the Executive resolutions, opposing social pacts, or wages were predictably rejected by what became the standard majority for the Executive in all Congress votes-about 87%.

The signs of opposition to the class collaborationist policies of the UGT leadership, however continually rose to the surface before they could be bureaucratically stifled.

to And in order to hold this opposition in check, the bureaucracy was nonetheless forced to agree to a number of policies which it has no intention whatever of carrying out.

For instance the resolu tion passed on wages includes: "an adjustment of wages every three months in line with the increase in a cost of living index to be compiled under the control of the trade unions.

On jobs the UGT is nominally committed to: 'control by workers through the trade union branches of all redundancies related to the economic crisis.

*Factories intending to close in response to the crisis should, if they are worthwhile for the interests of the community, be nationalised without compensation and come under the control of the INI (the Francoist version of the British National Enterprise Board)."

These are not left" policies. In some ways they are extremely right wing insofar as they involve strengthening the Francoist INI (National Industrial Institute).

But the ideas of even a limited sliding scale of wages based on a price index under union control or of any kind of nationalisation without compensation are not ones which would be voluntarily put about by the UGT leaders.

Buried

They are policies which will frighten the capitalist class and for that reason they will be buried by Redondo and the obedient Executive as soon as it is decent to do so.

The UGT also at the Congress "reaffirmed" its rejection of the reactionary Moncloa Pact signed by the CP, the PSOE and the capitalist parties last year.

Under this pact workers are forced to take real wage cuts and allow unlimited redundancies to "solve" the economic crisis in exhange" for meaningless promises by the Francoist government that it will end enemployment.

The UGT however has been and remains opposed to the Moncloa Pact in the same sense that the TUC General Council "opposes" incomes policy!

Redondo is on the PSOE Executive and he got the Congress to let him stay there.

Conditional But in referring to the possibility of a PSOE government, Redondo said: "Logically this should be to the benefit of the working class. But our support of a socialist government would be critical and conditional support because our confidence in the possibility of social transformation through a future PSOE government does not, however, imply that the UGT would give a blank cheque to the policy of our brother At the end of the congress Felipe Gonzalez fresh from participating in ceremonies in honour of Spain's armed forces. and looking more than ever like a clothing advertisement from a colour supplement. replied to Redondo.

The UGT, he said, is and always has been, "Our union." When there is a PSOE government he said. it would need the support of the UGT or it could not succeed.

What he meant was that he intended to take no responsibility for the failure of such government to answer the needs of the working class.

It would, he implied, be the fault of the working class itself.

Resentful

Redondo was evidențly resentful of Gonzalez pro. prietorial attitude to the UGT and ostentatiously refrained from applauding during Gonzalez speech.

But this is the tension not of principle but of rival bureaucrats; both made it perfectly clear that they thought one of the main tasks of the Spanish "Socialists" was to destroy the left wing of both the PSOE and the UGT.

As Gonzalez put it: *The PSOE could receive a majority, popular mandate which obliges it to assume the tasks of government.

What disturbs me for when that occasion arisesis the maximalist positions inside the PSOE and the UGT, which are often no more than excuses on the part of comrades who will not admit that they are afraid of taking on that task."

Gonzalez has accumulated popular support in the name of "socialism". He is now giving warning that when he becomes Prime Minister he does not want to be under any pressure to follow Socialist policies.

In this he can expect all possible help from Nicolas Redondo and the leaders of the UGT who last week showed themselves to have graduated in record time from clandestine opponents of fascist laws to open agents of the capitalist class in the workers movement.

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