Wave of pay strikes grips

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onomic and politica crisis grows in Germany While the French government sends its troops to defend imperialist interests in Africa, the force of the bourgeois state is now being turned against the struggles of workers within France itself.

The Maritime Police is enforcing a ban on all mass meetings within the naval dockyards, and imposing a lock out in some areas.

The 60,000 strikers in the naval yards and munitions factories are demanding parity EC The hopes of Western imperialism that West Germany will provide a firm basis for rectifying the international economic crisis of capitalism is starryeyed, to say the least.

Fervent preparations are now being made for the summit meeting on July 16/17, where, it is hoped, Schmidt will agree to expand German growth. But all is far from healthy in the German economy. Inflation has bee kept to 3%, but the growth target of 3% is unlikely to be achieved, especially in the wake of lost production due to the massive engineering strikes and lockout in March and April.

Unemployment, at 'the lowest level for 4 years, is still nearly 1 million.

And the recent failures of the SPD's coalition parties, the liberal FDP, threatens the continuance of the Schmidt regime.

In recent engineers working sector in Paris.

Wave of strikes

But this massive action is only part of an enormous wave of strikes for higher wages, improved conditions, and in defence of jobs.

In the last fortnight strikes have erupted in the ironmines, steelmilis, textile industry, furniture industry, and many other sectors.

Further action is threatened on the railways and in the docks.

Hamburg and Lower Saxony the FDP was virtually annihilated, in favour of the SPD in the former case, the CDU in the latter.

Part of the opposition came from the so-called "green' ecological parties of young radicals. Some 25% of younger age groups abstained altogether.

The resignation of Maihof, FDP Interior Minister, on May 6th, following the publication of the report of the Schleyer kidnap, heightened the crisis of the FDP and of the coalition.

He had been attacked from both sides, from the left for his responsibility for widening repression, from the right for failing to eradicate 'terrorism'.

Even the dormant SPD "lefts' were forced, two years ago, to protest at the practice of border police making a record of those in possession of left-wing literature.

More recently he has been blamed for the spectacuiar 'liberation' from the West Berlin cenT In every case workers are demanding wage increases far beyond the limits of the Barre plan, and many strikes have moved to the level of occupation-as in the Renault car factories, and the plants of Moulinex (domestic appliances). Moabit remand prison, of Till Meyer, by 5 commando women.

• Now the FDP is internally split over whether to ally with the CDU, the SPD, or not at all.

Meanwhile, it offers no clear independent identity.

If it loses again at the forthcoming elections in Hessen, the government will effectively grind to a halt. For with a two-thirds majority in the upper chamber every decision by the Bundestag can be overturned.

A more serious threat to the economic security of the Federal Republic comes in the increasing strains in the cosy cooperation achieved between union leaders and employers since the war.

The strike wave earlier this year was a shock. But the recent DGB conference (equivalent body to the TUC) also voted under a section on youth unemployment, for a 35-hour week and for nationalisation of key industries, banks and insurance companies.

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SOCIALIST F RESS, Wednesday 28 June, 1978