[The Chilean junta has confirmed the growing strength…]

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The Chilean junta has confirmed the growing strength of working class opposition to it by taking emergency moves to ban trade unions.

In the last week of October, six trade union federationsconstruction, textiles, engineering, mineworkers and two peasants' unions-were outlawed for being too left wing.

Demonstrations against this move resulted in numerous arrests.

This new crackdown comes after reports of growing strikes and other actions by workers over the last few weeks.

Since August the mining area -Chuquicamata, for example, has been the of unrest.

Workers have boycotted the canteen and held illegal mass meetings.

And they have booed and jeered their leaders for inaction. Workers' wives responded to an appeal from the regime to get their husbands back to normal working by staging a "saucepan demonstration" in conscious ironic imitation of the anti-Popular Unity demonstrations of six years ago.

The regime seems unable to find any way of dealing with such events apart from increased repression of all workers organisations.

This has been applied not only against the relatively more independent organisations which have been arising but even against the fake "unions"' set up by the regime itself and led by its scab supporters.

The desperation of the military dictatorship over how to stamp out the growing struggle was shown by the panic tactic they resorted to after the new ban was imposed.

They gave four days notice of national "union" elections.

No-one who had ever before been a union official was permitted to stand.

And the votes-500,000 of them the regime claims-were scrutinised and counted by its own agents.

Other reports suggest that the voting was very low and that workers treated the fake elections with the derision they deserve.

All this goes to illustrate that after five years of brutal tyranny the Pinochet regime has less of a social base than ever.

Its policies have made life perilous and materially hard for the working class-but without being able to make it safe for capital, and in particular without benefitting the petty bourgeoisie which had clamoured for the military to seize power before September 1973.

Last week ironically one of the groups which stopped work in protest against the economic policies of the junta was the lorry owners whose stoppage played such a crucial role in the lead-up to the military overthrow of Allende.

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