EPLF builds workers' and peasants' councils

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Part three of a series on Eritrea by David Whitfield Digsa lies to the south-east of Asmara, in the heart of Eritrea.

At the centre of many battles, the town has been captured and re-captured by the liberation forces and by the Ethiopian army of occupation.

In July of last year, the Derg's planes bombed Digsa for 45'minutes, killing 13 people and wounding 107.

The heavy toll of this raid was no accidental tragedy.

Nine months after their liberation by the EPLA, the people of Digsa had gathered in the market place to elect a People's Assembly for the administration of the town, when the attack was launched.

The 13 people killed by the Derg in Digsa were not simply 'casualties" of a war for national independence. Their fate was determined by the social war of class forces that is developing in Eritrea alongside the military conflict.

It is this process of civil war in Eritrea which has aroused the fear and wrath of the Ethiopian military dictatorship, at least as much as the strategic significance of the Red Sea coasts.

Transformations

Socialist Press has not yet been able to provide hirst-hand reports of the developments in Eritrea, and this article is not presented as a searching analysis of the social transformations taking place within Eritrea.

The information it contains is based on accounts given by the EPLF and by various visitors to Eritrea, who are in different degrees politically sympathtic with the EPLF.

In its National Democratic Programme' • the People's Assembly at Afabet EPLF women's militia EPLF puts forward the objective of a 'People's. Assembly constituted of people's • representatives democratically and freely elected from anti-feudal and anti-imperialist patriotic forces, to draw up a constitution, decree laws, elect 'the people's administration' and decide on national economic plans and foreign policy. • Although the continuing war of course prevents the establishment of the national assembly, People's Assemblies have. been formed on a local basis in the liberated areas, as at Digsa.

Progress has advanced at different paces in different situațions, but the same pattern 'has. always been followed.

First, where they do not already exist, mass associations are formed-of workers, peasants, youth, women, and petty-bourgeois layers.

Within these mass associations, the EPLF maintains and develops its own political organisation through secret cells.

At the same time people's militias are formed, for the defence of the town or village and to aid the heavily-stretched resources of the Eritrean Popular Liberation Army.

Once they have become established, it is the mass associations which move to elect the People's Assembly. . The members elected are subject to recall at any time. The Assemblies are structured so as to ensure the dominance of the proletariat and the poorer sections of the peasantry.

In co-operation with the EPLF, these local organs of power control economic development, security, and act as courts to resolve conflicts within their area.

Land reform is of course an urgent priority in every rural sector. Agricultural production in Eritrea is varied, and the problems arising from the systems which have been inherited today are far too complex to be dealt with fully here.

In many areas, the redistribution of land on an equal basis has been the first step which had to be taken.

Collectivism

This in itself is not as simple a measure as it can sound, and cannot be accomplished overnight. • But in those areas which were first liberated by the EPLF, progress is now being made beyond this redistribution towards collectivism.

Land claimed by absentee owners has here been taken over by the People's Assemblies. In some cases the militias have fully collectivised their holdings (except for small vegetable plots) and are developing more advanced agricultural techniques on this basis-for example, the use of fertilisers.

A major sector of the agricultural economy lies in the plantations created in the fertile areas by the plundering Italian colonists.

This land was taken into the hands of the Ethiopian state after the ending of British colonial rule.

Like every other holding the Ethiopian state, this land is now controlled directly by the EPLF in the liberated areas.

The estates are worked on a cooperative basis to provide 60% of the food required by the EPLA. At the same time, they are the centre TOT agricultural research and experimentation.

The People's Assemblies aiso control the development of the peoplé's shops and the workshops.

Private trading is far from being abolished in the liberated areas. On a national scale, 50% of the needs of the Eritrean people are supplied from imports.

Although the EPLF has taken control of the important exports of salt and sandalwood incense, merchants still command major sections of the market, and this remains a problem of critical impor tance.

Market priçes are fixed by the local assemblies, and at the same time there has been a rapid spread of "people's shops'-cooperatives which sell basic supplies at prices some 30% below the levels of private trade.

In the last months of the liberation of Keren, the EPLF took over the entire distribution of basic supplies. through these shops.

The establishment of workshops has long been a central feature of the EPLF's programme.

Originally designed to provide for the material needs of the fighters-particularly in working to repair arms, vehicles, etc-they have increasingly expanded to involve sections of production formerly filled by individual artisans.

In these workshops, the EPLF places heavy emphasis on the practical involvement of the fighters, who spend periods engaged in this work as also in agrícultural labour and the construction projects of road-building, etc.

Alongside the growth of workshops there have been important moves in the villages towards the collectivisation of domestic Formerly women spent a vast proportion of their lives in gathering water and pounding grain for their families on an individual basis.

Now the building of collectively-owned mills and the development of improved water supplies considerable lifting of th burden of domest drudgery.

Women's oppression The EPLF places a consistent emphasis on the fight to abolish the specific oppression of women, and these material changes have clearly provided the opportunity for large numbers of women to participate actively in the revolution.

Even in the areas dominated by Islam, where their oppression has been most severe, women have come forward in, increasing numbers to take up arms in the militias and work as representatives in the People's Assemblies.

As the last battles were raging in the fight for the control of Kerem, a contingent of 2,000 newly-trained young women came up to the front.

The EPLF estimates that no less than one quarter of all its fighters are women-a remarkable figure by any standards.

Barefoot doctors

Considerable work has been carried out in the fields of health and education. Here the EPLF has had to contend with an acute shortage qualified personnel.

This gigantic problem has been tackled by training "barefoot doctors' in the field, and to date some 500 local clinics have been established as part of the general programme of fighting for health provisions.

The campaign for literacy has been developed along similar lines. Here the EPLF has insisted that, as education cannot be 'neutral process" the schools for literacy must work within the framework of political education of the masses.

Much of this work has been seriously disrupted by the massive offensive launched last year by the Ethiopian military, dictatorship and its allies in the Soviet and Cuban bureaucracies.

The EPLF itself argues that perhaps the most severe blow struck by this latest attack was the disruption of the continuity of its work with the oppressed masses of Eritrea.

Mengistu, Brezhnev, and Castro are also fully aware of the advantage they can hope to win from such a blow. Their war in Eritrea is not simply to repress a struggle for national independence.

The EPLF proclaims itself a Marxist-Leninist party, and the workers and peasants of Eritrea have surged forward beneath that banner.

Once again the Stalinists can be seen in the forefront of the battle against the struggle for socialist revolution.

The central question that hangs over the Eritrean masses is whether they can carry forward their struggle into the fight for a revolutionary socialist programme.

Without that political strength, their courage and heroism will not be sufficient to defeat the threats of reaction from within and counter-revolution from outside their beleagured nation.

Concluded

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Christine Creasley is. a NUPE shop steward representing 80 home helps in one of Camden's five Home Help sections. She is also on the Camden General Strike Committee.

We interviewed her on the developments in the strike around the question of emergency cover, and the decision of the strike committee to exempt home helps from the indefinite strike action last Barnet dustmen picketing the Brent transfer station. They told Socialist Press that they believe that 6-ton lorries getting £28 a ton and carrying 15-20 loads a day.

Chrictine Prasclar Friday.

What was the attitude of your members towards the growing demands for indefinite strike action?

The basic situation because of the structure of the job /SP: Home-nelps only meet once a week at Thursday afternoon's pay out, Otherwise they are isolated in their work) was that I had to discuss the possibility of • strike action individually with them when i saw them.

Their attitude was that because we didn't have any muscle we would only succeed in hurting our patients.

At a branch meeting on 8 January home helps in my section argued angrily against my support for indefinite strike action.

This hostility was carried over to the mass meeting in Camden Town Hall last Tuesday.

I was one of the few home helps who voted for all out strike-a policy I have supported for months in the branch and on the shop stewards committee.

for How did the decision to strike on Tuesday affect the home helps?

•Virtually every home help phoned in on Wednesday morning to ask the home help organiser for guidance.

had instructed this organiser immediately the vote was taken on Tuesday to inform individual home helps that it was up to their discretion whether their patient was an emergency " or not-until the strike committee took a definite decision on emergency cover and until | could meet my whole section at Thursday's pay out.

I want to make it clear that those who continued to work did so on the understanding that they received no pay-as the strike had been declared on Tuesday.

So the focus for organising the home helps shifted to the strike committee?

Yes, the main issue was to control emergency cover.

On Wednesday the strike