[Wing the results and eral Election of iwo…]

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Wing the results and eral Election of iwo groups which t: the LCR and thr was in effect one of neutrality between ETA and the repressive state apparatus |'We must politically fight ETA terrorism ... we never give the slightest support to the UCD government, police or army against ETA").

Behind masses

This means that, in Euskadi in particular, but also elsewhere, the LCR is putting itself not ahead of but behind significant sections of the working class and oppressed masses who continue to call in demonstrations, for instance, for "dissolution of the repressive forces of public order"

These gross adaptations were linked to a complete failure to distinguish the class nature and policies of the main workers' parties.

One of the main slogans of the LCR was "a socialist not a bourgeois government" and this was • concretised to mean a PSOE-CP government.

Such a call, however, was not linked to any struggle to throw out the existing collaborationist leadership of these parties.

Nor was it coupled to the call for the independent mobilisation of the working class against that leadership.

Change of tactic

• The election saw a change in tactics by the comrades of the Liga Communista (LC).

Unlike the Spanish section of the OCI, the LC saw clearly the need to change the correct boycott position both sections had adopted in the elections of June 1977.

Instead the. LC engaged in propagandist participation in the election campaign in an attempt to clarify the options facing the working class, to fight for working class unity and independence, and to expose the existing collaborationist leaderships.

The LC (faced with great difficulties of small numbers and lack of resources) nonetheless set up candidacies in five provinces under the datitle Workers' Alliance, stating in advance that they would withdraw before the voting in favour of a critical vote to the best placed of the majority workers' parties in each province (except in Euskadi where they withdrew in favour of the LCR arguing that there was no clear majority workers' party).

The main slogans of tle Workers' Alliance were:

*Unity the struggles!

•For a workers' majority in the elections!

*Abolish the monarchy and revoke the constitution!

*For a workers' government without bourgeois ministers! , *Not a single vote for the bourgeoisie-Vote Workers' Parties!

Impact

This basically correct form of campaign could have had a serious impact if it had been adopted by the much larger LCR.

But that "Trotskyist" party proved once again that its considerable numerical size in ino way made it capable of offering a clear alternative lead to Spanish workers.

Next week: Spain on the eve of the municipal elections. From LCR election Programme.

The bitter fruits of consensus.

We were told, and are still toid, that overcoming the economic crisis and consolidating democracy was a question of "national interest"

In that was includad bosses and workers; landowners and agricultural labourers; the CEOE [Spain's CBI] and the Workers Commissions and the UGT, the Democratic Centre Union (and Popular Alliance) and the workers' parties.

That is the great lie which has dominated the political life of the country in recent months. It is necessary to see it doesn't continue to dominate in the future.

Because these 'national interests' don't exist anywhere. What exist are our interests, those of the workers; and their interests, those of the bourgeoisie and the bosses.

We nood decent wages, work for all; they need wage control and reduction of manning levels.

We need the police and army to be purged trom top to bottom, that those guilty of crimes and provocations are punished, that full freedoms exist for the soldiers; they need to hide from us the truth about the activities of the reactionaries (such as 'Operation Galaxy" [a coup attempt last year and they only respond to fascists and those planning a coup with. impotent calls for discipline towards the King and ridiculous sanctions.

Finally: we have to politically fight against the terrorism of ETA; we have to tell ETA that its actions all the time go more against our interests and must end once and for all.

But we cannot forget that thie fundamental cause of ETA activism lies in the negation of sovereign rights of the Basque people and in a long and uninterrupted history of brutal repression in Euskadi.

For us solidarity ' with Euskadi means, in the first place, fully taking up the struggle for these rights and against. repression and we never confuse that with giving even the slightest support to the UCD government, the police or army against ETA.

On the contrary, they, and in the first instance the government, use the negative offects that ETA actions provoke in our people, and the climate of 'national unity against terrorism' (which the PSOE and CP and also the ORT and PTE have decisively contributed to creating), in order to impose more repression against Euskadi, in order to. , increase the effects of the police and use them to invade our streets, to limit the exercise of freedom, to justify criminal acts within and outside our national boundaries ...

The conclusion is clear: every time the "'national interest'' is invoked in practice it is to support the interests of the bourgeoisie. That is the real meaning of the politics of consensus.

Build the alternative.

When you look at the elec. toral programmes of the PSOE and the CP, one thing is clear: their promises of strength and effectiveness are compatible with the interests of the bosses, the army and imperialism. And the request for a "broad parliamentary majority' is no more than a way of begging ministerial portfolios from Suarez.

Because the basic thing is that they do not want to win. That is why they have not set up unitary PSOE-CP candidacy which would have developed an immense sensation of power among the workers and would undoubtedly have gained "a broad parliamentary majority".

But that majority, a workers' majority, is what they don't want.

What they want is merely to sell their favours to the UCD at sightly higher cost. That is why they ask us for an "offectiva So, what is to be done? When the old roads show themselves to be blind alleys it is nocessary to find a new one.

laid. We laid them fighting the Moncloa Pact, struggling to throw out the Constitution and now. mobilisina ourselves to win the wage negotiations.

In that way the alternative is being built, the workers! left which, against any kind of pact and consensus, puts forward the unity, organisation and mobilis. ation of the workers.

And that workers' left has to be in Parliament. It depends on your votes.

For a socialist not This is centri to the problem of the elect ions.

From Liga Communista election material:

Workers majority, workers' vote.

On March 1 workers are summoned to give a reply. The bourgeoisie, unable to maintain the anti-working class Cortes of June 15, 1977, has had to call The bourgeoisie is attempting a manoeuvre: to create through use of the ballot box the fiction that the majority of the population is with Suarez, Fraga and co.

But that is false. Suarez, Fraga and all the bourgeois parties are heirs of the Francoists, are the authors of unemployment and repression.

They are the executors of working class and of popular demands.

The same people want to carry on governing with the support of the ballot box.

There can only be one reply. The one the people who live in Astarfe gave to Suarez: "Out, liar, out, out"'.

Out with the government the Francoists and the rest the bourgeoisie: 40 years enough, far too much. Out.

That is what the workers are saying with strikes of hundreds, of thousands, of millions.

The Basque people are saying that with their struggle against repression.

Because as well as the confrontation on March 1 there are those of February 25, 26, 27, 28 and March 2, 3, 4, 5 ... confrontations the massive struggle against the aggression of the bosses and the Francoist government which is developing through Spain.

And that is more important than the elections. There are no ballot boxes which can deny the overwhelming expression of popular will involved in the present strikes.

But it is necessary to defeat the bourgeoisie in all fields; it is necessary to say through the badlot boxes as well that we, the workers, want more Francoists in the government.

It is important to teare them no pretext to carry on govern. ing. We must take advantage of the elections to back up what we are saying in the strikes: that Let us say it more clearly: every government in which the UCD or any other bourgeois party participates, even though Felipe Gonzalez is Prime Minister, will be a government in the service of capitalist interests, incapable of opposing them.

We do, not want that government. We want a socialist government, based on an alliance of the majority workers' parties PSOE and CP.

Whether its ministers should be from both parties, or only from the PSOE, is of secondary importance.

What is important is that there should not be a single minister of a bourgeois party.

A government of that kind the immense majority of the population.

This time they mustn't be strengthened by any electoral fraud, it must be made clear that the immense majority is against them.

A workers' majority in the elections means that we demand that the Francoists and the bourgeoisie should go, because we want a workers' economic plan and freedom for our trade unions, against the social pact.

We want full freedom and to finish . off the repressive Francoist laws and repressive apparatus.

We want freedom for Euskadi and the other nationalities.

We want solidarity with the people of Iran and our brother workers of the world, that we do not want NATO, the Common Market, or any of the other examples of ganging up with imperialism.

All that means a workers' majority in the elections. It implies that we want to suppress the monarchy and the constitution and that we want it to be the authentic will of the people which decides how the country is to be ruled.

A workers' faithful to the needs of the looking for its support to the objectives of the workers. That We know already that the PSOE and the CP don't want either to hear about or to speak about a gavernment like this.

We know already that they say we have not yet arrived at the moment for "unity of the left" , that we have to be moderate and prudent because democracy is fragile and the economic crisis very hard. majority, as welt as taking the immediate and urgent measures to satisfy the workers' demands, has to guarantee the calling of a Constituent Cortes, elected in conditions of full freedom, and not like these elections or those of June 15, 1977.

We want a Cortes in which the nationalities take part of their own accord rather than being forced to do so by Martin Villa as is happening now.

Breaking once and for all the treacherous pacts with the Francoists and the bourgeoisie, imposing the will of the working class majority. That's what the workers' majority means.

And that's why Santiago Carrillo and Felipe. Gonzalez don't want a workers' majority because they are tied by these shameful pacts, compromised behind a coalition government which carries on increasing unemployment, increasing repression and deniés rights to the majority.

They have done everything possible to sow division and demoralisation.

They hope that strikes are not centralised, and that the bourgeoisie is not defeated through the ballot box.

obtain workers' pretenti But precisely for that reason Therefore, if the leaderships want" it, it is necessary to force -. • 7нь - VI them to want it.

That is the task for the workers' left: to impel the majority workers' parties into an alliance against the bourgeoisie.

That is another reason to put the workers' left into Parliament -to vote LCR. majority we call for the workers' parties.

The LC is going to withdraw its candidates, in agreement with the independent comrades who have fought with us for the Workers' Alliance and for a workers' majority in the We fight for the victory of a united working class and we don't want to disperse votes.

In every province the vote should go to the parties which can still today draw together the great majority of the class.

In almost the whole country that is possibie around the PSOE or the CP.

Does that mean a vote for the betrayals of Felipe Gonzalez and Santiago Carrillo?

No, it means confronting the Francoists and the bourgeoisie together with the socialist and communist workers, together with the majority of workers in every province.

Because in elections as in strikes there are class lines. It is a class vote, it is a vote which Felipe Gonzalez and Santiago Carrillo don't want because it is a mandate to break with the Francoists and the bourgeoisie. If anyone still thinks that in this way we support the treacherous leaders, we will tell them perhaps yes . :.. but like the rope supports the hanging man.

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The symbol of cow dung and horse manure is used continually in the film to express all that in Freudian terms from which it is Wednesday

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