[Published by Folrose Ltd. for the Workers Socialist…]

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Published by Folrose Ltd. for the Workers Socialist League, 31, Dartmouth Park Hill, London NW5 1HR. Printed by Anvil Printers Ltd., London. Registered as a newspaper at the Post Office.

The "March on Paris" called by the Stalinist-led CGT on March 23, revealed more of the deepening contradiction in France between the intentions of the labour movement leaders to hold back struggle and the determination of hundreds of thousands of workers to carry it forward.

The occasion for the march was the bitter fight in the steel-making areas of northern and eastern France against the crisistorn steel companies' efforts to sack thousands of workers.

Workers on strike and in local demonstrations have been savagely attacked by the CRSthe heavily armed riot police.

Provocations

led he CRS provocations have The CRS orovocations have Dem bittered workers to become increasingly insistent that their trade unions-in particular the CGT and the CFDT-take. decisive action against the proposed sackings and against the anti-working class policies of the GiscardBarre government.

Last week's Cantonal (county) elections revealed that a decisive majority of the French people wish to see the end of the present reactionary The Stalinist and reformist leaders, however, feel not strengthened but threatened by the rising tide of working class anger against the regime.

Hold back

Unwilling to move a step outside the narrow confines of bourgeois parliamentarism, they know that they must hold back this tide while at the same time appearing to give a lead to the mass movement.

Both the CT's noisy sponsorship of last Friday's march and the CFDT's equally noisy refusal to have anything to do with it were both tactics designed to allow the rival bureaucracies to fulfil their difficult and contradictory role.

. The division between them allowed them both to attack each other from the "left"

Georges Seguy of the CGT said the CFDT was inactive;

Edmond Maire of the CFDT said the CGT was organising diversions without paying attention to the concrete needs of the shortly-to-be-sacked workers.

Of course, both are right and! their twin betrayals combine to form a joint strategy to head off and confuse the workers' None of the tactics designed to defușe the militant anti-government, anti-bureaucratic content. of the demonstration succeeded.

They could not stop the march Becoming a vast demonstration of 150,000 workers, students and youth.

They could not stop the shouting of slogans 'against the Giscard-Barre regime.

They could not stop the national, teachers' union,. FEN, from mobilising for 'their own" march at the same time and place.

Youth

They could not stop the presence on the demonstration of workers and youth from an enormous range of industries and struggles who arrived not merely in solidarity with the steelworkers but also to link their own struggles and demands with those of the tens of thousands of steelworkers who, prominent in red worksuits and safety helmets, driving large industrial vehicles, dominated the vast march.

Among many other groups of workers, I spoke to several groups of& teachers-and to a group of workers at British Leyland's distribution centre at Argenteuil near Paris, whose struggles at present concern the unionisation of the plant (only' a minority of the members are yet unionised) and a wage demand which the Leyland management has hand.

The bureaucrats of the CFDT also could not stop tens of thousands of their members from joining the march in defiance of their own leadership.

A CFDT member told me:

"We do not understand the attitude of the leadership in calling for non-participation in the march. We condemn this attitude. There are marry members in the rank and file of the CFDT who have come today despite orders".

I also spoke to one of the CGT steelworkers from Denain who bitterly described the pickets and demonstrations which had been attacked by the CRS.

Not confined He, too, said that CFDT members from the region had come with the CGT members to the march because they saw clearly that the struggle was not, as their leaders claimed, confined to jobs in the steel Even a small delegation of members tion with a banner and leaflets supporting the fight of the steelworkers and putting forward the slogan: "Too many police outside the factories; not enough to carry out public safety duties."

Both during the march and especially at the dispersal point, the Place de l'Opera, however, their colleagues of the CRS were carrying on a new series of provocations, dispersing demonstrators with baton charges and volleys of tear gas grenades.

• Bloody clash However much the bureaucrats had tried to disguise the political content of the demonstration, they failed to prevent what they planned as a picnic ending in a bloody clash between tens of thousands of workers and the forces of capitalist oppression.

The bureaucrats want mass action to end here and to go off to the bourgeoisie's drawing a syn to it port rescued and declare a victory.

The size, militancy and repression of the march now makes this more difficult for them to do.

But the future of the mass struggle against the capitalist class and capitalist government in France depends now more than ever on the building of a Trotskyist leadership.

Only such a party can confront the bureaucracies and put forward policies which give an answer leading beyond the existing needs of the working class to the strategic aim of socialist revolution, the first step towards which requires the immediate overthrow of the reactionary Giscard-Barre government and its replacement with a Socialist Party-Communist Party government.

It is therefore important for us to evaluate the record of the main organisations in France claiming to adhere to the Trotskyist Transitional including factory occupations against closures and redundancies, work sharing with no loss of pay, a general strike to bring down the Giscard-Barre government and the setting up of a SPCP government.

At least on paper the LCR was presenting some alternative to the Stalinist CGT leadership even if it completely failed to point out that the demands it presented implied a life and death struggle to dislodge and destroy that leadership.

On the other hand the policy towards the demonstration pursued by the OCI, which is claimed to be the largest Trotskyist organisation in the world, was nothing less than a scandalous one of abstention.

Abstain

Neither in 'their weekly paper Informations Ouvrieres, nor in their semi internal thrice weekly Letter, did they tell their militants and supporters whether to go on the march or not, or whether to support their union sections going on the march or not.

Members were told to propose against the Stalinists a different march and to abstain on the Stalinist proposals!

in the event 150,000 workers and youth marched through Paris, were subjected to the propaganda of the Stalinists, Pabloites, Maoists and every other left tendency imaginableexcept the "Trotskyist" OCI which just let them get on with it.

This line of the OCI actually reinforces the treachery of the Stalinist and reformist leaderships when the only "leadership" it itself has to offer consists of confusion and abstention. gasps in office, the Callaghan-Healey government has continued to show its hatred and contempt for the organised working class that put it in office.

Then, with only two days to go before the crucial vote of confidence in Parliament, Prices Secretary Hattersley and Lord Privy Seal Peart went out of their way to insult leaders of the nine civil service unions-representing over 600,000 civil servants-with a derisory 7% pay offer.

Even the government's own civil service Pay Research Unit has proposed rises of between 26-36% in order to restore: comparability with private And the militant record of civil servants has been graphically demonstrated in a week in which over 250,000 had been involved in selective strikes and protests over the pay: issue and in support of 39 victimised colleagues at the Scottish Office suspended for refusing to scab on computer staff.