Danish Workers Fight Picketing Law

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International Summer For the last six years Danish workers have seen their wage agreement extended by the state and laws limiting pay increases.

As usual the 1979 wage round saw intervention in March by the shaky Social Democratic coalition government.

This was received with a sigh of relief by the trade union leaders who had done nothing to fight in defence of living standards even before the intervention.

Only after the government measures had been introduced did the union bureaucracy mobilise what they thought would be token demonstrations in protest at the pay limits.

But these 'token' actions turned out very differentiy. Every day since the government intervention has seen militant strike action.

Bus drivers, for instance, not only supported the protest The WSL is holding its annual international summer school from July 21 to July 29 inclusive. The school is open to members and supporters of the WSL.

This year we are extending special invitation to EX-MEMBERS OF THE WRP-both those who have been the victims of recent expulsions and those who have found themselves outside the WRP in various. ways over the past few years due to the political degeneration of the movement and the. increasing bureaucratisation of the internai regime.

The WSL from its inception has based itself on developing the continuity of the strengths that were contained in the SLL/ WRP International Committee tradition.

We have stated that these strengths in the period of the 1960s. and the early 1970s included the correct insistence that, despite the 'boom' capitalism remained a system of crisis and had not changed; the ability to work carefully and systematically in the unions; the insistence on the importance of Marxist theory, and the centrality of the fight for Trotskyist parties. demonstration but stayed out on strike, demanding that their claim for higher wages and improved conditions be met.

To strengthen their action they adopted the tactic of mass picketing. Danish bourgeois law forbids pickets from hindering others from working-and the police were brought in to break through the blockade of the bus garages.

But while the union bureaucracy was able to isolate and defuse this struggle, the bus drivers' example has been taken up by other groups of strikers, who have also mounted mass pickets, and faced the onslaught of the police.

Biggest battles

The biggest battles have centred on the militant struggle by 48 Copenhagen cement drivers employed by F.L. Schmidt-the monopoly producer and for cement in Denmark.

Schoo But such strengths did not mean that the IC was free from major political weaknessesweaknesses which showed themselves the more the movement was put to the test of practice.

Today, in the most fertile conditions for revolutionary work, the WRP has reached its deepest stage of political degeneration. Its heritage has been liquidated by its leadership.

The WSL now represents the most developed expression of the continuity of the strengths of the IC tradition and the fight for the Trotskyist programmeits principles and methoddeveloped over the last 4½ years.

One of the tasks of the summer school will be to deepen our understanding of this development as a basis for the struggle to reconstruct the Trotskyist Fourth International.

The main presentations will include: Political Economy; Dialectical Materialism; the International *Committee; the USFI; the OCI; and the development of the WSL as an International Tendency.

The workers struck, demanding a cost-of living pay agree.ment, a reduction in overtime and more drivers to be taken on.

Within three weeks sections of the Danish building industry were on the point of closure for lack of cement.

Pitched battle

When the management attempted to reimport cement recently dispatched to Sweden, the 48 drivers picketed the harbour.

As police were sent in, dockers ioined the drivers' picket line and a pitched battle followed, in which the police were eventually forced to withdraw and did not return.

A wave of working class protests the next day against the police violence brought lorry drivers out to blockade bridges and the approach roads to Copenhagen for several hours.

Our founder members were expelled from the WRP in 1974-two weeks before the annual conference. All discussion was stifled. Recent expulsions were on similar lines.

The suppressed discussion must proceed now. Our summer school offers a unique opportunity for that to take place. We think that all ex-SLL/WRP comrades have an obligation to be part of this.

The WSL has of course been consistently slandered by Healy in the Newsline and elsewhere, presumably in order to create a barrier between ourselves- and the membership and ex-members of the WRP.

We urge ex-members to examine us on our politics and our practical record and not to be influenced by this approach.

The school will provide the opportunity to discuss all ques tions on which there may be disagreement.

Write for the agenda of the school plus the practical details Accomodation will be provided with meals at low cost.

Details from WSL, 31, Dartmouth Park Hill, London NW5 1HR And rising anger* at the attacks on picket lines has resulted in dockers and seamen voting to stage sympathy pickets if further cement shipments are attempted.

The employers, increasingly desperate in the face of this class solidarity, are now threatening to lay off 25,000 construction industry workers.

But the cement drivers are not only up against the employers and the police: they face also the scabbing of the Polish Stalinist bureaucracy, which continues to export cement to F.L. Schmidt by train.

This is played down in a cover-up article in the Danish Stalinist daily paper Land ag Folk, which blandly declares that:

"Even though they the drivers) are not many in number, their conflict with the firm has already meant big problems for the building industry.

"More problems can be expected in the very near future because cement supplies from abroad are nowhere near enough. The countries in question are Sweden, West Germany and Poland [!] "The drivers' appeal, however, to Danish building workers not to use cement from abroad during the strike."

Communist Party members in Denmark and throughout Europe must be confronted with this, the latest case of brazen strike breaking by the Polish Stalinist leaders-whose scandalous record includes sending scab coal shipments to fascist Spain during heroic strikes by Asturias miners.

The % of 197€ Christian Democr 38.7 CP 34.4 Socialist Party Social Democrats Republicans Liberals Radicals MSI (neo-fascists)

PDUP Far Left At least 9 members of the Iranian Socialist Workers Party (HKS) have been arrested by the local committee in Ahwaz.

Ahwaz lies in the province of Khuzestan, major centre of the Oil industry and home of the Arab minority in Iran.

The first two arrests came on May 30, in the wake of the fighting in Khorramshahr between the revolutionary guards' and Arabs demanding recognition of their national rights and an end to political repression and violent attacks from Khomeini's supporters.

Further arrests came over the next two days as protests developed.

Armed members of the local 'revolutionary committee' raided the homes of HKS members, contacts and associates, making arrests and confis. cating literature.

The HKS is jointly supported by the USFi and the OCRFI.

Its national leadership has demanded the release of the arrested members: The lives of all these revolutionary fighters are in danger. We have no information of their whereabouts or fate' Such attacks on democratic rights by elements of the new regime show the determination of Khomeini and his supporters to sweep aside with violence any force that stands in the way of their construction of a counterrevolutionary dictatorship in the 'Islamic Republic' All socialists, within Iran and internationally, must give their full support to a campaign for the immediate release of the imprisoned militants of the HKS.

ELECTION RESULTS ramber of Deputies otes Seats 1979 1976 1979 38.3 38.9 30.4 33.8 10.2 Senate % of votes 1976 1979 inefficient" and, more important, anti-working class Christian Democrat government was supported in office by first the abstention and then the votes of the CP in parliament.

It was those memories which made the CP's campaign for a "New way of governing Italy" fall on hearing but unbelieving ears.

Lost votes

The CP lost votes throughout Italy and in all social classes.

But the losses were geogra phically concentrated in the south, and were especially great among the young.

This is proved by the fact that the CP's losses were noticeably worse in the Chamber of Deputies (for which the minimum voting age is 18) than in the Senate (for which voting begins at 25).

The CP has failed to win the loyalty of a whole new generation of working class and petty bourgeois voters.

The CP paper, Unita, itself morosely calculated that in 1976 40% of voters between 18 and 25 voted Communist. This fell last week to 28%.

Most of the losses in this age group were to the petty-bourgeois Radicals and probably to the far-left candidates (other than the PDUP) who got nearly 1% of the poll.

The possibility of the CP regaining some of its lost authority in the working class now seems low.

Last resort Though in the short term the "historic compromise" government has been removed from the agenda, the bourgeoisie may still be rapidly driven towards trying to hold off the growing demands of the working class by bringing the CP into the government.

But in the present economic and political crisis this would be a last resort which could not be expected to be effective for very long.

Other solutions The failure of elections and parliament to hold out the prospect of any political solution must increasingly force leading sections of the bourgeoisie to look for other-non-parliamentary-solutions for their problems.

Already during the elections the growth of terrorist actions by the Red Brigades and other similar organisations was being used by the government to justify an enormous increase in repression against the left.

Seat! 197€ 197:

38.3 31.5 10.4

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SOCIALIST PRESS. Wednesdar 20 June 19-9 SOCIALIST PRESS. Wednesdar 20 June 19-9 Page 3

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