Euskadi: a tale of two murders

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Gunned down by police-Francisco Caballero It is one of the minority of towns of the region to have elected a municipal council last April, with a majority of workers' parties rather than Basque nationalist councillors.

It has a Socialist Party mayoi. ::On November 7 at 3 a.m. Ortuella became, to the anger of its people and the embarassment of its political leaders, another name to add to a long list of Francoist crimes against the working class.

At that time Francisco Caballero, a 25 year old worker from Ortuella, was shot dead in nearby Bilbao by the armed Francoist police.

Bloody reminder

He was returning home with a friend after visiting friends when two armed policemen fired machine gun bullets into his car, which careered out of control.

Francisco Caballero was a sympathiser of the Spanish CP, of which his father was a well-known local member in Ortuella.

Caballero's death, coming only two weeks after the referendum which "approved" the Basque autonomy statute worked out between the bourgeois nationalists in Euskadi and Franco's successors in Madrid, was a bloody reminder that the approval of the statute does not mark the end of repression.

But this latest murder was an acute embarassment to the leaders of the main workers and Basque nationalist parties and trade unions.

Ten days earlier they had organised a massive one-day general strike and numerous demonstrations throughout Euskadi after the killing of a member of the Socialist Party (PSOE), German Gonzalez.

It is still not clear who was responsible for that killing. It was claimed by "autonomous commandoes" of ETA which alleged that Gonzalez was a police spy.

ETA (militar) has denied any responsibility for the killing.

It may have been done by a group which has split from ETA (militar) but many in Euskadi believe that it could have been the work of police provocateurs.

Certainly the killing was cynically used by the reformist, Stalinist and nationalist parties.

They organised a wave of activity against ETA and in favour of the Statute of Autonomy-a statute which will, as many Basque workers realise, not remove the Francoist forces of repression from Euskadi but will add another locally based police force to them.

Contrast

"With the : statute-more repression!" is a slogan on many walls in the Basque provinces today.

There could hardly have been a sharper contrast between the reformist, Stalinist and bourgeois nationalist leaders' response to the killing of Gonzalez-which they cou!! blame on ETA and "ultraleftism"-and that of Caballero, who was murdered by the Faced with enormous pressure from the rank and file to organise a response, these leaders could not afford just to do nothing.

One hour only They called strikes, demonstrations and mass meetingsbut in such a way as to contribute to confusion and demobilisation of the working class.

The strike they proposed was for one hour only-and it was scarcely publicised.

In the mining area around Ortuella, however, workers spontaneously went on strike for the whole day of Caballero's. funeral.

And in many other factories they called mass meetings which indulged not in the harmless ritual denunciation of "right and left terrorism" in which PSOE and CP and Basque Nationalist Party leaders specialise, but in severe attacks against the inaction of their leadership.

• The next day the Basque daily paper Egiro reported them in this way:

"The factory mass meetings -where they took place-turned out to be very polemical, since many workers criticised the position of the Workers Commissions-CP and of the UGTPSOE in calling an hour's stoppage yesterday when last week they called a general strike.

"In many meetings it was said that "there appear to be first and second division workers"

*There were open conflicts between supporters of the token hour and the whole day strike throughout the day in the factories of Babcock Wilcox, General Electric, Lemoniz (nuclear power station) and others.

The content of the resolutions reaching this office reflects the conflict.

"We have received many communiques from'mass meetings in various workplaces.

"Those from Lemoniz, from the Cadagua shipyards, the Buildings and Works department, and many others, join in condemning the posture of the Workers Commission-CP and the UGT PSOE.

"For the workers of Lemoniz this showed "the policy of collaboration which they carry on with the UCD (the government): for • the workers of the Cadagua shipyards it brings into the open the political intentions which were hidden behind the calling of the last general strike; that time they tried to make us see that the real enemy was ETA terrorism but the reality has shown something else.

Dispersed

The same conflicts showed up later in the demonstration which the CP, the PSOE and the main unions called in Ortuella to coincide with Caballero's funeral.

They had summoned "the whole population of Viscaya province" to attend. But they had been caretul not to publicise the call-nor to arrange transport!

So, in the event, it was a small demonstration of 3,000.

It began under the direction silen the from the funeral to the suently irom ine luneral to tnt Town Square for a ritual singing of the Basque national anthem and the Internationale.

Thereupon the CP leaders rapidly dispersed and the march continued noisily with many slogans and increasingly under the leadership of ETA (militar).

The slogan of "Dissolution of the repressive forces" was widely taken up-but so was the slogan which epitomises the political bankruptcy of the ETA mas eiralletas! TA-mOre Ilias machine guns!).

The events around these killings show up the reality of the present political situation in Euskadi.

But the reformist and Stalinist leaders play their treacherous demobilising role in more and more open alliance with the government of Francoists in Madrid and their armed agents in Euskadi.

In the absence of any convincing alternative leadership in the workers' movement, many workers have turned to the radical nationalist forces repres ented by the Herri Batasuna (Popular Unity) coalition which is in effect the political arm of ETA (militar).

But radical words don't constitute a political programmeand that ETA is incapable of providing.

ETA is unable even to take political advantage of the aftermath of the referendum-in which the government, the Basque Nationalist Party and the reformists and Stalinists got barely 50% of the votes even The Liga Communista in Euskadi reacted to the two deaths by putting up two wall posters, (the second of working class town near to Bilbao.

And now what?

The police have killed a worker; a militant of the PCE. The trail of blood which the Forces of Public Order (FOP) leave in their trail is again extended.

Enough! This constant aggression against the people must be stopped!

On 29 October the leaders of the PSOE, PCE, Workers Commissions, UGT, Spanish Labour Party (PTE, Maoist) and Euskadiko Eskerra (Basque left, politico-military wing of ETA) called for a general strike and other actions as a result of the death of German Gonzalez, against terrorism and in favour of the statute of autonomy.

What are they waiting for before replying with the necessary boldness now we are confronted with another provocation by the, repressive forces which they nave sanctitied in their statute?

Will they content themselves with parliamentary questions and commissions "of investigation" to bury the matter?

In fact their intentions are not to defend the interests of Basque workers-neither on 29 October, : nor today. They wanted to divide us more in order to back up the autonomy statute which had failed to secure majority support. which will be elected early next year.

Two out of the four parties of the Herri Batasuna coalition have now said they will participate, and the others appear undecided.

Such indecision seems likely to heraid the rapid demise of ETA's political influence.

In Euskadi, almost more than any other part of Europe, the way is open for the building of a revolutionary Trotskyist party to replace the existing reformist, Stalinist and nationalist leaders.

This possibility, however, is hampered as it is everywhere else, by the consequences of the prolonged crisis of Trotskyism in the course of which the Fourth International as an authoritative centre has been destroyed.

Euskadi points to the urgency of reconstructing it.

The statute of the FOP is incompatible with the freedom of Euskadi!

The workers' organisations must organise resistance against this police terror which is unleashed against the working class and people of Euskadi on the pretext of an "anti-terrorist" struggle.

ts this not the moment to call a general strike against the enemies of the Basque working class?

Workers: discuss this in mass meetings and give the answer. .

*Dissolution of the repressive apparatuses!

*Down with the government and the monarchy!

*Let those responsible for the crimes pay!

6.11.79 Sup

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