Franco's Heirs Set Back in Euskadi Elections

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administrative hard to distinguish from those police will point in the same the smallest functions which have been allo- of the central central government in direction as those of the Spanish is a result of the cated to the "autonomous" Madrid.

ench cops wade in A 6-week public inquiry into the build- Such confrontations between large numing of a nuclear power station at Plogoff in bers of French workers and the police have Northern France has led to bitter daily multiplied in the last eight months, with clashes between anti-nuclear demonstrators major incidents in Nantes, Cherbourg, Belfort, the naval yard at Brest and the Last weekend the violence spread to Tull-scale rots in the steel towns of Paris, where a protest march of 2,000 was viciously attacked by police using tear-gas.

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The Summer School will be attended by delegations fr organisations affiliated to the Trotskyist International Committee, and is open to WL members and supporters.

The first elections to the new and almost powerless Basque parliament - took place on March 9. They produced a result which was both predictable and unpredictable.

The expected part was that the various Basque nationalist parties would together get the majority of the 60 seats (20 for each of the three Basque provinces Viscaya, Guipuzcoa and Alava).

What was less expected was the dramatic extent.. of their victory and the resulting blow suffered by both the "demo. cratic" Francoists of the Democratic Centre Union (UCD) and also by the main national workers' parties the Socialists (PSOE) and the Communist Much to its embarassment the party of the central government in Madrid (the UCD) will have only six seats in the new parliament.

And four of those it derisory of those it obtained in the smallest province Alava as a result of the and riot police.

More details available from: electoral system which is heavily weighted against the most populous and urbanised region.

That, of course, does not mean that capitalism will be under-represented in the Parliament which will assemble in the traditional Basque capital of 1937.

The election victors were the party of Basque capitalism, the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV).

Demagogic

After a demagogic nationalist campaign the PNV got 25 out of 60 seats-even more than expected.

The radical nationalists of Herri Batasuna (Popular Unity), who are allied to the guerrilla organisation ETA (militar), say that their 11 deputies will boycott the parliament.

This means that the PNV will be able to form a monocolour right wing nationalist "government" to exercise the BUT HCHE LU derisory administrative functions which have been allocated to the "autonomous"

Longwy and Denain.

WSL, BM Box 5277, London Basque government.

Despite its parliamentary strength, the PNY is bound to find its political hegemony in Euskadi increasingly threatened by the more radical sections of the nationalist movement.

The heavy popular support for Herri Batasuna, and for the more compromising Euskadiko Ezkerra (linked to ETA political military), came from sections of the petty bourgeoisie, the youth and of the working class.

They are bitterly hostile to the Francoists of Madrid and their omnipresent repressive apparatus; and at the same time they are contemptuous of the PNV's bourgeois respectability and reaction.

It is very likely that this support for Herri Batasuna will strengthen as the PNV implements policies which, for all their nationalist rhetoric, will be inerr nationalist rhetoric, will be hard to distinguish from those of the central government in Madrid.

The guns of the Basque police (who will in any case remain in Euskadi).

And Basque flags flying from all the public buildings, and the Basque language in the schools will hardly distract attention from the acute and growing problems of unemployment and inflation faced every day by the working class of Euskadi.

It is those material problems, alongside the continuation of many aspects of Francoist repression, which will set a limit to the growth of support for the Because of their petty bourgeois class position they are incapable of offering any coherent answer to the material problems of the working class.

And many workers already clearly view the arguments between EIS and the PNV as largely a diversion.

They did not in the elections however, look to the major national workers' parties, the PSOE and the CP, to offer an alternative solution.

The disillusion of workers with the reformist and Stalinist leaders is reflected in the pathetJubilant Basque nationalists ically low vote they received in the elections.

The PSOE got 14% of the votes and 9 seats, the CP a mere 4% and only one seat.

It is certainly these attitudes of workers in Euskadi, especially those not of Basque origin, which produced the very high level. of abstentions in last week's election-participation was only 59r.

After the elections, there is little that either the PNV or the UCD in Madrid can now do to disguise any longer the pathetic fraud which the present Statute of Autonomy represents.

Capitalist authority will be thrown into a growing crisis in Euskadi.

For revolutionaries, therefore, the present situation is creating a massive challenge.

But it also contains the opportunity to fight in the mass movement to link the demands of the working class and those of the radicalised nationalists against the policies of the reactionary Suarez government and its occasionally insolent, but ultimately faithful puppets of the PNV in Guernica. % of Seats % of votes votes in 1979 general election

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Guernica, cruelly bombed by Hitler's and Franco's planes in

radical nationalists. Incapable