French workers march against fascist violence

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It is estimated that about one million people marched in France on October 4 against the bombing of the synagogue of Rue Copernic where three died and 20 were injured.

The ressurgence of right wing neo-fascist groups in France has been a marked feature of the last three months.

Their targets have included not only synagogues and Jewish areas but also North African immigrants, property of the Soviet Union and well known non-French left wing leaders.

The fact that the Rue Copernic murders have brought mass response is partly because of the highly organised and vocal Jewish. lobby and partly because of the guilt of sectors of French capitalists at their collaboration with the Nazis in the deportation of French Jews to Hitler's concentration camps.

Abysmal record

But it also represents recognition on the part of large numbers of French workers of the need to fight the growth of racism.

The demonstration centred on the abysmal record of the French police in convicting any known fascists-even those caught in the act.

But the anger of the demonstrators was directed squarely against the Giscard government. One of the main slogans was "Giscard, Bonnet, accomplices of the murderers" • (Christian Bonnet is the Minister of the Interior).

The "passivity of the public authorities and the indifference of the government" as well as "the inexplicable powerlessness of the police" has been strongly condemned by Alain de Rothschild, President of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France.

•It has therefore been a major blow against Giscard in the run-up to next year's Presidential He has demanded that the police carry out "an exemplary action" to capture those responsible.

Statement

Prime Minister Raymond Barre made a statement in Parliament condemning the bombing and there was a unanimous vote in the National Assembly to suspend proceedings so that its Deputies could go on the demonstration.

The police unions themselves have joined the criticism, particularly against Bonnet.

A public argument has been raging since Inspector Durand was unmasked as a member of the recently outlawed FANE by Italian police investigating the Bologna bombing.

The Autonomous Federation of Police Unions and the National Autonomous Union of Civil Police maintain that up to 30 names on a list of members of fascist organisations are currently serving police officers.

They have demanded that these people be kicked out but Bonnet denies that there are any such numbers involved in his secret list.

Other police unions such as the General Police Union have condemned the nonchalant attitude taken by Bonnet to the rise in fascist violence. "We are astonished by the attitude of the Minister of the Interior who minimises the danger of the neoNazi movements.

More to the point of course the police are at the same time concerned by the growth of self defence squads among immigrant communities and the labour movement: "We are equally worried because of the risk of setting up of self defence movements following this action.

The movement against this terrorism was expressed not only in a major demonstration in Paris but throughout the country: in Aix-en-Provence, 1,000 people led by Mayor Alain Joissainf marched through the town; in Avignon 2,000 people attended a mass meeting; in Besancon, 3,000 peopie were mobilised by the • Movement Against Racism and for Friendship Among People (MRAP) as well as unions and immigrant organisations; in Bordeaux 10,000 joined the march; in Grenoble 7,000; 4,000 turned out in Lille, 5,000 in Lyon, 10,000 in Montpellier and 5,000 in Strasbourg.

Active

The main trade union organisations the CGT and the CFDT were active in organising and participating in the demonstrations but the leaderships of the Communist and Socialist parties have not, however, distinguished themselves from the liberal bourgeois elements in the marches; nor have they put forward any independent working class demands.

Inadmissable

"All measures must at last be taken by the government so that the criminals will be arrested and punished. An end must be put to the inadmissable activities of the groups which call themselves Nazis as our party ceaselessly calls for" declared CP General Secretary Georges Marchais.

Gaston Defferre, President of the Socialist Group in the National Assembly echoed this theme: "Those who are politically responsible, who are in charge of the forces of order, must act quickly and decisively."

'Best interests'

Meanwhile the CP fails to mount any struggle against national chauvinism; indeed they champion the call for immigration controls in France which they describe as a measure in the best interests of immigrant workers.

*No reliance on the state *Build workers' self squads!

the fascists off the After prolonged haggling with leaders of Poland's new independent union federation Solidarity, Warsaw judge Zdzislaw Koscielniak decided last Friday to cut the Gordian knot.

He himself deleted the right to strike-a clause negotiated by the union with the government as part of the settlement of this summer's strike wave in Gdansk -from the union's draft constitution.

Then he added a clause specifying the Communist Party's leading role in Polish affairs.

And then, while Solidarity leader Lech Walesa pondered his next steps, Judge Koscielniak registered Lne independent union with its 'amended consti tution! .

Walesa afterwards declared that:

"We shall be guided by the charter without the changes made by the court. The court has its charter and the union has its own."

But it was just such an uneasy balance of forces which the strike leaders plainly thought they had superceded with the Gdansk agreement.

The court ruling amounts to a rearguard attempt by at least sections of the Stalinist bureaucracy to reverse the gains of the summer strike wave.

It comes in the context of a call by Warsaw Communist Party leader Henryk Szablak for CP members to join Walesa's new unions-in a clear bid to fight for political control over them.

And at the same time the debate on how best to cope with the new situation in Poland continues to rage among the Stalinist bureaucrats of Eastern Europe.

While East German leader Honecker and Romanian leader Ceaucescu have viciously attacked the concessions to the Polish strikers, Hungarian TUC boss Sandor Gaspar has admitted that strikes have taken place in Hungary, too, and advocated tactical concessions to workers' demands in the form of an extension. of Meanwnue in the USSR, the ageing Kremlin bureaucracy, weakened by the resignation through illness of Premier Kosygin, must be watching with some trepidation.

Dogged by mounting working class resistance in Poland they face the daunting prospect of another disastrous harvest at home, and the added strains of maintaining their war in Afghanistan.

Fearing above all the possibility that workers within the USSR will draw lessons from the militancy of their brothers and sisters in Poland, the Kremlin leaders are forced to play a spectator's role as the Polish bureaucrats struggle to regain control.