Spanish Coup Bd

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Arm in arm "defending democracy" - Francoist Manuel Fraga and leadine Stalinist Camarhn HENRY PHILLIPS, just back from Madrid, sums up the outcome of the February events.

So everything in Spain is back to normal after the dramatic coup attempt of February 23 and 24.

Just as normal, the government is in the hands of the main right wing party, the Centre Democratic Union (UCD)-now led by Leopoldo Calvo Sotelo whose vote of confidence was so rudely interrupted by Civil Guard machine gun fire.

And, just as normal, this is a government which lacks authority and whose timidity and internal divisions are only too obvious.

Many UCD MPs have demonstrated their desire to form a coalition with the Socialists which Calvo Sotelo totally rules out.

Though Calvo Sotelo asserts that he is not going to govern with the sword of Damocles over nis head, it is clearer than ever after February 23 that, it he doesn't look upwards before every move he makes, at least he looks over his shoulder at the Francoist army.

Almost every day Calvo Sotelo is obliged to announce that there is no military pressure on him.

But another thing which is plainly back to normal is that every Spanish barracks is full of officers who-at the drop of a three-cornered hat-would support a military coup if they thought it could be successful.

They will have no problem in inventing a pretext since another thing which continues as normal is the continued terrorist campaign of the radical Basque nationalist group ETAmilitar against the forces of state repression.

Since the relative impunity with which ETA-M has been able to shoot down police and army officers is one of the main reasons given by the military officers who want to justify the seizure of power, Calvo Sotelo tried to demonstrate his concern by rushing off to the Basque country as soon as another police commissioner was shot dead by ETA-M last week.

ETA-M has stepped up its campaign since the failed couppartly to distinguish it from the Politico-Military faction of ETA (the so-called "poli-milis") which reacted to the coup by releasing the three foreign Consuls it had kidnapped and declaring a unilateral and unconditional ceasefire.

Released Everything is also back nearly to normal in the army and the Civil Guard. Most of the members of the Civil Guard who invaded the Parliament building have been released and are now back at their posts.

The authorities say they were merely obeying orders: in fact they had volunteered to participate in an action 'to save Spain"

Only their leader, Lt-Col. Tejero is detained along with four generals (including Milans del Bosch and Armada) and 20 or so other officers and a handful of ultra-right civilians, former officials of Franco's Their "detention" according to El Pais, the main bourgeois newspaper in Spain, means that for the most part the officers are simply confined to their Tanks on the streets of Valencia comfortable quarters in various military barracks, allowed complete freedom to receive visitors and communicate outside.

They are being treated, El Pais also reports, like heroes.

I heit role, ana the coup as whole, is to be examined by secret military tribunal.

What is planned, of course as everyone iealises because it is another part of what is normal in Spain-is a cover-up of the fact that plans for a coup were almost certainly participated in or known to the majority of the top echelons of the military, and probably also to the King and the leading politicians.

Such a cover-up is designed to bolster the myth that the army and police leadership can be divided into a pro-coup minority, and a democratic, constitutional majority.

Everything which has been revealed since the coup attempt (mostly in the bourgeois press since government sources are virtually silent) suggests that it was in no way on principle that the majority held back from supporting the coup-but rather a tactical decision.

It is thus clear that. the forces leading towards a military coup remain as strong as ever and have even been strengthened by recent events.

It is not so much the Spanish capitalists as a whole who are supporting the coup.

Bureaucracies The main employers' organisation, the CEOE, in fact declared itself fairly early against it.

Most of the Spanish bosses still hope to be able to control and exploit the working class with the aid of the Socialist and Communist bureaucracies which lead the workers' organisations.

And in the aftermath of the coup attempt the bosses got a lot of gratifying evidence of the extent to which the labour bureaucracies are prepared to make abject concessions under the threat of a coup-though this too is normal enough behaviour for them.

During the coup attempt the main workers' unions, the Workers Commissions (Communist) and UGT (Socialist), urged workers to 'stay calm' and not go on strike:

And after the coup was over they called off strike after strike on wages and other issues so as to avoid "provocations" which would give offence to the generals.

This is just what most labour leaders did in Chile in 1973.

Despite all this class Tejero - led the raid on the Parliament: now a fascist folk-hero. collaboration-which led Workers' Commissions leader Marcelino Camacho and scarcely reformed Francoist Manuel Fraga to march arm in arm through Madrid in support of the Constitution and the Kingthere are already sectors of the Spanish capitalist state who are disillusioned with the brief experiment in "democracy"

Unemployment

This sector can only grow as the crisis of capitalism becomes more acute.

It is the enormous level of youth unemployment • in Euskadi for example, which is one of the factors making for the mass support for ETAmilitar, whose militant nationalist campaign is so offensive to the armed forces.

As a result of the massive growth of resistance to the Francoist dictatorship among the working class, the youth, the intelligentsia and the petty bourgeoisie, Spain's rulers had no option but to grant concessions to this movement.

But at every step along the way they tried to limit the concessions and maintain continuity with the Franco dictatorship.

Bequeathed

This explains the importance of the monarchy and Juan Carlos (who was, of course, elected oi chosen by nobody, but bequeathed as head of state by Franco personally).

Sections of the bourgeoisie thought their interests would be served by introducing a form of bourgeois democracy and tying their fate to their fellow capitalists in the rest of Western Europe.

The centralcontradiction has

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Civil Guard commander Aramburu hurries to the Parliament to quell the rebellion. What will he do next time?

chatting 3 years ago with General Milans del Bosch - now confined to barracks. an unconditional truce after the coup attempt. united front which breaks from the designs of the military caste reformists, but by the develop- 7 In Inna AI1 IAt AnTek MAnIA ni Marlisan SaSTTPTATIPIT MEARO Nunnom weIN the right wing bourgeois UCD, and the bourgeoisie.

This would help to in every country. Calvo Sotelo heen that thev were ohliped to attempt this manoeuvre under conditions of rapidly deepening economic crisis, under conditions where the bourgeoisie of other advanced capitalist countries were moving not towards democracy but away from it.

The Spanish bourgeoisie were trying to change horses in mid-stream -and the stream was a raging torrent.

They were only too aware that in material terms, because of the economic crisis, there was little their "democracy" could offer to the hungry workers.

Tentative

Workers had to be given some democratic rights: but they could not be allowed to use them to make gains. This is why the manoeuvre of 'democratisation'. has been carried out so tentatively by Spain's rulers.

Although the state is officially a bourgeois parliamentary democracy, the apparatus of the Francoist dictatorship has -with few exceptions (like the old vertical "trade unions")remained untouched.

Of course, all parliamentary forms of rule have a repressive apparatus behind them-and there are few nations where the leaders of that apparatus have never seized political power or come close to it.

But the difference in Spain is that the Army, Civil Guard and national armed police are led by officers who regarded it as natural-in many cases as heaven-ordained-that they should monopolise political power.

The "democratic" bourgeoisie have not dislodged this military caste-and that is not so much because they haven't been able to or because they haven't wanted to risk the political consequences of trying to do so.

Pinochet

Many of the more openly dictatorial generals have been forcihlv retired: but others rise to fill their place. frATATAT In Chile, General Pinochet rose to the top of the army as a result of purges of his superiors who were believed to be insufficiently constitutionalist.

It is not the capitalist class which at present is in the vanguard of the moves towards military dictatorship in Spain; but this vast military caste which is the other legacy oI Franco and whose privileges and prestige have diminished sharply even through the very Garcia Carres, one of the civilian conspirators: a former leader of one of Aranen's cornaratiat "unions" limited democratisation which has taken place.

The failed coup led by Generals Milans del Bosch and Armada has served as a dress rehearsal for the real thingwhich February 23 so nearly became.

The military will have now learned to theit own satisfaction that, unless a major political change takes piace, a coup will not be met by well-organised, instantaneous general strike and other action by a united front of workers' organistions.

By. contrast, the far right has taken the attempted coup as a cue for a wave of action and provocative mobilisations.

Slogans in favour of Tejero have appeared painted on walls everywhere.

The fascist MP of Fuerza Nueva, Blas Pinas, has publicly hailed the attempt and has said that since the arrest of the generals "the prisons have been converted into temples glory"

The old Francoist and still semi-official newspaper El Alcazar has also praised the objectives of the coup.

The strengthened position and arrogance of the extreme right should provide a terrifying lesson, too, to the Spanish working class. Inere is very little time to develop the necessary united front actions if the next attempt at a coup is not to Juan Carl I VUIL : successful.

There were immediate calls I general strike action when e news of the coup broke-for stance, from à number of volutionary socialist groups d from the CP in Euskadi and Catalonia.

But these calls were either ›lated from the mass of the WC ›king class or, in ine case or thi e CP, almost immediately IET voked in line with the central pa Ity line which was "Stay quiet and trust in the King"

But when democratic rights, even as limited as now exist in Spain, are supposed to rely for their defence on Bourbon monarchs installed by military dictators, it is time for a massive political turn in the working class movement.

Acida from the huildino nf a the preparation of a general strike, and propaganda in tavour of the dislocation of the Francoist armed forces, there is a specific concrete demand around which a movement for these objectives can be built.

This is the demand for an open public tribunal called by organisations of the workers' movement and the radical intinnolicte dacinned tn unraver Socialist leader Felipe Gonzalez congratulates the King strengthen the preparedness the working class.

And it would also help to expose the fatal weakness created by the reformist and Stalinict leaders They call for all the facts to LOL be revealed-but demand that that should be done by the military investigator appointed by the government!

Both Felipe Gonzalez, leader of the Socialists and CP leader Santiago Carrillo have more or less echoed the call of the new UCD Defence Minister that the enquiry into the coup shall not he converted into a "witchUG. LUITVILUN TY ALV. hunt" against the armed forces.

If Spain is "back to normal" that fact should be taken as a last minute warning siren by the labour movement.

It is only Trotskyism, the transitional programme and the strategy and understanding of permanent revolution which can provide the perspectives to meet Inose tasKS. dens By taking up the struggle to build Trotskyist parties in every country and reconstruct the Fourth International as the authoritative world party of revolution, we will be able to prove the positions of Trotskyism correct not-as now-largely by the betrayals of the masses at the hands of the Stalinists and ment of the socialist revolution

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Page 6 SOCIALIST PRESS, Wednesday As Labour councils up and down the country decide on rate lovels for the coming financial year the question of how to respond to Tory attacks on local government finance is sharply posed. Socialist Press has consistently argued for a policy of mobilising the working class behind Labour councils in a confrontation with the Tories.. But some of Labour councils have argued for raising rates in order to buy time' to prepare a movement against the Tories. Lambath council leader TED KNIGHT is recognised as expressing this view most consistently. Socialist Press supporters KEITH WHITE and IAN SWINDALE recently interviewed him. The third and final part of this interview is

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