French right wing resort

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Frederiksen, chief of the now disbanded neo-Nazi group FANE.

Southern Africa Price 60p (including postage) from WSL, BM Box 5277, London WCIN 3XX While all the working class parties in France were preparing for the second round of the Presidential election campaign in support of the Socialist candidate Mitterand, the sitting candidate Giscard d'Estaing showed the workers the iron fist of reaction that would strike at even the mildest of socialist governments.

In the most unexpected of places-the Centre Universitaire at Assas in Pariswhere there has not even been a token student strike in over 11 years- an alliance extreme right wing student groups called a strike and violently cleared their opponents from the building.

The pretext for the action was a protest against a decision by the administration to abolish an exam, in use only at Assas, which allowed some students to graduate in February instead of June.

The administration argued that the exam was uneconomic, only allowing 5 to 10% of students to leave early, but costing nearly as much as the full final exam to operate.

There appears to have been little opposition from the majority of students to the proposal-little over a thousand out of 17,500 replied to a 'referendum' from the student union on the question, and no more than a hundred attended the eve of strike union meeting, despite forceful attempts by the extreme right to ensure a good attendance.

It is clear that from the beginning of the affair the extreme right was intent only to use the question as the occasion for a show of physical force.

The generally improvised nature of the right wing action is evidence of their alarm at the election results rather than the abolition of the February exam, which certainly did not need such a hurried response.

Further evidence of growing labour unrest in China came to light recently at a press conference given by Chen Yu, vice president of the trade union federation of China, at the end of April.

While trying to play down the significance of these events, and without giving precise dates, Chen Yu spoke of a two-day stoppage in an iron foundry at Anshan to the north east of Peking, and a similar dispute at a glass works in Shanghai. He insisted that these were very small strikes involving only a minor proportion of the workforce in both cases.

He denied rumours that there had been a strike at the steel works at Taiyuan, capital of Shanxi province, So ill prepared were the right wingers that they did not succeed in mounting a picket line on the first morning of the action, Tuesday 28 April.

"We are not used to this kind of thing" said one of the organisers, "and anyway students are not in the habit of getting up early"

As a result most lectures got under way without difficulty, although a number of students had stayed away to avoid the threatened During the course of the morning the right wing assembled their forces and stormed into the lecture rooms snatchina microphones away from the lecturers and driving the students out. This phase of the operation was far less amateur.

The right wingers were uniformed-leather jackets, navy blue woollen hats and 'ranger boots' and armed with thunderflashes and small gas bombs which proved most efficient means of clearing lecture rooms.

When one lecturer shouted at them You are but admitted that there had been 'discussion' caused by discontented young workers, whose main grievance was their enforced spearation from their families.

Increases

It will not have escaped notice that in March the government decreed significant increases in the number of days holiday allowed to workers for family visits.

There are estimated still to be several hundred thousand separated families as a result of the economic policies pursued in previous periods.

Even more significant than the admission, however guarded, of the outbreak of strike action, was Chen Yu's revelation of the scale of youth unemployment.

Four million young Ultra-right is exploiting Nazis' they were quick to agree with him. Their main chant was "O ... O ... Occident' They succeeded in clearing the university without any active resistance from the majority of students and lecturers by 11 o'clock, and barricaded the entrances to the university, and violently repelled some attempts to reenter the building.

Police cleared the build. ing in the early afternoon, but only atter being held oft with a hail of dustbins and gas bombs.

Giscard people he described as waiting for work'. . This is a small figure compared to some estimates made by the capitalist press, but it is far larger than any previous admission by Chinese leaders.

Recent issues of official Chinese bulletins have also admitted to the fact that workers and students have been increasingly discontented in several areas of China.

Among the causes of the problems were disputes over bonuses and wage increases, and also over the allocation of new housing units.

Criticised

In the universities the standard of food has been regularly criticised, and students have agitated in support of writers such as Bai Hua who have been attacked by the authorities. nass youth unemployment Fighting continued in the streets around the university for some time afterwards, and the right wingers later reoccupied the university and effectively stopped all work for the day.

The following day saw a much smaller number of students attempt to attend the university and the right wing asserted their control again by mid-morning.

Molotov cocktails were being prepared to repel the large force of police which was gathering in nearby streets, as a result of which the President of the University withdrew his request for police assistance and allowed the closure to continue to the end of the dav.

Having made their show of effective political force the right wing student organisations appear to have lost interest in the original issue of the February exam.

The right wing ailiance is a new feature of the political scene in France. No doubt it reflects the response of the far right to the suppression of the neo-fascist FANE by the state, and the turn to more extreme political means by the former Perhaps most significant of all Chen Yu's revelations was that there exist 'all sorts of organisations calling themselves free and independent' operating in the factories and workplaces.

Demands

In his view these all represent the continuing action of the 'Gang of Four' and their supporters, but it seems unlikely that the exis. tence of 'several factions' can be accounted for solely in terms of former ultra-leftists.

The possibilities exist for the creation of independent workers' organisations in support of economic and democratic demands in China today, but as in Poland it will only be through the creation cif a members of that group.

More importantly, it shows that the liberal' wing of the French ruling class remains willing, as ever, to impose its will by armed force on the working class.

The evidence for this view is the enthusiastic support for the alliance which was given by the Comite des etudiant liberataux de France (CELF), the student organisation of Giscard's followers.

The other groups have a long history of extreme right wing views and actions. They include the Groupe union et defense (GUD), the Front des etudiant nationalistes (FEN), the Union nationale inter-universitaire (UNI), as well as various 'corporatist' Deng new party, a Trotskyist pariy, that the masses will corne to overthrow the parasitic ruling bureaucracy. groupings.

The fact that these groups were able to achieve their aims so easily reflects upon the deep political divisions amongst the left wing student organisations, flowing in large part from the sectarianism of the Communist Party of France (PCF).

Squabbling

However, the right wing warning is not just aimed at students but at the whole of the working class, itself weakened by the deep divisions and months of JEW! squabbling between leaders of the Socialist and Communist Parties anc disorientated by the recent twists and turns of the Stalinist CP leaders into anc out of Eurocommunism, fal left sectarianism and out right racism.

In the past the working class has shown itself able tr force its leaders to aci together against the threat from the extreme right In the next few week! this determination must br found again if the democra tic rights of the workers are to survive the growing right wing wave of violence.

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