Ion Mounts

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ITAIN 6 issues.

issues On February 27th the Polisario Front announced the formation of the Democratic Arab Republic of the Sahara in the former Spanish colony of Western Sahara.

The Front has been fighting a remarkably successful guerilla war for several weeks against the armies of Morocco and Mauretania which have taken over the country after the withdrawal of the Spanish army which was completed last week.

This takeover was the result of a sordid deal signed in Madrid just before Franco's death between the Spanish fascist regime and King Hassan.

The King promised Spain the continuation of a large slice of the territory's huge phosphate revenues in exchange for sovereignty.

In fact, in an entirely unsuccessful effort to save face the Spanish government gave sovereignty to "the people of the Sahara" but handed over the "administration" to the Moroccan and Mauretanian EUROPE 6 issues. 12 issues armies.

In resisting this settlement the Polisario Front has had the support of the Algerian government. This help, however, has been more nominal than real. And Algeria has up to now wriggled opportunistically out of recognising the new republic.

TWO So far only two countries have done so (Malagasy and Burundi) though a majonty voted in the OAU to recognise the Polisario Front as a national liberation movement.

The matter promises to have wide repercussions, not least in Spain.

The Military Democratic Union have strongly protested at Spain's cynical betrayal of the Saharan people and a large number of the returning Spanish officers are reported be supporters of the Union.

ESS The most recent example of the growth of repressive legislation in West Germany was an amendment to the Criminal Law (paragraph 88a) which severely tightens press censorship and restricts freedom of speech.

The new paragraph provides for jail sentences of up to three years for anyone who undertakes "to spread, make available, produce, accept, deliver, store, offer, advertise, announce, import into, or export from "the Federal Republic (including West Berlin) any publication which supports crimes of violence and which "tends in the given circumstances to increase the preparedness of others" to support movements against the Federal Republic and her security or against principles of the constitution by criminal acts of violence. The same applies to all public speeches.

For German courts "criminal violence" need not involve any kind of direct exertion of force; it includes obstruction of entrances and exits, of public highways or public means of transport, picketing, passive resistance, civil disobedience, and strikes which do not have the blessing of the union A liberal critic pointed out that in the present circumstances of 1.3 million unemployed, even the balance sheet of a flourishing bank might well "increase the preparedness of quite a number of people to engage in "criminal acts of Clearly, the law is flexible enough to permit prosecutions for virtually anything said or printed that does not suit the ruling class. In practice it means that a call for a strike is illegal unless it is within the rules of the "social partnership" between the union bureaucracies and employers. It aiso means that information about ongoing working class action can be suppressed, especially if it might help build up solidarity or spread the action.

SUFFICIENT

The existing laws were already quite sufficient to permit the common police practice of raiding oppositional publishers, printshops, booksellers, and editors, or seizing printing equipment and printed material, and of banning publications from open sale.

The new law is more specific and it covers everybody between the actual author and the reader.

The DGB (Deutscher Gewerkschafts Bund, the main trade union federation in West Germany and West Berlin) long ago took its own precautions against left opposition. It ruled on 3rd October 1973 that union membership. Since then hundreds of militants who oppose the "social partnership" have been expelled from frequently as a their jobs.

their unior and result, sacke from COLLABORATE The union leaderships collaborate closely with the political police in implementing these expulsions. And on many occasions Stalinists, Maoists and "left" social democrats in the unions have in their turn collaboated with the union leaders by denouncing fellow workers.

The DGB's expulsion policy followed a similar ruling by the German Social Democratic Party (StD) in 1969, and the well known Berufsverbot of 28th January 1972.

A common decree by the Federal Chancellor (then Willy Brandt) and the Prime Ministers of the 10 provinces of the Federal Republic plus West Berlin then ruled that nobody could be employed in public services unless they would "under all circumstances support and defend the liberal and democratic principles" of the Federal Republic.

These principles, nowhere defined in written law, are in practice redefined from day to day to exclude from public employment anyone opposed to the capitalist status quo.

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cooperation with «extreme left membership organisations" is incompatible with