Italy: Cp Installs a Tory Government

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The small cloud of lethal TCDD gas, which escaped from the chemical plant of the Swiss Hoffman-La Roche company in Sevoso near Milan, is having major consequences both medically and politically. • Fifteen people are now in hospital but the long-term medical effects of the almost indestructible poison are expected to be much worse.

TCDD was an ingredient of the defoliant used by the United States in the Vietnam war.

STERILITY

A report from Vietnam in the Italian Communist L'Unita said (PCI) newspaper that sterility had been caused by the drug and infant mortality had increased by over 50% in contaminated areas.

The new Christian Democratic (DC) government has been ironically forced to advise abortion and contraception to inhabitants of the contaminated area.

(It was DC's opposition to abortion which indirectly led to the June 20th elections).

The PCI leaders have criticized the dangerous delay in the government's handling of the situation.

But they propose that this deadly threat to workers' health and lives should b inves ed through an enquiry not l he labour movement but by parliament!

INTERESTS

The systematic subordination of the interests of the working class to those of the bourgeoisie, of which this is an sample; last week led the PCI to use its power to install in office another DC government, a government of the bosses.

Led by Giulio Andreotti (who led the centre-right coalition• of 1972), the new government survived its initial vote of confidence only through the abstention of the Communist Party (PCI).

The smaller parties, and in particular the Socialist Party (PSI) were all unwilling to abstain and take the responsibility for the continuation of Christian Democratic rule unless the PCI did so as well.

CONNIVING

The PCI and PSI together now have more votes in parliament than the DC; but they are conniving to keep it in office and thus they fully share responsibility for its nakedly anti-working class policies.

The published programme of the Andreotti government contains no criticism of the fascists. It includes a committment to reduce the vast government deficit, which means enormous cuts in state spending and increases in taxation; wage control, including a "transfornation" (ie. partial abolition) of the already incomplete sliding scale of wages; and the rationalisation of the state-owned industries, leading inevitably to many thousands of redundancies to add to the 1½ million worKers already unemployed.

SAVAGE

These savage anti-working class measures - wage cuts, unemployment and state spending cuts - are the price demanded by the other major imperialist powers for a loan from the International Monetary Fund which Andreotti's government desperately needs.

They are also the beginning of the programme required by the Italian capitalist class, whose crisis of profitability has worsened markedly during the last few months of political uncertainty.

The 'bosses know that they cannot introduce these policies without the active collaboration of the PCI and PSI leaders.

But the policies are bound to encounter massive resistance from the working class. PCI leaders fear this hostility from their own base and in the last week have been touring the country trying to explain to party and workers" meetings why they have already broken their electoral promise to return to opposition not admitted to coalition by the DC.

They point to their gains: a "Communist" as speaker of the assembly, "Communists" in the chair of several important parliamentary committees; old premiers such as Colombo, Moro and Rumor excluded from the Cabinet, as the PCI leaders insisted.

But workers did not give the PCI more votes and more parliamentary strength than ever before in order to see their own parties re-install a bosses' government with a few cosmetic changes and to have unleashed against them an all-out attack on wages, jobs and social services.

CONDEMNED The PCI leaders have condemned the Polish Communist Party over the " prison sentences given to workers after the recent protests about price increases.

Their opportunism in doing this is made clear by their support for the DC's programme of wage cuts and price increases in Italy.

The main criticism of Andreotti's policy speech made by the PCI daily newspaper L'Unita was that it did not call strongly enough for "sacrifice, rigorous choices and responsible participation."

Leaders who can behave like this have totally abandoned any on behalf of the working cli Italian CP leader Berlinguer after meeting Christian Democratic Prime Minister Moro earlier this year