SPAIN Contempt For Reforms'

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TURKEY General Strike • The hundreds of thousands of workers who went on strike in the Euskadi (Basque) region last week exemplified the contempt felt throughout the Spanish working class for the Suarez regime's proposals for constitutional reform.

The vast Euskadi strikes were sparked off by the murder of a demonstrator by the police on September 8th.

The pressure against the authorities is so strong that even the members of the local councils (largely appointed by the Tascist regime' have been forced to protest.

Many of them have resigned en bloc, demanding the disarmament of all police present at demonstrations or the resignation of the Cabinet.

Elsewhere in Spain major industrial action has developed among 300,000 workers in the Confederation of Revolutionary Workers Unions (CRWU) are now on strike in Turkey demanding the resignation of the National Front government and the abolition of the State Security Courts set up to repress the working class.

This is the latest stage of a developing struggle in which the bourgeoisie has pressed forward with renewed attacks on the working class.

ARMED

On September 5th this took the form of an armed confrontation in Elazig between fascists and left wingers in which four people were killed and forty wounded. Fascists went on to destroy the headquarters of trade unions, left-wing parties and the bourgeois democratic Republican Popular Part into The fascists have moved action in response to a growing resistance within the working class to the erosion of real wages by inflation.

Within the unions this has brought increasing affiliations to the CRWU from unions which have split from the right-wing reformist Confederation of Turkish Workers Unions, and which are pressured by their members into fighting to improve living standards.

The CRWU as a result has been forced into a campaign against the state security courts, which during the 1973-75 period successfully exploited the pretext of the Cyprus war to stamp out a number of major wages strikes.

Though the courts' influence declined in late 1975 and the beginning of this year, the ruling class But the militancy of on one side of the fascis just how imp mise is.

SREV Carusy metalworkers, building workers and the air traffic controllers, who last week refused to cooperate in the movement of an especially large number of military aircraft.

Many new disputes are boiling up as the period of renegotiation of wage contracts approaches.

While the workers take action, the leaders of the opposition Democratic Coordination, (in which the Communist and Socialist Party leaders collaborate with the Christian Democrats and other bourgeois parties) held their first authorised meeting in Madrid and repeated their readiness to talk compromise with the fascist government.

continued manifest the Spanish workers and the intransigenice s on the other show ›ssible such a comprois now attempting to reestablish their power and in particular enforce a series of measures which will put an end to free wage bargaining - including:

*Legislation of wages, prices and incomes.

*Ending local wage bargaining, and imposition of centralised negotiation.

*Set up an employers union to conduct all negotiations on behalf oI capitalism.

*The setting up of a joint lockout fund between the employers.

*Stopping all payment to striking workers.

Despite the sweeping nature of these attacks and the wave of fascist violence, the reformist union confederation has refused to join the CRWU in fighting the courts and demanding the resignation of the National Front government.

Indeed in July at the CRWUcontrolled Tofar car factory in Bursa, members of the reformist confederation actually joined with fascists in attacking a group of workers who refused to take their leaflets. This attack brought 30,000 workers onto the streets demanding the government resign.

And in Zonguldak where fascists Kilkers stormed outkor 1,000 OUL work, seized three fascists and Killed them.

Clearly the situation demands the setting up of organised workers defence squads, and the broadest possible united action between workers and peasants in support of the general strike.

The need is now for the building of a Trotskyist leadership with a programme to take this struggle forward.

Coverage Next Members of the fascist 'bunker' at Franco's The constitutional "reforms" which the Suarez cabinet tremblingly unveiled last week prove to be almost identical to those put forward by Arias Navarro four months ago.

They suggest a general election before June 1977, (based on unversal suffrage) to a two-house parliament with powers to change the constitution.

But its powers will still be restricted by the appointed Council of the Realm; most workers' parties will be banned from participation in the elections; the powers of the parliament over the government are not specified; and some of the upper house (which would have considerable power) are to be appointed.

It still remains to be seen whether even such measures will be passed by the necessary two-thirds majority of the Cortes (the present largely appointed "parliament") or accepted by the army leaders, who were reported to be "discontented" after Suarez discussed the proposals with them.

The regime's "reformist" stance is a fraud and the militant workers are showing through their actions that they understand that.