Spain: Ultra Right Stirs Damnstiat

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right organisations onto the streets in San Sebastien and Madrid demanding savage vengeance against anti-fascist movements and calling for a new, even more, reactionary The Suarez government had already been profoundly shaken by its failure in the face of ultra-right resistance to forcibly retire two army generals who stood in the way of even the fake "reforms" through which it hopes to dupe the working class. dire blow to Suarez, " further doomed attempt to introduce mock democracy, since it comes at the same moment as the mounting crisis of Spanish capitalism, reflected in the recent collapse of share prices, demanding new, more severe, antiForking class measures.

Inese were announced last week and consist of a new attempt. to enforce wage control, along with the abolition of virtually all the regulations controlling redundancies.

Firms may now dismiss workers without limit or control and the signs are that unemployment will rise very rapidly as a result.

Workers' Commissions and the other illegal trade union organisations have already called a one day general strike against these measures.

But there is no doubt that the mass of workers will not be prepared to stop at such limited actions.

A new wave of strikes has already started to develop, beginning with the building workers in Biscay province.

It now looks very likely that the Suarez government will soon be squeezed out of office through the pressure of the workers' demands from one side and the mounting ruling class resistance to even fake "reforms" on the other.

It is that prospect which has prompted a major regroupment in the fascist camp. A new alliance of parties was launched last week This will no doubt be reflected in the Socialist Party Congress, due at the end of this month.

under the grotesquely inappropriate title of the 'Popular Alliance' This incorporates major parts of the right-wing Catholic 'Opus Dei' group, the Francoist wing of the Christian Democrats and other groups swearing allegiance to the politics of Franco.

Its leading figure is Manuel Fraga Iribarne, the verbally "reformist" and practically repressive Interior Minister of the last fascist government.

Fraga, the man with whom Communist Party and Socialist Party leaders have discussed a "national pact". ", has close links with Lopez Riga, formerly Social Security Minister to Isabel Peron's government in Argentina, and the original organiser there of the anti-working class death squads.

REACTIONARY

All these events reveal as starkly as possible the unalterably reactionary intentions of the Spanish ruling class.

They expose more clearly than ever the criminal treachery of the Communist and Socialist Party leaders who continue to advocate a coalition government with the very people who are carrying out a systematic attack of workers' living standards and organising the merciless repression of the workers' movement.

EXILE

The latest government crisis was precipitated by the return of the exiled Thanom - ostensibly to become a bonze (monk) - in September. But this provocation had been prepared long since.

Ever since March the leadership of the fascist Nawaphon movement - several of whose members have just gained senior positions under the new military junta - has been telling foreign reporters to expect 'important developments' in October.

Yet the coup in Bangkok by no means gives the military-fascists control of the whole country.

In large areas of the north, peasant and guerilla resistance is so strong that government forces cannot pass safely. Fighting was reported last week along the Laotian border.

And the gathering opposition of the Bangkok workers movement to inflation and repression has been shown in a series of strikes and demonstrations in the last three years.

Revolutionary resistance to imperialism and its servants is widespread in South East Asia.

In Manilla (capital of the Phillipines), even while IMF and World Bank chiefs were winding up their conference, an illegal demonstration of several thousand came on the streets against the phoney referendum' organised by the Marcos dictatorship to giye his rule a 'democratic' veneer.