Workers Still Confront Fascism

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wave of working class protest these have since received heavy union organisations to call a in services such as transport in nationwide action, they nomin- order to minimise the impact of 6 issues. 12 issues 24 issues The Day of Action against the Spanish government's recent economic measures on November 12th showed simultaneously the massive strength of the Spanish working class and the role of its leaders in trying to demobilise that strength.

According to the estimates of the Coordinating Committee of the Trade Union Organisations (COS - an alliance of leaders of the Workers Commissions with the Socialist Party union the UGT and the former Catholic union, UFO) which organised the action, two million workers, a quarter of the labour force, were on strike on that day.

MINES

In the coal mines and the construction industry the strike was virtually total. The areas most affected were Euskadi in the Franco died a year ago -on November 20th 1975. His successors, the King and his two cabinets headed by Carlos Arias Navarro and now by Adolfo Suarez, have faithfully continued the fascist dictator's murderous work against the masses of workers and peasants in Spain.

They have talked incessantly of "reforms" and democracy. But so far not a single trade union or workers' political party has been recognised; not a single person has cast a single vote; and every struggle of the workers for democracy or for higher pay, has been met by the regime with repression violence and murder.

This is the record of Spain's "Teforming" governments:

Political Prisoners December 1975 - a "pardon" granted by the King reduces sentences and permits several hundred workers' leaders and militants to leave jail. Many have subsequently been rearrested.

July 1976 - an "amnesty" conceded under the pressure of massive demonstrations leads to the release of something over 100 prisoners. Many have subsequently been rearrested.

In recent weeks the number of political arrests has soared once again. The campaign has been directed especially against parties to the left of the Communist About 100 militants of the centrist/Maoist Labour Party have been detained in Buskadi, as have a number of leaders of the youth section of the Communist League (one of the sympathising sections NAME. ...

ADDRESS. North, Catalonia in the East and the industrial areas which circle Madrid.

It was quantitatively the largest workers' mobilisation in Spain since the end of the Civil War.

The quality of the strike, however, which seldom got out of the control of its Stalinist and reformist organisers, was designed to minimise the threat to the fascist regime which such a mobilisation could have posed.

FORCED

When, a month ago, the huge against the government's measures fines. to control wages and encourage sackings forced the main trade ated it a "general strike". When protests came from the Christian Democrats and other bourgeois parties with whom the reformists and Stalinists collaborated in the "Democratic Opposition" the name was progressively "a day of action".

PICKETS OPPOSED

The COS leaders fought energetically against any demonstratons or pickets. In the event a few small demonstrations took place, and were attacked by the police; and, according to COS sources, 400 pickets were arrested on November 12th and probably 200 organisers, especially from the UGT, were detained in the preceeding few days. Some of The COS deliberately held back the mobilisation of workers the strike on the life of the urban bourgeoisie. In Madrid drivers on two of the Underground lines who began to strike were forced to work by the police at machine gun point.

The intentionally low key mobilisation imposed by the COS reflected its notion of the political role of the strike. This was merely to stage a protest against the economic measures which the Communist Party and Socialist Party leaders want to separate completely from the political struggle for democracy.

They wish to prevent any workers mobilisation becoming an obstacle to their plan to negotiate a pact between the fascist government and the class collaborationist Platform of Democratic Organisations.

NOT SUPPRESSED To the chagrin of these leaders, however, the independent mobilisation of the working class is not so easy to suppress.

Although the recent bus workers' strike in Madrid was defeated after the most savage police intimidation and company victimisation of the strikers, another major strike - that of over 20,000 building workers in Biscay province - has now lasted for över a month, despite the minimal strike pay which the illegal unions have collected for the strikers.

DISPERSED

Until the employers made an offer of an extra £20 a month last the ponce, both employers and government were shocked when in a permitted mass meeting of 5,000 workers their offer was overwhelmingly rejected.

The workers have decided to hold out for their demands of an £80 increase (far in excess of the government's wage regulations) and fight for the release from prison of two of their leaders.

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