[The arrest and then the release on bai…]

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The arrest and then the release on bai a week later of Santiago Carillo and seven other leading members of the Spanish Communist Party is part of a much bigger political cat and mouse game through which the Suarez regime and the CP leaders are both struggling in their own way to keep Franco's Spain safe for capitalism.

The arrest of Carillo, is an illustration of the undiminished political repressiveness of Franco's 'reformist' successors.

Like all the other political arrests which are still a daily occurrence in Spain, it reemphasises the importance of the demand for a complete amnesty and the legalisation of all political parties.

Carillo's political prominence not only prompted a new wave of militant demonstrations in every Spanish city around these demands; it also led to a chorus of protest from international reformist and Stalinist dignitaries who have managed to remain relatively silent about the many hundreds of other recent political arrests.

EMBARASSMENT

This, of course, has created a certain amount of embarassment for the regime, anxious to have its "democratic" credentials accepted.

The arrests, however, have a positive side both for the regime and for the Communist Party. Carillo may be an embarassing captive; but his detention helped the Suarez government at a crucial moment to defuse an outburst of opposition on its ultra-right flank.

The Falangist "bunker" had exploited the • regime's failure to rescue the President of the Council

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Saudi Arabia produces SO much oil that, for a few months at least, it can probably keep the most recent oil price increase down to 5% and break the majority OPEC plan for a 10% rise.

Its decision, Oil Minister Sheik Yamani said, was taken to help the economic problems of Britain, France and Italy and so help forestall Communist Party participation in the governments of the latter two countries.

The motives for Libyan President Gadaffi's decision to pour £250 million of much needed money capital into Fiat, Italy's major manufacturing company are more complex.

The deal gives the government of Libya (ironically once Italy's colony) 10% of Fiat's shares, but evidently a much larger share of control than this.

LIBYA

Though Saudi Arabia has already bought up sections of major capitalist corporations in West Germany, the Fiat deal is Libya's first move in this direction.

Up to now Gadaffi has preferred to take stakes in finance capital operations, such as the powerful Union of Arab and French Banks, which are major operators in the speculative Euro-currency markets.

In this enterprise Gadaffi's state bank operates in a consortium with the Midland Bank.

To Gadaffi at least such activities do not seem inconsistent with his policy of "Arab socialism"

In Libya itself, this, policy consists of a combination of nationalised or partly nationalised Libyan workers benefit from various "welfare state" schemes which do not go to the tens of thousands of foreign migrant workers who suffer appalling hardships.

The Arab Socialist Union is the only legal political "party"; it is really more of massive public relations enterprise.

The formation of independent workers' parties or trade unions is punishable by death.

"MIDDLE ROAD"

Gadatfis stated aim, like that of so many demagogues, is a middle road' between capitalism and communism.

His socialism, he admits, owes more to Mohammed than to Marx and his regime pursues a fundamentalist Islamic line.

The one consistency, however, in Gadaffi's otherwise erratic foreign policy has been his support for the Palestine Liberation movement.

It is for this reason that imperINTERNAT IONAL ialist governments and their most trusted agents in the Arab world, such as Sadat in Egypt, have made repeated attempts to sponsor a right-wing coup to unseat Gadaffi.

He evidently feels that the leverage to be gained by financial deals with major capitalists is a better guarantee against this than the strengthening of the mass movement in Libya.

The deal with Fiat has already sparked off an important industrial dispute in Italy.

Since the deal, Turin's daily newspaper La Stampa, always owned by Fiat's Agnelli family through a holding company, has been brought directly into the main Fiat company. This plan was never mentioned to the workers on the newspaper.

CONDITION

Journalists and editorial staff protest that this was a condition imposed by Gadaffi in order to secure editorial control of the newspaper.

Even before he owned any of it Gadaffi made demands for the dismissal of the editor for implicitly criticising his policy.

At least Gadaffi can rely on one newspaper to support him, no matter what. References to him in the Newstine, daily paper of the "Trotskyist" Workers Revolutionary Party are never less than uncritical.

Their "own reporter" at a giant rally in Tripoli last September was carried away in an ecstasy of adulation.

But how it is that the man the Newsline implies is the architect of permanent revolution in Libya can be a financial capitalist in Paris and Oil refinery in Saudi Arabia