TERNATIONAL NE Government crises sweep Europe

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cracks in coalition

'MAJORITY' NOW

MINORITY Fifty five large municipalities gained by the Union of the Left led by the Communist and Socialist Parties.

Fifty-five rusting nails in the coffin of the reactionary government of President Giscard d'Estaing and Premier Raymond Barre.

The results of France's local elections have made a complete mockery of the crumbling political alliance between Giscard's Republicans and Jacques Chirac's Gaullists which calls itself the "governmental majority"

On the first and second rounds of voting the "majority" got a clear minority of the votes.

The "majority" is now a minority in the councils of all but a few of the most important towns and cities (though the exceptions include Paris, where Chirac is now Mayor).

The popular-frontist Union of the Left got almost 52 per cent of the votes, confirming the growing unpopularity of the anti-working class policies of the Giscard-Barre NO THREAT CP Gen. Sec. Marchais the CP and Socialist Parties.

This is why the surge of support for the Union of the Left is an embarassment to the Stalinist and reformist leaders.

It puts pressure on them to make more energetic moves against the present government and it goes a long way to disprove their pathetic excuse for their collaborationism - that they could not win elections without the link with capitalist "opposition" parties.

The "Trotskyist" candidates of the LCR (Revolutionary Communist League - French section of the "United" Secretariat of the Fourth International) and Workers' Fight (Lutte Ouvriere) got about 4 per cent of the vote in the limited number of towns where they stood (a good deal less than the petty bourgeois "environmentalists").

LESS And their per cent the vote in Paris was less the Protest general strike in Milan office only by courtesy of the abstentions of the Communist Party.

It is, in effect, a coalition - with the only difference being that the Stalinist leaders are giving their support free, rather than in return for ministerial posts.

But the political 'understanding' which has kept Andreotti in power since the Christian Democrats' huge losses in the general election of June last year - has taken severe knocks.

Mass demonstrations and occupations by students and unemployed youth over the last six weeks have been directed as much against the CP's collaborations with the government as against the Christian Democrats themselves.

ATTACKS

And, in return tor a › 500 milion foreign currency loan to prop up the ailing lira, the International Monetary Fund are demanding redoubled attacks on the living standards of the working class - including public spending cuts; tax : increases totalling $ 2,000 million; and a combination of speed up with limits on pay and fringe benefits sufficient to freeze' the increase in labour costs to 16 per cent a yeat (it is currently running around 27 per cent, as workers seek pay rises to catch up with price inflation).

Working class hostility to the savage demands of the IMF, and The Workers Defence Committee reports that 32 of those convicted after last June's demonstrations against Gierek's government have now been freed.

But 23 more remain in jail and there have been no releases for sereral weeks. Persecution of members of the Workers Defence Committee seems to have declined but police have been harassing workers in Radom who have made complaints against them.

The alleged "pro-labour" bias of the majority Democratic Party was exposed as a fraud last week when the House of Representatives rejected the Construction Workers' Picketing Bill. This bill would have extended the right to picket on construction sites. Last year a similar measure was vetoed by Republican President Ford. This year not even the Democratic Congress will pass it.

ZAIRE

Major fighting has broken out in the Shaba province (formerly Katanga) of Zaire. The National Liberation Front claims to have begun the liberation of the country from the rule of President Mobutu.

Mobutu has appealed, so far without very much success, to the US for more military aid. Latest reports suggest that the Liberation Front has captured four important towns and is being welcomed by the local people.

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OXI 1AOE MIAHMOS