Spain: Francoists Call for "democracy'

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"Now this democracy must figures still show it as 5%) and emi- the tion of the sale fat arrhairson untarmnina rinhto 'Now this democracy must be consolidated" . These were the words of Franco's chosen successor King Juan Carlos when opening Spain's newly elected parliament.

They might equally have come from the mouth of Felipe Gonzalez or Santiago Carrillo.

To ail of thein the consolidation of "democracy" means a determination to prevent any mobilisation of the working class which will threaten the limited legitimisation of the Suarez government produced by the June elections (the final results of which have still not been announced).

The key feature of this counterrevolutionary plan is the "social pact" through which Suarez aims to draw the reformist and Stalinist leaders in parliament and the trade unions into full collaboration with the massive economic attack on the working class which Spanish capitalism urgently needs.

CRISIS

The symptoms of the economic crisis get more glaring every day. Inflation is the highest in Europe; many businesses are near to closing down and stock exchange prices are tumbling; unemployment is over ten percent of the workforce (though the doctored official figures still show it as 5%) and emigrant workers are returning in thousands from the rest of Europe.

In the last two weeks Suarez has begun to unveil his plans to deal with this rapidly worsening crisis.

He has devalued the peseta by 20% giving an enormous push to the cost of living.

He has proposed cuts in public spending, greater freedom for firms to sack workers through the abandonment of the Francoist employment protection laws and new wage TARGET The wage control target has not been finally announced but the figures being put around are a flat rate increase which would be under 5% of the average wage (with inflation already at over 30% and still rising). Suarez wants, he says, to agree a figure with the unions.

So Suarez agrees he will have to grant some limited legal right to strike and allow the conditions in which the trade union bureuacrats can build up their still very restircted organisational strength in the mass movement.

In spite of the temporary gains made by the alliance of the Francoists, reformists and Stalinists which brought the new parliament into being, the situation remains extremely explosive especially on He still of the re inherited 1 And he is the question of the struggle national rights in Euskadi struggle against the social In relation to these struggle: Socialist and Communist F leaders are hostile to al! demands which would meet needs of the working class.

GROTESQUE

A particularly grotesque instance of this is the recent adoption by the CP-dominated "trade union" • the Workers Commissions, of what they call "the sliding scale of wages"

By this they Workers' Commissions bureaucracy means the increase of wages in line not with prices but with productivity!

The obvious unacceptability of the new economic measures to the working class has forced the leaders of all the main unions to reject them in public.

But behind the backs of the workers they are manoeuvring towards a treacherous deal with Suarez.

Suarez knows, however, that the chances of controlling the working class through such a deal remain very smail.

FRANCOIST holds in his hands many pressive powers h e has from the Francoist state. still prepared to use them for and lact. : the arty the the against the organised working class as he has used them to repress the recent mass prison revolt in Madrid's Carabanchel jail. came only after hundreds of common and political prisoners had totally destroyed the interior of Carabanchel, that hated symbol of Francoist repression.

There is no doubt about the willingness of the union leaders, and Socialist and Communist Parties, to collaborate with all this.

But this is not so easy in a situation where still less than 10% of Spanish workers belong to any Socialist Party leader Felipe Gonzale of the union federations and wh most of them have frequen in strikes and demonstrat shown their rejection of it leaders' collaboration capitalism and the government.

Suarez acknowledges that to the social pact accepted he i have to make "concessions" wh the reformist and Stalinist lead -who bureaucratically domin the unions and who between th picked up nearly a million votes than Suarez in June's fra ulent elections-can sell to workers who have so far given th qualified political support.