Taly Workers Fight Fascism

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The massive response to the general strike call by the Italian trade unions on Tuesday of last week was a warning to the fascists throughout Europe.

Originally the strike was planned as the fourth in a series of "protest" stoppages against the government's economic policy, especjally unemployment and inflation. The trade union leaders - especially the Stalinist leadership of Italy's largest trade union federation, the CGIL - intended it as a form of pressure on the Moro cabinet, and as a means of strengthening their parliamentary manoeuvres for a coalition based further to the left.

But the strike actually took place following a series of dozens of bombings and assaults by extbeen frequent for ss, cral yare been frequent several years, but which accelerated in the last few weeks. These culminated in the deaths of two young left-wingers in Milan and the unprovoked shooting of a Communist Party worker, Rodoifo Boschi, by plain-clothes policemen guarding the Florence offices of a fascist organisation.

MASS RESPONSE

The strike therefore became a mass response by all sections of the working class and trade union move. ment to the mounting wave of fascsit violence and provocation, ans against the forces in the police, the state apparatus and the capitalist parties who connive at it. Twelve million workers downed tools. In Milan the four-hour national strike call was extended to eight hours shutting down the city for the whole day.

In dozens of cities mass marche: and demonstrations took place; well over a hundred thousand workers gathered in the central square of Milan as six different marches converged for a single demonstration.

Unable to fight, unable even to surrender competently the undignified collapse of the US puppet state in South Vietnam forms the mirror in which half a dozen pro-imperialist regimes in S.E. Asia and the Pacific can read their own future.

Last week Kissinger's protege Thieu fled to Taiwan and reported exile in Hampstead taking with him over £30m in gold -almost Ll for every man, woman and child in Vietnam. Behind him. with 15 divisions of liberation forces poised within easy striking distance of Saigon, the parasites and policemen of his regime queued up at rapidly closing Western embassies for visas to take them to welldeserved exile.

RESHUFFLING

Thieus regime marked on almost a week of 'reshuffling', under the guidance of the French Foreign Office in which the only goal was to find a cabinet with which the Provisional Revolutionary Government would agree to negotiate a urrender. Nothing could learly show the rotten character e response - far bigger than the rn-out on the fragmented general strike calls of a few hours on refor mist policies over the last few onths - showed that the working class movement is ready to back even the most cautious lead on such an essential question as the defence against fascism.

It is this readiness for struggle that has derailed the anti-communist law-and-order campaign headed by Amintore Fanfanı, secretary or the Christian Democrats, the main capitalist party, and former apologist for Mussolini. Fanfani, supported by factions within the Christian Democrats who are opposed to the Communist Party's perspective of a coalition agreement, demanded tougher police and legal measures to deal with the rising 'crime rate' -on this platform they hoped to produce a substantial swing to the right in the regional elections scheduled for mid-June. not reaminele anticommunist ere of regimes like Thieu's - where willing stay and "defend - than Isberated Da Nand where the vast majority of the people have welcomed the NLF soldiers, and the liberated imperial capital of Hue, where the was able to hold a 30,000 strong political rally this week.

BARBARIO

Yet up to ine last moment Thieu's generals fought with the most barbaric US military equipment. Reports last week revealed that, as Xuan Loc fell, South Vietnamese aircraft bombed the outskirts with "decompression" bombs. When these explode they remove the oxygen from the air over a considerable area. so that hose not killed by the blast die of suffocation.

But what the liberation of Cambodia and Vietnam have shown is that no amount of technological savagery can guarantee the survival imperialism in S.E. Asia. Regimes throughout the area are now being shaken. In Laos, the coalition of the Pathet Lao with bourgeois politicians is in jeopardy as Pathet Lao forces clash with government troops along the main high way ists and Social-democratic leaders to the fascist threat has been wholly inadequate. Defenders and architects of Italy's post-war "democratic" constitution (which leit a large part of Mussolini's legislation intact they again turn to the capitalist state as the sole defence for the workers' movement. They now peddie the illusion that more stringent legal measures against fascist organisations, such as the draft bill now being discussed in the Chambe of Deputies, can be the answer to the danger.

What reveals such policies as a fraud is the series of conspiracies - for a coup detat, to protect fascists from arrest and prosecution and to infiltrate left-wing organisations - in which many of the senior officials of she state apparaKome. students protest at raseist polence us have been implicated in the last few years. All these organisations, including the armed forces, the criminal police, the intelligence services (SID), and even the forest guards, are riddled with pro-fascist and savagely anti-communist clements. he idea that they will ever be ahle to enforce laws to suppress the fascists, inside and outside their own ranks. is a reformist pipc-dream.

The Italian workers movement already shown in practice that PRG soldiers riding through Da Nang In Thailand, Maoists guerrillas last week: deteated the Pramoj government's army in engagements on the Mekong river. Pramoj has oblicly committen himself to the removal of US troops from Thailand. In the Phillipines. President Marcos, long-time ally of US imperialism, has made a rapi "readjustment" of foreign policy even threatening to take over Clark Field, the largest US airforce base outside America. Indonesian oreign minister, Malik, held out an olive branch to Hanoi, publicly declaring that an Indochinese federation could help neighbouring countries to "resist the ambitions and pressures of the great powers the area. Malaysia and Singapore, the othe two members strength of the working class itself Last week's demonstrations were given an added effect by the fact that they tall almost exactly on the 30th anniversary of the liberation of northern Italy from Mussolini and his Nazi backers in April 1945.

But this liberation was carried out. in most of the northern cities. by armed resistance groups who led a number of mass workers up. risings. Capitalist rule in Italy was only re-established by the delfberate policy of the Stalinist leaders, who from the beginning attempted to disarm the victorious resistance forces, and handed the power back first to the 'allied" military authorities, and then to the constitutional assembly. The fact that fascism is able to raise its head at all in italy today stems from this betrayal.

The spread of fascist activity underlines the need for a revolutionary, Trotskyist party in Italy, able to politically challenge the Stalinists and social democrats. An essential part of such a challenge must he the demand for workers' based on the trade unions the factory councils and other wor kers' organisations, which will protect the workers movement against violence and provocations.

The bitter lessons learned in the struggle against fascism will strengthen the struggle for such a policy. In the summer of 1948. when a young fascist attempted to shoot Communist Party leader Palmiro Togliatti, a spontaneous general strike erupted in many of the Italian cities. Resistance members took up the weapons which they had kept (against the instructions of their leaders) and set up road blocks in a number of areas. The Communist Party leadership had to strain every political muscle to restore 'order' one result of which was the removal of the Communist Party from government. The lesson of the last few months in Italy is that the real traditions of the resistance cannot be carried forward manoeuvres for coalition with the capitalist politicians, but only by revolutionary policies drawing on the strength of the workers' movement as an independent force. of the SEAN "alliance, have so recognised the Khmer Rouge government in Cambodia, and are pushing for closer relations with Peling. And spokesmen of the S: Korean regime have also expressed worries about the effectiveness of US "support"

But the diplomatic shifts in S.E. Asia in no way alter the reactionary character of all these egimes, and their utter hostility o the liberation forces in their own countries. The revolutionary victories in Indochina have shaken them; it is now the duty of the Cambodian and Vietnamese revolutionary governments to give political and material support to the liberation fighters the nei hhouring countries.

Arthur Hartman, special envoy of US Secretary of State Kissinger and President Ford, landed in Athens last week in the wake of massive demonstrations by almost three thousand young workers and students against NATO and US bases in the country.

The main demonstration called by the youth sections of all the left-wing political parties, took place on April 21st, the eighth anniversary of the colonels putsch in 1967. Shouting "Fascism shall not pass!" and 'Ghikas (Minister of Public Order the Karamanlis cabinet) is a fascist!' large numbers of the demonstrators marched towards the American embassy, where they were met by violent police charges, backed up with tear gas and armoured vehicles Several dozen people were injured or arrested.

Hartman's task is to find with the collaboration of way the Greek and Turkish governments - to preserve US interests in both Greece and Turkey. Commuting between Athens and Ankara, one of this main tasks i to pressure the Turkish cabinet into making territorial and political concessions in the occupied northern part of Cyprus, while preserving. with promises that the Congressional ban on military aid to Turkey will soon be lifted, Turkish membership of NATO.

SHAKEN

But Hartman and his chiefs are playing a delicate diplomatic game. The Karamanlis government in Greece has been shaken not only by the anti-American demonstrations, but by the shift to the left in a series of local elections during April. And in Turkey the Demirel government is a fragile bargainingpartner. Formed only a month ago, after weeks of intricate negotiations, it rests on the COoperation of Demirel's Justice Party with three groups of extreme rightwing parliamentarians, including Erhakan's fanatically Muslim and anti-communist Party of National Safety, which supports the complete annexation of Cyprus by the Turkish army, and the pro-fascist Party of National Action. Demirel himself, whose inaugural statement to Parliament in April promised to *fight against communism and all subversive attempts to threaten national unity and republican order represents to the full the corrupt and brutal character of the national bourgeoisie. With inflation running at about thirty per cent a year and unemployment around 1,800,000 the government will seek to use the Cyprus question as a diversion from their failure to do anything about the acute economic crisis which now presses on th workers and small farmers. Cyprus is also a cover for keeping the army - and the threat of resumed military rule in the wings of politics, and for the Government's open tolerance of right-wing violence against the labour movement. Pive left-wing students were wounded by gunfire, and hundreds arrested, when fascist 'commandos attacked a demonstration at Istanbul univerity a week ago.

Tie thoroughly reactionary character of the Demirel government has in no way altered the policies of the Soviet bureaucracy Since 1964 the Kremlin has been anne Turkish assimes for neertity from NATO, overlooking the state repression against left organisations and the right to strike. The restoration of Demirel, regarded the chief "Washington' man "mong Turkish politicians, in an open coalition with fascist elements, is one of the bitter fruits of this cynical disregard of the interests of the Turkish workers movement.

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