Tunisia Declares State of Emergency

Scan page 2

ers smell success imposing a fierce regime of repression in Tunisia.

At least 1,000 arrests have now been made of workers and unemployed youth, including 11 of 13 executive committee members of the General Workers' Union (UGTT).

The state of emergency is still in force, with army units exercising a dusk-to-dawn curfew. For venturing criticism, the paper El Rai has been suspended.

With the aid of bribery and brute force, hysterical demonstrations of workers "loyal' to the ruling Destour Socialist Party have been arranged by Mohamed Sayah and other party leaders.

Despite the determined efforts of Prime Minister Nouira's government to create a smokescreen of false information, it is now becoming possible to judge the scale of events on 26 January.

The general strike itself was the culmination of months of pressure and agitation.

Discontent

As long ago as August there were signs ir the publications of the UGTT that discontent among its rank-and-file members was reaching a level that could not be ignored or contained Founded in 1944 by Ferhat Hached and Habib Achour, the UGTT was the trade union wing of the nationalist DSP.

After independence these links were. continued and formalised, though in practice the union always maintained a degree of autonomy from the one-party state and their relationship has been problematic.

In 1965 these tensions came out in the open, and Achour was arrested for his criticism of government policy. But in 1970 he was re-installed by the DSP as the union's secretary-general (Achour was a founding member of what was then the Neo-Destour Party under French colonial rule in 1934). As the international crisis of capitalism bore down on underdeveloped economies with the greatest severity, Tunisian workers experienced constant inflation of prices and soaring unemployment.

'Social pact'

The government responded with 'austerity programmes, and the UGTT leadership collaborated in preparing a 'social pact of wage control.

Demoralised by the events iately.

Opposition to Bourguiba's government came from the student movement in the late 1960s, when riots were put down with energetic brutality and from liberal intellectuals more recently.

Limited The latter clamoured for an end to the one-party system, and finally the government conceded some limited organisational rights to the Democratic Socialist Opposition Movement.

Led by Ahmed Mestiri and Hassib ben Amar, this group of liberal social-democrats publishes El Rai, which is about as oppositional as The Guardian in Britain.

But as the economic crisis deepened, the militancy of workers grew rapidly.

This movement was largely led by youth. Some 50% of the Tunisian population is under 20, and unemployment is here at its highest.

Sections of youth have been in the vanguard of all the recent mobilisations, challenging the government, union bureaucracy and now the army.

Impracticable

Last November, in strategic sections of industry (mines, railways, etc), a series of strikes began against government wage control. Elements of the administration sought to control this development with the collaboration of the UGTT leadership.

But this soon became impracticable as Achour was driven by the pressure of his own members to make more uncompromising statements and the bourgeoisie recognised the need for direct confrontation.

Tahar Belkhodua, associated with the policy of conciliation was dismissed as Minister of the Interior, and the scene set for the recent battles.

Thugs hired

The wave of strikes pressed on. Gangs of thugs were hired by the DSP to ransack offices of the union and threaten leading militants.

Demonstrations in defence of the union throughout the major industrial centres became larger and more frequent, while weapons were being gathered in local headquarters-clubs, iron-bars, Molotov cocktails and teargas canisters.

Amid all these preparations, Achour there was no quarrel with the DSP.

This position could satisfy neither side-nor could it be sustained for very long.

The secretary general's main concern was to secure the principal base from which he could reach out to grasp the succession to the dying President Bourguiba. He has now been shipwrecked and smashed by the tidal wave he hoped to ride to power.

'Deviationism'

The government fulminated with accusations of 'deviationism' , and infiltration by communist and ba'athist elements conspiring to subvert the loyal and innocent Tunisian workers. This produced sycophantic protestations of 'true patriotism' from some quarters, but did nothing to check the surge of solid opposition.

The UGTT leadership was left with no option but to call a general strike. On the day itself, as the strikers gathered for demonstrations in Tunis, Kairouan, Sfax and Sousse, the police moved in to blockade union offices and occupy positions in the central and industrial areas.

Fanned by provocation from agents and police, small incidents rapidly developed into major confrontations with the wrecking of buses to form barricades, and attempts to occupy or burn down government buildings.

200 killed To attack the first general strike since independence, the army was ordered in for its first major intervention into the class struggle. As this massive operation proceeded along its bloody course, some 200 workers were killed and hundreds more severely wounded.

These actions have no parallel in Tunisian history, and amount to an insurrection. It is still not clear what forces have been responsible for giving this movement such political direction as it showed, but it is almost certain that the strikes and demonstrations were the result of spontaneous militancy rather than any conscious intervention. This was reflected in the confusion which characterised the demands raised by the workers, and the evident lack of organisation on the day of the general strike itself.

Barely justified

The government's claims a 'communist conspiracy' are barely justified by the role of the Tunisian Communist Party which is now illegal and long ago dissolved itself into the left wing of the nationalists. Nor is there any evidence of any socialist organisation operating within the country. But the hints of Libyan complicity are more substantial.

Achour himself recently visited the 40,000 Tunisian migrant workers in neighbouring Libya, and used the opportunity to issue a statement of support for the PLO which reached far beyond the cautious and compromised position of the Bourguiba Massive stocks piled up by US coal bosses and power stations before the nine week strike by United Mine Workers members are beginning to run out.

President Carter sent his Labour Secretary, Roy Marshall, to set up talks between the employers and the UMWA leaders to show the employers that the Government took their fears seriously.

The largest strike in the Proposals for union of the two countries finally broke down after the Duerba talks in 1974, but the Gaddafi dictatorship has not lost all its enthusiasm for the project.

Significantly Mohamed Masmoudi has recently returned to Tunisia after four years exile.

The main proponent of the union plan, Masmoudi was dismissed as Foreign Minister after the discussions aborted. He and Achour are close political associates, and the Libyan connection is the second source of the secretary general's influence.

These machinations within the bureaucracy of the state union's history called to establish the right to local strikes and to defend the miners' health and welfare payments is clearly beginning to bite.

But as the bosses grow desperate so does the determination of UMWA President, Arnold Miller. Miller has been trying to win acceptance in the union for abandoning the strike demand in return for guarantees on the health and welfare fund.

Miners' efforts to close party offer no forward prospect to the Tunisian masses. Although the government seems to have succeeded in crushing the insurgency and preserving its power, this temporary defeat must form the basis of the future political development of the Tunisian workers and peasants.

Drawing the lessons from this conflict, they must now continue the fight to break the UGTT from the state apparatus completely, and begin to form an independent workers' party to struggle for their independent class interests. down scab pits must be stepped up and as the latest outbreak of shooting shows, defence. squads must be strengthened.

The open collaboration between the Democrats and the employers heightened by Marshall's intervention shows the clear need to break all links between the union and the bourgeois party they supported in the last election, and the need to build a Labour Party based directly on the organs of the working class.