Cp, Sas Join Hands

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Italian politics continues to be dominated almost to the point of obsession by what ex-President Saragat called "the worst thing that has happened in Italy since the liberation".

Leading Christian Democrat Aldo Moro remains in the hands of the "Red Brigades" who are demanding the release of all their members now on trial.

There seems little doubt, however, that the Italian ruling classwith the full backing of the Communist Party-are prepared for Aldo Moro to become a martyr to the cause of strengthening the power of the tottering capitalist state in Italy.

In the 10 days since Moro's dramatic kidnapping the Andreotti government has introduced new repressive measures.

Maximum prison sentences for kidnapping have been raised to 30 years and life according to whether the victim lives or dies.

Suspects may be held longer without charge and questioned longer without a lawyer being present.

And telephone tapping can now be carried out without any time limit (it was previously 15 days).

This still gives Italian police less nominal licence than the British police have under the Prevention of Terrorism Act, though in practice as in Britain the regulations are, in any case, ignored.

It looks as if the state authorities are as far as ever from finding Moro.

"Expert"

They keep making dark hints at "international involvement" in the kidnapping, referring presumably to the Red Army Faction in West Germany.

There is no shortage of international involvement in the state operation.

The Italian authorities are being assisted by a large contingent from the anti-terrorist squad of the West German police as well as a smaller group of "experts" from the British SAS.

This cooperation in repressive operations in Europe is the fruit of the meeting of Home Ministers and security chiefs organised by Merlyn Rees last year in Britain.

The Communist Party leadership has if anything stepped up its campaign to back the repressive apparatus of the capitalist state.

collaborator in an interview with the French capitalist daily, Le Monde, Ugo Pecchioli, the CP's law and order spokesman talked proudly of the "close collaboration' between him and Interior Minister Cossiga over the Moro affair.

Asked about the reform of the police Pecchioli said thrae reforms were necessary:

"to restore several thousand police agents, at present uselessly employed, to operational service; to make the profession more worthwhile and so encourage recruitment; to set up operational unity between the three present police forces which not only act separately but compete with each other"

Unpaid agents

Pecchioli added that every citizen should report suspicious activities to the police.

That then is the Stalinist policy in the face of the social and political crisis, of Italian capitalism: strengthen the repressive apparatus of the bourgeois state, make it more efficient and get the masses to act as its unpaid agents.

The CP Secretary General of the trade union federation CGIL made it as explicit as possible:

"The democratic state must defend itself with the laws it has and the men it has. We must be those men"

Despite the widespread rejection of the methods of the Red Brigades, there is no doubt that the spontaneous class reactions of Italian workers to the crisis will increase the size of the gulf between the Italian working class and its purported "leaders" in the CP.

Independence

The rapid growth of repression which the Stalinists are supporting makes more desperately urgent than ever the building of a new revolutionary leadership based on the independence of the working class, the rejection of collaboration with the bourgeois parties.

The goal of such a party must be not the strengthening but the destruction of the apparatus of bourgeois repression.