MASHLAST LIALLEH+ONAL SAS CHAR ALARM ANAL RASCHALS Wave of workers' struggles sweeps Europe

Scan page 14

Workers' action most developed SaiDAR osi DAYI Letter to the editor 14 Socialist Action May 1984 The following article appeared in the April 23, 1984, issue of International Viewpoint.

Workers' action against austerity in Western Europe is becoming again a major factor in world politics. The struggles at the center of the political stage in at least six countries are the most developed since the massive strike wave of 1968-72.

With the parallel development of the anti-missiles movement, they testify to the integrated character of European since 1968-72 strike wave politics which increasingly demands a consciously coordinated response from the labor movement. The EEC elections will underline this objective need, as governments of both the right and left attempt to use them as referendums of confidence in their austerity programs.

A brief survey of the industrial scene amply demonstrates why bourgeois politicians from Craxi to Kohl believe such a vote of confidence is necessary.

In Italy, the anti-inflation program of socialist prime minister Bettino Craxi has been met with the largest workers' demonstration in Italian history. One million people demonstrated in Rome March 24 in defense of the sliding scale which cushions workers' wages against the effects of inflation. The motor force of the movement comes from the national assembly of workers' councils. This body has met twice, convening over 2,500 rank and file delegates in defiance of bureaucratically inspired divisions in the workers' movement. As we go to press, delegates are planning to organize a general strike unless the government withdraws its plans.

In Spain, the epic fight of the Sagunto workers to save their jobs at the state-owned steel works, has sutfered a defeat with a majority of the workers approving the closure of the main iron and steel casting installations. Nevertheless, the Sagunto workers led a strike wave in the first months of 1984 unprecedented in modern Spanish labor relations in terms of the number of strike days lost, serving notice on the PSOE government that "industrial restructuration" will not go unchallenged.

Threat of general strike In Belgium, the Martens government is facing a renewed rise of the general strike movement, despite the bureaucratic divisions in the workers' movement. The government's proposals to slash social security provisions have provided a fresh twist to the austerity package that has already made Belgium the country with the third highest unemployment in the EEC, after Ireland and Holland.

In France, the plan announced by President Mitterrand on March 29 will mean the loss of 20,000 jobs in the steel industry, mostly in the depressed Lorraine area in the northeast of the country. The steel workers, through a general strike in Lorraine, have taken the lead in fighting these proposals which form part of the package of "modernization" which will eliminate 25,000 miners' jobs, as well as closure and lay-offs in shipbuilding, the car industry and telecommunications. On April 13, 35,000 Lorraine steelworkers and their supporters marched through Paris chanting, "Mitterrand watch out! The working class is in the streets!" The fight of the steel workers is provoking growing pressure for the French Communist Party to openly oppose the government's policies.

In Britain, the decision by the miners union leadership on April 12 to continue their strike action against pit closures and a low wage offer, represents a massive escalation of the stakes involved. Failing to defeat the strike by a policy of encouraging divisions in the miners union, the Thatcher government must now turn toward the full unrestrained use of the government's anti-union legislation, through the police and courts, in order to inflict a defeat on the miners and the leftwing-led unions who have backed them through solidarity action.

In West Germany, the 160,000 strong printers union, IG Druck und Papier, staged 24-hour strikes at all the major plants to press the demand for the 35hour week with no loss of pay. The union had appealed to workers in 50 plants countrywide to join it. The strikes follow a succession of "warning strikes" by members of the country's biggest trade union, IG Metall, throughout March with many of its 2.6 million members in the engineering industry involved.

What explains this synchronized eruption of workers' anger? There are wide differences between the breadth of the strikes, their chances of victory, and their political implications. Nevertheless there are some common factors.

Firstly, the fact that the organizational strength of the workers' movement remained intact despite heavy defeats, meant that a clash between the bosses and the labor movement was inevitable, however delayed.

Even in Spain, where the trade-union movement had been ravaged by heavy-handed operations to establish bureaucratic control of the post-Franco mass legal unions and by the early signing of a social pact that tied trade unionists hands in the face of savage attacks on workers' standards of living, the huge strike wave of recent months has created a new confidence in the possibility for fighting back.

This type of confidence is reinforced by the general recovery of the European economies, however sluggish. Even in countries where the gross domestic product is still in decline, such as Italy, industrial production has experienced a sharp rise. This expansion does not necessarily mean a reduction in unemployment, as employers try to jack up productivity through new technology and new working practices. Plans for the reduction of the working week without loss of pay, coupled with "social control" of new technology as sponsored by the West German unions, are a response to the bosses' strategem being urged on all the member unions of the European trade union confederation.

The EEC elections can be the occasion for militants to make valuable propaganda for a consciously coordinated plan by the European working class to put the cost of the crisis on the back of the employers, and to overcome the unevenness of the struggles.

However, in some instances such actions can go beyond propaganda. The Italian factory councils' national assembly passed a resolution of solidarity with the steel workers of Lorraine, the West German metal workers and printers, the British miners, and the Belgian workers.

Workers link up

The practical links between these struggles can be a permanent consideration in the present struggles. Dock workers and Ford car workers already have permanent European coordinations of workplace representatives and trade unionists. Other industries could follow.

Secondly, the adoption by most trade union confederations in Western Europe of the plan to fight for the 35-hour Solidarity supporters in Gdansk: May 1984 Black party excludes SWP:

Dear editor, In November of 1980 over 1500 Black activists met in Philadelphia to form the National Black Independent Political Party (NBIPP).

The major avowed purpose of the party was to democratically organize Blacks independent of-and in opposition to-the Democratic and Republican parties and their system of capitalism, imperialism, and racism.

However, since its inception, the bulk of NBIPP's leadership has opted to lead the party away from those afore-mentioned goals. Instead, they have been bureaucratically involved in sabotaging all attempts to implement anticapitalist and anti-Democratic party actions, and they have been expelling dissidents who sought to carry out the line of the charter. This has led to a deterioration of the party which has resulted in a 70 percent decline in membership.

At a recent-poorly attended-Central Committee meeting of NBIPP, these reformist and/or opportunistic elements of the leadership were able to gain enough support to expel activists who are members of the Socialist Workers Party. The SWP members in NBIPP have been loyal party builders. The SWP has a documented public record in support of independent Black political 35-hour week with no cut in pay.

week, has to be the subject of resolutions and a plan to achieve action in the next period.

The experience of the present waves of struggles and for a European-wide response to the crisis will be at the center of an "Assembly of workers against austerity and the Europe of the capitalists" on May 26-27 at LeBourget near Paris, initiated by the Ligue Communiste Revolutionnaire, the French section of the Fourth International. On the platform will be rank-and-file leaders from all the present struggles.

It will be a modest contribution to the vital task of building an internationalist consciousness that can make a Socialist United States of Europe a vital objective for the European working class vanguard.

AP action for many decades.

The expelled activists were charged with divided loyalties. But many rank and file members and leaders of NBIPP have been actively involved in Democratic Party politics; some are actual Democratic Party members. Their work in the Harold Washington mayoralty campaign in Chicago and in the current Jesse Jackson campaign are two examples of this disloyalty to NBIPP's stated position in its charter. Yet there has never been criticism of such deeds, nor attempts at expulsions for such revisions of the party's principles.

Although I am not a member of the SWP-nor can I take responsibility for the past and present actions of that party-1 am totally opposed to this undemocratic expulsion. There was no prior democratic discussion among the membership of our local chapters, nor was the decision made by a few Central Committee members carried out according to the guidelines of the party's charter.

Exclusionary membership should not be tolerated or supported in NIPP. We need party builders. Build NBIPP!

Zakiya Somburu Co-chair San Francisco-Oakland NBIPP

Scan page 15

Politics and intellectuals: says that he suddenly heard about the John Reed Clubs as a left-wing organization of writers and artists in 1934 (the Clubs were established in 1929). After joining, he says that he was surprised to learn how closely the Clubs were associgle against capitalism in all its modern guises and disguises, including bourgeois democracy, fascism, and reformism (social democracy, Stalinism)."