Senora Peron with her personal adviser Lopez Rea The success of last week's general strike in Argentina is a great victory for the working class movement.
The upsurge began with a spate of wild-cat strikes at the beginning of this month, when President Peron refused to ratify the national wage settlements and set herself firmly against any rises over 50 percent. The CGT (equivalent of the TUC) was forced to call a general strike for They promptly called this off ten hours before it was due to end when the President promised to allow in creases of 100-150 percent to cover the effects of the roaring inflation. However, when the President seemed to have second thoughts about her surrender, a new movement of wildcat strikes spread out over the coun try on the 9-10 July. These forced 'La Presidente' to ratify the wage more serous controntations we mus of the aims of the general strike.
President Peron also suffered a severe setback in the parliamentary arena, when her own party went against her and elected Italo Luder as the new Senate leader - who would succeed her if she resigned - rather than Raul Lastiri, son-in-law of Lopez Rega, who previously was next in line. Deputies from her own party were also going ahead to impeach Lopez Rega for 'common crimes' - namely the fostering of the Argentine AntiCommunist Alliance (AAA), the notorious police death squad responsible for hundreds of murders of workers and intellectuals.
The armed forces have quite sig nificantly been one of the forces pressing Isabel Peron to surrender because. they say, the austerity programme which she was trying to unload on the working class was playing into the hands of the guerrillas. What the establishing itself in control with the blessing of Lorenzo Miguel and other leaders of the Peronist CGT union bureaucracy. Then it would carry out its own version of what it cynically calls an acceptable emergency economic programme. At the same time it will institutionalise the present more freelance repression of the workers movement so as to more effectively 'neutralise' it.
The background to this serious social crisis is an economic situation which is worsening as the international recession gets a grip on the Argentine The working class is being hit hard, with the austerity programme that sparked off the present crisis having doubled (or tripled) the prices of basic commodities, food and transport. Now, after the important strike by the steel workers of Villa Constitresponse to repression earlier this year. most important upsurge since the urban insurrections in Cordoba in 1969-71.
Villa Constitucion, like La Plata and and several other provincial centres, again saw severe confrontations with the police, and the second wave of wild-cat strikes saw important guer rilla actions - especially in Cordoba, traditional centre of working class militancy.
The crisis of the Peronist movement, and the slipping grip of the trade union bureaucracy over the workers' movement (especially outside the capital of Buenos Aires) opens up a huge potential for revolutionary politics. In the context of more and acon last Aurust, ana m also prepare to launch a solidarity campaign for the thousands of political prisoners rotting in Senora Peron's jails.
Two of the delegates who were excluded: Mike Knowles and Rosemary Sales red weekly 17july 1975 Two people went down to Andersonstown Barracks to collect the signs on the Friday night (4 July) and they were immediately told that they were being held for questioning. One of them was actually badly beaten up.
RS: People were extremely worried about the situation with the Loyalist assassinations, but they had no faith in the Army to protect them from this.
GMc: I think the general attitude could be summed up in one quote: "We haven't fought them for six years to keep them here.' • What did they think of any Westminster sclution for instance, the Bill of Rights type approach that you found at the staged meetings you went to?