ment, however, had also begun to change its policies. Most of the leadership of the NUWM had come from the members of the British Communist Party. In the early days of the movement the CP had favoured building an alliance of the unemployed with the employed workers. Despite the tremendous obstacles put in their way by the right-wing union and Labour PHILIP AGEE (former CIA agent) speaks on "The CIA in World Tuesday to danuary. roopm, ar conway man, hed Lio square (Holborn tube). A London Socialist Forum FOR CHEAP, RELIABLE IBM typesetting with fast turn-around, BENGALI FRIENDS in Eurone and elsewhere for Benaali book na aran-Dal-bipiao (rourth International paper contact: Renas c/omernatonalen, box 3z74, 1030b stockholm, Sweder DEFEND THE RIGHT TO WORK badges-17p including postage , 97 Caledonian Road, London N.1. Bulk rates on en quiry (01-278 9526).
UNEMPLOYED TEACHERS in London meet every Wednesday at pm in room ol, Nortnern Foly, Holloway Road, N.T.. HARINGEY STREET THEATRE have a play about the Working are outs oors and sceneros expenses anth lacking was a strategy to build a united front of the unemployed, the organised employed workers, and the militant leaders like A.J. Cook and Herbert Smith. The initiative remained completely in the hands of the left reformists, who capitulated to the right wing in the General Strike.
In the late 1920s Moscow changed its line -WHAT'S ONRED LADDER THEATRE requires an adminstrator. Shethe should. nave organising experience, and knowleage or tne trade umon anc SOUTHWEST LONDON IMG meetind with film 'To Dip in Maund and speaker trom LCH-ETA(VI. Fri 9 Jan, 7.30pm battersea District Library, Lavender Hill. Swi1 PUBLIC RALLY to launch the International Communist Leagu 'For a Workers' Answer to the Crisis'. Tues 13 Jan, 8pm, at Conway nol, hed Lion square, London WCT The C6 limit was sold to workers by the TUC on the basis that it would prevent further unemplov ment and ensure a better deal for Ine low paid. wen, we all know what's happened to the unemploy ment figures since then; and the experience of workers at a small engineering firm in Basingstoke s ust one exampie or me trade union bureaucrats equal lack of concern for the low paid.
The struggle at the R.E. Cross factory in Basingstoke first blew up in September when the owner sacked two workers for attempting to unionise ene pace. of the 40-strong workforce refused to join the union and scabbed, a strike by the remaining workers for union rights and no victimisations was completely successful.
This left Cross thirsting for from Jack Jones revenge, and last month there was a new confrontation over wages. The shop stewards demanded the full t6 back-dated to July (when the previous agreement ran out).
Cross refused any money till January, and then began to victimise individuals when a work-to-rule started. the response or tre workers was to occupy the factory. But a High Court order to evict them.
Morcle among the strikers was still high. But although the occupation was their trump-card, the Transport & General Workers UnAlthough 12 ion officials insisted that they call it off. Senior steward Bob Baldock told Red Weekly:
the way we see it, the union officials have sold us down the river on two accounts: by getting us to stop the occupation, and then not making the strike official We know that the advice to end the occupation came from pressure from above, which is why we say that we have to rely on ourselves rather than the union bureaucracy.
Since the end of the oceupation the case has gone to arbitra tion. The T&GWU was hoping to resolve matters by Tuesday, but Cross still insists he won't negorate ww the anon wen wive me sinkers are organising support through the local Joint Shop Stewards Committee (sub-committee of the Trades Council). They'll probably need it - certainly Jack Jones, their union boss and architect of the 66 limit, doesn't look as though he's going to lend them
ations.
11 December In Barcelona there were strikes in all the schools and mass meetings in all the universities. At Pedralbes, a meeting of 2,000 people issued a call for a der ionstration assembling at the Clinical Hospital. About 4,000 people gathered there, only to be brutally attacked by the polIce.
In the factories the call for action was generally followed. In the building industry, officially on strike since the previous day, there were numerous stoppages and mass meetings; at the On 19 December the Labour-controlled London Borough of Camden was granted possession orders in the High Court against Campden Court flats in Hampstead and several houses in Prince of Wales Crescent, N.W.1.
Camden can now legally throw the 80 occupants and their personal effects out onto the street at any time in the next few weeks. These tenants are council licensees' The present half-hearted gestures towards liberalisation by the Juan Carlos regime cannot hide one thing: that it is firmly committed to the continuation of the fundamental policies of Francoism. The working class in Spain has already given its answer to these manoeuvres through its actions of 11 and 16 December. Since the significance of these was carefully played down in the British press, we print below a report from our French sister paper Rouge which gives a better idea of the real scope of these mobilisLeps ship-yard, a thousand workers walkco out and marened as a conting ent to the centre of the town, carrying iron bars and hammers. In the health séctor the San Pablo Hospital and the Clinical Hospital joined the strike.
In the engineering industry there were mass meetings in most of the factones, notably aEsEAl and in ine sabadell and Baix Llobregat zones. Several demonstrations took place despite the police clamp-down. One of about 800 people, called by trade union delegates ana to workers commissions. was Torced for the homeless, the most acceptable political solution to this problem appears to Crosland to be housing-on-the-cheap schemes - on the SCH model.
In this way Camden's young homeless are permitted short-life use of temporarily empty council property in exchange for rendering it minimally habitable at their own expense (Campden Court has but one bath between 40 flats).
Re-housing to seek refuge in the church of Santa Maria del Mar after a brutal charge by the police; others of 500 and 1,500 people marched respectively to Santa Coloma and Cornala. More than 6,000 converged without being able to form up in a contmated as 150,000 workers on strike and 250,000 people taking part in the mobilisations in the Barcelona region.
crs aiso went on sinke tv inousand walked out in the building industry, and 1,500 of them joined a street demonstration. In engineering most of the big factories were affected: Intelsa, Casa, Robert Bosch, Camps Siemens. Kelvinator, Marconi, Boetticher, and the three Chrysler police forcibly evicted the workers, who that short-life re-housing for the single people and childless couples was impossible. This proved to be a lie: empty publicly-owned blocks in the borough have been identified.
Council's basic interest is to ensure that re-housing is not won as a right by licensees. They need to deny such a right now because it is true that re-housing 'licensees" will become a practical impossibility in the future if Camden Council continues to acquiesce in the Labour Red Weekly 8 January 1976 ana ramo ond 16 December -CLUSCU on the neighbourhood of the main prison The total of those involved was estiIn Madrid tens of thousands of workAt Kelvinator, Casa and Chrysler the Camden Council initially claimed But the lie demonstrates that the were meeting inside the factories. More Involved in some sort or action Mass meetings were also held in most or tne universities, including one of 3.000 at the independent university which culminated in a demonstration complete with self-defence pickets. In the neighbourhood, meetings often called by the workers commissions set about preparing a further mobilisation on 16 December.
in buskadi (tne basque country), te scope of the strike was comparable to that of the general strikes in September against the death penalties, with particularly militant mobilisations in Bilbao in tne Asturias preparations nac begun at the beginning of the month On 5 December there was a demonstration of 1,000 on the question of political Disoners on ru wecemocr stoopaze. hegan at Ensidesa, Estardillas, and in une mines or san victor. Nicolasa tres Amigos, Maria Louisa and Escar; a thousand people also managed to demonstrate outside the offices of the StateMassive On 11 December a further demon stramon took place mr oviceo, and tner were mass meetings in the universities. Finally, 16 December saw one of the most massive mobilisations of the last ten years. The strike was particularly solid in the mining zone of La Cuenca, in the Giron arsenals, in the engineering industrv. and in the banks. The genera hospital of Giron was occupied to protest against une arrestora cocon The schools were also involved in the struggle, with the university practically In Valladolid, the workers commission at the Fasa-Renault factory together with those in the building industry organised widespread action on 16 December In Valencia, a 'forum for amnesty' on the university campus on 11 December was violently broken up by the police. On 12 December the Labour Party (PT - a split from the Communist Partv) called bv itsell for a genera strike, a sectarian and unprepared initiative which met with little response.
On 15 December, following a call from most of the organisations of the left, 1,200 people took part in a demonstration: the staff of the psychiatric hospHal aiso demonstarea at neir blace of work against the sacking of four doctors. Also on the same day, a delegation of trade union delegates and engineering workers from Macosa (a factory employing 2,000 workers) met outside the offices of the State-run trade union to call for amnesty for political prisoners and put forward demands around the renewal of their ware archien On 16 December there was a further meeting of engineering workers. and also a demonstration of women and children in the nol neignpournood to demand the opening of the schools (closed by the regime to avoid possible trouble).
Dispersed
In total, therefore, several hundred thousand workers took part in the mobilisations of 11 and 16 December. This is a clear sign of the present militancy of the working class. Turmermore, most of tne stoppages, demonstrations, and meetings coupled with the call for an immediate general amnesty with demands concerning wages and jobs.
But this powerful mobilisation nevertheless remained too dispersed - not only because of the repression, but apparently as a result of a conscious decision by the reformist organisations. Thus while there was a certain co-ordination of the workers commissions in particular industries in Madrid (building and engineering), there was no real co-ordination at the level of the city. In the same way, while most of the workers' organisations linked their appeals to those issued by the Democratic Junta, the Democratic Convergence (Socialist Party-dominated bloc), and the workers commissions, this was done without any previous agreement or common platform.
If the initiative for the mobilisations mostly came from the Junta or the Convergence, however, it was the workers commassions and oren me revolutonar left which played the most active role in the concrete preparation of the struggle in the factories. In fact this breathed new life into the workers commissions, not only in Euskadi but above all in the Asturias and Madrid.
Perspective
These mobilisations show that the time is more than ripe for concerted action on a national scale. Conditions are especially favourable because the battle for a general amnesty and the dem ands around the renewal of the labour contracts provide the concrete possiome of unifying the movement and giving it a common perspective: the overthrow of the dictatorship.
But instead of that, the reformists merely repeat hollow formulas about *the peaceful break with the dictatorship', squandering the tremendous militancy of the workers in dispersed clashes The balance sheet of the actions of 11 and 16 December must lead to another conclusion arosener
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(often known as "official squatters'), give their answer
Corp. Spain/Housing 5