A MASSIVE CROWD of Portuguese workers -according to some reports as many as 300,000- marched through the city centre of Lisbon last week to demonstrate their support for trade union unity' and the establishment of a single trade union federation in the country.
Organised by the Intersindical anion federation, the demonstration was supported by a wide range of left-wing political groups.
The controversy over the prop osed new law on trade unionism. -which the Communist Party, supported by left-wing memhers of the Armed Forces Movement in the Government, is relying on to establish the policy of trade union unity' in threatening to split open the coalition Government, Two days after the massive "unity demonstration, some 50,000 workers resp onded to the call of the CP's coalition partners" the Socialist Party and the Popular Democratic Party (an outright capitalist party that calls itself "social democratic')- and attended a meeting against the new law, calling for the right" of workers to form several competing union federations —as exist in France and Italy, for example.
This stand of the Socialist Party, and their collaboration with the PPD, is the result of a steady rightthe 60 years of his life.
Internationalen, weekly paper of the Fourth International in Sweden, recently revealed Diat Volvo, a major European motor company based in Sweden, had taken advertisements in El Mercurio in Santiago, Chile, to wish the Pinchet dietatorship fappy annivenary on Die ocearon of its fist year since the coup.
Following the exposure, the Chile Solidarity Committees took up the Valo gesture an a symbol of Swedish capitalist complicity is Chilean reginession. The capitalist press were forced to pick up the story, while the Social Demotratic Govern: ment wrung is lots and did nothing.
Volvo has meanshilo decided cut the Tinancial clinate is satistactory" and thie "tahour market receptive" to the expansion of Swedish capitat or Chile This expansion wold take the form of new parts and assembly plants.
The Swedish Chille Sedichirity Comellsees have called for international prodests against Volvo, and alrepdy in Scotland the International Marxist Group has approached various organisations, notably the Nat ional of Union of Students, with a view to organising a picket of the Volvo slow ward shift in its policies since the fall of the fascist regime. This has recently led to the split from the Socialist Party of a left-wing group that received more than one-third of the votes at the last Congress of the SP.
INTERSINDICAL If a single, unified trade union federation is recognised this can only he the Intersindical federation, which developed out of the Communist Party's underground resistance network against the fasc ist regime. Although the Communist Party is the predominant influe nice in Intersindical there are u number of large and militant unions within it which they do not control in the period following the overthrow of the fascist regime the CP opposed all strikes, and the groups of the far left strengthened their position within Intersindical.
It was Intersindical which played the crucial role in mobilising the working class last September against the reactionary silent majority demonstration. The crushing of this right-wing mobilisation forced Spinola to resign and represented a big setback for the political plans of the Portuguese capitalists But despite these big victories for the workers" movement, the reactionary offensive is by no means a spent force. The alliance of the Over 100 people gathered in Conway Hall last Friday to pay tribute to the memory of Jabira Nichola, Palestinian revolutionary and member of the International Executive Committee of the Fourth International, who died at the end of Decamber. The speakers-Charlie Van Gelderen, Tony Cliff, Moshe Machover and Akive Orr- all stressed the need to continue the struggle for socialism in the Arab East to which he dedicated Photo: ANDREW WIARD (Report) When the German political prisoner Holger Melas died while on hunger strike last November, there was a widespread outcry against the conditions under which Meins and other members of the Red Army Fraction (RAF - also known as the BaaderMeinhof group) had been kept in prison.
For a whole day the German Government was unable to make any reply to the allegations raised by delence lawyers in the press and the television. It appeared that the basis for a broad united front campuign had heen laid.
ТБел on 10 November Judge Gunter von Drenkmann of the Berlin Supreme Court was gunned down on his doostep. The action was quickly laid at the door of the KAF, and all the accumulated sympathy for them disappeared overnight.
Now two months later, it is widely admitted that Drenkmann was killed by a right-wing coup. Even the Guardsan's London Letter columna recently put forward this view. pointing out: Drenkmann was one of the most liberal of Berlin's younger judges The RAF has always denied any responsibility for the killing, but is Communist Party and the more prominent leaders of the Armed Forces Movement is based on a basically contradictory policy. They proclarm the need to consolidate the democratic revolution before undertaking any fundamental anticapitalist mensures, yet it is the big capitalists who are behind all the manocuvres of reaction.
ment have not carried out the sort of measures that would undermine support for the right-wing in the A NEW RAVE of workers struggles has broken out in Spain, threatening tontup to is very foundations.
insurrection on 15 January. The city was shut down in a 24-hour general Joined by local university students In any case, the killing had its desired effect, and the detention continues for lwo years.
LAWYERS goverument has pushed through lawa their lawyers. A recent statement issued by the defence committee '1. The tral can take place without assume that by the time of the trial the prisoners wil either he dead or unable to sand trial.
the mere suspicion of his being a political supporter of his clients will he sufficiont. Hieh up ta now the authorities ava regarded the campaign against the prison conditions as support of this kind, and therefore have instigaled procodings against the urisoners" Inwyers.
background of the trial, their clients' matithem are being framed 4. No counsel for the detence must particular triai.* Lp to now in Germany (as in most constries, ep. USA, France) defendants a ho are socused as a political Part of last week's massive demonstration in Lisbon in support of 'trade union unity' Moreover the left in the Governto rock the reactionary Franco dicta In the northern city of Pamplona, 20,000 workers staged u virtual ministrike, and thousands of workers took to the streets in mass demonstrations, without trial and solitary confinement of suspected members of the RAF stil joined by local students, took part -as does the hunger strike begun on 13 September Utrike Meinhot the key industrial contre of Barcelona has now been in solitary continement Following the death of Meins, the which isolate the prisoners even from pointed out the essence of these laws:
counts.
2 To exclade a counsel for the defence 3. The lawyers must nut mako politica! statements in court. Hence they are forbidden to attacie the prison conditions of their clients in aper court or explaio toe politica vation and the entire way the charges ngainst countrysile, where the power of the Lundowners, the moneylenders and the Church is still very strong. The divisions within the Government have also paralysed it in the face of the economic crisis which is produc ing mounting unemployment and a continuing high rate of inflation.
Although the giant march on 14 January was very impressive, the mass working class response to the reactionary offensive has no organ ised expression outside the trade who had struck in solidarity with them. The riot police attempted unsuccessfully to stop the demonstratsons with baton-charges, tear gas and rubber bullets. At one stage they opened fire, wounding three demon strators. In reply the workers threw factory. up barricades and trees and lamp pusts were felled across city streets.
The struggle began the day before when police brutally attacked a pea ceful solidarity demonstration of 2500 workers and miners" wives, org anised in support of local potash miners who have occupied their pit? the beginning of the year.
The previous day -13 Januaryworkers from the SEAT car factory, in a 5000 strong demonstration in in support of a struggle against victimisation that the SEAT workers have been engaged in since November. In the latest round the manugement had locked out almost the entire workforce for tive days, and sacked four hundred militants. In addition they had announced a programme of an all-out fight for the destruction of redundancies because of the world declacations and have jobnt defence Last May the German Chancellor, Heimut Schmidt ( a close personal fend of Roy Jenkins) pledged Germiany to an open society which eaves Toom for multiplicity of views and social groups. The laws heing enacted have been the focus of the fight ag by the German social democracy today rell us something different.
The famous American lawyer Willam Kunstler recently described the new laws as starkly reminiscent of the denial lo cerlain classes of per sons of any meaningful legal righrs in the courts of the Third Reich"
One hundred and ninety other law- And, as the Basque strikes show, a yers in the United States have also declared their opposition, and an international cocomittee has been set un in Utrecht in Holland. (Purther information: International Defence Committee, cro Institut tur But although there has been no concerter move so far towards the creation of workers and peasants' commuttees to oreanse against the new reactionary offensive and to begin to tackle the ungent economic problems weighing on the masses. this remains a constant theme in the agitation of revolutionary groups like the Portuguese Trotskyists of the LCI, who are steadily increasing their influence.
Robin Backborn crisis in the car industry The ShAT workers" struggle is not only direcred against the management but also against the Government-con trolled 'official unions, who have engiteered a sell-out 'agreement with the company. The workers have refused to accept this deal and organised demonstrations outside the union headquarters demanding new elections for union representatives in the Struggles also broke out in many other parts ol Spain last week, with 12,000 steelworkers defying the attempts of riot police to break up their demonstration against plant closures in the Basque town of Bilbao, and 7,000 shipworkers in the city of El Ferrol going on strike.
Clearly all the conditions exist for •generalised workers offensive which could bring the dictatorship tumbling down, and there is talk again of a coordinated national gen cral strike, such as was being discussed last autumn by the leaders of the underground workers' commissions controlled by the Communist Party But the Communist Party saw such an action as simply a means of putting pressure on 'liberal' capitalist elements, and not as the beginning of the dictatorship. When it becarne clear that a general strike could not he held within such limits, the Com munist Party seems to have got cold feet and scrupped the idea. Since then they have been very wary about the political struggles which have broken out, playing little part in the hunger strikes of political prisoners which ainst the dictatorship. and actually opposing the general strike of 300, 000 workers in the northern Basque region in solidarity with the hunger But the present wave of struggle proves that the Communist Party cannot hold back the class struggle.
new revolutionary lendership is com ing into being which can launch the kind of struggle necessary to put an end to Franco and his reactionary heirs. If the Communist Party should decide to act now it will only be for