Source: The Militant, Vol. 12 No. 42, 18 October 1948, p. 2.
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At the elections to the Madras Municipal Corporation, the third largest local body in India, held on Sept. 30 and Oct. 1, Comrade S.C.C. Antonipillai, member of the Central Committee of the Bolshevik-Leninist Party was elected by an overwhelming majority to represent Division No. 32 in the City Corporation. Comrade Antonipillai polled over 5,000 of the 7,000 votes cast, the remaining being divided among 5 other candidates. Comrade Antonipillai’s vote is the highest recorded vote in the history of the Madras Municipal Corporation.
Six members of the Madras Labor Union were also elected to the Corporation. Being sympathizers of the Trotskyist movement they will work in cooperation with Comrade Antonipillai. These seven will be the only spokesmen for the labor movement in the Council of 80, as the Socialist and Communist Parties did not run any candidates. Comrade Antonipillai is the President of the Madras Labor Union and a member of the General Council of the All-India Trade Union Congress.
On Sept. 23, the Indo-Chinese people celebrated the third anniversary of their struggle for independence from imperialist France. The young Viet-Nam republic has an impressive record of achievement.
“Three years ago,” reports the Vietnam American Friendship Association, “people in South Viet-Nam faced the French armor and tanks with rusty rifles and bamboo spears. Today Viet-Nam war factories are turning out bazookas, mortars, anti-tank grenades, landmines and other deadly weapons. Hand-grenades have been manufactured in so great quantities that they now serve as wedding presents in the villages.”
During the past three years Viet-Nam troops killed 21 French colonels and majors, 53,600 enemy soldiers, wounded 45,000 others, seized 103 field guns and mortars and 75 bazookas as well as destroying a great number of weapons.
Although the French despots maintain an army of 110,000 men at an annual cost of about $200,000,000 (of which about $40,000,000 will come from Marshall Plan supplies this year) they have been forced to retreat from the countryside, back to the big port cities.
When the Viet-Nam republic was formed three years ago some 90% of the people were illiterate. Today this figure has been cut down to 20%, about 7,000,000 Indo-Chinese having been taught to read and write since the new government was formed.
Lacking customary school supplies such as paper, pens, ink, chalk, books, the pupils use wooden plates, leaves, charcoal, bricks, clay and so forth.
“In many villages,” declares the report; “whole families from grandmothers down to 5-year-old boys go to the same school, sit at the same table and drawl out the same alphabet.”
Violence flared again in France when the Queuille regime ordered Mobile Guardsmen to oust sit-down strikers from a steel mill in Lorraine. One worker was killed in another clash.
When the guards used tear gas, the angry workers answered them with stones, bricks and tiles. They finally regained possession of the plant after ten persons had been seriously injured.
Premier Queuille called the miners’ strike “insurrectionary” and threatened to use force to break it. A decree was issued, drafting all the technicians ... of the coking ovens in northern France into the armed forces.
At a late September meeting of the Central Committee of the Italian Communist Party attended by Togliatti, the various speakers dwelt at some length on the “Trotskyist danger.”
Here are some extracts from the speeches of various Central Committee members published in the Sept. 25 l’Unita, official organ of the Italian Communist Party :
Roasio declared that “increased vigilance is necessary to. avoid the infiltration of Trotskyist theory in the party. Trotskyism is not yet a danger in Italy, but it can be in the future if we do not intervene in time ...”
Ciufoli insisted “on the necessity of assimilating our doctrine (Stalinism) in order to struggle against Trotskyist, maximalist and anarchist conceptions.”
Dozza “took up and developed once again the subject treated by Comrade Roasio.”
Last updated on: 29 March 2023