Source: The Militant, Vol. 12 No. 44, 1 November 1948, p. 2.
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The “tough” attitude of the Henri Queuille regime toward the mine strike that began Oct. 4 lias brought France to the verge of civil war.
The miners’ demands are modest. They ask that their present Wage of $57 a month be raised $13 to make up for the decline in their living standards due to skyrocketing prices. To guarantee the new minimum level they ask a sliding wage scale.
These demands were formulated by the CGT which includes about 250,000 of France’s 400,000 miners. Two other unions, the Christian Workers and the Workers Force, who at first joined the Stalinist-headed CGT in the strike, have broken ranks and ordered their members back to work where possible.
The government offered a wage boost of $8.50 a month which was rejected.
At first the mining areas were completely peaceful. Then the Queuille regime began a drive to break the strike. Police were sent in to “maintain order.” The police clashed with strikers.
In protest, the union withdrew safety crews manning pumps and ventilating systems. Strikebreakers were sent in to replace these men.
The troops were ordered to take over the mines and moved forward with tear gas against the strikers and their wives, who hurled missiles at the steel-helmeted soldiers.
The government thereupon ordered police and troops to fire on the strikers “when necessary” and mobilized 40,000 army reservists. At St. Etienne, troops opened fire on the miners with their rifles, killing two and wounding forty.
On the surface the conflict would thus appear to involve no more than a struggle between the mine workers and a reactionary government over economic demands. But that is only the surface appearance.
Like all the other workers in France, the miners have suffered the intolerable consequences of inflation. The French capitalist class has attempted to place on the workers’ backs all the costs of the war’s devastation, the costs of re-conquering the colonial areas in revolt, and the costs of preparing for World War III in addition to keeping up capitalist profits.
Like all other workers, the miners have been forced repeatedly on strike in desperate efforts to keep up with the rising cost of living. All this has driven home the conviction that the rule of the capitalists must be replaced. This conviction is so widespread that every major action the workers undertake at once brings to the fore the fundamental question – will this action knock out the flimsy props of French capitalism?
Obviously the situation imperiously demands that the French workers prepare for decisive actions to oust the capitalist misrulers and establish a Workers and Farmers Government.
The leading French capitalists are thoroughly aware of this. So they have been preparing for action. Their man is de Gaulle, the sinister figure who plots to come to power in the style of Mussolini and Hitler. However, he is biding his time, hoping to gain the advantages of a “legal” seizure of power, in the manner of Hitler.
Meanwhile, Premier Henri Queuille, a long-time political friend of de Gaulle, who was made head of the government with de Gaulle’s acquiescence, is acting the part of tough cop, trying to beat down the resistance of the workers and to smooth the way for de Gaulle.
The working class could easily sweep all these reactionary forces into the garbage can if they were united around a genuinely revolutionary leadership. But the leadership over the majority of the workers is held by the Stalinists. Their political objective is not to achieve socialism in France but to regain posts in the capitalist government which they can use in bargaining for a deal between the Kremlin and Washington.
The Stalinists try to utilize the French workers for their own reactionary aims. They are interested in enough strike action and demonstrations to impress the French capitalists with the desirability of again installing the Stalinists in the government as watch dogs over the workers. At the same time, to save their bureaucratic apparatus from the explosive effect of revolution they try tc head off any far-reaching working class action, to dissipate the energies of the workers ahd to confine their strikes within the narrowest possible frame.
This policy can lead only to defeat and demoralization and facilitate the de Gaullist march to power. The Stalinists are repeating what they did in 1934–1936 in France – divert the working class from the path of socialist revolution.
The Trotskyists in France are doing their utmost to break the grip of the Stalinists. They demand that the strike struggles be widened and coordinated and centered around key slogans that clearly pose the basic question facing France today: A Workers and Farmers Government or fascism.
The Australian Trotskyist paper, The Socialist, calls attention to a curious dispute between the British and Australian Stalinists. A page of the Aug. 14 Tribune, Australian Stalinist sheet, “is almost entirely devoted to summaries of the attack made by the Central Committee of the Australian Communist Party on the leaders of the British Communist Party, and the reply of the British Communist Party.”
Sharkey of Australia charges Pollitt of Britain “with having advocated a ‘Left Labor Government,’ with having supported drives for more production under capitalism, etc.,” reports The Socialist.
“The same charges,” continues The Socialist, “could equally be levelled against the Australian Communist Party, as it has supported the same policies itself.”
In the opinion of The Socialist this attack on the British Stalinists may be “intended as a gesture to the colonial masses.” Attacking the British Stalinists as “too mild in their attitude to the government of imperialist England” would fit in with such an “anti-imperialist” campaign.
“Significantly,” observes The Socialist, “the Malayan Stalinists have reprinted and endorsed Sharkey’s attack on the British party.”
Last updated on: 29 March 2023