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From Socialist Worker, No. 92, 12 October 1968, p. 2.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
SPAIN, LIKE THE REST of Europe, is waiting for the ‘Red’ October.
The Franco government, preparing to meet the rising tide of protest, is following the example of de Gaulle, in France who after the May revolution, spoke of workers’ participation in industry at the same time as he brought in more repressive measures.
A cabinet meeting last month decided to legalise all student organisations. This step – on paper at least – is a drastic constitutional change, for until now all associations were banned and severely repressed in Spain.
But the same meeting, under the pretext of combatting Basque terrorism, resurrected a decree of 1960 which includes many old fascist measures of the 1940s.
Under this decree everything is illegal. Its penalties are nothing less than long-term or life imprisonment.
It bans all meetings, associations, conspiracies and ‘unions’ (excluding, I assume, the matrimonial one) that are against the ‘integrity’ of the regime and its authorities, From now on, all political activities and all matters affecting basic civil rights will be dealt with by the military authorities using summary trials.
Franco wants to freeze the ‘hot’ October by terror.
But laws and terror are unlikely to deter the workers. In spite of the new repressive decree, a general assembly of underground workers’ organisations (commissions) met last month.
They came from Cataluña, the Basque country, Galicia, Asturias, Andalucia, the East Coast, Aragon and the Central provinces.
They made plans for a general strike which would land a crippling blow to the regime. Crippling, but perhaps not mortal; the future is hard to predict and we have American bases in Spain ...
The assembly declared: ‘Our weapon is the general strike. But our experience of mass action has taught us that it is very difficult to start a general strike on a previously fixed date.
‘We see the general strike as the generalisation of a series of partial struggles which may start in one factory, industry or locality and spread like an oil slick throughout the country. We know this requires a lot of sustained work, principally in two directions: the creation in each firm of one commission, representative and militant, capable of mobilising all workers, even the more backward ones.’
The workers’ commissions are now reorganising along these lines: as factory committees including the most representative workers regardless of their political organisations.
The Catalan workers’ commission called a week of demonstrations between September 4 and 11. In Tarrasa, an industrial town near Barcelona which has a long, militant, tradition, the civil guard shot at several thousand textile workers.
In Barcelona itself, a demonstration on September 11 had a nationalist flavour. It recalled the area’s freedom and autonomy, which was lost when the Bourbons came to the Spanish throne in the early 18th century.
But the demonstration was reinforced by the participation of workers. It was a unified show of strength which emphasised to what extent the fight for democracy is gaining a popular base.
It is this unity among the rank and file that has determined the move towards political unity among the various workers’ organisations.
For example, the five main Catalan parties issued a joint statement of solidarity with the Basque people that condemned the government’s repression against them.
The five parties include the Catalan Communist Party, which maintains a degree of independence from the Spanish CP. In spite of the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia (condemned by both CPs) and the political turmoil that it caused, the unity of the Catalan parties has not been broken and the CP has not lost militant members.
This unity does not exist in the universities, where marxist students are sharply divided. But there is contact between workers’ commissions and free students’ unions.
The government move to give more paper freedom to students while using greater repression against the workers is designed to destroy this unity.
Together, workers and students will answer back this month.
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Last updated on 30 October 2020