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From The Militant, Vol. 12 No. 19, 10 May 1948, p. 2.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
Martial law was proclaimed in the port cities of Kobe and Osaka in Japan last week after tens of thousands of Koreans demonstrated in the streets against an order making their schools subject to Japanese education laws. The American military Commander, General Eichelberger, flew to Kobe from Tokyo to take personal charge. Over 1,600 persons were arrested in the two cities and more than a thousand continue to be held.
Naturally, in view of the recent proclamation of a “Democratic People’s Republic” in Soviet-occupied Northern Korea and the impending elections in U.S.-held Southern Korea, the demonstrations in Japan are ascribed to a “Communist” plot. “Most of Japan’s 600,000 Koreans – are strongly Communist,” a dispatch to the New York Times asserts.
But what these people, long held in subjection as a persecuted minority by Japanese imperialism, apparently wanted was schools at last free of the domination of their former oppressors.
They made the mistake of thinking, this could be realized with the coming of the American “liberators.” The Japanese authorities, backed by MacArthur’s HQ, quickly disillusioned them.
One of the most grievous crimes of the Korean schools, it appears, is the prominence given to the teaching of socialism. The Koreans are discovering that their’ present star-spangled rulers are just as ruthless against socialism and their aspirations for national freedom as were their former oppressors of the rising sun.
More than anything else, the new overlords of Japan fear that the Japanese masses may become infected by the Koreans’ spirit of militant struggle. Strikes in Japan, although on an unprecedented mass scale, have been peaceful thus far and the workers have submitted to military bans without any serious resistance. The demonstrations of the Koreans can furnish a dangerous example to the Japanese. That is why Eichelberger and his troops have clamped down so violently on Kobe and Osaka.
The “Movement for the Triumph of Democratic Liberties,” led by Messali Hadj is conducting a fierce struggle for “total independence and the election of a sovereign constituent assembly” in Algiers against French imperialism. This movement, originally the People’s Party of Algiers, was suppressed by the Daladier government before the war, by Petain during the years of Nazi domination and is only semi-legal today. But it enjoys the allegiance of the overwhelming majority of Algerians, as proven by all the elections held by the “French Union” (the post-war name of the French Empire).
Recently the Federation of this movement in France held a mass meeting in Paris. Tunisians, Moroccoans, North Africans of every country, Egyptians, Palestine Arabs as well as Viet Namese were represented on the platform. French working class organizations were also invited to send representatives to support the struggle of the Algerians. The Stalinists, who had supported
French imperialism’s refusal of Algerian independence ever since they entered the de Gaulle government after the war, attended along with other organizations’ representatives. The Stalinists tried to place all the blame for imperialist outrages in Algeria upon the present Schumann government, in line with their recent “left” turn. They were very mealy-mouthed and vague about their support of the movement, which they had previously denounced as fascist.
When Jacques Privas, secretary of the Trotskyist PCI mounted the platform, they tried to stop him from speaking and then attempted to stage a walkout. But the North Africans present knew of the unflinching solidarity of the Trotskyists with their struggle for independence. Led by the chairman of the meeting, the colonial workers of Paris quickly put an end to the Stalinist maneuver. Privas’ revolutionary message and exposure of Stalinism was interrupted by constant rounds of enthusiastic applause.
Hundreds of miners and metal workers turned out on March 12 to the Gilly People’s House in Charleroi, Belgium, to listen to George Vereeken, veteran Trotskyist leader, debate Max Buset, president of the Belgian Socialist Party, on the Marshall Plan.
Buset described the Plan merely as an effort to overcome American over-production and aid Europe to become a good U.S. customer. Only the “scandal press” in the U.S. calls for war against Russia, he said. No one else there wants it. Vereeken pointed to the examples of Greece, Turkey, Iran and China to show what Wall Street “aid” really meant and what the Marshall Plan would mean for all of Europe. Continued applause greeted his exposures and his conclusion that only the international struggle of the workers against the bosses could assure peace and plenty.
The recent convention of the National Teachers Union was a most important one. The convention had before it three proposals relating to the recent split in the French trade union movement. 1) To remain in the Stalinist-dominated CGT Federation; 2) To join the new reformist “Force Ouvrière” (Workers Strength) Federation headed by Leon Jouhaux; 3) To go autonomous but work for the reunification of the trade union movement. The third position received an overwhelming majority. As a result, the reformist and Stalinist wings of the union have decided not to form separate organizations but to remain in the autonomous union. This is one of the few unions which has remained intact in spite of the split in the trade union movement as a whole. The Teachers Union leaders are affiliated with the new “Trade Union Unity” tendency, supported by the PCI.
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