New Zealand battles

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crush opposition - expulsions.

During the Congress one of the best known historic leaders of the Party, Garcia Salve was expelled for publicly uttering criticisms of a pro-Soviet kind.

Carrillo's maintenance of the CP leadership now, therefore, involves the decimation of the party, a fact of which revolutionary socialists in Spain should be able to take advantage by presenting a programme of concrete measures defence against the prosperlive fascist coup ARMY units placed coils of barbed wire around the Palmerston North Rugby Ground where the New Zealand All Blacks played the South African all whites.

The anti-apartheid demonstrators opposing sporting links with South Africa were stopped from marching to the grounds by mort than a thousand These 4,000 demonstrators were backed up by a further 500 picketing the Town Hall in Wellington where the ruling National Party was holding its annual conference.

Every game has been met with huge demonstrations with, in many cases, the marchers wearing crash helmets and other "riot ger" . These scenes have provoked direct Prime Ministerial involvement: Muldoon has called meeting to sort matters out and has even threatened to call an election on the theme of "law and order" if the situation doesn't cool down.

Muldoon's "law and order" doesn't stretch so far as the New Zealand Rugby Union.

Sw.E.LATHAM

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Socialist Organiser 6 August 1981 Page 5 PCE speaker. In the mid-?os Unless the workers' movement these people were sectarian solves its political problems, confronts reaction head-on, There is a widespread call ary politics. LUIS is a Trotskyist International Liaison Committee sympathiser from Barcelona.

THERE WAS an attempt at a military-police coup last Febuary. What has been the atmosphere in the labour movement since?

At the time of the coup the workers' movement was, in my opinion, in a state bordering on demoralisation. It was confused and unready.

Instead of raising the alarm at the dangers to the labour movement from the Spanish Stare aparted fories cert Gammele. service), the main workers' parties, the Communist Party (PCE) and the Socialist Party, openly support that state apparatus.

But it is basically still the Francoist apparatus installed in 1939 at the end of a very bloody civil war.

This attitude paralysed the workers' parties at the time of the coup. While the army was driving tanks around the centre of Valencia, expecting that the army would turn out all over the country, the parties called for reliance on the state apparatus and the king.

In fact, in the rest of the country the army was dithering - and might have launched a general offensive against the workers' movement and parliamentary democracy.

On 27th February, five days after the coup attempt, there were great mass labour movement demonstrations in which the CP and SP leaders called for complete working class subordination to the The Bolshevik-Leninist Group is the Italian affiliate of the TILC.

THE BOLSHEVIK-Leninist Group of Italy is fusing this autumn with two other groups, which will strengthen considerably its intervention into the major developments now taking place in the class struggle in Italy.

The new group will have a majority of industrial workers; the GBL itself is already active in the engineering industry, around the Angsalda plant in Genoa and the Standard (ITT) Spanish bosses and their state. They told the workers to rely on the king to protect them.

They deliberately tried to convert the mass movement that arose in reaction to the attempted coup into support for the monarchy.

Has there in fact been a growth in popular support for the king, after his refusal to support the coup?

Perhaps. There was no support for Franco's King' in the working class before the coup. Now the CP is trying to convince the working class that the monarch and the monarchy are their only shield against the Francoists entrenched in the police and armed forces.

And the SP?

Worse. But the coup has begun to open the eyes of the working class and induced it to start defending itself and to fight back against the regime over the heads of its leaders.

What form is this taking?

It has two aspects. There is a progressive radicalisation at the base of the trade unions, among the rank and file. The working class youth, who have been confused and demoralised for the last four years by the ballyhoo about a new era of secure democracy, are being pushed into activity.

They have yet to place themselves in the forefront of the struggle - but there has been a beginning, and many of them feel the need for a political commitment.

In the last month or so, another social contract has been signed with the government and the Spanish CBI. It has been massively rejected by the rank and file of the CP unions. It has been plant in Milan, as well as among the council workers in Genoa.

The major issue facing the working class at the moment is the bosses' offensive against the 'scala mobile', the wage indexing that has been a big obstacle to substantial pay cuts.

The Stalinist trade union bureaucracy are currently opposing this attack - as a bargaining counter to get into the government. But the GBL is fighting for a principled lead to defend wages.

Public

Public sector workers are currently facing a wage fret ze, as well as cutbacks in servic 3S.

Defence of jobs is anot her issue that the GBL sees as voted down at mass meetings.

So strong has been the opposition that the Stalinist leaders of the Workers Commissions in Catalonia have been forced into rejection of the contract.

The Catalan Federation is to the left of the Carrillo leadership of the PCE. Rejection of the general rightwing policy of the PCE is being expressed by the rank and file of the CP as a call for rejection of 'Eurocommunism' and for 'Leninism' Have there been Every day. Electricians, engineers, the steel industry, farm labourers in Andalusia. Usually the union leaders succeed in isolating them. In face of the growing radicalisation of the workers' movement there is crisis in the leadership.

Is there now opposition the SP?

There are small groups organised in the Central Branch of the UGT, the union federation linked to the SP.

Then there is the official opposition. It is "intellectual' allegedly leaning towards Marxism - Pablo Castellano, etc.

The most militant revolutionary workers are not in any party, though thousands have passed through the Trotskyist' movement in Spain in the last five years - the LCR (USFI), POSI (Lambertists), PST (Morenoites), and POR (Varga).

Why have the Trotskyist groups proved so impotent? I think because of the speed of change between 1975 and urgent, in view of the jobs massacre building up after the defeat at FIAT, where 23,000 workers were sold out.

State

The GBL, alone of the Trotskyist groups, is also fighting against the state repression unleashed upon the ultra-lefts of Autonomia Operaia (Workers' Autonomy), loosely linked to the Brigate Rosse urban guerillas.

Although the Movimento Sociale Italiano (Italian Social Movement - the main fascist grouping) is passing through a crisis, the physical threat of fascist attacks remains, in particular against students and youth.

The GBL has been involved in organising self-defence in both Genoa and Milan. Tanks in Valencia during the 1977. First they proved incapable of being an adequate vanguard: now they have taken to falling behind the labour movement. This is especially true of the LCR.

Commissions

In Workers' Commissions meetings it is often hard to know an LCR speaker from a and ultra-left...

In the past seven weeks, a huge wave of strikes has shaken the conservative Australian government of Malcolm Fraser.

Major industries all over the country have come to a standstill. The post and milk deliveries have been disrupted, and the shops in Melbourne The Fraser government has a standing subcommittee of the Cabinet, which does nothing except draw up lists of cuts. They are popularly known as the Razor Gang and the first issue of Socialist Fight carried the headline 'Give Fraser the Razor' Over two months ago the Razor Gang produced a report with an unprecedented list of cuts, including the abolition of 17,000 civil service jobs and moves to sell off some highly profitable government enterprises such as sections of TeleWhat about the youth movements of the PCE and the SP?

They don't exist. Four years ago the SP youth grew a lot. Now there is almost nothing. Then the PCE youth numbered thirty or forty thousand. Now they are perhaps 1500.

How likely is a new coup attempt? left empty.

Western Australia began to run out of food, with transport workers not making deliveries.

Workers have demanded wage rises, a 35 hour week, and a halt to the proposed anti-union measures and job cuts of the right wing government. Malcolm Fraser com Australia. At the same time they were proposing massive increases in hospital charges.

Australia has no NAS. We used to have a and succeeds in defeating it, it is probable. We must disband the Francoist gendarmerie (the Guardia Civil), purge the army, and bring to trial those involved in the coup attempt.

And we must aiso win the trade unions to working class policies to fight the attacks of the employers.

Do you want to word?

First Fraser offered to revoke suspensions and lay-offs, and cancel some anti-union measures. Now he has backed down on pay, too.

Paul White, a member of the Australian 'Socialist Fight' group, told Socialist Organiser about the background.

system called Medibank where you could see a doctor without paying and the doctor was paid by Medibank, but even that was at the doctor's discretion.

Often the doctor would refuse to treat you till you paid, then you could reclaim the money from Medibank afterwards. However even that system has gone completely now.

The ACTU and CAGEO (the Australian equivalent of the Council of Civil Service Unions) took three weeks even to meet on the issue after THE Trotskyist International Liaison Committee summer school, held in Oxford from 19th to 25th July, was an international festival of Its participants came from the USA, France, Italy, Turkey, Greece, Spain, and Australia as well as Britain.

Alan Thornett presented a survey of international politics and the imperialist wardrum beating. Bob Sutcliffe, an economist well known on the Left, gave a long and detailed analysis of international capitalism.

Tony Richardson analysed the crisis of Stalinism. Steve Zeltzer spoke on the revolution in El Salvador.

There were . sessions on social democracy, and on the history and problems of Trotskyists on a world scale.

One of the best aspects of the gathering was the chance to talk to comrades from different countries, and help develop a political understanding based on a real international outlook.

We talked to some of these comrades for Socialist Organiser. *Next week: an interview on the socialist struggle in the USA.

from the rank and file oi the unions and workers parties for unity in action of the working-class organisations against the employers attacks.

United

Fighting for such a policy revolutionaries can reach thos workers in favour of a uniter front, and in the class struggle lead them to the necessar conclusions and to revolution the Razor Gang report was announced.

So they've just said 'take action if you want but don't spread it' and supported one-off demonstration on 19 August-the day after the Federal Budget.

The major thrust of their response is to be a flurry of press releases before the Budget and a fortnight of intensive TV ads!

The Australian Labour Party leaders.

like the trade union leaders, have condemned the cuts and simply announced that they will "plug into" the ACTU media campaign and some of the demonstrations.

Socialist Fight has been campaigning combine the marches with direct action to resist the cuts. In our view the government must raise the funds needed or we must kick it out.

And victory for the public sector workers on wages is vital for the fightback against the cuts.

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