SUBSRIBE TO Name -Address ' • v. MacLeoc lease make all postal orders or cheques payable to socialist Actior 1 Pretoria Road. London. SW16. 6 months £1 'extremist fringel but, 12months £2 is holding wages down at Reforms In a massive strike-wave, last month, involving more than 100, 000 in Madrid Spanish workers served notice that they will not sit by in silence while Franco's old collaborators in the government debate timid, The Carlos regime's response to the which rapidly spread from Madrid to Barcelona where dockers, electrical and telephone workers were was typically brutal.
Demonstrations & assemblies - such as the one in madrid's main university race. on January 12th -were quite savagely •sperse• ov ine bolice Many legenc strikers were arrested and charged The postal and telephone workers were drafted into the armv & made subiect rest.
In the midst of this upheaval, the regan air of calmi « ooked rouno tor suitabie scapegoals.
at a time when over 250. 000 workers were estimated to be the Carlos government attributed it to the !.. action of certain extremist groups that have sought to disturb or delay the government plans'.
Workers in industrial suburb of Villaverde The pretence that the opposition to ine recimes corley is mee lo ine extremist fringe obviously flies in the La January 16th In dispatch from Madrid to the New York reporter Henry Giniger even pointed out that the strike wave could not be placed at the door of the illegal 'workers commisions' (influential in the growing strikes last year) who 'found themselves joining in after the The mass outburst was not due to any on the contrary, to ine growing impatience of layers of workers not only with the economic polcies orine carlos covernment- wnich La time when inflation is soaring at 17% - but alsc ion. with its clear refusal to grant any substantial democratic rights.
It is true, of course, that the Carlos regime has tried to put on a 'liberal! image to undercut the groundswell of opposition that was growing in the last tew years of Franco's ruie. Ine plans it has put forward however such as cranine creder collica treedom lo official trade union movement, and, at a later date, allowing 'universal suffrage' - are marginal.
Their true purpose, as admitted by Justice Minister Antonio Garrigues, not so much to dismantle the Franco dictatorship as to 'tart it up'. Quoted in a Reuter's report from madria lasi month, he pointed out that'... the new government would not aismantle ine Franco regime but improve it & bring While Carlos promises a parliament based on 'universal suffThe still intends to keep an appointed upper house with powers to block the decisions of the 'elected representatives Carlos inability to even begin dismantling the Franco heritage (shown most clearly in his refusal to release those thousands of political prisoners still rotting in the dictatorship's jails) which is the real cause of growing unThe minor reforms he has put forward cannot even begin to satisfy the desire amona Spanish workers for elementary rights - such as the right to form political parties to tree speect, or to demonstrate - which the death of Franco seemed to promise them.
Despite the brutality of the regime in dealing with mass opposition, such unrest will continue to explode in anti-government actron as nappenea only ‹ few weeks back when over 50,000 demonstrated in Barcelona demanding the release of all political prisoners.
Dilemma Continuing to defend Franco's legacy will only Dring me warlos government (and its fascist supporters in the army)
pressure for democratic change. The recent surines and acmons rallons dre only the opening shots of a growing working class opposition which, already, has seen ine struggle by ine walalan c Basque nationalists, long oppressed by Ine rranco regime, Carlos may have been able to ride out the current wave but inis is merely e foretaste of what is to come. The Franco legacy won't be dismantied trom 'above'• It will be dismantled by the Spanish workers wno will not De afraid to lgo beyond' the plans for an orderly transition parties such as the CP have ir store for them in order to create a socialisi democracy.
J.L.