the Mediterranean.
Franco regime -Hostility The PCI-led Confederazione Generale Italiana del Lavoro (CGIL) has hattan Bank in 1949. increased its size from 3 to 4 million workers since the upsurge in 1969, and its strength and growing influence cannot be disputed. It has succeeded to a large extent in channelling the movement that arose in the factories which the CP theorise as one of the forms of 'direct democracy' needed to complement the parliamentary inThis theorisation, and the leaderParty in most major factories, explains a great deal about the apparent paradox of the right-ward drift of the PCI leadership and the initiatives carried Among these initiatives are those of 'self-reduction', where workers and tenants pay what they themselves consider to be a fair price for transport, rent, gas, electricity and other services. Most of these initiatives are organised from the base of the factory The far left have often played an initiating role in these actions, and have grown to the extent that the three main groups of the left - PDUP, 'the party of the united proletariat for communism'. Avanguardia Operaia, and Lotta Continua - expect to get over a million votes in the coming This force undoubtedly AL represents the growth of a large vanguard which has seen through the reformist project of the PCI and the disastrous consequences it could have spanish bunker Italy is not the only country in Europe under the microscope of American foreign policy makers today. They are also closely watching Spain, which straddles two areas now of particular concern - the Iberian peninsula and The US can rightly lay claim to a long standing cultivation of the Spanish regime for just such a situation. Immediately after the Second World War, Spain was badly discredited in the eyes of the victorious IDer RusE Dowers are ever moe so be fore the labour movement) by virtue of its close association with the defeated fascist powers and the active assistance it gave them during the war. (Franco was far less prudent than Portugal's Salazar in this, who throughout the war hedged his bets.)
But US policy makers, gearing up for an international offensive against the working class and upset by recent evidence of Communist strength in France and Italy, - founded on its success in smashing the economic and political organisations of the working class. They thus moved to usher Franco out of cold storage and into the warm embrace of the "Western Alliance".
The tide of hostility in Europe and America to this erstwhile companion of the lascist powers nad still not subsided blocking efforts to bring Spain Marshall Plan aid. But it could not prevent such 'unofficial' schemes as the $ 25 million loan made to Spain bv the Chase ManWith the onset of the Korean War, the US threw caution to the winds in cultivating Spain as an ally against the Communist menace. Official US Government credits were now extended to Spain and top US military brass began a campaign in favour of a military pact with the dictatorship. The US successfully pressed for an end to UN sanctions against Spain and its admission to the various UN bodies and led the way in returning its Ambassad or to soat antury ronowed oy trance and Britain (where the Labour Government was still in office).
It proved too difficult to bring Spain into the NATO pact (although the more prudent Portuguese dictatorship had been a founder member), so negotiations were set in motion for a separate US-Spanish military agreement, which was eventually concluded in September 1953.
This agreement, and the series of reneg otiated treaties which followed it, remain in effect today. In exchange tor economic and military aid totalling some $ 2 billion, te us nas been able to bund up a num NO Supporters of the North London Committee Against Repression in Spain ber of major air bases, and an important naval base on the Mediterranean This "Spanish connection' has not so Tar been or top oract importance to tre US. True, the Iberian peninsula is an important area strategically to the US, as the European land mass with the closest geographical proximity to the US itself - enhanced in the case of Portugal by the staging post of the Azores in mid-Atlantic, and in the case of Spain by its strategically valuable Mediterranean coast line. But the Spanish armv is looked on as a rathe shoddy affair by the American military, and too heavily tied up with maintaining domestic order.
The alliance with the democratic capitalist nations of Europe has thus come first, which explains why the US has never taken a hard stand on bringing Spain into NATO, and has palmed off the Spanish army with second-hand, outmoded military equipment (much to the resentment of the Spanish military).
But today these alliances are no longer as stable as iney once lookea. NAtU in grave disarray, and a number of the US's main partners seem "threatened' with the prospect of left-wing governments including the Communist Party. And all this while the Mediterranean is starting to become a prospective international hot-spot Under these circumstances the Spanish alliance is becoming more important than ever. This was reflected in the renewal of the treaty last year, which involved a substantial increase in aid and, for the first time a statement of common interest and system of military coordination between US and Spanish forces...in the Medaculancar But all this will not be worth the paper it is written on if political events in Spain should start to follow those in Italy or morror or notors rortural. ror mIs reason the US Government has its fingers firmly implanted in the pie of Spanish politics, and we can expect it to be grabbing handfuls before long.
It is ably assisted in this both by the American military establishment, which has close links with its Spanish counterparts, and by big US corporations like the notorious ITT, which has dominated Spain's telephone system since the '30s (and whose President in Spain is a former Government Minister).
Undoubtedly one of the reasons why the 'reform' schemes of the various "liberal' currents in the dictatorship continue to run into heavy water - and why the continued banning of the Spanish Communist Party is a common theme of them all - is that the die-hard wing of the dictatorship can count on an important measure of support from US imperialism on this question.
TRAND