Last week 3,000 die-hard far right supporters of the Spanish dictatorship gathered to demonstrate their determined opposition to any change in its basic institutions. The numbers assembled were pathetic — a striking testimony to the complete isolation of the dictatorship from the population at large. For these erstwhile strongmen, who once wielded their iron fist over the entire country, were able to marshal fewer supporters with the blessing of the regime than the far left can today call onto the streets in the teeth of ferocious repression.
But if the far right has no capacity to mobilise large numbers, it still occupies powerful and important positions within the dictatorship that allow it to carry on a long and potentially bloody campaign of resistance. The real object of their demonstration was to serve notice of their intentions to do just that.
TURMOIL Already the power of the right has thrown the present Government into a political turmoil. It came to power with the aim of gradually introducing a number of political reforms which would give the ruling class greater flexibility in dealing with the workers movement and smooth the road for Spain's entry into the Common Market - but without either destroying the repressive machinery of the dictatorship or opening the door to a massive leap forward for the working class organisations.
But its efforts at 'reform' were systematically blocked by the far right, while at the same time the working class was able to seize on this confusion in the camp of the ruling class to strengthen and extend its own struggles - both in defence of its economic interests and to further democratic demands This challenge forced the reformers' in the Government (headed by Home Secretary Fraga) to hold back on their schemes and resume the tried-and-true weapon of the dictatorShip - repression. he wave of brutality that the dictatorship resorted to in response to the working class upsurge - • capped off by the butchery in Vitoria. where five workers were murdered in cold blood - brought the scale of repression back to the level it had reached before the death of Franco.
DIVISIONS But the divisions in the regime persist. Last month the Prime Minister, Arias Navarro, outlined his long-awaited 'reform' programme. Murdered Carlist worker is carried away. INSET: military cartridges found on scene. It was a real anti-climax: reorganisation of the Cortes (Spanish Parliabe elected, but with the Francoist die-hards organised into an upper house with veto power; no legalisation of the Communist Party or far left groups; and no mention of trade union rights or amnesty.
This package, not surprisingly, was greeted with total hostility by offered more detailed and extensive proposals - the upper house to be primarily elected, and workers to be allowed to form trade union bodies outside of the state-run union', CNS. These proposals have, for the first time, a little meat in them; and ting some cautious interest from the middle class groupings in the anti-Franco opposition.
before, and it remains to be seen ment) so that the lower house could them.
attention more.
all the anti-Franco opposition groups.
So a few days later the Government this bait seems to be working, attracBLOOD Such promises have been made the far right will of the dictatorship. the dictatorship.
Hundreds of police stood by as fascists attacked Carlist celebration on the mountain of Montejurra. But they found their path blocked by a lanon. band of fifty heavily-armed rightwingers who started to harangue torial.
When the crowd refused to pay the fascists opened fire, killing one young man, severely wounding another and inuring sever This outrage was perpetrated in full view of the police, who made no move to intervene, and the idenuy or a numer or te attackers 1s well known (the band had openly announced that they were headed by the fascist Sixto de Borbon). But the Government has made no move to bring these individuals to trial.
loud.
The Spanish workers can expect nothing from the reform' projects of the dictatorship except the spilling of more of their blood. As the workers of the Babcock Wilcox firm recently proclaimed: 'In order that the workers and people can live, it is necessary that the dictatorship dies'. The task facing the Spanish ship. workers movement, and revolutionary militants in particular, is the organisation and preparation of those measures that can bring about the death That is what the Trotskyist forces in Spain are fighting to do, by propagating those political demands and forms of organisation (in particular self-defence against the right-wing bands and the Francoist police) that can unify and strengthen the workers struggles, laying the basis for a general strike to bring down three nousand cheering students a generous sprinkling of radical workers -jammed a lecture hall at the School of Philosophy and Letters campus in Madrid on 5 May to hear Ernest Mandel, noted Belgian Marxist economist and a leader of the Fourth International. Mandel spoke on the topic, The Class Nature of the State"
This was the second of two meetings organised for Mandel's visit to Madrid. The previous evening more than 2,000 persons packed a hall at the university's School of Economics campus to hear Mandel present a Marxist analysis of the current worldwide economic slump.
In the course of his speech, Mandel cADamcu now me capese Cuss although a tiny minority of the popucongrouca me state aparatus in capitalist countries, whether their governments were democratic or dicta
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Thousands hear Mandel speak in Madrid