Interview with BASILIO MONTES, member of the Spanish Workers Commissions national secretariat
BASILIO MONTES was originally coming to Britain as part of a joint delegation from the Spanish Workers Commissions and the USO, one of the two socialist trade unions. As we reported last week, José Torres, another delegation member, was denied a passport by the Spanish authorities. Therefore the schedule of the tour had to be pared down, and only Montes arrived in Britain.
Comrade Montes is a member of the national secretariat of the Workers Commissions and a leader of the Movimiento Comunista (MC), an organisation which had its origins in the Basque nationalist movement but which now has significant influence in the workers movement as a whole. The MC participates in the Democratic Coordination, a body which involves many of the major working class parties in an alliance with sections of the 'democratic bourgeoisie' in order to win a 'negotiated break' with the dictatorship.
Montes explained to Red Weekly that the principle objective of the tour was to have been to establish contact with those sections of the British labour movement which reject the attempts of the Labour Party and trade union leaderships to single out the UGT for support. The UGT is a trade union adjunct of the PSOE, the traditional party of social democracy in Spain.
Rebuilding
He stressed that the central force in rebuilding the workers movement has been the Workers Commisssions, organisations which were born out of the struggle for independent unions against the fascist vertical syndicates. Nevertheless, Montes strongly favours the unification of the trade union movement:
'We are aware of two very important factors, both of which point in the direction of an eventual single and united trade union for all Spanish workers. One is this great consciousness of the need for unity which is developing in the workers movement, and the other is that the only real force in the movement — the Workers Commissions — reflects this unitary spirit and wants to build this central union for all workers.
'We have therefore decided that the way forward to the democratic break is through the election of rank and file delegates from all tendencies to a Constituent Union Congress, which would decide on the form of union they want'.
Montes is pessimistic however about the immediate prospects for this policy. This is partly because the regime has latched onto trade union pluralism as a way to divide the movement, but mainly because the other trade union bodies, with the backing of European social democracy, oppose unification. 'These other organisations don't appear to want it', he said. 'Certainly the UGT doesn't want unity.'
Agreement
In this respect, Montes pointed out that the MC is in substantial agreement with our comrades of the Revolutionary Communist League (LCR) that 'in the struggle for the united, central union the unitary organisations in the factories are fundamental.' He stressed the importance of the Coordinator of Vizcaya, set up [the foot of this column is lost from the scan] would be difficult to maintain the development of these united rank and file bodies at a national level if USO, the UGT and the sections of the Workers Commissions dominated by the Communist Party (PCE) were 'actively hostile to them, seeing them as a threat to their continuing leadership'.
He agreed that the leadership of the Workers Commissions does not accurately reflect the balance of forces within them. The PCE holds 21 out of 27 seats on the national secretariat: in Valencia, for example, from a 44-41 vote in their favour, they took all three delegates; in Zaragoza, with a 330-320 vote in their favour, they also managed to walk off with all three delegates.
We talked at some length about the new package of economic measures just announced by the regime. Without any doubt they are the most savagely anti-working class measures since those taken in 1959 and 1967, which were distinguished by the level of repression needed to enforce them. Wages and collective bargaining procedures have been frozen.
Suspension
But perhaps the most serious threat is the suspension of Article 35 of the Labour Relations Law. This fixed redundancy payments at a minimum of six months wages, and was designed as a sop to the workers by establishing a measure of security in employment and therefore, so the reasoning went, industrial peace. Of course it never stopped dismissals for political reasons. Basilio Montes, who lost his job in a Basque steelworks because of his activity, has good reason to know this.
The suspension of Article 35 will result in a massive increase in unemployment, which is already running at more than a million. 'These measures are a real challenge to all Spanish workers', said Montes, 'and will be accompanied by the stepping up of repression.'
When Labour Minister de la Mata offered USO, UGT and the Workers Commissions a 'social pact' made up largely of these same measures, some two months ago, the Workers Commissions secretariat decided on a 24 hour general strike, whether or not the USO and the UGT would support it. And here Montes stressed the importance of 'support and sympathy' for the workers' objectives inside the Democratic Coordination:
'It is small, but this support puts the regime's policies into question... for the small worth that the support of these bourgeois parties may have, it is still better that they should line up with us rather than the Government.'
The 24 hour general strike is now fixed for 12 November, and could be an important step forward towards that general strike which will finish the dictatorship once and for all. Comrade Montes is less certain that this is how the regime will be displaced. However nobody would dispute his statement that 'the dictatorship is not at stake in this type of strike'.
Pressure
Yet he seems to have a singular lack of confidence in the capacity of the working class to win democratic rights for itself: 'Apart from the odd leftist, everybody understands the general strike as a means of pressure in order to achieve the democratic break. We aren't talking about the revolution.
'If we workers could impose our own demands there would be little point in heading for a bourgeois democracy, would there? If the army decided to block the way, where would we be without guns in our hands?'
Asked about the importance of workers self-defence, Montes said: 'I think it is legitimate for the masses to take whatever measures are necessary to defend themselves.' Unfortunately he seems to relegate this to a future struggle for socialism.
Montes sees the bourgeois allies in the Democratic Coordination as important to the workers' struggle, even though they are clearly seeking an agreement with the regime: 'The struggle of the masses is pushing this option further out of their reach.'
Independent
This is true, of course, but the implication which Montes misses is that this argues for a reliance on the independent self-organisation of the masses. He rejects the idea of a working class united front for the present. 'A lot would have to change' if this were to be achieved, since 'polarisation is not so much between the working class and the bourgeoisie as between those who want a democratic regime and those who don't.'
Montes sees the rise of the mass struggle as cementing the inter-class alliance of the Democratic Coordination. He sees the formation of the Coordination as flowing directly out of the Vitoria murders earlier this year. 'Faced with five savage murders no section of the opposition could avoid stating explicitly that the regime would have to go. Otherwise [...] would have been left naked in fro[nt of] the masses.'
This is a novel emphasis in int[erpr]eting the Vitoria events, which [were] marked by the advanced nature o[f the] demands and forms of organisa[tion] adopted. Their importance lay i[n the] fact that a general strike led by [the] revolutionary left went far beyon[d the] bounds of the PCE and bourg[eois] reform project.
Opposite
The real significance of pre[...] events would seem to be the opp[osite] of Montes' analysis. The Coordin[ation] is creaking under the strain of [...] mobilisations which challenge [the] viability of a 'negotiated break' [with] the dictatorship.
Demands like the dissolution o[f the] repressive forces which have [been] raised in many recent struggles [are] rejected by the PCE, the main [force] behind the Coordination, bec[ause] they threaten to scare away its [bour]geois allies. Montes unequivo[cally] supported this demand, but di[d not] seem to understand that it threa[tens] to tear apart the alliance of whic[h his] organisation, the MC, is part.
Clearly the MC strategy is f[...] subordinated to class collabor[ation]. Asked about the perspective[s for] building a revolutionary party, M[ontes] said that 'in the short term I don['t see] any possibility — the differ[ences] between the parties of the left ar[e too] great'.
Although the Coordination [...] plays 'a secondary role in the str[uggle] of the working class', he sees c[ollab]oration with the 'democratic bo[urge]oisie' as necessary until the st[...] [the foot of this column is lost from the scan]
have had such striking success in operating outside this framework.
Solidarity
Finally, comrade Montes stressed the need for international solidarity with the Spanish working class. The first element in this is simply information about the Spanish workers' struggles. He said that specific links should be encouraged between British and Spanish workers — most obviously in the multinationals, but also within different sectors of industry. He particularly mentioned miners, engineering workers, building workers and dockers.
Montes explained the particular importance of financial support for Spanish workers. He told of how, without strike pay, many struggles are broken by lack of funds. He saw the visit partly as a way to gain financial support for the impoverished Workers Commissions.
His point is emphasised by the announcement that the UGT has received £350,000 from European trade unions, including the British! The UGT, backed by all the forces of European social democracy and specifically tolerated by the Spanish Government, has only 25,000 members. It is estimated the formal membership of the Workers Commissions amounts to more than a million.
'The principle object of our visit is to explain the realities of the Spanish situation, so that people will understand that in the Spanish trade union movement the UGT has only a tiny [...] [the scan breaks off here, at the foot of the page]
Cartoon caption (pages 6-7): 'Dissolution of the repressive bodies'—a central demand of the recent Basque general strike. Over thirty workers have been murdered by these forces since the death of Franco. Every town listed bears the scars of their crimes. (From Joven Revolucionario, LCR youth paper)