THE BORINAGE STRIKE
The strike of the Borinage miners against the threatened losure of their pits was by Februar limax. At that moment, the miners of the whole country struck in solidarity with their Borinage comrades. The metal workers in two big districts of the country had joined the movement. General strikes planned in different regions. In the Liège region, the inthe workers' clamored to join the movement. Gas and electricity workers also declared their readiness to broaden the wave of protest by stopping work. Belgian workers were showing a dramatic militancy that made them the centre of attention of the European working class.
It was at that moment that the union leaders joined the government and employers in liquidated the for vague promises of economic reform: the constitution of a public investment company (which would permit the creation of factories by the state, in order to absorb unemployment) and the creation of a bureau of economic programmation (intended, in the eyes of the unions, to start economic planning, but, in the eyes of the bosses and the government, only to plan state expenditure and the distribution of contracts by the state).
It is true that, thereby, this strike is the first in Belgian (if not in Western European) history, which had no immediate social but only general economic goals: full employment; nationalization of the mines; planned economy. But the educational potentialities of the movement were to say the least weakened by the tact that neither were these goals reached nor was the working class mobilized in a real trial of strength for their attainment. The movement was stopped before getting up its full momentum and the compromise reached "economic conference" quickly proved to be a rotten one.
It is also true that, in mid-February, the whole Belgian working class was not yet ready for such a general strike movement for transitional demands. Lack of education and propaganda; the weight of the past betrayals by the bureaucrats; great regional differences (two thirds of the unemployed are concentrated in the Flemish part of the country) - these are obstacles which have still to be overcome. But the union leaders, especially their centrist left wing, had created big hopes among the advanced workers in the preceding months. combativity was on the increase; the abrupt "settlement" of the February strike movement has given a blow to the workers' contidence in this leadership. And in the Borinage, where militancy and hopes were highest, the rotten compromis produced demoralization, to the degree that the reformists did not dare to organize a central May Day manifestation, for fear that it would not succeed
As the general line of the class struggle still goes upwards, the revolutionary Marxists hope that the lessons of that strike will be assimilated in a positive way by the advanced workers. The "right to work" into the Februait has already led to a 24-hour general agreement by the government will be taken seriously. strike in the Ghent region (in Flanders), where it is the first big strike movement since 1936.