AGAINST THE
CHILEAN JUNTA!
CHILE WNED MED JUNTAN SWEDEN On September 20 the village of Bastad, the most luxurious summer recreation spot of the Swedish bourgeoisie, was transformed into the assembly point for one of the most important Chile demonstrations ever held in Sweden. About 7,000 demonstrators came from all parts of the country: 1,200 from Stockholm, 375 miles away; 1,500 from Goteborg, 125 miles away; and even 100 from Umes, 850 miles away. In all, 100 buses of demonstrators invaded the small bourgeois paradise village. There were also 150 people from Denmark and smaller groups from Finland and Norway. Why Bastad? Because that is where the Swedish Davis Cup tennis team was playing the Chilean team. The Swedish authorities had refused to boycott the match, and that was seen by the Chile solidarity movement as a brazen provocation allowing the Chilean junta to score some propaganda points. In oddition, one of the Chilean players, James 30
In FUKET: STOO LET KAMP NOT FRSCISM FOR SOCIRLISTI aren
Still TLAS COPCO Fillol, was an active supporter of the far right even before the 1973 coup. Among other things, he gave large sums of money to the "strike" of truckowners shortly before the overthrow of the Unidad Popular government. The mobilization was made possible by the continued existence in Sweden of a strong Chile solidarity movement. This had already been shown on September 11, the second anniversary of the coup, when 7,000 demonstrated in Stockholm and 8,000 more in other places throughout the country. The Chile committees used these demonstrations to mobilize for the following weekend, under the slogan, "Stop the Match." This slogan and related questions (the situation in Chile, for example) became the most hotly debated political question in the press and on radio and television for a month before the match was held. There was a special reason
SWEDEN for this. In May 1968 the far left stopped a game against a Rhodesian team by invading the stadium; there was a violent clash with the police. One of the results of that action was that nobody continues to say that politics and sports are separate affairs except for a few rather stupid conservatives to whom nobody listens anyway. This time, the bourgeois press and the Social Democrats decided to confront the solidarity movement with a more subtle argument: "Of course, we all agree that the regime in Chile is awful and we have to show our distaste by demonstrating against the match. But you are terrorists who say you will use violence to stop the match. You are thus violating the democratic right to hold meetings (the match, that is!), and this shows your own antidemocratic character, " With this argument the Social Democrats accused the Chile committees of splitting the solidarity movement and called for their own demonstration to be held two days before the match. This was on attempt to split and confuse the mobilization. But this was supplemented by a second and more vigorous argument: 1,500 cops with horses, dogs, riot equipment, and helicopters were sent to the village of Bastad. The government announced that there could be no guarantees against grave injuries and even deaths, thus trying to frighten people away from the demonstration of the Chile committees. But the twofold tactic of the Social Democratic government failed completely. This can be seen in a number of respects: 1. Everybody in Chile itself was informed about the solidarity mobilization. The slogans, many of them in Spanish, could be heard on the Chilean televison coverage of the match. Several hundred large red balloons, each inscribed with the name of a Chilean murdered by the junto, were released by the demonstrators, and the Chilean television commentator was forced to explain that a big demonstration against the match was going on - organized, he said, by "paid Marxists. The junta's press tried to line up the petty bourgeoisie in a nationalist campaign against Sweden as a whole, but it can be assumed that the information the junta had to give to explain this campaign was an encouragement to all the oppressed workers in Chile. 2. Pressure on the Swedish government to take concrete measures against the junta increased. At the moment, it is only the harbor workers who are boycotting Chilean material. 3. Even though the demonstration did not succeed in stopping the match (because of the massive police mobilization), the mobilization was seen by everybody as a victory. The tennis match became a side issue. "The demonstrators won the match" was the headline of Dagers Nyheter, the largest bourgeois daily. Some bourgeois commentators even asked if if was correct to have spent $1 million mobilizing such a large police force against demonstrators who had already said before the demonstration that they were not going to Bastad to fight the police.
4. The Social Democrats' split maneuver failed completely. Only 1,000 turned out to their demonstration two days before the match. It received scarcely any press coverage. The problem of the Social Democrats was nicely summed up by one of the Social Democratic reporters: "We have bad contacts with the youth. Our meetings and demonstrations consist mostly of a bunch of pensioners. " 5. The demonstration was also a victory for those with a correct view of unity in action, which is extremely important given the sectarian tradition among the revolutionary left established by the large Maoist groups and even the CP. This time, the sectorion maneuvers of the Maoists and the CP were bypassed. The Maoist group SKP (Sveriges Kommunistiska Parti - Communist party of Sweden) gave an extraordinary performance during the weeks leading up to the demonstration. They changed their line three times. At first, they argued that Chile was a "legitimate state" and that the match should therefore be held. The main enemy, they said, was the two superpowers, and the mobilization was a diversion from the struggle against these superpowers, After being completely discredited by this position, the SKP leaders decided that although the match should be held, there should after all be a demonstration against it. But this position did not relieve the pressure they were feeling from their own rank and file and from the mobilization itself; at the last minute they argued that the match should be stopped. The CP also made some sectarian maneuvers. The CP leaders participated in the propaganda and mobilization calling for the match to be stopped, but at the last minute they made a splitting maneuver. The pressure from the Social Democrats and the bourgeoisie, which were accusing the CP of participating in preparing a demonstration in which violence would be used, induced the CP to split from the Chile committees over the question of whether the marshalls for the demonstration should be armed with sticks and wear helmets. The CP accused the Chile committees of using a tactic that could provoke the police and the local reactionaries. Instead, they wanted to have totally unprotected marshalls, which would have meant giving the reactionary gangs a real possibility of attacking. The CP could not understand that it was the presence of the demonstrators that constituted the provocation in the eyes of the local reacfionaries and the car-gangs from the neighboring towns. The result of the CP policy was a separate demonstration 200 yards from the main demonstration; the CP drew a total of 1,000 people. The defeat of the sectarian practices of the Maoists and the CP represented an important victory for the anti-Stalinist left in Sweden and especially for the Revolutiondra Marxisters Ferbund (Revolutionary Marxist League), Swedish section of the Fourth International, which was one of the main forces in the mobilization.