(The following article appeared in the June 8 issue of Rouge, weekly newspaper of the Ligue Communiste, French section of the Fourth International. The translation is by Intercontinental Press.]
JUNE 1-In Belgium, the employers, the government, and the leadership of the FGTB [Fedération Géné- rale des Travailleurs de Belgique- Belgian General Federation of Workers] are all exponents of the same idea: "social peace." The PSB [Parti Socialiste Belge - Belgian Socialist partyl, the ultrareformist outfit that leads the FGTB, has been invited and welcomed into the government to guarantee social peace.
The UBOT
[Union Belge des
Ouvriers du Transport - Belgian Union of Transport Workers] presents a striking image of trade-union integration and of class collaboration. Its program? Sign sweetheart contracts behind the backs of the workers and then ask the workers to "be good."
The result is that the working class pays the costs of this fool's game. Concentration and privatization of port facilities has been put through on the backs of the dockers with the benevolent complicity of the union leadership. And the result of this: infernal speedups, lack of security and cleanliness, frequent workplace accidents, increase in unemployment, and so on.
But there came a day when the workers' anger exploded. On April 6 the Ghent dockers walked out. On April 9 they drew their comrades into the struggle. The strike has now lasted for more than eight weeks.
From the outset, the Ghent dockers put forth clear demands: a weekly pay increase of 1,000 francs [about US$23]; increase in unemployment compensation of 50 francs a day; recognition of the workers job qualifications; revision in the hiring system; improvement of the cost-of-living escalator.
The general secretaries of the FGTB and the CSC [Confédération des Syn- 766
dicats Chrétiens - Confederation of Christian Trade Unions] answered: "We will never recognize this strike." The strikers answered this by setting up a strike committee, forming strike pickets, and organizing solidarity with workers in Antwerp.
Also from the very beginning, the employers and the government set in motion everything they could to break the strike. All assemblies are banned in Antwerp, which is crawling with cops and gendarmes and where troops were called out to unload the ships. Clashes between the strikers and the
Dockers meeting in Antwerp during strike.
repressive forces broke out. On April 27 gendarmes in Antwerp assaulted the workers. On May 21 in Ghent a cop shot at the workers.
As for the union leaders, their attitude was worse than disgraceful. After having refused to recognize the strike, they proposed (two weeks into the strike) that the strikers give up the struggle, in return for which the union tops would take up the workers demands-when the contract comes up for renegotiation. A week later, they proposed setting up a Vigilance Committee that could exert pressure on the union federation — on the condition that the strikers go back to work! And during the whole time, they tried to break down the solidarity between the Antwerp and Ghent workers.
The Communist party also played a role, its Antwerp branch having been entrenched there for a long time. The CP straddled the fence. On the one hand, it tried at all costs to maintain a friendly relation with the union leaders. On the other hand, it could not crudely demobilize for fear of losing a portion of its electoral support.
The bourgeois press fulminated against the strike. It insisted that port traffic was "normal," minimized the number of strikers, exaggerated every little incident, and denounced "professional agitators." Libre Belgique even went so far as to denounce three members of the LRT [Ligue Révolutionnaire des Travailleurs- Revolutionary Workers League, Belgian section of the Fourth International] who allegedly "sacrificed their vacations to interfere in things that were none of their business."
Newspapers affiliated to the unions were no better. Het Wolk defended the scabs; Volk gazet's headline on a story about a dockers demonstration read: "800 Persons at Communist Demonstration."
In face of this powerful antistrike campaign, which was trying to line up other workers and public opinion against the dockers, solicarity took on decisive importance. And it was organized, despite the opposition of the FGTB leadership, which did everything to prevent it. In other factories, such as at Verlica, union delegations and workers assemblies voted motions affirming their solidarity with the dockers and their indignation at the police attacks; they asked the tradeunion leaders to recognize the strike immediately. In Brussels, young trade unionists set up a unified support committee. The militants of the LRT carried out many activities to popularize support. In France, in Cherbourg, Ligue Communiste-LRT solidarity leaflets were handed out to the dockers.
This Friday [June 1], the dockers strike finished its eighth week. A long time. The strike is at a difficult phase and it is hard to say if it will be able to continue. But already some preliminary lessons can be drawn.
In January 1970, the massive spontaneous strike of 23,000 miners in Limbourg shattered "social peace." It revealed a thrust of workers militancy that outflanked the trade-union apparatuses. The setting up of a strike committee expressed the miners' desire to control their own struggle.
The radicalization and politicization process of the workers vanguard has gone on slowly in an underground fashion. Today, the dockers strike stands at the center of the organized workers movement. Beginning as a struggle for a set of specific demands, it broadened, and through its breadth and political dimension it has posed basic questions for the workers movement; in the first place, that of tradeunion independence from the bourgeois state.
This is in no way a temporary diversion. Whether it results in victory or defeat, the dockers strike has powerfully contributed to a realignment within the workers movement. The gap between the rank and file and the top leadership, which was spectacularly manifested in 1970, has widened and deepened. In hundreds of factories around the country, financial solidarity was organized, sometimes against the union apparatus. From Wallonia and from Flanders, many workers delegations came to express their solidarity: Cockerill, Petrole, ACEC, FN, shipbuilders, etc.
An opposition is being constructed and strengthened against the policy of the ultrareformist union leaders who have shown their real strikebreaking face. The battle for union democracy, for a militant trade-unionism being led by the workers of Nouvelle Défense [New Defense] is beginning to bear some fruit.
three months after having spent three years in San Carlos Prison.
3. On Thursday, March 1, another former political prisoner, Jesús Márquez Finol, was gunned down in the middle of the street by agents of SIFA [Servicio de Inteligencia de las Fuerzas Armadas - Armed Forces Intelligence Service]; this was confirmed in an official communiqué from the Ministry of Defense.
4. On the same day, Compañero Arnaldo Monjes, a former political prisoner who had been in San Carlos Prison, was arrested and taken by a commission of SIFA to the SIFA headquarters.
5. On the same day, the home of Compañero Omar Dalmasas, another former prisoner from Modelo Prison, was searched; it is still not known what police organization is holding him in custody.
6. The same day, Companera Margarita Oviedo, a former political prisoner, disappeared. She is presently in the custody of SIFA.
7. On February 26, after learning about the death of Compañero Reina, the political prisoners in all of the country's prisons went on an indefinite hunger strike to protest it and to demand that responsibility for it be determined.