[The following article appeared in the April 25 issue of the French Trotskyist weekly Rouge. The translation is by Intercontinental Press.]
Four persons are dead and dozens are seriously wounded. The ugly face of fascism has reappeared in Italy. This time it was not an isolated attack but a broad offensive against the workers movement. It occurred a few weeks before regional elections were to be held across the country. The killers: the fascists and the police.
On Wednesday, April 16, a housing demonstration was held in Milan. At the end of the line of march a car rolled toward a group of persons engaged in discussion. A fascist inside the car fired an initial shot, wounding a demonstrator. A second bullet struck the demonstrator in the head, killing him. This was the first victim, Claudio Varalli, seventeen years old.
Thursday, April 17. Protests in response to the killing started growing in the morning. In several cities thousands of demonstrators spontaneously took to the streets. In Milan, the offices of the MSI' were occupied. The police fired shots into the crowd, wounding a number of persons. A police van drove into the demonstrators, crushing one of them. This was the second victim, Giani Zibecchi.
Thursday night, Turin. After a scuffle with members of the struggle committee in the Falchiera district (a working-class area inhabited mainly by immigrants from the south), a fascist hunted down a militant and killed him with a shot from a pistol. This was the third victim, Antonino Micciche, a member of Lotta Continua [The Struggle Continues], a worker at Fiat who was laid off in 1973.
Friday, April 18. The unions called for a one-hour strike throughout the country. Big demonstrations were held in the major cities (20,000 in Turin, 40,000 in Milan, for example. In Turin, the offices of the MSI burned down. In Florence, demonstrators attacked several fascist headquarters. The police opened fire. A member of the Communist party was seriously wounded. He died from his injuries the following day. This was the fourth vietim, Rodolfo Boschi.
Last year a number of big workers to Protest Fascist Attacks
BERLINGUER
mobilizations answered the fascist attacks in Brescia and on the Italicus train. Since that time the fascists have been more discreet. Now, a month and a half before the elections, they are trying to raise their heads again.
Their actions, including the abortive attempt to derail the Milan-Rome train, have a clear aim. The hope is to create a climate of provocation, to the detriment of the workers movement. The effort has the support of not insignificant sections of the bourgeoisie who favor a head-on attack against the working class as the way to resolve the political crisis.
The majority of the bourgeoisie, however, are hesitant about setting off a process that could lead to violent class confrontations. This is why all the bourgeois papers were filled with antifascist statements after last week's killings. The driver who crushed Zibecchi and the murderer of Micciche were both indicted. It was announced that measures would be taken against triggerhappy cops.
But at the same time the bourgeoisie see the situation as an excellent opportunity to go after the "extremists" and to continue their policy of selective repression against vanguard militants.
The line of the Communist party assisted the bourgeoisie in this. [Enrico] Berlinguer, the CP general secretary, said: "The organs of the state must be energetically reminded of their duty to see to it that the terrorists are rendered harmless." And,
"violent reprisals, attacks on political headquarters must be denounced."
Even worse, local party officials in Florence explained the murder of the CP member Boschi as an outcome of a provocation against the police by a far-left militant.
The CP tried to restrict the scope of the mobilization in all the demonstrations called in response to the fascist attacks. In Turin, on Friday morning [April 18], the demonstration headed toward the offices of the MSI. At the head of the march were Fiat workers, former shopmates of Micciche, who had been killed the night before. Next came a united marshaling squad, made up of representatives of all the groups that had called the demonstration. Suddenly, the CP marshals tried to divert the demonstration off to a side street. They were helped by the PDUP2 marshals, who on this occasion adopted a completely opportunistic attitude.
The bulk of the demonstrators continued, however. And while the sideline commentators of the CP and PDUP talked about fascism, the antifascist militants gave their response to the killings: the MSI headquarters were set afire. The police who were protecting the building were compelled to withdraw, owing to the size of the demonstration.
The line put forward by the CP is criminal in face of this offensive against the workers movement. They are demanding that the law against the fascists be enforced, and they are calling for the formation of a front of all the "constitutional" parties (that is, of all the political parties except the MSI).
But what reason is there to believe that the bourgeoisie will enforce its laws against the fascists? The Italian constitution solemnly forbids the formation of fascist parties. Has this prevented the MSI from conducting a number of attacks, frequently with the support of the Christian Democrats?
Outlawing the MSI, the solution advocated by the three main far-left groups (PDUP, Lotta Continua, Avanguardia Operaia) is no answer either. It is illusory to believe that the bourgeoisie will outlaw the MSI. And even if it does outlaw them, it would be no more than a formal measure. Only a united response by the workers movement will assure that the fascists are rendered harmless. Militant self-defense is the only effective answer.
In this respect, the demonstrations that took place April 17 and 18 showed both the extent of the mobilization and its militant character. In a number of cities thousands of workers and young people sacked the fascists' offices. On April 22 a general strike protesting the government's austerity program was conducted throughout the coun try.* It was an excellent opportunity to combine the mobilizations against inflation with an effective response to the fascists. O 4. An accompanying article reported that demonstrations were held throughout Italy the day of the general strike. In two of the larger actions, 160,000 persons marched in Milan and 80,000 in Turin.
tion to France. The bosses force this because they never send job contracts to Africans. At least not to any I ever saw.
Forced by misery, unemployment, famine, and drought, Senegalese and other African workers have to come to France illegally without a job contract.
The bosses then force them to take any type of wages and working conditions, because they know the workore don't have because they know the workers don't have the proper papers.
Q. How do these accords affect the situation of Senegalese workers in France?
A. They are used to further exploit the African workers. Workers who have just arrived are subnosed to have o medicol arrived are supposed to have a medical examination, paid for by the boss, to see if they are well enough to work. But the bosses take this money out of the workers' wages anyway.
Housing and social welfare for the workers is taken care of by the National Fund for Social Action. It is supposed to provide job training and teach the workers to read. The money for this fund comes out of the social security payments of the immigrant workers. This is unfair. African workers in France are supposed to have equal benefits with French workers. These benefits, which cover not only the workers but also their families, include such things as medical care and supplemental payments for families with children.
However, since hardly any Senegalese workers bring their families, and since these payments can't be used for families back in Africa, the Senegalese and other immigrant workers are cheated through this scheme.
Moreover, an African worker who stays in France for a long time, say even ten years, making payments to the fund, loses all his benefits if he returns to Africa for six months.
All this money goes to the fund, yet the budget the government announces for immigrant workers never equals what the workers have put into the fund. They don't give us one-tenth of what we pay in.
In addition, there are all kinds of phony government-funded "humanitarian" organizations that drain off money that is supposed to go to the immigrant workers.
At the beginning of the emigration to France, people were housed in cellars, attics, and places like that. You could find forty people living in small rooms, piled one upon another. They cooked meals and did their laundry there, with no windows or ventilation. Added to the rotten working conditions, this environment has caused tuberculosis, a disease we never knew in Africa.
When the National Fund for Social Action was set up, the former colonialists-
An Interview With Sally N'Dongo
The New Slave Trade-African Workers in France
[Sally N'Dongo is the general secretary of the Union Générale des Travailleurs Séné- galais en France (UGTSF-General Union of Senegalese Workers in France). ' He granted the following interview to Tony Thomas in Paris last February. The interview was conducted in French, and Thomas has provided the translation for Intercontinental Press.]
Question. How have the relations of Senegal and other African countries with France led to the immigration of thousands of workers?
Answer. Senegal has been colonized by France for centuries. French exploitation through the slave trade and other forms of plunder dates from around the 1670s. After the resistance of the Senegalese to colonial penetration was crushed, the colonizers began to plunder the natural resources and to impose forced labor.
Forced labor-which I was a victim ofincluded the construction of roads, public buildings, military bases, hospitals, and other things needed to support the colonial regime. There was also forced labor in the form of military service, either in combat or doing things like cutting wood.
The colonialists imposed peanut cultivation to change our farming from growing things for Senegalese to eat and wear to a commercial agriculture oriented to the imperialist economy. Before this, people didn't grow peanuts very much, but grew their own food and manufactured their own iron, weapons, cotton for clothing, and so forth. Everything was made by Africans for Africans, without modern techniques. But the Africans lived much better than now. So by these two ways-forced labor and the imposition of commercial agricultural production-colonialism brought poverty and misery into Senegal.
After "independence," which was only another form of dependence, de Gaulle made sure that reliable people were in 700
power in Senegal. They, in turn, signed accords with the French government on the relationship between the two countries.
What are these accords? They say, for example, that a Frenchman working in Senegal has the right to repatriate all his money to France with no interference and that a Senegalese in France has the same right. They have the "equal" right to set up corporations without interference.
This is meaningless for us. A Frenchman in Senegal is a manager or owner of a company, while a Senegalese here is a street cleaner. You see who gets the best of this.
In Senegal, Africans are unable to get higher-paying posts. All the education there is controlled by the French. If an African wants to study to be an engineer, a technician, and so on, he is told that this is not good for him or useful for the country.
Senegal is completely in the hands of French imperialism. From the level of the president of Senegal on down, the country is controlled by technical, military, and political "consultants" or "assistants" from France. This includes the police, who have French instructors who show them how to torture.
The same relations apply to the accords on immigration. A Senegalese who wants to come to France needs a passport, a job contract approved by the French embassy, and a round-trip ticket. He must also deposit 35,000 francs CFA' in the Senegal state bank. This is equal to 700 French francs.2
Theoretically, a Frenchman coming to Senegal to work must do the same thing. In practice, any French person with an identification card or a passport can come to Senegal and do what he wants.
This encourages illegal African emigraex-civil servants, soldiers, merchants in the colonies-set up phony "housing associations" for immigrants. They get money from the immigrants' social security payments to subsıdize their housing operations, which only institutionalize what went on previously in cellars and attics.
Now they take old, abandoned factories or stores, repaint them a little, pile up bunk beds, and set up immigrant housing. The conditions are just the same, and the immigrants must pay rent as well as have their social security payments going to finance this racket.
Q. What about working conditions and jobs?
A. The work African workers do here is basically the kind that French workers won't do, such as cleaning the streets and sweeping up in factories.
Even those workers with technical training are not hired for skilled jobs but must take any kind of job they can get. Africans who were trained for such technical positions as electricians and mechanics for French companies in Africa are told by the same companies that their training in Africa was not good enough to be used for the same jobs in France.
The wages of the average French worker are between 1,200 and 1,500 francs a month, but African workers average between 800 and 1,200 francs. There is supposed to be equal pay for equal work, but the jobs are not equal so the pay isn't either.
The gap between the living standards of African workers and French workers is even wider because the French workers get various social security payments for medical care and child allotments for their families, while most Africans don't.
Moreover, it's the French workers who get to be the foremen and team leaders responsible for work, not us.
Q. What types of organizations do the African workers have?
A. There are two types of groups: organizations controlled by the governmenteither the French or African governmentsand organizations independent of them.
The main purpose of the government organizations is to weaken the independent organizations.
When the independent groups make demands, the government will often say, "That's not a recognized group, so we don't recognize that demand."
These government-controlled organizations have no real base in the mass of African workers here. They don't support the workers in their day-to-day struggles, so they don't have any chance of gaining their confidence.
Q. What kind of activities does the UGTSE carry out?
A. The UGTSF is an organization that helps African workers take care of their everyday problems here in France. At the same time, it links this action with political struggles not only in France but in Senegal itself.
Our work begins with teaching the workers how to read and write. By doing that we are able to raise their consciousness. We use this to expose the administration of the companies, the government, and the leaders in Africa. We try to help them deal with the problems of social security, family allotments, immigration, housing, and the unions. We have, for example, organized rent strikes in the lodging houses for foreign workers. At the same time, we explain how the mechanisms of capitalism are used to keep them in their place.
Q. In the United States, the AFL-CIO trade-union federation has largely ignored the problems of immigrant workers. Is the same thing true in France?
A. The two big union federations here, the CGT and the CFDT,' have been forced to deal with the problems of immigrant workers, although they have not made any effective efforts to educate the ranks about this question.
Many French workers think that we have come here to take the bread out of their mouths, as the saying goes. They think that the money they pay into the social security goes to us and that we take their jobs.
However, we point out what is going on with the social security money. We also point out that France has gotten rich through the continuing pillage of our countries. That is why we are forced to leave our homelands to come to France to get jobs.
The constant propaganda of the capitalists has its effect on French workers. The leaders of the working class have to fight this if the struggle of all workers is to be effective.
The leaders of the CGT and the CFDT probably don't know how to carry on this type of struggle because they don't know how to fight against the capitalist class in a really independent way. However, these groups have been forced to take action in our defense because of the role that African workers are playing in the unions and the plants.
Several years ago the government issued the Fontanet-Marcellin Memorandum, requiring European and North African workers to obtain job contracts before working in France. Previously they were able to get a permit to come to France and look for a job.
At first the union leaders supported these decrees, seeing it as a way to stop the competition of the immigrants who they thought were wrecking their strikes.
Through educating and agitating around this issue we forced them to recognize that these decrees were directed not only against immigrant workers but against the unions as well. In factories where the majority of workers are immigrants, the unions would be paralyzed if the immigrants weren't struggling. So we were able to force the unions to take a good stand and fight for the repeal of this memorandum.
As I say, the rank and file still need lots of education. In part there still exists a colonial mentality toward Africans among the masses in France. This mentality has to be destroyed, not only through working to support the immigrant workers, but also through solidarity with the struggles going on in Africa.
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Notes
1. Movimento Sociale Italiano-Italian Social Movement.
1. The monetary unit of the Communauté Financière Africaine (African Financial Community), which is composed of many of the former French African colonies.—IP
2. Partito d'Unita Proletaria-Party of Proletarian Unity.
2. One French frane is equivalent to US$0.24.—IP
3. Workers Vanguard.