By Pierre Frank clashes had gone on for several days:
"What sort of machinations dia
Quarter riot as emoted the Latin general strike of May 13, ten years to the day since the coup of the generals and "pieds noirs" [French colonialists] in Algiers that precipitated de Gaulle's rise to power. The "riot" constituted the opening of the period that will liquidate the Gaullist regime. How did it occur and what happened?
Day by Day
We must go back to the Algerian war to find the roots of the intense politicalization in the student and university world. The Algerian war, the influence of Cuba, the martyrdom of Che Gue-
- in china vara, and, to a certain extent, also the "cultural revolution" in China heightened this political development and turned it more sharply away from the policy of "peaceful coexistence, " of the "peaceful and parliamentary road" to socialism.
It was in this context that the specifically university problems, resulting from the outmoded character of the educational system and methods, were posed. The latest events began on March 22 at the University of Nanterre. This new university, recently founded in the Paris suburbs, was to be the government's most modern educational institution, equipped with every imaginable improvement.
But the government located it where it became exposed to a number of to a shant aunt of social contradictions. It was built next to a shanty town. Ihe municipality is the oc under the thumb of the Communist party; and the local CP looked with disfavor on the agitation, political discussion, and factional ferment that groups largely led by militants expelled at different times from the UEC [Union des Etudiants Communistes -- Communist Student Federation] introduced into this suburban town. A large proportion of the students came from the sixteenth arrondissement and other west Paris neighborhoods, the most bourgeois in the city.
The Nanterre students, unlike those at the Sorbonne, had no congenial they were forced to off-campus community; discuss university and social problems among themselves. And they connected up these two sets of problems.
What the established authorities thought about this can be gathered from the remarks of the minister of national education in parliament after the street
'madmen' carry on daily?
these Nanterre ...Under the label of 'critical university,' the most absurd lucubrations were voiced in auditoriums renamed, to serve the cause, Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, Mao Ise-tung, Leon Trotsky." (Journal p. 1606.3 May 9, 1968, No. 26 A.N., •ificiel
The university officials decided to take reprisals against a group of students, including Daniel cohn-Bendit. Ine latter had already had a run-in with a minister who came to the university to dedicate a swimming pool. The Sorbonne students decided to extena solidarity to the students at Nanterre who were threatened with expulsion and to hold a meeting in support of them on Friday, May 3, in the Sorbonne courtyard.
At the same time, a fascist group, Occident Lthe Westl -- the group is insignificant numerically but its connections permit it to carry out attacks with virtual impunity -- declared that it was going to "clean out" the Latin Quarter.
During the afternoon of May 3, the leaders and most of the militant elements of the university movements met in the Sorbonne courtyard. The marshals of these groups were also there to block any fascist movement. But at the end of this meeting, which had proceeded without incident, the police invaded the sorbonne and arrested several hundred of those present.
I'he police had come onto the university grounds in accordance with a written request from the rector Roche. But, without lessening his responsibility, there is no doubt that this police operation was part of a plan conceived higher up.
The government thought that the unrest among the students was the work of small groups with no real following. It was convinced that all that was needed to end it was a show of determination on its part and all the more so since exams were in the offing. Furthermore, this same day, the organizational secretary of the French Communist party Marchais had
"grouplets" in scathingly denounced these l'Humanité, speaking of "the German, Cohn- Bendit.
" The government must have thought that repression of the students would not provoke the workers organizations to express solidarity with them.
The arrest of the student cadres, who were hauled away in police vans before the eyes of everybody on the Boulevard St. Michel, touched off an immediate reaction. Students attacked the police cars and clashes of a violence not seen in years broke out spontaneously. Politically unaffiliated students played leading roles.
The next day, the UNEF [Union Nationale des Etudiants de France -- French National Student Federation] and the SNES [Syndicat National de l'Enseignement Supérieur -- University Teachers Union] called an unlimited strike for Monday, May 6. After a hastily convoked court handed down stiff prison sentences against several demonstrators, the strike began that day with three demands as prior conditions for all negotiations: release and amnesty for the sentenced students; withdrawal of the police from the Sorbonne; reopening of the university with full political and trade-union rights for the students.
Early Monday morning the day already threatened to be a stormy one. In the afternoon, still more violent fighting than in the preceding week began. In the evening, in St. Germain des Prés, clashes lasted for several hours, producing casualties on both sides. Outraged by the brutality of the police, the people of the district displayed their sympathy with the demonstrators.
On the morning of the following day, the bourgeois press did not support the police The UNEF and SNES leaders called a meeting for 6:30 p.m. at the Place Denfert-Rochereau. The strikers occupied this square at the indicated hour and held their meeting. The police let it be known via the press that the meeting had not been authorized (no one had asked for any authorization) but had been "tolerated"! After the meeting, a procession formed and with red banners flying marched about twelve miles through the streets of Paris, going up the Champs Elysées to the Piace de l'Etoile.
The bourgeois press and I'Humanité left one feature of this demonstration un- - алі 2 л. . 20 де на нори8480 1 mentioned. But in parliament the next day the night of May 7-8 there were violent encounters in the area between St. Germain des Prés and Montparnasse.
On May 8, the government, in the person of the minister of national education, made equivocating statements before the National Assembly. False promises without definite commitments were made, conditioned on the restoration of order in the Latin Quarter. Confronted with an eminently difficult situation, the UNEF and SNES leaders hesitated and the day ended with a demonstration which dissipated itself for lack of an objective.
On Friday, May 9, the students again gathered on the Boulevard St. Michel, not to demonstrate but to discuss what was to be done. By the afternoon, it was evident that the movement had not succumbed to the government's maneuver and that it was spreading to the provinces.
The organizations in the lead called another meeting for Friday, again for the Place Denfert-Rochereau at 6:30 p.m.; and reaffirmed that there would be no negotiations until the three preliminary demands had been met. The new upswing in the movement continued into evening of May 9.
A month before, the JCR [Jeunesse Communiste Révolutionnaire -- Revolutionary Communist Youth] had planned a meeting for that day on the theme "From Revolt to Revolution" in the Salle de la Mutualité. They wanted to explain the causes and objectives of the student movement developing in several countries. The events gave an acute timeliness to this meeting.
During the day, the JCR announced that after the slated speakers had spoken, the meeting would be turned over to the students to continue their debate. An audience of 4,000 to 5,000 persons gave the meeting the air of a revolutionary assembly by their enthusiasm and militancy. Italian, Dutch, Belgian, German, and Spanish students affirmed
. their solidarity with the French students. The speakers forcefully stated that this struggle was not a reformist one, that it challenged capitalist society, that it would
Had eat tone)
a UNR [Union pour la Nouvelle République deputy could not contain his indignation: "M. Didier Julia...The Internationale was sung there [at the tomb of the unknown soldier at the Arc de Triomphel and red flags were made by tearing up red-whiteand-blue ones [the French tricolor]." (Journal Officiel, May 9, 1968, No. 26 A.N., P. 1620.) Tearing up the tricolor to make red flags was a sacrilege that no daily newspaper cared to reveal.
That day, as most often in the the demonstrators course of the battle,. improvised, but what improvisation! On not end until the working class went into action in a revolutionary struggle for socialism.
The second part of the meeting given over to discussion was no less important. For nearly two hours speakers with differing political points of view aired their positions, their suggestions, and their perspectives. Although it was not an assembly of elected representatives it suggested a student soviet [councill. Above and beyond the specific problems of the struggle, two concepts dominated the discussion:
(1) The student struggle could be no more than a part of the struggle for socialism; and the fundamental social force in this struggle was the working class. No remarks of a Marcusian or similar type were listened to. There was abundant discussion of means for linking up the student struggle to that of the workers.
(2) Democracy was vital to the movement's development. Differences were normal and the existence of political groupings a matter of course. But these groupings must not try to impose their leadership on the movement or disrupt it by raising extraneous questions.
When they broke up at about 1:00 in the morning, several thousand fighters found themselves politically united for the big day of May 10, which was to prove decisive.
May 10
This day consisted of three successive phases, each with unforgettable characteristics. The morning began first of all with the spread of the movement to the medical students and, most important, with the high-school strike which had been announced at the May 9 meeting in the Mutualité.
Where did this high-school movement come from? The Vietnam war sensitized very young students. They joined the Comité National Vietnam [National Vietnam Committeel. When they tried to take this question into their schools they ran head on into an administration - and too often a lack of understanding from many teachers, even those of the left wing -- that regarded the high schools as nothing but barracks for teen-agers, who must not concern themselves with politics.
Incidents occurred in the high schools. The expulsion of a student from the Ivcée Condorcet led to a demonstration by students from several hundred high schools in front of this school and, above all, to the formation of the CAl [Comités
Action Ivcéens -- Hich-School
Action Committees] in November 1967. This organization's activity developed over a of several months. The organizaperiod tion of high-school students was helped along by the fact that they live together all day long in their schools like workers in a plant.
A pamphlet should be written just on this movement -- on the seriousness and perseverance of these very young militants from fourteen to sixteen years old.
Their strike began a little like that of the workers. A few schools "broke the ground." At 9:00 in the morning, the students of these schools marched out into the streets of Paris and went from one school to another to call the students out on strike, holding meetings of 1,000 to 2,000 high-school students in the squares and quadrangles of Paris.
Their basic demand was for the right to discuss politics and social questions in general in the high schools. They decided to meet at 6 p.m. at the Place des Gobelins to march on the Place Denfert- Rochereau in order to take part in the university student action. "Your problems will be our problems tomorrow," they explained to the older students. In the afternoon, about 8,000 high-school students massed in a procession which reached the Place Denfert-Rochereau at 6:00.
да пода .
The second part of the day began. After a meeting at this spot, which was rather an assembly to discuss the movement and the course to be followed, a procession set out on the Boulevard Arago and passed in front of the Santé prison to demonstrate solidarity with those who had been jailed or sentenced for their part in the demonstrations of the preceding days. It crossed through the working-class neighborhoods and then swerved to return by the Rue Monge and the Boulevard St. Germain and moved back up the Boulevard St. Michel.
This was a demonstration the like of which Paris had not seen in a long time. About 30,000 strong at the beginning, it visibly swelled, and toward the end it had clearly doubled. It had an enthusiasm and a youthful character matching the spring revivification that had brought leaves back to the trees on the boulevards. The demonstration was made up in large proportion of university and high-school students and striking professors. However, it was joined by many young workers, who every day in growing numbers had been taking part in the strikers' demonstrations, as well as by revolutionary workers and militants who had suffered for long years from the Stalinist gag on the organized workers movement.
At last, Paris again saw demonstrations planned without police participation, which were held without prior authorization, not subjected to the control of marshals from the CP and CGI [Confédération Générale de Travail - General Confederation of Labor -- the Communist-controlled union] who barred all slogans and banners considered "subversive" by the apparatus. At last there was a demonstration that gave free rein to the initiative of the masses.
This demonstration of 50,000 persons, made up in its overwhelming majority of young people, had a very high political level. There were red flags, a black flag, the flag of Vietnam, but not one tricolor.
"The Internationale" and other old revolutionary songs were sung. Revolutionary slogans were mixed in with the strikers' immediate demands: "Against the Police State," "Against the Bourgeoisie and Bourgeois Education." In the workingclass districts, the demonstrators called for worker-student solidarity.
Once it returned to the Latin Quarer, the demonstration again found itseli lacing a sorbonne surrounded by severa. tight ranks of police troops, gendarmes [paramilitary police] and above all the gangster-like CRS [Compagnies Republicains de Sécurité, the semimilitary elite
Hatred against the security police]. "forces of order" took extraordinary forms. There was a rain of angry shouts and insults. The UNEF marshals could hard- 1y restrain the demonstrators. Now a confrontation, a clash seemed inevitable.
Unable to enter the sorbonne, the demonstrators decided to stay in the streets of the Latin Quarter until their a few clashes, demands were met. After they began to construct barricades. Anyone there could see how spontaneous this was. If you check a map of Paris, was at once that any "specialists" in can guerrilla warfare and street fighting would never have dreamed of a deployment so easily encircled. No "specialists" were there. Spontaneity and popular initiative were.
In short order, automobiles were taken, materials and tools found in nearby construction sites, even air hammers being used to loosen the cobblestones in the streets. Workers were particularly helpful to the students in this.
A single fact will illustrate how well this activity expressed the general anger. The quarter where the barricades were built is essentially bourgeois or petty bourgeois. Yet when the demonstrators used automobiles to build up the barricades, the people did not protest. Everyone knows how much an automobile means nowadays to its owner. Even more, the same people gave demonstrators, who had been out since five or six o'clock in the morning, food, something to drink, transistor radios to follow what was happening over the air. Finally, when the police resorted to the most brutal measures during the night, for several hours, large numbers of fighters on the barricades were given refuge in neighboring apartments.
A few days later, when the giant demonstration of May 13 was passing by, a big contingent of "barricade fighters" marching along the Rue Gay-Lussac chanted, "Thanks, thanks, Gay-Lussac." And from the windows came an answering "Bravo, bravo." It was a most moving incident.
From the Barricades to the General Strike
It cannot be said that France woke up to all this Saturday morning, because everyone had been following the events minute by minute throughout the night as they were broadcast over unofficial radio transmitters. Journalists on the spot described the savage repression as it occurced, their voices being punctuated by the continual exploding of grenades. Anger swelled.
The evening before, the CGI and the CFDT [Confédération Française et Démocratique du Iravail -- French Democratic Confederation of labor] had projected a demonstration for the following Tuesday, in the evening. They met again, because it was impossible to wait that long and do only that much. On Saturday afternoon, demonstrations broke out again in the Latin Quarter, where many streets already resembled a battlefield -- remnants of barricades, burned automobiles, streets torn up...Would the struggle in the streets be resumed?
In the evening about 9 o'clock, Premier Pompidou made a statement on IV and radio. Pale, his features drawn, with a nervousness quite different from his usual manner, he offered some generalities and then in substance indicated that the government was capitulating on the three conditions laid down by the striking students and teachers. All the demonstrators were to be released, the police were to be withdrawn, the sorbonne would be reopened Monday.
But things had already gone too far. The declaration had other consequences than avoiding new confrontations in the streets. The CGT and CFDT had already decided to stage a general strike and a big demonstration in Paris on Monday. They held to these decisions.
Noting what the government had conceded or promised, the UNEF and SNES stressed that this proved that the government bore all the responsibility for what had happened in the previous days. They decided to continue the struggle until the promises were actually carried out.
Sunday was taken up in preparing for the general strike and demonstration on Monday. In the evening it was announced that the students and teachers were to assemble at the Gare de l'Est, that a parade would go from there to the Place de la Republique where the workers unions would assemble, that the unions belonging to Force Ouvrière [FO] in the Paris region would, for the first time, participate with the others. From the Piace de la République, a huge demonstration would cross Paris, going through the Latin Quarter to the Place
Denfert-Rochereau. It was something like the victors paying a visit to the field of battle.
The discussions among the organizations had lasted for many long hours. We can reveal some inside information about this.
The Stalinist leaders of the CGT wanted the demonstration to leave from the Place St. Michel and go to the Bourse du Travail on the Place de la République. What they wanted was to avoid the Latin Quarter and end up at the address of the bureaucrats.
The spokesmen of the UNEF and the SNES said that they could not accept this proposal and that if the unions refused to change on this, they would organize an independent demonstration of their own from the Place de la République to Denfert-Rochereau.
The heads of the CGI had to assent, the evening before, the goversmen t just as the evening before, had to assent. On top of this they likewise had to accept the leader of the "March 22 Movement," Daniel Cohn-Bendit, who only on May 3 had been called "the German"
by l'Humanité. Ihe marshals had to be made up of one-half workers from the unions and one-half students from the student organizations.
It should be added that on that Sunday, the heads of the Stalinist organizations, particularly the marshals, who, up until then had never been used against the police (the organizations bowing to police orders) but against the "leftists," were warned by their chiefs that they must not do anything against the "left-
" even if they were insulted by them. ists, It was noted that they had to restrain themselves many times during the demonstration. But it would be a mistake to conclude that the Stalinists will be inclined to respect workers democracy from here on out. They staged this demonstration against their will, and one can be almost certain that they will seek revenge at an opportune moment.
It is impossible to describe the demonstration in a few words. We can only indicate a few features. Most of the workers who marched with the unions were certainly not up to the political level and militancy of the groups assembled around the students and teachers where the slogans were predominantly anticapitalist, revolutionary, against the bourgeois state, for the socialist revolution, for workers power, for internationalism "Rome, Berlin, Warsaw, Paris!"). But the level of the workers was considerably higher than in the past. No longer were there unworthy slogans like "des sous,
Charlot" ["some pennies, Charley"].
The main feature of the demonstration was its anti-Gaullism. Inasmuch as the demonstration took place exactly ten years to the day since the military coup in Algiers that brought de Gaulle to power, a slogan heard everywhere was "Ten years, that's too much.
Ihe leaders of the political parties (Fédération de la Gauche Démocrate Socialiste and Parti Communiste Français), who were excluded from the front ranks upon the insistence of the UNEF and the SNES, marched in the ranks of the crowd.
They were hardly applauded.
For the revolutionary militants it was a day that aroused great hopes. Their groups swelled in size as the demonstration progressed through the city. They did not even have to suffer the tricolor in the demonstration. Even more -- a demonstrator climbed up the annex of the Pré- fecture of the Police to pull down a flag floating from the windows. Likewise at the Palais de Justice, a demonstrator tore down the tricolor and replaced it with the black flag of the anarchists. The effigy of a member of the CRs suspended from a rope was carried by the Surrealists.
There were only revolutionary s1ogans and spectacular actions. At the Place Denfert-Rochereau, the CGI leaders called through the loudspeaker for the crowd to disperse. The vanguard groups (March 22 Movement, JCR, etc.) decided to continue the demonstration. some groups under the leadership of sectors like the anarchists went toward the Elysée -- something that was both utopian and adventuristic. But most went to the Champ de Mars where a meeting was held of some 20,000 to 25,000 persons.
• the It
Ihis meeting was by far the most important happening on May 13, 1968. It was in a certain way, on a much bigger scale, a continuation ol the discussion that took place May 9, first on the Boulevard St. Michel, then at the JCR meeting. When the groups, some of a dozen persons, others of several hundreds or even some thousands, went from Denfert-Rochereau to the Champ de Mars, packing the sidewalks for several kilometers, bystanders thought that another uprising was under way.
The truth was that most of the participants knew that this was not the time for new battles, but the time to draw the lessons of the events and to decide what to do the next day. For more than two hours there was a democratic tossing about ol ideas, oi proposals, prefiguring a kind of soviet assembly functioning democratically. Finally it was decided to continue the student strike and to occupy the Sorbonne the same evening, which was done.
This is where things stand as this is written. The university student movement has entered a new phase about which we will write later. It is not yet possible to draw a complete balance sheet on what has happened, but a few conclusions can be made.
A New Period
We are not dealing with incidental events but with a break in the political equilibrium in France and the opening of l new period. It is possible, of course. to list the "errors" committed by the government (occupation of the Sorbonne, excessive repression, underestimation of "grouplets" in the pattern of the Stalinetc.), but the movement would never ists, taken on the breadth it dia, excited such sympathy, touched off a general strike by the unions (CGI, CFDI and FO) who were not even dreaming of something i teation ond not de daos do which many like that only a lew days belore, social contradictions had already reached a rather advanced point.
In comparison with the similar student movements in other countries, this one came late, but the delay, far from being due to the slower evolution of the French students, corresponded to the greater explosiveness of forces accumulating at a much higher political level than elsewhere.
With a certain feverishness, the government is at present getting ready to government is at present getting ready to take various measures. "Today, pealing for everyone's cooperation, above and I will take all the students, Pompidou said before a necessary steps, parliament which showed a little life precisely because the succession to Gaullism has been posed to a certain degree by the events.
Let us disregard the Gaullists who are waiting for de Gaulle to speak on May 24 and say a few words about the democratic and Social Democratic opposition. These gentlemen of the FGDS, together with the Communist party, will without loubt be the major beneficiaries in an elections that might be held in the near future. They would be carried into power "legally." During the past week they hardly gave a sign of lile. Now, on the parliamentary level, they are making all kinds of noise, without insisting on the fact that they have the possibility of coming to power via pressure from the streets.
The Communist party is of particular interest. It is sounding literally lar interest. It is sounding literaline? all variations every day in order to cover" its leadership of the movement, as the students themselves put it. On the day following the demonstration, it acted as if nothing unpleasant at all had been experienced by the bureaucrats in the march. It said not a word about the meeting at the Camp de Mars. A Political Bureau declaration, still based on unity with the democratic bourgeoisie, warned "the workers and students against any adventurist slogans capable, under present conditions, of disrupting the broad front of struggle that has been constituted and giving the Gaullist regime an unlookedfor pretext to consolidate its shaky domination."
These are not the words of other days, but the spirit has not changed. It is no longer a question of "provocateurs" but of the danger of an adventure. The politics of peaceful and parliamentary roads to reestablish a democracy which is supposed to develop gradually into socialism still lives on.
Nevertheless it would be rather surprising if the present events did not short- 1y have some consequences within the Communist party. Ihe policies followed by this party among the youth are completely bankrupt. For around six years, the CP leadership expelled from the organizations and demonstrations under its control -- often in a violent way -- these "leftists" who have now returned at the head of tens of thousands of youths. By an action that had nothing in common with parliamentarism or pacifism, these "leftists" forced the government to capitulate, and all the bureaucratic machines set up in bourgeois society to stage a 24-hour general strike.
For months the leadership of the Communist party has been engaged in preparing for a new political combination with the factions of the bourgeoisie aimed at assuring an alternative to take over from Gaullism. The role assigned to the CP was to provide a guarantee for the next regime against being bowled over from the left. It played this role to perfection in 1936 and in 1945-47. It certainly does not doubt its capacity to do it once more.
In 1936 and in 1945-47, "grouplets" (the term was accurate at the time) existed to the left. The leaders enjoyed great
Social Democrats were being prestige. (The challenged but for a rather long time they were supported by the Stalinist leaders, which helped to smother the protests.)
Without being unimportant, the development of the left at no time reached such a level as to offer a practical challenge to these leaders.
The situation is quite different today. Even before the FGDS-PCF combination was worked out, a force existed to the left that could not easily be handled owing to the fact that it had grasped the essence of classical reformism and post-Stalinist reformism.
All the problems of French society; a combination of old problems resulting from worm-eaten structures dating back to the nineteenth century and new problems resulting from the modernization following the second world war, became posed in an urgent way. The contending camps will have to define themselves, get organized and decide on their policies. The initiative taken by the students opened the way for a big mass movement in the direction of socialism. One can be sure that to the right, political regroupments will take place and profascist forces will be organized before long to defend the capitalist regime.
Under such conditions, the construction of a mass revolutionary Marxist party acquires decisive importance. Con-
A high-ranking member of the British labour party has threatened Tarig Ali, a prominent figure in the British movement against the war in Vietnam, with deportation. Robert Mellish, minister of public building and works, and London chairman of the Labour party, demanded in a letter to Home Secretary Callaghan that Ali be deported to Pakistan for his part in organizing the massive March 26 demonstration in Grosvenor Square.
Mellish has a well-deserved reputation as a racist. The May 8 Sun, in commenting on the interchange with the home secretary, noted ironically that Mellish "has been in trouble with the party before now for showing less enthusiasm for immigration than was then had commented to Callaghan that Ali was, in his opinion, "abusing British democracy."
Callaghan's reply, coming as it did from a more liberal champion of British "democracy," was equally alarming. "I fully appreciate your feelings," he said to the advocate of deportation, "...But I have no power to deport Mr. Ali unless he is recommended for deportation by a court of law following conviction of an offence punishable by imprisonment. Ihe possibility of taking proceedings against the organiser of the Grosvenor Square demonstration has been considered but no proceedings are to be taken."
A statement of protest signed by a number of well-known figures including lamara Deutscher and Bertrand Russell, said of Callaghan's reply: "We view it as an open invitation to any policeman siderable forces are at hand to carry out this task, but they are fragmented politically and organizationally. Efforts must be made to overcome this state of affairs in order to succeed, as rapidly as possible, in attracting the numerous militants appearing among the youth as well as the many older ones who for years have been awaiting better days.
We will return to all these problems, as well as to the consequences which this turn in the political situation in France cannot fail to have internationally, in western Europe in the first place.
to put Tariq Ali in the dock to be deported. In the event of an arrest of Mr. Ali, everyone will understand it in this light.
"But, more ominously, it is an incitement in the present situation, to any racialist to commit an act of physical violence against Mr. Ali."
The statement also said: "That the leaders of the Government should seek to rid themselves by such crude methods of one of their most active and vocal critics of their Vietnam policies, must cause even the most loyal supporter of the Labour Party to wonder where this Government is taking us."
Another strong protest was made by the Movement for Colonial Freedom. The May 14 Guardian said it was signed by Lord Fenner Brockway, Stan Newens, M.P., Lord Anthony Gifford, and Dr.
Leon Szur. The signers declared, "At the time when a deplorable outbreak of racial feeling has been sparked off by Mr. Enoch Powell's disgraceful speech it is utterly shameful that the chairman of the London Labour Party and a Minister in the Government should select for attack one member of the anti-Vietnam war movement on the grounds that he is a Commonwealth citizen.
"We believe in full political freedom for all citizens, whether they come from Britain or the
Commonwealth.
We shall accordingly fight to the full extent of our powers against any move to deport Mr. Ali on any political grounds whatsoever, including those pristical orbences possible arrest for arising out of his possible arrest for
TARIQ ALI THREATENED WITH DEPORTATION FROM BRITAIN TARIQ ALI THREATENED WITH DEPORTATION FROM BRITAIN
"ARMED CAMP" ATMOSPHERE AT TRIAL FOR H. RAP BROWN
H. Rap Brown, chairman of the student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, went on trial in New Orleans, Iouisiana, May 13 on trumped-up charges of violating the National Firearms Act.
The militant black leader is accused of transporting a rifle on a plane, while under indictment for another charge. The obscure law under which he is being tried was passed in the 30's to deal primarily with John Dillinger, the bank robber.
Brown insists that he had no knowledge of an indictment against him in Cambridge, Maryland, at the time he flew to his home town in
Baton Rouge, Iouisiana, in August, 1967.
William Kunstler, the noted civilliberties attorney who is defending Brown, has charged that federal and state governments conspired to silence the black power spokesman and planned his entrapment under the little-known law.
In the first days of the trial it was revealed that Brown was kept under constant surveillance by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other police agencies.
• announced
The Justice Department before the trial that it had "accidental- Ily" obtained secretly recorded conversations involving Brown. In order to prevent the defense from having the right to examine them, it asked the judge to read a transcript of the conversations, rule that they were not "relevant" to the case, and order the transcript resealed.
This scandalous procedure was denounced by the defense, which submitted a countermotion, asking the judge to order the transcript opened to inspection or dismiss the case.
The judge ruled in favor of the government, thus sanctifying the illegal wire-tapping and other electronic surveillance carried out by the FBI, which had provided the transcript.
Kunstler also protested the "armed camp" atmosphere in which the trial was being conducted. A special police guard of forty men patrolled the court building. Kunstler asked for a mistrial and a opain
H. RAP BROWN
change of venue. His protests were overruled.
A Baton Rouge policeman testified May 17 that he had Rap Brown under surveillance while Brown was in Baton Rouge on August 17. Kunstler told the court that was part of "the whole process of getting Rap Brown."
During the first few days of the trial, police sought to intimidate people attending by taking their pictures and forcing them to sign their names and state their business before entering the building.
The judge finally ordered the intimidating procedures to be discontinued.
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BOLIVIAN POLITICAL PRISONERS DEMAND IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Repression continues rampant in Bolivia. Minister of the Interior Arguedas recently announced the arrest and arraignment of persons accused of having participated in supporting the guerrilla movement.
At the same time, political prisoners are being kept in prison without trial in absolutely illegal circumstances. Ine iollowing is the text of a letter signed by prisoners in the Panoptico Nacional, the La Paz prison. The text was published on April 20 in the La Paz daily Presencia.
To the Chairman of the
District Supreme Court:
Your Honor,
The signers of this memorandum have been held in the Panoptico Nacional since August 1967. This imprisonment is unjustified in every respect and cannot be allowed to continue. For, the accusation lodged against us has its origin in political questions, in which the judicial branch has lamentably involved itself.
We are suffering economic losses and difficulties in supporting our families. It is unjust for us to be accused of an alleged crime when we were absent from the scene of these events; and we reject this accusation.
Augusto Velardo, a Peruvian journalist, recently visited the "Ezequiel Zamora" guerrilla front In the mountain: of El Bachiller in the state of Miranda, about 200 kilometers from Caracas, and was granted some very informative interviews by the freedom fighters.
It should be explained that the . "Ezequiel Zamora" front was set up by the Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria [MIR -- Movement of the Revolutionary Left] along with another front in eastern part of the country (the "Antonio José de Sucre" front).
These fronts should not be confused with those established by the Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional [FALN —- Armed Forces of National Liberation] and the Frente de Liberación Nator, it is common knowledge that we were held in confinement from January to August 1967. And promptly in the month of August we were transferred to the Panoptico Nacional, that is from confinement to prison. How can your honor and the members of the district court suppose that we were in the siglo Veinte [mine] for the bloody events of St. John's Day in June?
Without waiting for a general prison inspection, we ask that this tremendous injustice against our persons be remedied without delay by restoring our freedom.
Very truly yours,
Oscar Salas Moya, confined March 7, 1967; imprisoned July 3, 1967.
1967; imprison dauust 3, 19 January ?,
Alberto Jara, confined January 7,
Victor Carrasco, confined March 2, 1967; imprisoned August 3, 1967; his trial has been postponed and he remains a prisoner.
Filemon Escobar E., confined lebruary 21, 1967; imprisoned August 3, 1967.
Justiniano Ninavia, confined larch 23, 1967; imprisoned August 3, 1967.
René Olivares, confined January 18, 1967.
cional [FIN - National Liberation Front] which are led by Douglas Bravo and Elías Manuitt, who also pursue a line of armed struggle. The FALN-FIN have likewise stabilized two guerrilla fronts, making a total of four in the country as a whole.
Although the MIR and the FALN-FIN act independently of each other, the leaders of both organizations have recently indicated that in principle a unification of the two tendencies would be in the interest of the Venezuelan revolution.
Velardo's report, including the texts of the interviews granted to him, photographs, and background material, has been published in two recent issues of the new Mexican magazine, Por qué? [Why?].*
Notes
* April 24 and May 8, 1968, issues.