[This is the first of two articles on the Belgian miners' strike and the role the vanguard youth are playing in it.]
Brussels
The wave of wildcat strikes that has swept Europe since the May-June 1968 events in France reached Belgium in the first weeks of 1970. It began with a strike among the coal miners of the province of Limbourg, in the eastern part of the Flemish-speaking section of the country, not far from the border of Wallonia, the French-speaking section.
On February 1, as the strike was about to enter its fifth week, I was able to interview François Vercammen, a leader of the JGS |Jeune Garde Socialiste/Socialistische Jonge Wacht - Socialist Young Guard], a revolutionary socialist youth organization in political solidarity with the Fourth International, which has played a role in the development of the strike.
"The strike started in the mine at Winterslag," Vercammen said, "a small town in the region, on January
5. It began among the surface workers, who blocked the entrance, and soon the whole mine was on strike. Three other mines in the region struck within twenty-four hours, and it quickly spread to include about 23,000 coal miners in the area. This was remarkable considering that the political level of the miners in this area is low, that the workers have been poorly organized, and that the union gave no leadership to the workers."
Vercammen explained why the wildcat movement spread so rapidly. "The Limbourg miners receive wages considerably lower than their counterparts in other countries of Western Europe, and lower than in the coal mines of Wallonia where a tradition of working-class militancy has resulted in better wages. In addition, many jobs in the mines pay less than similar jobs in other industries. So, there was a 178
general feeling that wages should be substantially raised.
"Last April, sentiment for a strike was blocked by the leaderships of the unions. The workers were told that it was not the right time to strike, that a 'collective work agreement' was due to be negotiated at the end of 1969, and that the workers should wait to see the results of that."
"Collective work agreements" are tripartite compacts between the bosses, the unions, and the government on wages, conditions, etc., covering a whole branch of industry.
About 75 percent of the unionized workers in the area belong to the union affiliated to the Confédération des Syndicats Chrétiens |CSC - Confederation of Christian Trade Unions], the rest to the Fédération Générale des Travailleurs de Belgique [FGTB— General Federation of Belgian Workers - the Social-Democratic union]. About 80 percent are unionized.
"The general feeling among the workers that there should be a significant raise in wages," Vercammen said, "was reinforced by the leadership of the Christian union itself. They gave their pledge to fight for an immediate raise of 15 percent and began to campaign on this demand in their paper and in the mines. So it began to be accepted among the workers that if the demand wasn't granted, a strike would be called."
"Now, I must say something about the particular problems of the mining industry, which is in a general crisis throughout Europe," Vercammen continued. "If we lived in a socialist economy, we could make a general plan for the production of energyhow much coal to produce, how much electricity, how much atomic energy, etc. But we live under capitalism, and the capitalist owners of the mines try to get as much profit as they can.
"To the extent that there are other sectors of industry that are more profitable, they take their money out of mining and put it in those other industries.
"But they are also receiving subsidies from the government to maintain the mines at a certain level. For example, the capitalist concern called Société Générale, which dominates the mining industry, receives subsidies from the government - which it promptly invests in the steel industry.
"One section of the bourgeoisie says it is possible to grant the 15 percent raise, if the price of Belgian coal is raised. The Belgian mines are presently selling coal at below world-market prices - about $6 less per ton than U.S. coal, for instance. So some sectors of the Flemish middle bourgeoisie directiy linked to coal mining are asking for higher prices.
"But the nucleus of the big Belgian bourgeoisie, especially the Société Gén- érale, which dominates the mining industry, says, 'No, the price must rewhere it is; otherwise the steel main industry (which we also control) would not be competitive on the world market.'
"The position of the Coal Directorate, a so-called neutral state organization with strong Social-Democratic influence in it, was that, unfortunately, the 15 percent increase is impossible. We then had the situation where the CSC union was demanding the 15 percent raise while the Social Democrats, who are more closely linked with the governments, said that 10 percent was enough.
"The Social Democrats had their way. The collective work agreement negotiated on December 15 granted a 10 percent increase spread out over two years. There was to be a raise of 4% in January 1970, 2% in mid- 1971, and another 2% at the end of 1971. The Christian union bureaucrats caved in and dropped the demand for 15 percent.
"The workers were very surprised and angry, and there was talk of an immediate strike on December 15. But after some discussion it was decided to wait until after Christmas to collect the double-time rate for working during the holidays. The strike was set for January 5."
"Between December 15 and January 5," Vercammen said, "there were forty-two small strikes or slowdowns in the mines, so there was a general feeling of mounting tension.
"On January 5 it started in Winterslag, the most politically advanced mine (for example, the Social Demohave a small majority of the crats workers there), and spread to Zolder, Waterschei, and Beeringen within twenty-four hours. Another mine that was scheduled to be closed at the end of 1970 joined in after the first week. The workers in this mine feared a repetition of what happened in Zwartberg in February 1966, when the mine was closed permanently after a strike was defeated.
"So in about a week and a half the strike was solid throughout the Campine (Limbourg), and remains so today.
"The spirit of the miners reflects what happened in Zwartberg in 1966. That strike was the first sharp class battle in this region of Belgium. All the workers are now talking about Zwartberg:
"'If we had united in Zwartberg like we are united now, if we could have gotten student support like we have now, we could have won in 1966.'
"In fact, there are certain parallels between this fight and the earlier one. In Zwartberg two strikers were killed by the gendarmerie [federal police], which were under the control of a Social Democratic minister of the interior. Today we also have a Social Democrat in the same position. Then, as now, the unions didn't support the strike."
After the defeat of the 1966 strike, a committee of Zwartberg workers who had been in the leadership continued to function to help the miners find new jobs, etc. The Zwartberg workers, scattered throughout the other mines of the region, maintained a kind of fraternity and have been a source of militancy in the present strike.
I asked Vercammen how the strike was organized and led.
"As it is a wildcat strike, without union leadership," he said, "the orga- March 2, 1970
nizational forms have been spontaneous. What has emerged is the Permanent Strike Committee of the Campine area, which is the recognized leadership. It is composed of two or three delegates from each mine. These delegates have not been actually elected, as the movement spread so quickly, but have emerged as the rank-andfile leadership of the workers in each mine. These are the fighters, generally recognized by the other workers, as can be seen in the fact that the strike is now entering its fifth week completely solid.
"The Permanent Committee immediately contacted the Zwartberg group, and there are two members of this body included in the Permanent Committee."
Vercammen described the role played by the JGS in mobilizing solidarity with the strikers.
"We have distributed about 300,000 leaflets in the factories, mines, universities, and schools all over the country. Students of the JGS and other revolutionary groups, together with striking miners, have gone to other mines. In this way the strike has spread to several mines in Wallonia more or less successfully.
"In the large steel mill of Cockerill- Ougrée in Liège, where there is a high political level, there has been a solidarity strike led by older revolutionary socialists.
"In Flanders, there has been a wave a wildcat strikes in other industries, the most important being in the ford plant in Genk, which is the largest factory in Limbourg. Cops used water cannon and tear gas to herd scabs into the Ford plant. The union leadership has been forced to give de facto recognition to this strike.
"The workers have also struck at General Motors in Antwerp.
"The government has sought to put pressure on the strikers in various ways. At first the unions did not pay any strike benefits, but now they have been forced to. Secondly, a year-end bonus was due the workers. The Social Democratic minister of labor, Louis Major, said he would pay the bonus right away if the workers went back to work, but not otherwise, because the workers 'might spend it on bread.' (The money comes from the bosses, but is dispensed by the state.) I was at a miners' meeting when this statement was reported, and I can tell you that Mr. Major is an unpopular man with the miners.
"In the first week there was an attempt by the cops to break the strike. Many of the workers in the region live in small villages twenty to thirty kilometers from the mines and come to work on buses. These men have less contact with what is happening in the mines than the workers in villages closer to the mines.
"The buses have to stop outside when they get to the mines, except at Waterschei. In the other towns, pickets were able to meet the buses, talk to the workers, and bring them out on strike. But in Waterschei it is possible for the buses to drive right into the mines. The cops tried to do this a few times, but the workers organized squads to 'greet' the buses ten kilometers or so outside of town. The cops had to give the tactic up.
"They also tried to split the workers along national lines. About twothirds of the miners are foreign workers - Italians, Spaniards, Greeks, Turks, Moroccans, and Algerians. The political police have told these workers that if they participate in any demonstrations or meetings they will be expelled from the country. Nevertheless, the workers' unity has been remarkable.
"The foreign workers have been the best fighters, the most militant. Most of the participants in the miners' committees are foreign workers, which means that everything must be trans-
Greek, Turkish, and Arabic."
Bourguiba Retaliates
Following violent demonstrations and a 100 percent effective student strike at the University of Tunis protesting the visit Bo V.S. Seeia agai rete Redas, ist of U.S. Secretary of State the dissidence on the campus. As yet, however, it has not imprisoned the students involved.
The Tunis government announced February 18 that "unless new facts appeared," it would not prosecute the forty students arrested in connection with the anti-Rogers demonstrations. However, it was indicated that they would be expelled from school "in order to make it impossible for those who consider the campus a fertile ground for agitation and seem not to have grasped the significance of the recent clemency granted certain of them to do any harm."
The "clemency" referred to was an amnesty granted to thirty-one students imprisoned for participating in the June 1967 anti-imperialist demonstrations.
Chato Peredo Carries on the Struggle
The Bolivian Guerrilla Front Under a New Leader
An informative article on recent developments in the guerrilla movement in Bolivia appeared in the January 30 issue of Marcha. The author, Carlos María Gutiérrez, one of the political editors of the Montevideo weekly, on assignment in La Paz, was able to interview various guerrillas, including Chato Peredo, the brother of the martyred Inti Peredo.
Chato Peredo, according to María Gutiérrez, has left his home in Santiago de Chile to assume leadership of the guerrilla movement initiated in Bolivia by Che Guevara.
María Gutiérrez begins by establishing how Inti Peredo sought to re-form the guerrilla front. A year after the death of Che Guevara, "compelled to live in the cities in order to reconstitute and strengthen an urban network before opening a rural foco* (a hard lesson driven home by the death of Che), Inti showed how he had matured as a result of his tragic personal experience."
For Peredo, the main ideas held by Che upon initiating an armed struggle in Bolivia "remained immutable."
Inti Peredo summarized them in an interview granted to Augusto Olivares of the Chilean magazine Punto Final in June 1969, about three months before he met death in La Paz at the hands of the Siles Salinas regime.
"In Bolivia," Inti Peredo told Olivares, "no revolutionary can seriously maintain that it is possible to take power on the electoral road."
On the foco concept, Peredo said:
"The ELN |Ejército de Liberación Nacional- Army of National Liberation maintains the principles established by Che. We hold valid the thesis of the need for a guerrilla foco in the current situation in Latin America. Because of this we announced that we would return to the mountains. We will build an armed force. We are not trying to form a political party. We are aware that organizing a military apparatus has its problems, but I believe that political definitions will be attained in action... I know those that speak about an armed wing and a political wing. This is equivalent to converting the sector fighting in the mountains into a pressure group that operates in conformity with political directives issued in the city. I know of some chiefs who have spoken of imposing truces in the armed struggle, which would mean keeping the military organism in the mountains inactive. This can be said by someone who does not understand genuine armed struggle or by the pseudo revolutionary, who, in the final analysis, uses the armed struggle to exert political pressure on the electoral road."
On the resumption of guerrilla war, Inti Peredo said: "We are in the stage of reorganization. Our people want to fight, because many problems encountered in periods of preparation can be solved in action... They appeal for solidarity in the struggle of the ELN, which is the struggle of Che and thereby of all of Latin America.
We need financial
Solidarity.
resources. Arms cost a lot."
This interview was granted June 24. "Twenty days later," continues María Gutiérrez, "the work of informers plus the enormous repressive apparatus of the Dirección de Investigaciones Criminales (forever in the hands of the CIA) dealt a terrible blow to the Ejército de Liberación Nacional. In Cochabamba on the evening of July 14, several dozen police surrounded a house on Lanza Street used by the ELN as a center for armaments, the documents of the movement, and the most valuable men. Inside was a university professor named Victor Guerra (second in command in the ELN), the guerrilla girl Maya- Rita Valdivia - and two or three more members of decisive importance in the stage of armed struggle that was to begin in the jungles of Chaparé."
In the ensuing gun battle, the police finally managed to take the house. They found one guerrilla dying, another wounded, Maya shot in the head, and Professor Guerra seriously wounded in the chest.
After this came the "tragic dismantlement of the ELN." In La Paz, an arsenal was captured in Carrasco Street. "On July 23 the painter Luis Zilvetti Calderón, winner of the grand national prize in painting, was arrested in one of the plazas. He proved to be linked to the ELN. Zilvetti was carrying very important lists of names and addresses. (Around this murky fact there are serious suspicions concerning the loyalty of the painter, who surprisingly later turned up as a refugee in the Ecuadorian embassy, obtaining a safe-conduct to leave the country.) Then began innumerable raids and jailings."
María Gutiérrez continues:
"In a house in Bueno Street another arsenal and store of explosives were found. In an apartment on Tejada Borzano Avenue, the DIC seized arms, radio equipment, and a great number of documents (among them a plan to execute the CP leader Mario Monje, apparently condemned to death as a traitor, and who is now being held in the La Paz prison). On July 30 in a shoot-out at a house in the Obrajes district, they captured Gonzalo Oroza Bellido, the third key man in the movement, and his Finnish wife Terttu Tuliki. Almost immediately, another top-rank leader fell, the engineer Jürgens Schutt Mogro. In Cochabamba, the police raided the home of Maya's parents and seized a third arsenal there.
"Closely pursued by the police, Inti Peredo nevertheless remained in La Paz. The urban network had disintegrated and the ELN was now scattered along with its fighters, without arms, financial resources, or secure places in which to hide out while waiting for this difficult stage to pass. In August the Cochabamba police claimed to have found the decomposed body of Rigoberto Zamora Zazzo, a Chilean who belonged to Víctor Guerra's group and who was supposedly in the house on Lanza Street when it was raided in July. According to the police version Zamora fled from the area and committed suicide upon learning of the death of Maya, with whom he was allegedly in love. But it was proved later that he had been terribly tortured by the police for a month, dying from the effects. The story about finding his body was only a police alibi.
"Arrests continued throughout the country. In Santa Cruz, the DIC captured Carlos de Miguel (a youth who had lived a long time in Montevideo and who had recently returned to Bolivia), Oscar Busch Barberi and Miguel Rivera, accusing them of belonging to a network in Santa Cruz. On August 29, they detained Edgar Peña, the respected president of the Football Federation of Santa Cruz.
"By September, the ELN appeared to have been completely destroyed."
Then came a surprising development. On September 4 the ELN made a spectacular reappearance. In various cities, commandos took over the radio stations briefly to broadcast a taped message from Inti Peredo. Among other things, he said:
"The ELN is not a ghost. It is alive, ready to renew the struggle in the mountains... It is true that we committed some errors, and we recognize and must correct these as is our revolutionary duty. But it is also true that these were committed in the course of work, mistakes that are encountered by those who engage in action, mistakes that are not committed by those who only watch the action... The ELN does not have any pact or agreement with any party whatsoever. No 'documents of great value' have been seized, as the government ministry glibly claims. It is false that Victor kept notes evaluating the capacities of the fighters which were found by the police. The government has no messages in its possession. It is false that a great quantity of arms and ammunition was taken. Yes, we lost a part, which we will recuperate in fighting... We are on the threshold of a new historic stage. The battle begun at Nancahuazú,* which was interrupted briefly, has begun again."
Four days later, on September 8, Inti Peredo was trapped by the police in La Paz. María Gutiérrez appears convinced that Peredo took an unwarranted risk. He stayed for one night at the home of a member of the Communist party. This ambiguous person may have turned informer.
Inti Peredo held off a hundred police for two hours. He was finally captured. The police claimed that he committed suicide with a hand grenade. "In reality, Inti was beaten to death. After he ran out of ammunition, the police entered the house and killed him with their gun butts and by kicking him."
Last December, María Gutiérrez interviewed Chato Peredo, "who, since the death of his brother, has occupied Inti's post." The interview took place in La Paz.
"A former member of the CP, a doctor, Chato in 1966 was one of those favored by the leadership, which sent him to Moscow to keep him from being tempted by the guerrillas. Today the succession of events, the heroic deaths of his brothers, and the obstacles which the reorganization of the movement continues to encounter from his former coreligionists, have endowed his political ideas with a bitter and tranquil realism.
"A great part of our interview was devoted to examining the behavior of the Bolivian CP and the other parties in Latin America (among them the Uruguayan party) with respect to the guerrilla struggle of 1967. Chato knows that period from both sides. Later he learned from reliable sources what happened internally in the movement. Now in command of the ELN, his analysis of the errors, betrayals, and perspectives has been completed."
In response to a series of questions, Chato stated that at the time of Inti Peredo's death, the guerrillas were ready to begin operations, but they suffered some blows and this has delayed reopening the struggle.
At present an urban network has been reestablished of sufficient strength to make it possible to begin operations in a rural foco.
Asked about the first police raid in Cochabamba, Chato Peredo said he thought that it was the work of an informer. The identity of the informer, however, is not yet known.
María Gutiérrez continues:
"Although it is little known, during 1969 the ELN received a political infusion - a Trotskyist sector headed by the dissident Hugo González, separated from the POR [Partido Obrero Revolucionario| and affiliated to the tendency in the Fourth International led by Pierre Franck [sic). The González sector did not enter as a bloc, but reached an agreement with Inti permitting its members to enter individually into the ELN.
"Many observers in La Paz hold that this opened a way through which the intelligence services possibly infiltrated the guerrilla movement. I asked Chato Peredo about this point.
''It is quite possible,' he replied."
María Gutiérrez does not deal further with this point. Why he included it is hard to say. It sounds like a belated echo of the old Stalinist slanders of Trotskyism in general. The problem of informers has always been present in the guerrilla movement as it has in the revolutionary movement generally. It is sufficient to recall that the Czarist police succeeded in penetrating the top leadership of the Bolshevik party in Lenin's time. Che Guevara faced the same problem in Bolivia.
It could be that María Gutiérrez has taken for good coin the libelous assertions of the Lora group which split from the POR in 1966 and which has maintained a bitterly factional attitude since then toward the Fourth International and its Bolivian section.*
Chato Peredo expressed a hostile attitude toward the Ovando regime. "It is not going to carry the revolution to its ultimate consequences," he told María Gutiérrez. "Not even a limited petty-bourgeois revolution."
This means that the guerrilla movement under his command does not intend to change its plans.
The ELN, according to Chato Peredo, is seeking to extend its base into the working class. But don't the Bolivian unions, which are directed in the majority by political forces hostile to guerrilla war, stand in the way?
"The ELN's method of work in this stage of reorganization, carried out above all by Inti, is certainly based on individual recruitment. We are continuing to follow these methods and we believe that we must recruit along these lines. The guerrilla movement must above all be a reduced group that finds its point of support in broad sectors of the people, above all the working class. In view of this, we and Lambertists in Strange Company."
are not getting in contact with the trade-union leaders, because experience has shown that these leaders are geared in with party politics and its interests. We are working among the rank and file, with individuals."
"You have not changed your tactical concepts so as to exclude a rural foco? There are various persons, like Béjar in Peru, who have the opinion that the old thesis based exclusively on a foco should be revised in view of new experiences. Are you following the previous concept?"
"Rather, our experience shows us that Che's original theory remains valid."
"Do you see the peasantry as the principal force for the armed road?"
"Above all, because that is where the struggle develops-in the countryside fundamentally. Experience has shown that the city is the worst enemy, because that is where all the means of the repressive apparatus are concentrated. That means that going into action in the city would be going into action in the enemy's terrain. Che's idea, which we are continuing. Che's idea, which we are continuing, was to form an army on the basis of peasant elements, but with a proletarian ideology, that could defeat the other army holding up the system. And this new army cannot be formed in the city, but in the terrain where we can move most freely and with the best prospects of developing."
María Gutiérrez asked Chato Peredo about Che's comments in his Diary on the lack of receptivity among the peasants even as an arena for work.
"Che was aware of this problem. We know that in the first stage we are not going to be supported by the peasants either and that basically the guerrillas will have to draw on the elements recruited in the city. But these elements will have to go into action in the countryside, which is our terrain, bringing the enemy into our terrain. In the first stage, the peasantry is not going to support us. But new stages will arise, in which the peasantry will have to take a neutral stand, in which the struggle continues, and the pesantry sees that it will be a prolonged struggle, so that at first they are neutral and then they will turn to supporting the guerrillas, even joining them."
Marcha's correspondent asked what would happen if Cuba and Bolivia were to resume trade relations. Would this affect organization of the guerrilla struggle?
"In principle, we do not believe in that possibility. We don't believe that diplomatic relations will soon be established with Cuba."
"I was referring to trade, not diplomatic, relations. They themselves haven't yet moved toward suggesting that."
"The same goes for commercial relations. In any case, we are maintaining an independent policy with regard to this. We don't have sufficient material to make a definitive judgment on this question."
The interview was held December 14. In the following weeks, according to María Gutiérrez, the guerrillas engaged in various actions in the heart of La Paz and in full daylight. These actions included holding up a truck carrying a large sum of money on December 30. One guerrilla was killed in this action.
In conjunction with the trial of the five Polish students charged with spreading propaganda "damaging to the good name and interests of Poland and of socialism," the government-controlled press has conducted a vehement campaign against the accused.
"Almost every day, the papers, and especially two, Zycie Warszawy and Express Wieczorny, have devoted about half a column to the trial; and the radio has not lagged behind," Le Monde's special correspondent wrote in the february 15-16 issue of the Paris daily.
"These accounts, to be sure, make rather monotonous reading," the French correspondent continued. "They report day after day only what would seem to support the indictment. Thus, for example, when Maciej Kozlowski (the main defendant] admitted most of the facts charged against him but added that he did not see anything wrong in them - that freedom of opinion existed in Czechoslovakia at the time and he thought it could be the same in Poland-the Warsaw press noted only that the accused admitted the facts for which he was indicted. At the most, the press indicated that he 'tried to minimize the significance of these facts' (Zycie Warszawy) or that 'at the same time he gave his own evaluation of his admitted illegal ac-
On the following day, the police located their hideout and another guerrilla was killed in the encounter. One of the leaders, Dario Adriazola, who had fought beside Che, was wounded and captured by the police.
María Gutiérrez ends with the following two paragraphs:
"Paralyzed by an option that is likewise a vicious circle, the ELN must obtain funds to keep moving forward and to get out of the deadly trap of the cities. These funds are at the same time in the cities, and to obtain them calls for too high a price - the lives of the best ones.
"If a serious change does not occur abroad in 1970 in solidarity toward the Bolivian guerrillas, it is not clear how the ELN will be able to continue positively fulfilling a task that is today heroic but which could soon become suicidal."
tivity, demonstrating an extraordinary megalomania."
The central charge against the students - Maciej Kozlowski, Maria Tworkowska, Krzystof Szymborski, Jakub Karpinski, and Marguerita Szpakowska-is gathering information for the emigré publication Kultura and distributing this journal illegally in Poland.
An Agence France-Presse dispatch February 11, two days after the trial began, indicated that the copy of Kul tura offered in evidence was a special issue devoted to the March 1968 Polish student demonstrations.
That issue printed a number of statements issued by the students which did not follow Kultura's line. For example, the Warsaw Polytechnic students' Appeal to the Citizens of the People's Republic of Poland said: "We demand honest news in the mass media; we do not want to have to get our information from sources like Radio Free Europe, which, despite the fact that it has reported the events in Poland objectively, is by its very nature antisocialist and anti-Soviet."
The appeal of the Wroclaw students, also printed in the special issue, included this point: "We demand consistent realization of the bases of socialism instead of exploiting its ideas to defend positions in the leadership."
Notes
* Foco: A geographical center set up and maintained by the guerrilla forces to polarize their struggle. The concept, given extreme expression by Regis • Debray in his Revolution in the Revolution?, is currently under dibate among revolutionists in Latin America.
* Where Che Guevara established hisfoco. March 2, 1970
* For more on this point see the article by Joseph Hansen elsewhere in this issue "Healyites