BREAKS WITH BELGIAN SP
A ARTES
On the very eve of filing candidacies for the May 25 elections, the official Socialist party in Belgium suffered an unexpected blow. Camille Huysmans, the patriarch of the international Social Democracy, the secretary of the Second International before World War I and chairman of the Second International during the thirties, broke with the party.
The reason for his break was the refusal of the top bureaucrats to include him on their slate of candidates in the important Flemish industrial center of Antwerp where Huysmans has been leading the party for more than half a century.
Their excuse was that Huysmans was too old to make a good member of parliament. However, they are finding it difficult to explain why it was that only six months ago ~- when Huysmans was a bare 93 and a half years old -- they beseeched him to head their slate in the municipal elections,
The real reason for their decision was the fact that the
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94-year-old veteran was getting too "young" for them. He published a book in which Lenin is lauded. He came out sharply in favor of recognizing China. He has condemned the West German bourgeois regime in violent language. And -~ crime of crimes -- he has been criticizing the current "youthful" leadership as being "much too petty=bour- -geois and right wing."
Huysmans, of course, is no revolutionist. He is not even a centrist. He is a traditional reformist. But nowadays the new -reformist leaders on the continent have moved so far to the right that even a traditional reformist like Huysmans finds it hard. to stomach them,
On April 28, Léo Collard a and Achille Van Acker themselves came as heads of the party, hat in hand, to plead with Huysmans not to run in the election. The press reported a "particularly stormy" session that lasted one hour before the "turbulent youth" threw out the senile ancients who sought to talk him into being “reasonable,”
Huysmans was expelled from the party for running for office without the permission of the leaders. He is now campaigning as an independent. Young socialists of his area who have helped pass out his campaign literature have also been expelled,
Through his move, the Antwerp workers got an unexpected opening to express their discontent with the SP leadership and policies and there is a good chance that Huysmans will win office once more despite his "age."