Political strike against Franco

Spanish Civil War AN ESTIMATED 50,000 workers held sit-down strikes of varying durations in Madrid, Barcelona, Seville, Bilbao and other Spanish towns on Tuesday despite displays of force by security police and the para-military Civil Guard.

The strikes - called by the illegal Workers' Commissions-were an unprecedented display of working-class solidarity with Franco's political prisoners and a blow at the infamous Trade Union Law now on its way through the Cortes (parliament).

TAX * SWEETS NOT DENTAL Racialist move by Ceylon govt Metalworkers, printers and builders were well to the fore in the strike movement.

Franco's official sources claim that 'only" 15,000 workers took part in the strikes, but this is clearly a gross underestimation.

The strike was the first big political strike against the fascist regime.

Previous strike struggles have been confined largely to economic questions.

Under the tight repression of the Franco police, the organization of such a big solidarity strike is a sure sign that the Spanish working class is finding its feet in struggle.

FREEDOM • and amnesty Hundreds of students and young workers marched through Madrid under the noses of the police, shouting for freedom and amnesty.

Police made a number of baton charges and dózens of arrests.

More than 3,000 people gathered near the Atocha railway terminus in central Madrid where the Workers' Commissions had called for demonstrations against the regime.

Earlier in the day at Madrid University, police broke down doors of the Political Science faculty and batoncharged a group of about 400 students who were chanting slogans.

In the Catalan textile town of Tarrassa, workers struck and demonstrated and a priest was among those arrested.

Spanish actress Julia Pena stood up in a performance by a German theatre company in Madrid and called for the release of political prisoners.

ARRESTED then released Police arrested her, but she was released when the actors refused to continue the play unless she was set free.

These tremendously inspiring demonstrations and strikes indicate that Franco's senile and malignant fascist regime can no longer wall off the workers and youth of Spain from the revolutionary movement of the European working class. Spanish future A STATEMENT by Santiago Carrillo, Spanish Communist Party general secretary, lays bare the acute dangers facing Spanish workers if the fight against fascism and the employers is led by those tied to the Stalinist 'road to socialism'.

In an interview in Paris published yesterday in 'Le Monde', Carrillo says:

*All those who are in favour of the restoration of democratic freedom, even if they have goals opposed to ours, even if, in the past, they have supported the Franco regime' can be the allies of the Party.

"The Spanish, regime has kept its fascist forms, and our first task is to put an end to these. For that, we are ready to do business with the devil!' It was this policy, tying the working class and poor peasants to the requirements of those employers who were prepared (quite hypocritically) to swear their allegiance to 'democracy, that strangled the Spanish revolution and led to Franco's victory in the Civil War.

Lead

It was in the name of 'first leleat fascism, then struggle for socialism' that Stalin's political servants in Spain took took the lead in handing back the factories and land to the ruling class.

They destroyed the organizations (and murdered their leaders) who called for class unity against the oppressors.

There is a bitter reality when Carillo says in jest that 'Spanish socialism will march with a hammer and sickle in one hand and a cross in the other' (i.e. hand in glove with the 'progressive' elements of the Catholic Church).

For the increasing pressure