GIL ROBLESAND THE GENERALS

•No fue posiblo la paz Robles. Published by Artel. 1968. For the leading right-wing politicians, the advent of the Spanish Republic in 1931 could only encourage the 'virus of rationalism' in the universities and working-class subversion'. Their task was preparation of counterrevolution. Their man for the moment, Gil Robles.

Robles in his autobiography, 'Peace was not possible' • articulates the ruling-class hatred for the proletariat: 'For their part, the working masses, more and more isolated from elements which could be called conservative, and imbued with the principle of the class struggle, would be converted into powerful instruments of social subversion . . • 'Among these masses, there was an absolute absence of spiritual principles. The proletariat lived submerged in the most frightful moral poverty, derived mainly from their physical wretchedness' The Catholic lawyer Robles spent the first two years of the Republic establishing the CEDA as a national party and building up its youth movement, the Youth for Popular Action (JAP). This included visits to Italy and Germany to study the organization of the Nazi Party and Mussolini's black-shirts.

The presence of CEDA ministers in Lerroux' cabinet selected • in October which provoked the insurrection in the Asturias in 1934 was determined by the bourgeoisie's requirements.

Robles could use the legal framework - of the state to prepare for civil war while the JAP provided a shock TOTCe of fascist youth to supplement a depleted army.

The JAP military units fused with the army whenever workers had to be fought or strikes could be broken.

Robles' memoirs reveal the seriousness of the conscious planning which went into the counter-revolution. This seriousness was lacking completely in the leadership of the Asturian working class and the Spanish working class generally dominated by the left rhetoric of syndicalists and politicians in the, Grossi mould. (See yesterday's p. 9 review of Grossi's book written in jail after the failure of the 1934 uprising.)

At all costs a premature confrontation had be avoided - no more abortive milițary coups like the one led by General Sanjurjo in 1932.

The generals were over impetuous in their enthusiasm to remove the Republic in 1934. With Asturias under military occupation, the army wanted to press on with their conquests.

President Alcala Zamora's decision to amnesty the Catalan nationalist Perez Farras stirred up the military even more.

Before the October 18 decision was announced, generals Fanjul and Goded informed Robles that they wanted to see him urgently.

Their messenger, Candido Casanueva, was told to cool them down. After sounding out the mend in the barracks, they agreed and asked the CEDA, which was opposed to the amnesty, to make a compromise and stay in the govern'Although it is necessary to give an amnesty to Perez Farras, don't resign, because the army is in no position to stop power from falling in the hands of the lefts, who would tear us apart very quickly.' There could have been no better man to preside at the Ministry of War, which Robles did in 1935. His mair. task was to reorganize and re-equip the Spanish armed forces. General Franco handed over a complete study of the needs of the army which required expenditure of over a thousand million pesetas. This was ratified by the Council of Ministers on July 30.

Although Robles insists in his memoirs that he was not in favour of a military coup, this can only be understood as rewriting of history for the benefit of the Spanish liberals and Communist Party leaders who now figure among the cohorts of 'democratic' Robles.

He militarized the munitions workforce to ensure that the left takeover would not be repeated and personally supervised army manoeuvres in the Asturias.

These were manoeuvres of a new unit he set up which was especially equipped to deal with the physical problems of fighting in the mining valleys against a 'fresh movement of sedition'.

In the good company of Generals Fanjul, Franco and Goded, he watched the troops cross the mining valleys and take up positions in the hills.

It was from October 1934 that the Spanish Military Union (UME), the right-wing conspiracy within the army, spread its tentacles from captains and colonels to generals Mola and Goded.

Although Robles had to make way for the strong man Francisco Franco, his participation in the Republican government provided two years of valuable preparation of the bourgeois counter-revolution.

The lesson of the insurrection in the Asturias and Robles' career is that the spontaneous militancy of the working class, far from automatically dislocating the bourgeois state, in fact leads this State to sharpen its knives against the working class and in defence of capital.

When the Workers' Alliance in the Asturias decided not to spread the insurrection nationally, they presented the generals with two years to prepare for the national uprising. Recently an 'Observer' reporter was arrested in Kampala and had his notebook of contacts confiscated. It contained a dozen names of prominent people who the reporter had been instructed to see by the paper's African 'expert, Colin Legum.

One of the men on the list was Mr Anil Clerk, secretary to the parliament which General Amin has abolished for five years.

Mr Clerk subsequently disappeared and is believed to have been • murdered by the army authorities.

His death marks another chapter in the famous goldsmuggling case which involved Amin in 1966.

In that year Amin was suspended from the army after allegations were made in the House of Assembly that he had been involved in smuggling gold from the Congo. The court of inquiry set up by Dr Milton Obote spent three weeks investigating the allegations. The three learned judges filed the report, but Obote never published its findings.

During the inquiry the then Colonel Amin was represented by a local Kampala lawyer—Mr Anil Clerk.