NETHERLANDS the cross-sectoral level. The dynamic of the struggle was reversed. Instead of unification, there was division; instead of progress, retreat. And so the government and CSC leadership got a How the right got back in breathing space to patch up the dangerous breaches that had opened in their alliance. Vandenbroucke, the FTB president, announced that he was giving the government two more weeks. Could the FTB leaders really be thinking of launching the movement in the middle of the summer?
PREMIER LUBBERS managed to look a lot more credible in the
The government, however, is not election campaign than he is in fact. Lubbers' Christian Democraticyet in the clear. The CSC leadership
Liberal coalition has ruled the government in the last four years with has expressed its opposition to 17 of the government's measures.
a rough hand, and in the election campaign it was not shy about lying.
It remains to be seen how far the govern-
Never before has a cabinet been hit by so many personal scandals inment can go in negotiations and still maintain its internal cohesion.
The
Nonetheless, heading the slate of the Christen Demokraties Appel
FGTB, whose goal continues to be the destabilization of the Martens-
[CDA - Christian Democratic Appeal, a Christian conservative party],
Gol cabinet, is pinning its hopes on
Lubbers was able to score a decisive victory in the May 21 elections.
the government's problems in this
Lubbers' triumph was so great that the coalition government with
It hopes to create favorable respect.
the "free enterprise" liberal Volskpartij voor Vrijheid en Demokratie conditions for a negotiated return of the socialists to the government -
[VVD - People's Party for Freedom and Democracy] will be able to perhaps even without elections. The remain in office until 1990. The slogan "let Lubbers finish the job"
situation remains unstable, and any.
thing is still possible when the country returns to work in the fall.
The growth of struggles in recent months has considerably undermined the cohesiveness of the
FGTB's trade-union apparatus. This weakening seems to be structural. Today this apparatus is far from demonstrating the power, the cohesion and the confidence that it exhibited for decades and which formed the framework within which the trade-union left has learned to act.
The new relationship of forces offers new possibilities for the fighting trade unionists who have reacted intuitively, showing more initiative and audacity in action. But at the same time, the trade-union challenges facing this left and it are greater, cannot meet them simply through a spontaneous response.
In fact, because they are preoccupied with solving the problems through action, the vanguard trade- union militants often underestimate the imporatnce of being able to analyze situations beyond their own sectors. The trade-union left also neglects some other questions such as organizing struggles around precise demands and getting the active participation of the masses of workers.
Especially they underestimate the importance of offering a political solution that can serve as a focus for the fight to unite the workers and their organizations. To be equal to today's tasks in the Belgian class struggle, the trade-union vauguard is going to have to resolve these questions by learning the lessons from this last wave of struggles.
International Viewpoint 14 July 1986 volving ministers. became a reality. RICHARD BASTIANS
The left vote overall did not go down in these elections, but nonethe. less the left took some hard blows. In comparison with four years ago, the relationship between the left and right vote remained the same. But the runner-up in the elections, the Partij van de Arbeid [PvdA, the social democrats], did not make its gains through attracting disillusioned former supporters of the government parties.
Rather, the PrdA made its gains at the expense of the more radical smallleft parties. The Communist Party of the Netherlands (CPN) suffered an historic defeat. In one blow it lost all three of its seats, and for the first time since 1918 it is not represented in the parliament.
The PvdA will make an evaluation of its election defeat (since although they gained votes, they did not achieve their goal of getting into the government). The party leadership has already given an advance instalment on its post mortem. That is, it says that a change of course is not needed. The path that it marked out can still be followed, the path of not polarizing against the government but of building up the party's credibility as a potential party of government.
The PvdA has thus already come out with a preliminary conclusion while the negotiations over the formation of the cabinet are underway. So, it does not matter what the government goes ahead and does.
It is obvious that another Lubbers government is coming, Lubbers II. Undoubtedly it will carry out a new wave of austerity measures. The right's election campaign very much resembled the one conducted last year by the Belgian Christian Democratic head of government, Martens. Like his Belgian counterpart, Lubbers laid the groundwork for his election victory a year before.
Lubbers started the 1986 election campaign by handing out a number of presents. The lowest benefits were in-
KEER LUBBERS
DE RUG TOE
11
SAP campaign wins supporters creased a bit. Last year, unemployment dropped, for the first time since 1979. Even youth unemployment went down. Lubbers promised to bring unemployment down to 500,000 in the coming year. The present total is still 730,000.
Both government parties, moreover, promised to maintain the buying power of the lowest-wage earners and those entitled to benefits.
Lying to get elected is nothing special for the right. guarantee whatever that the promises will be kept. Everything indicates that Lubbers will step up his hard. line rule. Without taking account of the economic decline, the CDA and the VVD had made at least 16,000 million guilders (about 8,000 million US dollars) in cutbacks over the last
The disturbing thing is that Lubbers has succeeded, with his "no nonsense" government, in winning a base for the CDA for the first time among younger and nonreligious people. The CDA is not just a party that plays on Christian values but it has become a conservative
The CDA clearly predominates over its coalition partner, the VVD. Lubbers has been able to represent himself as a "statesman," as the man who got the country out of the slump. The "business-like" Lubbers has been able to seduce a lot of older and younger people alike to vote for the CDA.
The PvdA came in behind the CDA. In the official election programs for economic growth for the Netherlands, reducing unemployment, increasing buying power and so on, the differences between the government parties and the PvdA were minimal.
The question of reversing the steps taken by the Lubbers government -cutting into the living standards of large groups of people in the last years - was not raised. The PvdA offered no
Not everyone might have noticed that there was little difference in the election programs. But in these elections, the TV played a clarifying role. The TV debates between the government parties and the PvdA worked to the disadvantage of the social demo-
The old man of the PdA, Den Uyl (who headed up their slate), could not arouse any enthusiasm with his watered down version of Lubbers' program.
Well before the elections, Lubbers removed one of the last pitfalls, the cruise missile question. On November 1, despite four million names on a petition opposing the missiles, the parliament "democratically" decided to go ahead and deploy 48 cruise missiles in 1988.
After that decision, a big part of the peace movement (including the 12
24 Anneke Meijsen
VOOR DE
VERANDERING
Sap
socialistiese arbeiderspartij
SAP election poster (DR)
THE SOCIALISTIESE Arbeiderspartij [SAP - Socialist Workers
Party, Dutch section of the Fourth
International], waged a successful polled 3,939 votes, three times as many as four years ago, the last time that it took part in a campaign for the parliamentary
In the election campaign,
SAP increased its contacts and its reputation enormously, despite the competition
There was a record number of
27 slates in these elections — nine of them put up by left parties.
mass campaign that the number of responses. Membership increased by over 15 per cent. The number of subscriptions to the
SAP's paper, Klassenstrijd, rose by nearly 20 per cent. And the party sympathizers. PvdA) announced that the time for demonstrations was over, and that it was now up to the voters. But precisely because of this position, the cruise missile question was to play little role in the elections. The real reason the democrats pushed the cruise missile question into the background was to prepare the ranks of the PvdA for a possible failure to postpone a decision on deployment.
The PvdA leaders' objective was certainly not helped by prepared mobilization held a few days before the election. The encirclement of the cruise missile base at Woensdrecht by about 10,000 people was a success, but no thanks to the social distributed plus another 100,000 this, 10,000 posters were put up.
The SAP's campaign was by no disseminating propaganda. The SAP conducted an offensive campaign in such questions as the shorter working week, reversal of the austerity opposition to nuclear power and cruise missiles, as support for a left government without the right, played a major
The success of this campaign has clearly strengthened the position of the SAP. The demonstration held just before the election cruise missiles (see accompanying article) came about in particular into it. The small-left parliamentary parties were too busy with their election campaign and played no role in building this demonstra-
In the actions that were carried out for a 36-hour week, the SAP had a strong presence in factories. That won the SAP a lot of sympathy and aroused a lot of interest in the party, in particular
The SAP also came to the fore as a party of action in the mobilizations against the US attack on
On June 1, the SAP held a meeting at which its whole elecwas reviewed. The gathering radiated enthusiasm and
Everyone was happy with the result, despite sort of work is a long-term thing. To get a socialist alternative off the ground takes more than just a few initiatives.
In any case, the SAP will now take an active part in the discussion of the reasons why the left suffered a defeat at the polls and how we can make sure that, four years from now, Lubbers will not get in again.
democratic part of the movement.
Lubbers got his election victory by playing on the economic upturn. But in fact he also got a helping hand from the left. While the cruise missile issue was defused by the PrdA, the Chemobyl accident could have offered an opportunity to hit the right. Lubbers had just taken the decision to establish two new nuclear reactors. That was still fresh in everyone's memory. But nonetheless, the Chernobyl disaster did not spark off any reaction in the Netherlands. There was no mass demonstration. The left was too busy with the elections.
Lubbers' own fear that the Cherno byl catastrophe would cost him his International Viewpoint 14 July 1986|
THE ELECTION RESULTS
1986 %
PvdA 33.3
CDA 34.6
VVD 17.4
D 66 6.1
Small right 3.7
Small left:
CPN 0.6
PPR 1.3
PSP 1.2 head did not come true.
The PvdA was so anxious to rule in conjunction with Lubbers' in the entire period leading up to the elections it did nothing to build up a ernment, by mobilizations and by supporting and reinforcing the struggles being waged.
The actions for a 36-hour week that were carried out in the election period were left very fragmented and received no support from the PdA. Still worse, an action that had broken out in the Dutch railways just before the elections against a deterioration in working conditions was stabbed in the back by the Pvd.A.
The losses by the small-left parties came in this context. A lot of people who normally vote for the Pacifistiese Socialistiese Partij [PSP — Pacifist Socialist Party] and the CPN voted for the lesser evil. They thought that by voting for the PvdA they had a better
1982 Seats % Seats 52 30.4 47 54 29.4 45 27 23.1 36
4.3 4.2 1.8 3 1.7 2 1 2.3 chance of getting rid of the CDA-VVD government.
Here, the PrdA's slogan of "vote for us in a new government" scored a success. But it could manage this only because the CPN and the PSP themselves clearly offered no alternative.
The divisions and conflicts within the small left also played a role. But the PSP and the CPN had undergone
Probably a common slate around a few main points could have limited the damage. But there still would have been losses. The fundamental problems were elsewhere.
In recent years, the CPN apparatus has largely disintegrated. But above all the role of the CPN and the PSP in action has steadily declined. They have become more and more parliamentary parties. That was also reflected in their campaigns.
Before the elections, they failed to wage an offensive campaign against the government's course, based on a socialist alternative. Moreover, the small-left parties saw themselves as a sort of an appendage of the PvdA, that is, that they had to fight against the right along with the PdA and that the social democrats needed the radical noise they make in parli-
There was no aggressive campaign which was what the social democrats were out for. And thus, as small-left parties, which in any case would not get into the government, they dug their own grave because they votes count "people to "make their third small-left party, the Politieke Partij Radikalen [PPR € the Political Party of Radicals] lost less votes, among other things because they focused a lot of criticism on the PrdA's wish to rule the country jointly with the CDA.
The day after the elections, the index on the Amsterdam stock market went up by 12,000 million guilders. So the right sees the election results as a shot in the arm. Lubbers wants to finish his job, and now he can go Lubbers can do whatever he likes. In recent years, at every turn the right had to face actions and resistance. As soon as a new economic recession hits and Lubbers drops his election promises, we can expect sharper tougher confrontations. victory, Lubbers won't be able to please everybody. A strong alternative to the right and
PrdA must be built in the coming struggle.