Local elections
in Belgium
On October 10 the Belgian people will once again go to the polls, this time for municipal elections. A long community-based tradition pervades all Belgian political structures, and changes are easily made at this level. This election follows several months of rise in workers' struggles in the 1981-82 winter, the most important social movement that Belgium strike (see International Viewpoint No 4
Undoubtedly this will not be weighty enough to reverse the "Thatcherite' course of the Martens-Gol government. But it will awaken broad interest among the politicised militant workers.
The Revolutionary Workers League (LRT/RAL, Belgian section of the Fourth International) has been actively campaigning for some time. In February 1981 it, as usual, launched an appeal for unitary lists around two axes: 1) an antiausterity platform, and 2) a series of demands at local level under the title 'the municipality the service of the
Until summer 1982 negotiations with the pro-Chinese Belgian Workers Party (PTB), and the Belgian Communist Party (PCB), seemed once more unable to break through the barrier of the sectarianism of these two organisations.
then began to appear which, as in a game of dominoes, followed one after the other. By the time of the deposition of the lists on September 10 the LRT/RAL had succeeded in getting 14 unitary lists, including several in the principal towns. The agreements were in general between the LRT/RAL and the PCB, as in Anvers, Gand, Bruges, Malines, Sint Niklass, Wavre, Brussels, and three workers boroughs in the Brussels conurbation, many of these cases the Molenbeek, Saint-Gilles, lists included an important number of candidates from the recent mass movements, trade unionists, women, youth, and the anti-missiles movement, attracted by the unitary dynamic.
This spectacular turnabout by the PCB was completely pragmatic. It did not indicate any new political orientation, but rather a new indication of its deep crisis.
At Scarbeek a list 'Democracy without frontiers' has stimulated a unitary feeling which will go still further. Around the anti-racist committee in one of the most anti-immigrant localities in Belgium, are organised the LRT/RAL, the PTB, the
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(PLS), representatives of the Christian movement, and independent personalities.
At Herstal (Liege), the PTB, refused unity elsewhere, participated in a coalition with the LRT/RAL, PLS and the RPW (workers split from the Walloon
On the Flemish side the most unexpected feature was that the Socialist Party, which has an autonomous political existence from the francophone Socialist Party, tried cautiously to turn to the left. Under the aegis of the president of the parliamentary fraction of the Flemish Socialist Party a coalition was formed between the SP, LRT/RAL, the PCB and some independents. While the common platform was weak on demands the electoral opportunism of the SP in Leuwen led it to denounce the banks and holding companies as troublemakers in the crisis and to oppose austerity for the workers, in contradiction with the national line of this party. It also supported, financially and politically the FMLN of El Salvador, and unconditionally opposed the installation of new NATO missiles.
Decidedly, something has begun to move in the workers parties, at the point where the government is launching a new attack against the working class and when the workers movement is preparing to respond. This is the essential political axis of the campaign the LRT/RAL making throughout the country.
### Social
Democrats