### Referendum campaign launched
On 12 September 1982, over 100 people came together to form the "Group for a
Switzerland without an Army" (GSsA)
and decided to launch the campaign for a referendum. In September 1984, a new assembly of the GSsA agreed on the changes to the Constitution for a "Switzerland without an Army."
The meeting also decided to add a second section to the referendum proposal
"for a global peace policy". Without media coverage, the GSsA was able to get nearly 111,300 signatures. The demand for a referendum for the suppression of the army was handed in on 12 September 1986. The movement had scored its first
Many observers as well as people who considered the activists of the GSsA as *a handful of marginal troublemakers" were surprised by the breadth of the response to this "utopian" idea.
The national debate only really got going in June 1987. This was due to the appearance on German television of a documentary film by Roman Brodmann on "the insane hope of leading the sacred cow to the slaughterhouse." 1. In 1983 40,000 people demonstrated for disarmament in the Federal capital Bern. 2. In Switzerland, every group or citizen is entitled to launch a popular initiative to amend the constitution of the Swiss Confederation. All that is necessary is to hand in a properly drawn up proposal about the articles to be amended along with 100,000 signatures supporting the initiative. After the signatures have been verified by the Federal Council, the Confederation is then called on to vote for or against the proposition.
"We must kill the sacred cow"
SWITZERLAND monopoly of power against warlike external interventions or an overturn fomented from within. No state can do without an army."
After a historical excursion, the document moves onto the specificities of the Swiss defence system: "No other army is so imbued with the militia principle as ours.3 Responsibility for the safeguarding of independence is shared by the soldier-
THE referendum called for by the Group for a Switzerland without an Army takes place on November 25 and 26. Three years after the handing over of the petition signed by more than 100,000 people calling for a change in the Constitution, the Swiss are going to vote on the abolition of their army. The referendum campaign has aroused an unprecedented debate about the army, neutrality, Switzerland's foreign policy and history and so on. Demonstrations, concerts, debates and outspoken statements have come one after another.
When the Young Socialists launched the idea of abolishing the army in 1980, they did not imagine that such an idea would strike so deeply at the foundations of the Swiss
Confederation.
SOPHIE MASSOURI unleashed the political class and the army chiefs-of-staff against this "suspicious manoeuvre that has severely affected the national sensibilities of many Swiss people". The parliamentary interventions that followed this showing of this film were virulent and the defence minister even sent a note to the German parliament to denounce what he considered an attack on
Swiss sovereignty.
The extreme quality of much of this made the debate explode. In the eyes of the ruling class and the army brass, what had seemed like a vague and utopian idea had become, just like that, a real destabilizing plot against the country. Out came the old refrain about the "patriotic values that are being lost" and which are "'the real cement of the nation."
The most extraordinary of these reactions was, without doubt, the publication of the message sent by the Federal Council to the Federal Chambers about the referendum on June 1, 1988. Announcing the referendum, the Federal Council, in a 30-page addendum, listed arguments in favour of rejecting the initiative. For them, everyone knows that those behind this initiative do not believe that this vote will allow the army to be abolished. "(It) is, for them, a utopia whose purpose is to set in motion the process of the formation of a consciousness leading towards the political transformation of society." Characterizing the initiative itself they add: "to keep or to abolish its army is incontestably an existential decision for a state. The army embodies, in fact, the citizen. " In reply, the GSsA recalled that "on the contrary, called on several occasions to preserve a certain type of peace - or the peace of certain people — during the 1918 general strike, in 1932 in Geneva or in the Jura in 1968 — the army is a real danger to democratic rights. It always considers the actual exercise of democratic rights as a threat." They say that the army protects us from the enemy, but from what "enemy"?
The other question that has come up during the campaign is the cost of the army and of its abolition. The army is expensive. In Switzerland, as in other countries, the military budget is the only one to survive and grow in the face of cutbacks in public spending. In 1987, military spending went up to 10 billion Swiss francs [approximately $6.25b or £4b] that. is 1,800 francs [approximately $1,125 or £720] per citizen per year. Switzerland pays more per head of population for defence than any other European country.
Economics of abolition of army debated
During the debate, however, the government and the federal military department (DMF) raised arguments about the economic cost of the eventual abolition of the army, in particular in terms of employment. "The army awards numerous contracts to artisans or groups whose skills have become outdated and who would otherwise be unemployed." To these wholly demagogic arguments the GSSA replied that: "an investment of $1b can create 76,000 jobs in the military production sector, but 86,000 in mechanical manufacture, 92,000 in transport, 100,000 in construction, 138,000 in health and 187,000 in education.4
Whatever the result of the vole on November 26, it is clear that the right, the DMF and the whole military lobby will no longer be able to ignore the evident malaise in Switzerland about "a particularly expensive cow that has been sacred for too long". * 3. The Swiss army is a conscript army; it comprises today 650,000 men, together with 3,000 women who provide a voluntary service. The famous peculiarity of the Swiss army is that every man is a soldier from the age of 20. As well as the 17 weeks spent in recruit school when they first joined, the citizen soldiers is recalled twice a year for weapons training. After the age of 45, they are assigned to the civil protection serVice. 4. These figures are given in a brochure published by the CoSA, and are banca of aboy nraken by the 19 United States Department of Labor in 1975.
SWITZERLAND
Debate on army stirs Swiss
THE Parti socialiste ouvrier (Socialist
Workers' Party, PSO — Swiss section of
International Viewpoint #174 • November 27, 1989
W
HAT response did the campaign get?
the Fourth International) has been the
After a rather slow start, the movement grew with dazonly organized force to support the zling speed in 1988. The media and the politicians ignored the movement for as long as they could. At
If, along with those who have a longer term strategy, we can hold our positions, I believe it will be possible to interest these young people in oth er subjects and in politics in general. Even if Swiss youth are in general apolitical, they are sensitive to questions about the Third World. A lot of the moment when the campaign
IV spoke to Gisela Hürliman, a member was launched, the international cliof the PSO and of the JSR - Provo mate and the relations between the
(Revolutionary Socialist Youth), who has blocs were not favourable to such been a member of the national secretariat everything is different.