AROUND THE WORLD
### SUCCESSFUL
MEETINGS OF LCR ITALY The Lega Comunista Rivoluzionaria (LCR - Italian Section of the Fourth International) reported in Bandiera Rossa January 16, 1983 on two successful meetings of its members and sympathizers, in tensive campaign of propaganda and internal discussion in the groups. it represented the culmination of the political work of the groups since last September. In particular, it provided an opportunity to see how many signatures had been collected for the petition demanding that work be stopped on the Comiso missile site. This petition is being circulated by the Genova solidarity committee and the international peace camp fully involved in this initiative, have collected 10,000 signatures. Moreover, it is significant that the committees for sions that met in the morning, on Poland, Central America, and school reform. A general assembly took place in the afternoon. This was adressed by comrade Ollivier of the Jeunesse Communiste Revolutionnaire from France, and Lidia Cirillo of the LCR.
The assembly adopted a motion outlining the main forthcoming activities of the Rivoluzione groups These are the fight against youth unemployment, through participation in the Jobs' planned for February by the CGIL CISL, and UIL union federations; and
Sicily, and Turin.
On January 5 the LCR held a confer-
The most useful and interesting part of the independent left for a referendum ence in the Sicilian town of Campobello di Mazzara on the theme "1983 in Italian took place within the three commis- Comiso.
and International Politics'.
The leftwing town council in the centre of Trapani province gave permission peace in Genova and Brescia are directly involved in the campaign for signatures.
of the meeting was the debates that relaunching the campaign armament supporting the the siting of Cruise missiles at for the conference to be held in the QUEBEC WORKERS CONFRONT GOVERNMENT
The conference was built through distribution of leaflets, postering the walls, and sending loudspeaker convoys into the country streets.
Over 50 people attended, including the Mayor, comrade Fazzoni of the Italian Communist Party; the secretary of the trades council, comrade Gullo; several local government employees; and representatives of the Communist Party (PCI), the Socialist Party (PSI), the Party of Proletarian Unity (PdUP), and the Social Democratic Party of Italy (PSDI).
The conference was opened by Gas-
Since January 26 some 110,000 public sector workers in Quebec have been joining an illegal general strike.
The strike is in response to a unilateral government decision at the end of December to stop all negotiations with the government employees unions and impose decrees outlawing strike action for three years and imposing cuts in wages and working conditions to last until the end of 1985.
The wage cuts would affect the maducted a virulent campaign against the strikers. The daily newspapers have carried full-page advertisements defending the government's refusal to negotiate with the strikers. The front page headline of the Montreal daily La Presse declared on January 29 In the Face of the Illega Strike, Quebec will be Merciless'.
The anti-striker campaign is mainly directed at the hospital workers. On January 31 this section of workers went out
That afternoon their union leadership announced it had reached pare Bono, secretary of the local LCR jority of the workers, with 200,000 of branch and Communist mayor from 1957-60.- He recalled the seventeen years of LCR activity in Campobello, and the main initiatives and struggles in which it was involved, despite its sparse organised forces.
Comrade Bono particularly mentioned the recent successful battle through which Campobello has won a leftwing administration, rather than a shoddy compromise with the Christian Democrats.
Edgardo Pellegrini, head of the Southern Commission of the LCR, gave the main talk. He outlined the main points the Italian Trotskyists' analysis of the international and national situation. Demands were put forward that challenge the policy of austerity and rearmament; and would which create the conditions for an effective struggle to bring down the Fanfani government, and replace it with a government of workers parties, which would provide an anti-capitalist solution to the crisis.
A national meeting of the Rivoluzione youth groups took place in Turin on December 19, 1982. More than one hundred young people attended.
The meeting was prepared by an ex26 the 320,000 public sector workers suffering cuts of 19.5%. Wage rises would be kept below rises in the consumer price index and the scheduled wage rise of 2.8% due at the end of December has been cancelled. For teachers, and other workers who fear mass redundancies, the reversal of job security and working conditions agreements is a central issue.
The strike was called by the Common Front, formed by three trade-union federations organising teachers, hospital workers, and provincial government workers, to fight against their employer, the Quebec government. Of the 320,000 public sector workers 210,000 are members of unions in the Common Front.
On January 29 forty thousand public sector workers demonstrated in Montreal in a high-sprited and militant show of opposition to the government. The crowd reflected the composition of the workforce - 90% French-speaking and two-thirds women. Despite freezing temperatures they danced through the streets singing militant songs to traditional tunes, "Where are the special laws against the big bankers who close the factories, throwing people into the streets?'
The provincial government has cona tentative agreement with the government and suspended the strike. agreement was then rejected by a 72% vote of the 800-member union federal
The hospital workers now have to decide now to continue their strike. On February 3 the Quebec Prime Minister Rene Levesque announced that a special package of strike-breaking was being prepared. This would include: elimination of automatic deduction of union dues from wages, leading crippling financial problems for unions; loss of seniority and job security after three days on strike; punishing fines of one day's pay for each day on strike, after a return to work.
The vicious attacks take place in a context where only since 1972 have healthcare standards and educational levels in Quebec begun to approach those in English Canada. Yet, when the government in Ottawa cut 1.2 billion dollars from transfer payments to the provinces in March 1982, Quebec took the biggest cuts. A factor that the provincial government is using to justify its present measures.
The recession has hit hardest in French
Canada. The unemployment rate is the highest in Canada, and the Quebecois people have suffered for years from discrimination by the English Canada and US firms that dominate the econ-
However, the tradition of nationalist struggles has contributed to the Quebec ernment and employers are fighting to defeat working-class militancy here to put a damper on struggles across Canada. Growing support in English Canada for the determination of the
Front workers demonstrates that, like the government, workers that what happens in Quebec will point the way for other Canadian
SALVADOR
SOLIDARITY
- Stop the US war drive in Central Amer-
- Support the Central-American peoples' liberation struggle!
slogans anti-imperialist determined to preserve, while the gov. workers.
all over Sweden waged a twoweek solidarity campaign in
The campaign was centralised by the
WATERWORKERS CHALLENGE THATCHER
Some seven million people in Britain are presently being told to boil all water before using it. 38,500 homes are without water at all. One electricity generating station has had to close down. These are the effects of a national strike by the 29,000 manual water workers in Britain, now into its fourth week.
This strike is a direct result of the Thatcher government's desire to defeat
The government imposed a ceiling of 4% per year on wage rises in the public sector for 1982-83. almost no section of the public sector has been forced to keep to this - except
The waterworkers, who earn a basic £82 for a 39-hour week, put in a 15% claim to bring them into line with the gas and electricity workers, as well as report 90% opposition waterworkers to the 'improved' offer.
for the waterworkers will depend on the extent to which they support from the other unions. The manual workers have already been joined by the skilled electricians from support also means being able to stop the Trades Union Congress (TUC - single national union federation) or their own leadership agreeing to a sell-out, as they did over the health workers or the railway
The waterworkers have considerably more muscle than the healthworkers in being able to hit the government where it hurts - in industry. In the southwest two major industrial estates have had to be closed down. But for
Central-American Co-ordinating Commit-
There are local committees in at least 24 Swedish cities, and the co-ordination is supported by a wide range of poland solidarity committees.
The campaign reached its climax on 22 January - the 51st anniversary of the popular revolt in El Salvador that was drowned in blood by imperialism and Salvadoran reactionaries.
Some 700 people marched to the US embassy in Stockholm. A pre-march rally was addressed by a representative of Radio Venceremos in El Salvador, and Gabriel Lara, FDR/FMLN representative in Sweden.
In Gothenburg over a thousand people gathered to hear Ruben Cuenca from the FDR/FMLN. Other demonstrations took place in the northern city of Lulea where 150 marched, in Uppsala to the north of Stockholm where some a one-hour reduction in the. workweek, the time being the major and a fifth week of holiday. The employers, the water board, were prepared to offer 6%. But the government intervened to tell them to only offer 4%. The waterworkers rejected this overwhelmingly and voted to take national strike action.
After the successes of the government against the miners, railway workers, and health workers, Thatcher hoped to add
- water-users, like British Steel, have been little affected as they have independent supplies from their own reservoirs, serviced by their own employees. However
Imperial Chemicals (ICI),
40 million gallons a day, has had to reduce production and warned that it may have to close plants shortly.
The Labour Party officially has done
200 demonstrated, and in Sundsval. Trade-union organisations
Other activities included exhibitions, films, theatre, musical evenings, and revisited Central America, or from the large number of Latin American refugees in
The two-week campaign broada new scalp to her belt. And, at the same little time, to continue to weaken the unions, prefering to blame the government for particularly in their public sector strongholds. This strike has given her a pretext for threatening to break the existing to give full support to the strikers.
agreements with the unions,
The Tory government and the bour- cowed however.
geois press, almost completely anti-union, gions they have refused to even give are conducting a hysterical campaign against the strikers.
They are accusing this 'minority' of 'flooding British streets waterworkers, interfering, and demanding that the water board be left to negotiate, than
The waterworkers have not been
In several major reemergency cover, mending burst warer workers have occupied plants to prevent ened the solidarity movement in Sweden, and created a wider audience for future
In Britain solidarity activists are planning a labour movement conference on El Salvador for May 14. This conference aims to bring together trade-union and
Party representatives to plan a campaign to win over the Trades active support for the right with sewage'
Thatcher urged the strikers to respect
"a puritan work ethic" instead of attempting to deprive the community of Party and the left groups, including the one of life's essentials' (The Guardian,
January 29). She is confident that the
«Falklands spirit' will protect her. Just in case moral appeals and her public opinion ratings are not sufficient the army will be called in to ensure water supplies.
the management and whitecollar person-
Leftwing activists from the Labour Socialist League, the British section of
International have working to build solidarity for the waterworkers. Unlike the Labour Party leadership who fear that support for militant action will weaken their chance in of self-determination for the Salvadoran people, in opposition to the Thatcher government's support for US counter-revolutionary inter-
The conference will be addressed by representatives of the FDR/FMLN and Judith Hart, a prominent Labour MP who was central in campaigning Malvinas war. The conference has already
Employment
Norman Tebbit, currently responsible for getting anti-union laws through parlia ment attacked the 'undemocratic' work- lead that Thatcher has in the opinion the main union involved.
claimed that they had failed to get the two-thirds support for strike
However, even the national the general election that is widely pected this year, the left is convinced that
Labour will cutdown the ten polls at the moment by supporting and building the fightback against the Tories, new confidence been supported by a number of national, local, and regional union bodies including the national leaderships of the Minework-
Transport and General biggest union in Britain; unions, and the agricultural workers.
During the first national Solidarnosc Poland!
national leadership of the trade union.
On December 13, 1981, Zbigniew and but their 20-
Irena escaped internment, was interned. In the year old daughter underground they worked to give the
FREEDOM trade union a mass voice.
The historic radio broadcast on the eve of the 1982
May Day demonstration was the first fruit of this work.
FOR ROMASZEWSKI
A member of the clandestine regional committee of Solidarnosc, executive
Romaszewski was among those, within the leadership, who emphasised the
AND HIS COMRADES Cyril SMUGA On Monday 24 January the trial started of one of the main organisers of Radio Solidarnose in Warsaw, which was set up in April 1982. The main charges against the ten militants on trial are under the following provisions: Article 282 of the Penal Code (public incitement to disobedience) which carries a sentence of up to ten years in prison and article 46 (continuing unauthorized trade-union activities) and 48 (spreading false information) of the state-of-war decree of December 13, 1981. These penal clauses carry sentences of between three and ten years in prison.
zewski officially became a member of this in 1977, when his activity of making contacts with the workers attracted the attention of the police.
He then, together with his wife Irena, set up the KOR Intervention Bureau, which took on the task of listing and publicising violations of legality and cases of persecution of workers coming to the aid
Zbigniew Romaszewski was also to take advantage at this time of a trip to the USSR to make contacts, in the name of the KOR, with the Helsinki group in Moscow, and with the disneed to strengthen the underground structures by developing interenterprise co-ordination committees.
Against the advice of the majority of the union leadership, the Radio Solidarnosc activists backed the call of the Workers Interenterprises Committee (MRKS) for a demonstration on May Day. They were, in part, responsible for the well-known success of the action.
Following this success Romaszewski became the chief propagandist for a general strike. In an interview published last June in the clandestine Solidarnose weekly in Warsaw, Tygodnik Mazowsze, he explained:
"We have to prepare a general strike... It must be a general strike of the whole country with active defence of the enterprises. In Warsaw the active strike will involve twenty to thirty factories and the others will support them by a stay-athome strike. The demonstrations and processions will further occupy a part of the repressive forces. If the situation gets really serious, in my opinion the authorities cannot count on the army or even on the police.
If one single battalion refuses to fire... That was what happened in February 1917 when one little unit of Cossacks went over to the side of the demonstrators, and at the end of a month there was no longer a czar.'
Because of the political and organisational role that he played in the resistance, Romaszewski and his comrades became the most wanted people in Warsaw. Atter several fruitless attempts the police arrested some of them in July 1982, then the others on August 31 This trial will be, for the authorities, the opportunity to revenge itself on some exemplary militants.
On the day the trial opened, Radio sident mathematician Andrei Sakharov. Solidarnosc' restarted regular broadcasts
Access to the public gallery Military Tribunal in Warsaw, where this "public' trial is taking place, has been closed to journalists for lack of space'. Only the correspondents from the official Polish press agencies have been allowed in.
The two main accused, Zbigniew and Irena Romaszewski, are longtime activists for workers rights. After the
Arrested in August 1980, after the start of the strike in the Lenin shipyards in Gdansk, Romaszewski was freed by the agreement signed on August 31, 1980, between the strikers and the bureaucracy. He and his wife then participated in the formation of Solidarnose in the Warsaw region, where he became a member of the praesidium.
after several months of silence. It has called on the population of Warsaw to support the accused by gathering out side the seat of the Military Tribuna during the trial, and sending postcards to Romaszewski and his comrades in the prison where they are being held Zaklad Karny, Warszawa, ul. Rakowiecka Poland.
workers everywhere should and brutal crushing of the
Radom
URSUS strikes against price rises in June
1976, they were among the first to set up a network of material and legal aid for the juridical red tape in which the bureau- comrades!
the persecuted workers and their families.
This network led, three months later,
Workto the establishment of the KOR, ers Defence Committee. Zbigniew Romas-
The Romaszewskis then organised the Intervention Commission for Solidarnose in the region. This was responsible for helping the factory sections cut through cracy tried to tie them up. congress Romaszewski was elected to the
All spond to this appeal by writing to th defendants.