The legacy of the 'Easter rebellion'
So, the strategy of the Social Demo racy for the entire period has let the bourgeois parties gover for the whole four-year maxi that they can remain in offic calling an election. It has, thus hope of getting the opportu "restore" the workers' standard But the question is whether thi
For three weeks around Easter, the Danish working class mobilized against the conservative government and the national labor imposed by law.
This was the biggest mass movement since the Second
World War, fitting into a general context of rising class confrontations
The situation that made it possible for a "widespread" conflict to within a few days into an all-embracing to take form with the change of government in 1982. What was involved, in fact, was not an ordinary change of government but a turn by the bourgeoisie away from eighty years of class collaborationism.
Over the previous 35 years, there had been an almost unbroken chain of
Social Democratic minority governments.
economic crisis meant that the bourgeoisie had to resort to more drastic solutions than the Social Democrats could go along with - cutting social services and wages and breaking the influence of the unions. It was for that purpose that the conservative Poul Schlueter took over the government.
The Schlueter government has ruled now for two and a half years on the basis of a bourgeois
And it has moved fairly rapidly to tackle some of the decisive problems for the bourgeoisie. Not the least important of its initiatives has been a direct assault on the trade- union movement, which up until now working class, both because it is a unified
Danish working class is organized.
Poul Schlueter started his career as premier by making sharp cuts in the state budget and intervening into colbargaining.
succeeded in liquidating some of the gains the union
1970s. First and foremost, he got rid of the automatic cost-of-living increases, decline in real wages, especially for the also imposed a waiting low paid. He period before could begin draw sick benefits and eliminated rule of parity for wages of private and public workers.
This offensive, which hit the low paid and unemployed particularly hard, wages to profits and breaking the unity movement. It backs followed, in health, in education - but military and support for NATO's stepped-up
One of the major targets was unempossible to bring to bear more effectunemployment
10%) to push down wages and en the union movement. The attack contract that it general strike started But the deepening of the was followed up by all sorts of attempts to split the union movement, by means of government legislation by giving 100 percent political backing to the employers' divide-and-rule policy.
The divisions between skilled and unwidened by increasing wage differentials. support was given to union members who resigned from their organizations and who, in return for certain benefits, went over to yellow unions.
The Schlueter governments's previous "high point" came in the spring with two bills. One was clearly designed to remove the long-term unemployed from the labor market and consign them to living on social welfare. The second was to make it more expensive to get insurance against unemployment through the unions, in order to set in motion a mass withdrawal from the system and unemployment insurance.
Right from the outset of the Schlueter government, the workers were ready to resist. Already in October 1982, the new government was met with massive strikes and demonstrations. And in the following various groups of workers prolonged strikes against the government's offensive.
However, at no time did this resistance into a serious threat to the any lack of combativity in the working the weaknesses of their leadership that is, the Social Democratic party and the Social Democrats in the top abdicated governmental power without calling an election. Its problem for this entire period has been that it has to cling
So far, in any case, this line has collaboration, which is the basis of thei well paying jobs. But at the same time, a large part of the union bureaucracy has been subjected to direct pressure from the membership to give moral and economic support to groups of workers involved in struggles.
Such pressure from the membership been particularly country's biggest union, the SiD [SpeciDenmark], which has 325,000 members It has been hardest hit by the cuts and by bourgeois splitting maneuvers.
circumstances, SiD leadership, with the union president, Hardy Hansen out in front, has had to lay out an alternative line to 100 percent and offer economic support although this is the rules of the labor-court system.
The active line that the SiD has stood for has led to a significant split in the union bureaucracy, time the members in many unions have pinned their hopes on the development of action in the union movement as a whole.
other hand, has fought the active line with all the means at its disposal, partly through a imposing heavy fines on the SiD through the labor-court system (on one occasion the fine was 20 million kroner, or about
Another result of the many strikes and actions has been that the trade-union left wing has been strengthened so much the traditional opposition in the union movement led by the Danish CP that has benefited from this. To an increasing degree the lead is being taken by a new layer of union leaders who are either members of smaller revolutionary parties, independents, or members of the Social Democratic party who refuse to follow its passive line.
This new layer of union leaders has fight against the Schlueter government. So, it is no accident that despite the limited positions it holds in the union movement it came to play a big role in
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DENMARK
the development of the mass actions around Easter.
The decisive event in the Danish labor market is the national contract signed every two years between the union movement (LO - Landsorganisation i Danmark, the Danish National Confederation of Labor) and the employers' organisation (DA — Danske Arbeidgivertoreningen, * Danish Employers' Association).
Between contracts, relations between the unions and employers are governed by a system of labor courts that substantially restricts the right to strike. In other words, there is a solidly organized system of class collaboration in which the newcontract negotiations can serve as an outlet for the workers' discontent. In fact, in the past there have been extensive strikes when the national contract has come up for renewal.
Of course, it can be said that the LO and DA themselves establish the relations on the labor market. But nonetheless various governments intervened directly or indirectly. And during the 1970s it became standard practice for Social Democratic governments to step in directly and impose new contracts when the LO and DA could not reach agreement.
In this year's new-contract negotiations, the conditions were impossible. On the one side, the bosses, with the full backing of the government, refused to budge an inch, offering nothing to the workers. On the other side, the workers were in a fighting mood and united around some central demands, not the least of which was the call for a 35-hour week without loss of pay. So, the LO could , not just sell out the workers' demands in order to keep on chummy terms with the bosses.
Conflicts - strikes and lockouts -The forces of law and order in Denmark 8 thus could not be avoided, and they started on Monday, March 25. As sure as there was going to be a fight, there was going to be government intervention. The question was when?
The government should have stepped in early so as to keep firms from losing business or late in order to be. able to take advantage of the depletion of the unions' strike funds and crush the combativity of the workers. As it happened, ohe week, when the conflict was way and combativity was at its highest.
The conditions for launching the strikes. were thus quite exceptional. There was talk that the situation was quite normal, with the union bureauin control. But, on the other hand, it was clear that the government was going to intervene, and then the union bureaucracy would be impotent. It would not lift a finger to keep the strikes going - quite the contrary.
At the same time, no one could doubt that one week's official conflict would not lead to improvement for the workers. The government's intervention would inevitably take the form of passing a law that would impose a settlement in accordance with the employers' demands.
So, the first week was distinguished by an exceptional level of activity and discussions about what should be done in the event of government intervention. In that week, the basis was laid for the coming weeks' rebellion against the government. In various unions, shop stewards and other union activists got involved in organizing blockades, rallies, and demonstrations. The strike was not just an unwanted holiday but more and more became a mobilization of the new union activists.
When the government's move was announced on March 27, the line of many workplaces was clear - continue the strikes against the government. Already before the strike started that was the put forward by a number unions. Now almost all united around
A contributing cause was also the fact that the government's intervention corresponded expectations. In the first place, involved imposing a wage raise public and private workers of only 2% the first year and 1.5% the second. Secondly, the reduction of the workweek was kept to one hour, and it was to go into effect only from January 1, 1987, which can only be regarded as a mockery of our demand for 35 hours here and now. And finally, corporate taxes were cut, so that the bosses' real payments would amount to nothing, as they had demanded. This was simply a provocation, which brought two and a half years' suppressed anger boiling over.
The government's intervention in motion a dynamic out of the control of the Social Democracy and the union bureaucracy. They made a last desperate effort to put on the brakes by organizing a demonstration in front of parliament for the last legal strike day, on Friday, March 29. The idea was to make a "decent" protest before a return to work on Monday. The whole leadership of the LO, along with the chair of the Social Democratic party, Anker Joergensen, would speak and advise the workers to
The demonstration turned out to be a militant one in which 125,000 workers rallied and loudly protested the leading Social Democrats' bowing to the government's legal ultimatum. farewell but a sendoff to the struggle for the workers' demands - 35 hours now and without any cut in pay, plus ouster of the Schlueter government.
In attempting to put the brakes on the movement, the Social Democratic leadership in the LO lost its grip on the developments. And it was subsquently to become clear that they had to get help from others to regain control.
had undoubtedly its intervention to be met with protests. It was clear that the three working days before the Easter holidays were written off to scattered they expected that peace and tranquility estimation of the Danish working class, not only threw itself into all-embracing strikes but at the same time conscious of the stakes of the struggle and the means for waging
Monday, April 1, was marked not by scattered strikes but by a widening of the strikes, which came to embrace even more than the 300,000 private-industry workers involved in the official conflict. As good as all the private work-
International Viewpoint 3 June 1985
paralyzed, and the workplaces able to have an effect in shutting down the society followed suit - for from the strike funds, and withdrawal of the from the labor-court system
(which is where the striking workers were
Demonstrators on April 10 (DR)
strengthened, and the purely organizational level as well.
example, bus drivers, teachers, radio and TV, postal workers, hospital and a lot of office workers.
Throughout the country, the situa- of consciousness, tion verged on a general strike. And many workplaces set up action centers in which thousands of strikers organized blockades against strikebreakers and all nonessential services. For example, in Randers - a middle-sized employment services by a blockade and replaced by blockade services to which groups could turn and get support for blockading
In the rest of the country's industrial cities, moreover, the working class set the pace. Most cities reported a "near" general strike. Others did not need to use the qualifying adverb. For example, in Esbjerg and Aaalborg, where 50,000 of the cities' 150,000 inhabitants joined in the demonstration.
From the first days' sweeping strikes and demonstration of the strength and cohesion of the working class, the understanding grew that the proper objectives of the struggle were to bring down the government and win the 35-hour week with full pay. In line with this, the means ambitious - a general strike government fell, pressure on the union leaderships to provide economic support International Viewpoint 3 June 1985 fined in the sacred name of class collaboration).
demands indicated the level represented a revolt against class collaborationism respect for the parliamentary Before the conflict, these demands were only put forward by a few people on the revolutionary left wing, and in fact even there some of the left regarded them an escalation of rhetoric. But, nonetheless, they quickly became mass demands as soon as the struggle got
The first three days of struggle against the Schlueter government showed with all the clarity you could want that the fight could have been won. But it was just evident that the struggle needed a leadership able to offer a perspective for the next step in the fight.
Practically no one could have any illusions that the LO was the sort of leadership needed. It had abandoned the strikes and went from passivity to collaboration bourgeois witch hunt against the strikers.
However, there were in fact good possibilities for an alternative national leadership. In the first years under the Schlueter government, the left wing in the union movement had been flected in the Tillidsmandsringe (Shop Stewards' Circles) in from workplaces and activities in support of the workers
Before the conflict, the Tillidsmandsringe had a limited influence, because to a large extent they were limited to shop stewards from the Communist Party. But as the strikes developed, there was a massive influx into the Tillidsmansringe. Many new ones were formed, and in line with those already existing became a broad rallying ground for all the currents in the union movement that wanted to fight against the government.
Tillidsmandsringe able at the start of the conflict to gather together the activists, but it was also from the a national leadership with an eye toward national coordination and common guidelines for the fight. Here the responsibility on the Tillidsmandsringe in Copenhagen, which represented by far the largest section of the strikers. Thus, the meeting of this committee on the Tuesday before Easter was to a large extent responsible for the struggle's outcome.
Four thousand shop stewards met in a mood of conviction that the struggle
9
late of the fell struggle.
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The great majority drew ied for the government steward or the and which could a vote itself in strikes despite were new the against workplaces, the leaders the union also did demands and at stewards and independents whether this could continued strikes which was wake
In the at
Under no stewards have been following activists and shop they offer would any a great number of
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higher wages.
been strengthened.
important, the local wage could such a
Most prominent in that continued trade-union proposals from the could victory was building-workers from shop stopping criticism has extensive groups this happened the working the future. And the gradually people up the about
Schlueter a workers
- class policy, and years,
If it proves others, the present place.
there has been a defeat can be the coming in trade-union when ss. There is a confiden struggle is fought.
in publications like Marxism throughout the dispute were part of the decision making process.
They were people who participated in determining the strategy - actually, people who
The situation after the strike picketing! Now, after the event, they find that mass picketing was not the way of dealing with problems.
I have been a consistent opponent of a ballot in the NUM. That has been
Interview with miners' leader our collective decision.