THE TASKS OF REVOLUTIONARIES IN EUROPE
This conference is an indication of the profound changes which are taking place in the international working class movement today. In dozens of industries, and in new sectors like the banks and hospitals, a layer of revolutionary militants, capable of directly initiating and leading struggles of [illegible] highlights the modification in the relationship of forces between the workers' vanguard and the trade union bureaucracy which has taken place since 1968. The ripening of this process in the course of dozens of struggles during the next few years could, in the event of a far-reaching social explosion, lead to a situation very different from that in May '68. It could trigger off a series of struggles on a scale not seen in France for decades.
But this is true not simply of France. For those who have taken part in workers' conferences like this organised on a European scale, it is easy to see that a similar transformation of the workers' movement is taking place in a number of countries —notably in Belgium, Italy, Spain and Britain.
LAUNCHING STRUGGLES ON AN INTERNATIONAL SCALE
If today we can launch at least limited initiatives at the level of the individual factory, and even industrial sector, then it is clear that tomorrow we will be able to take certain initiatives —limited, but of extraordinary significance— at an international level. The possibilities are already evident in some sectors, such as the motor, steel, chemical and glass industries.
So, to deal with the tasks of revolutionaries in Europe today, we must first insist upon the active role of the workers vanguard in the internationalisation of struggles. It must be stressed that this development flows directly from the inevitable tendency towards the internationalisation of capital. The existence of the Common Market, and the possible steps towards economic and monetary union together with the political repercussions that would have, means that the development of its struggles on an international scale is already a crucial question for the workers' movement. This internationalisation of the productive forces, means that the multi-national companies have numerous factories in the various European countries —in other words, we are [illegible] the emergence of a kind of international employing class.
This means that the international negotiation of work contracts and European-wide strikes and solidarity actions have already been on the agenda for some years. There are basically four central tasks in this context:
1. To organise a response to the attacks on the workers' movement by the multi-nationals,
2. To integrate the 12 million immigrant workers in Europe into the [illegible] of working class struggle in each particular country.
3. To popularise the experiences of the most advanced struggles led by the workers' vanguard from one country to another.
4. To go beyond economism, and solidarity simply at the level of one sector, to develop a political solidarity on a European scale with the political struggles of the workers in Spain, Portugal, France, England, etc...
FIRST TASK: THE STRUGGLE AGAINST THE MULTINATIONALS
The first task can be summarised as the need to overcome the negative effect on strikes of the international centralisation of capital. In its most typical form, the multi-national firm, this allows the employers to develop a new offensive strategy, co-ordinated and centralised, in order to keep a tight rein on the situation while keeping wages as low as possible. This involves playing on the divisions in the trade union movement and the absence of any co-ordinated response, as well as investing in regions where wages are lower and the trade unions are weaker.
Hence any multi-national company faced with a strike can respond in a number of ways: it can transfer production from one country to another, insisting that overtime is worked in one factory which is not on strike in order to make up some of the production losses; it can adapt the schedule of production at the subsidiary to make up for the losses in production at the factories on strike, it can geographically separate certain stages of production so as to reduce the effect on sales of a struggle in a particular country, etc...
The bosses can even threaten to close down the factories and shift production for good if they are faced by a strike. This happened in Germany in May-June 1971, when the boss of the second biggest chemicals concern, Kurt Hansen of Bayer, threatened to move his factories abroad unless the workers modified their demands. Today the weight of these multi-nationals is still greater; and it must be an urgent task for revolutionary militants to respond to this offensive.
At the moment, however, it is the trade union bureaucrats who have seized the initiative at this level. They have set up 'world trade union councils' for each multi-national which organise a limited response at a supra-bureaucratic level to the bosses' offensive, and through this 'technical efficiency' they hope to maintain and consolidate their position.
I don't want to dwell here on the initiatives they have taken, even though a study of them would be rewarding for revolutionary militants. There was, for instance, the strike at Kodak in Vincennes in May 1971, when the Kodak 'world trade union council' succeeded in getting the British transport workers to prevent the delivery of films destined to Vincennes, and persuaded the German workers at a Kodak subsidiary not to produce extra film to make up for this.
But what I want to deal with here are the concrete initiatives which we should be able to develop with the forces we have already accumulated in various sectors on a European scale. Three examples will suffice: Caterpillar, SEAT-Fiat; and Rhone-Progil, which is part of the Rhone-Poulenc trust.
CATERPILLAR
Caterpillar is an extraordinarily powerful trust with interests on a world scale, specialising in the production of heavy tractors, bulldozers, earth-moving equipment, etc. It can cope at one and the same time with strikes in [illegible] France, and Scotland, provided they aren't co-ordinated.
However, we have comrades in Caterpillar —at Grenoble in France we have comrades who are with us today, at Goslee in Belgium we have contacts and intervene in the factory, while at Glasgow in Scotland we should be able to develop similar work.
These factories concentrate on different stages of production: for instance, the engines are produced at Goslee, while the assembly and wiring are carried out at Grenoble. Hence, if there is a strike at Grenoble, it should be possible to stop the delivery of engines from Goslee.
For example, in May-June 1973 a struggle began at Grenoble. It got off to a good start, being supported by nearly all the workers, but then got bogged down because the bureaucrats refused to consider the occupation of the factory. At the centre of the struggle was the demand for an across-the-board increase of 200 francs a month (approximately £4.50 a week) —a demand which could obviously have been extended throughout the trust, and taken up at Glasgow and Goslee, for instance.
The fact that the Grenoble factory wasn't occupied, however, was a big problem: eventually only 60% of the workforce remained on strike, and the scabs were going into work. Now if the Belgian comrades had taken solidarity action, and had refused to send the necessary engines to Grenoble, that would have been decisive in strengthening the strike and encouraging the Grenoble workers to defy the bureaucrats. It didn't happen —but it could have done, it was perfectly possible, and will be again if we systematically organise this work on a European scale.
Again, on 7 April 1974, a strike broke out at the Belgian factory at Goslee. But the comrades at Grenoble were not in touch with the developing situation. Right from the start the relationship of forces was rather bad, as only 57% of the workers had voted for a strike. The trade union leaders refused to organise the strike, although the bosses were notorious for their use of repressive tactics. By 13 May the strikers had returned to work on the instructions of the bureaucrats, even though their demands hadn't been met. Here again solidarity could have been decisive. At one time there were tenuous links between the factories at Goslee and Grenoble, but these have long since broken down. It is up to us to remedy this, and we now have the means to hand.
We can develop this solidarity on a very concrete basis. For instance, Caterpillar has a very complicated system of grading and bonuses, and indeed the last strike at Goslee concerned the whole grading system and the way in which transfers from one category to another are carried out. There are no less than seven categories, each consisting of four different grades. Here there is obviously the possibility of a general campaign around common demands against this divide-and-rule system of the bosses.
There is also the possibility of developing a campaign of political solidarity against the military use of Caterpillar [illegible]. This had its inspiration when the Grenoble comrades, reading the Spanish paper published by the Swiss section (Rojo), noticed a photo of a Caterpillar tractor being used in Angola. Caterpillar, in fact, sells tractors with machine gun rests. So the Grenoble comrades put out a leaflet dealing with the military use of Caterpillar equipment, and now there is a chance of developing a campaign in the European factories tied to the situation in Portugal and the struggle of the liberation movements. These kinds of possibilities exist, and we must take advantage of them.
To take one more instance —Caterpillar recently closed down its factory in Melbourne, Australia, making 2,500 workers redundant. But we only found out from the Communist Party, although we have comrades in Australia and could, with a more systematic centralisation of work, have been the first to use the announcement of this closure to show what Caterpillar is up to, developing from this example agitational work around job security at Glasgow, Goslee, and Grenoble.
SEAT-FIAT
A second example is the struggles which have been developing at SEAT in Spain and Fiat in Italy. Half of SEAT is owned by the Spanish State, with the other half belonging to Fiat. The example I'm going to give is based on initiatives taken by us, taken by member organisations of the Fourth International, but without any wider co-ordination or even information.
When the strikes at Fiat reached a very high level in 1969, the boss, Agnelli, considered shifting the production of engines and machine-tools to SEAT. So the leaders of the Italian CGIL union federation, who knew about this plan, went off to Spain to discuss it with the SEAT workers. However, when struggles started to break out at SEAT in June-October 1971, Agnelli gave up the idea, realising that the situation in Spain wasn't all he'd hoped it might be.
But during the June-October 1971 struggle another significant event took place: the French CGT union federation, together with the CGIL (both dominated by the Communist Party), sent a delegate to Spain. They asked a member of the Spanish Communist Party to come and address the workers at Renault and Fiat. Clearly it was a chance for the CP to play up its 'internationalist' image while at the same time developing a purely verbal solidarity.
An alternative, however, was proposed by a Trotskyist militant in the workers' commission (underground trade union). Very simply, he suggested: 'The delegate should be elected on the basis of a concrete programme of international solidarity.' He proposed that a 'permanent liaison committee' responsible to the base should be established. This committee, he said, should put out regular information on the progress of struggles and the response of the bosses in the Fiat empire. Furthermore, it should ensure the organisation of solidarity strikes in the European factories whenever a struggle broke out in any part of the Fiat trust. And on this basis he was elected.
For several reasons this project never actually got off the ground —nevertheless, it shows the kinds of initiatives and proposals that revolutionaries can put forward today.
At the same time in Fiat, Turin, while the SEAT strike was developing, some solidarity strikes were called by the trade unions. But our comrades used this to organise meetings in the departments and workshops where they worked in order to discuss the political situation in Spain. They developed the internationalist consciousness of the Italian workers.
So here we have two actions, totally unco-ordinated, which show the possibility of going beyond abstract and verbal solidarity.
These possibilities were already apparent with the outbreak of strikes in Turin in 1971. Fiat then tried to introduce a third shift at SEAT to make up production losses, but it was successfully resisted by the SEAT workers who in this way concretely supported the struggles of the Fiat workers.
Once again, we see that we could take initiatives which choke off the demagogic policy of the Communist Parties. We could bring to the SEAT workers in Barcelona the lessons of the massive gains won by the Mirafiori workers, particularly in the struggle against the capitalist organisation of work. We could also popularise in Turin the gains won by the SEAT workers on the question of self-defence, on the question of resisting the police. Lastly, we could develop a political campaign showing the key role of these forms of workers' struggles at SEAT and Fiat in the overall framework of the development of workers' struggles in Italy and Spain.
RHONE-PROGIL
This strike is currently taking place in a complex and highly automated factory in France producing phenol. Rhone-Progil is part of a multi-national, Rhone-Poulenc, which has 35 factories in 12 different countries and has for the last two years invested mainly in its foreign subsidiaries. In the present struggle I want to underline two extraordinary aspects: (1) the links established with other factories whose production is tied in with that of Rhone-Progil; (2) the links which the comrades are developing with other phenol-producing firms in Europe which aren't part of the Rhone-Poulenc trust. Then we can make a comparison with the elaborate projects of the international bureaucrat, Levinson, who in 1971 set up a 'world trade union council' for Rhone-Poulenc.
As soon as the workers decided to cut the level of production from 280 to 140 tonnes (enough only for use internally —so that they get paid but the bosses don't have any to sell), they got in touch by phone with the factory shop stewards at Bayer in Cologne and Montedison in southern Italy to explain the situation. The Bayer workers immediately respond in a very concrete fashion: they won't produce a drop extra of phenol, and their present production is only just sufficient for the German market, so they're hardly in a position to accept supplementary orders from Rhone-Progil. As for Montedison, the response is predictably a bit different: they're about to go on strike themselves, so there's nothing to worry about there!
The Rhone-Progil workers therefore talk about the possibility of sending a delegation to Italy. And here's an excellent example of how seemingly different questions tie in together —because it is obviously the Italian immigrant workers at Rhone-Progil who will be sent to contact the Italian workers at Montedison!
These contacts can and must be of a very different kind from those proposed by Levinson. First of all, one can explain in Italy and Germany —particularly necessary in the latter— the importance of the methods of struggle adopted: how the general assemblies of workers contribute to advancing the struggle, the way in which the technical problems posed by a strike in this sector (such as the danger of explosions) are overcome. The rank-and-file delegates will try to exchange experiences of struggle, and then they will go on to suggest ways in which the struggle can be prepared and organised.
You probably know that the struggle has been prepared and popularised by adopting many of the methods used at Lip. They produce their own recorded radio bulletins, for instance, which are regularly played in the canteen and keep everyone informed of all aspects of the struggle. There is also a printed bulletin, Phénoméne Unité, like Lip Unité. This application of the Lip experience must now be extended to Montedison and also —even if it meets with only a limited response— to Bayer.
Obviously these are projections, which we won't be able to organise in a day and which will only be systematised with a lot of effort. But even if we can't apply them today, we must all the time be [aware] that these [illegible] Bayer. There will also be a 'boomerang effect', since the workers at Montedison have had their own extraordinary experiences of struggle and will be able to pass these on to the militants at Rhone-Progil.
Unless we at least start to consider such initiatives today, we will never be in a position to carry them out. Although there are limits to what we can do today, that is no reason for not launching an all-out propaganda offensive on these questions. Clearly, also, we must push for demands on wages, etc., to be generalised and coordinated on an international scale.
But there is also another aspect of this struggle— the links established with other factories in the region, which it would clearly be possible to develop on an international scale. For instance, Rhone-Progil produces electricity for the EDF (electricity board) and chlorine for Ugine-Kuhlman. It is therefore necessary to get in touch with the workers here (which has been done) since they will be affected by the loss of production.
This kind of struggle has a potential importance unrelated to the comparatively few workers actively engaged in it, and its lessons must be driven home at an international level in the chemical industry.
LEVINSON'S PLAN
Compared with this kind of projection, Levinson's plan displays all the bureaucratic distortions of the international trade union apparatus. All he proposes is to draw up a list of demands which he alone will decide on in his offices at Geneva, based on his own enquiries. On this basis he tries to secure collective agreements, ratified by himself, on an international scale. He proposes limited actions to give some credibility to his international strategy, but these in no way stimulate or extend new methods of struggle gained through the various initiatives taken by the revolutionaries. On the contrary, he aims to limit as much as possible any communication on this issue. However, it is clear that there exists today a real possibility of countering the international strategy of the bureaucrats and the tendency towards hyper-bureaucratisation, as long as revolutionaries counterpose concrete initiatives at an international level.
The bureaucracy appears to have a big 'technical superiority'— Levinson, for instance, has at his disposal (thanks to the German DGB) a computer with information on all the main chemical firms in the world. This can give complete information on any firm to any trade union leadership within seconds.
It is this aspect of its activity that the bureaucracy aims to build up, knowing that here lies its strength. We have to respond to this 'technical and bureaucratic efficiency', not at the level of technical efficiency —although we could make use of much of the information built up by the trade union leaderships—, but through a series of initiatives which increase the effectiveness of struggles. One of the basic strengths of revolutionary militants lies in the co-ordination of struggles through delegates elected directly by mass meetings of workers. The workers of the Solvay trust did this with delegates from factories in France, Belgium, Italy, and Germany.
ONE CAN WIN AGAINST THE MULTINATIONALS
So I would insist on the fact that one can stand up to and even defeat an international boss, even if the struggle is isolated. It is possible to smash the policy of the multi-nationals if one rejects the defeatist attitudes encouraged by the international trade union bureaucrats —if there is a high level of struggle, if it is organised democratically, if it has clear perspectives and concrete objectives are put forward.
SECOND TASK: INTEGRATE THE IMMIGRANT WORKERS, FIGHT AGAINST RACISM
The second internationalist task of revolutionaries concerns the integration of the immigrant workers —of whom there are now 12 million in Europe— into the structures of the local workers' movement.
Immigration is today structurally necessary for the capitalist system. One can only understand the long-term growth of the capitalist system since the Second World War in the light —among other factors— of the presence of this mass of immigrant workers, which has allowed the bosses to tilt the balance of forces in favour of productivity increases at the expense of real wages.
CAPITAL'S POLICY
This relationship of forces has assisted the accumulation of capital because of its favourable impact on the rate of profit. In the present situation in Europe, immigrant workers are not only crucial for the functioning of the economy in a series of countries, but at the level of production they almost completely dominate certain industries such as textiles, and the car assembly lines in Germany, France and Belgium. They also play an essential role in some of the public services (refuse disposal, public transport).
The political use made of immigration by the bourgeoisie obviously ties in with its economic use (no training costs, low wages, long hours, etc.) to weaken the working class as a whole, by stirring up racist and chauvinist attitudes. The super-exploitation of immigrant workers thus becomes acceptable to sections of the indigenous workers, who are even persuaded to accept the sacking of immigrant workers as if this will in some mysterious way guarantee their own jobs.
The bosses try to foster the illusion that the social crisis is caused not by the capitalist system but by immigration. One even has the situation, in countries like Switzerland, where the existence of a privileged layer of workers is long established, where the super-exploitation of immigrant workers is justified on the basis that it will guarantee a privileged position for the indigenous workers.
OUR RESPONSE
It is urgent that we respond to this policy —which weakens the whole working class— since the traditional workers' movement has proved incapable of doing so. Our basic slogans must be: complete freedom of migration; common political, civil, voting and trade union rights for all those working in the same country.
In response to the strategy of the bourgeoisie— which envisages the 'social integration' of a layer of immigrant workers as atomised individuals, who adapt to bourgeois social and ideological norms— we must counterpose a 'class integration', i.e. their inclusion in the structures through which the indigenous working class movement organises its struggles.
The employers are trying on the one hand to increase the turn-over of a section of immigrants ('rotating' immigration), and on the other to integrate another section.
Class integration follows several routes. To take one example: when the Hella workers at Lippstadt in Germany (who make car headlamps) won a struggle in 1973 thanks to the advanced methods of struggle they used (strike committees, multi-national Spanish-Italian-Turkish committee), they introduced into Germany forms of struggle developed by the workers' movement in their native countries (Spain and Italy). When Spanish workers at a Geneva engineering works in Switzerland took over the 'factory committees' and organised the first strike for decades in three or four factories, they introduced new methods of struggle into a country where the 'Social Peace' has long reigned unchallenged. This has allowed the new generation of young Swiss workers to take a short cut in accumulating experience of how to fight effectively.
When a struggle broke out at the small Blindex factory in Marseilles with Tunisian workers at its head, they showed their ability to unite in struggle with French workers and to develop local support, including a solidarity demonstration through the area. This too shows the way in which immigrant workers can be integrated into local struggles and at the same time put to good use the traditions in the countries from which they come.
UNITY OF THE WORKING CLASS AND FORMS OF ACTION
This possibility can only be developed through a huge and conscious effort by the workers vanguard, sometimes against the stream. Obviously the examples I gave above are, at the moment, exceptions. We must not under-estimate the chauvinism and racism, the nationalist degeneration, of the workers' movement, which can lead to the isolation of even exceptionally militant struggles. Thus the Turkish workers at Ford's in Cologne suffered a severe defeat in August 1973 when they were unable to involve a significant number of German workers in the struggle. They made the mistake of estimating the balance of forces solely on the basis of their own militancy, not realising the importance of work in the trade unions and a period of preparation for the struggle.
We should also launch initiatives with the understanding that in some countries autonomous movements of immigrant workers can and ought to assist and provoke this 'class integration'. In France, for instance, the General Union of Senegalese workers has played a real role in channelling Senegalese workers towards the trade union organisations.
Lastly, we must fight for the right of immigrant workers to establish their own caucuses inside the trade unions. This will allow them to meet, to discuss their own specific problems, and to win greater backing for their demands. Furthermore —given the anti-trade unionism of many immigrant workers, whose judgement is based on the chauvinist policies of the trade union bureaucracy— these caucuses must also be open to non-union labour.
In this context brief mention must be made of two other tasks: the importance of support committees, and the creation or strengthening of revolutionary organisations in the immigrant workers countries of origin.
For instance, around the Muser strike in Switzerland, was held one of the largest demonstrations ever seen in Geneva. More than 3,500 people demonstrated their support for 100 mainly Spanish building workers. This was the first real challenge to the dominant chauvinistic current in the Swiss workers' movement, and it showed the possibilities of establishing links in the fight against chauvinism between immigrant workers, the radicalised youth vanguard, and a section of the Swiss working class. The work of building support for the strikers was decisive in achieving this success.
The second task flows from the fact that immigrant workers, joining the trade unions in the country to which they have come, and establishing contacts with revolutionary militants there, will thus be able to absorb a whole series of 'lessons' from the experience of the native workers' movement. This will obviously strengthen the possibilities of organising revolutionary parties, sections of the Fourth International, in their countries of origin.
This is already beginning to happen in one instance, with activity directed towards the Spanish immigrant vanguard in Sweden, Switzerland, Belgium and France in order to help strengthen the LCR-ETA(VI) (a sympathising organisation of the Fourth International in Spain). This work can both help to strengthen the Trotskyist organisation in Spain and counter the influence of the Communist Party and centrist currents among the immigrant workers. It is a precondition for the development of a movement of political solidarity with struggles in the countries from which the immigrant workers come.
THIRD TASK: COMBINE THE UNEQUAL DEVELOPMENT OF STRUGGLES
An essential task for the internationalist vanguard is to try to modify the unequal development of struggles by integrating them on a European scale. In all the major European countries, with the partial exception of capitalist Germany, struggles are today being launched around more and more similar objectives. This is explained by the fact that the structural crisis of the capitalist system is today combined with a conjunctural crisis. The structural crisis is expressed in declining industrial sectors, in the generalised inflation, as well as in the increasingly repressive regime inside the factories and the moves against this to question the bosses' authority.
The conjunctural crisis takes the form of growing unemployment, galloping inflation, etc. The combination of these two factors now exists to one degree or another in all the imperialist countries. This explains the growing tendency on a European scale for struggles to break out around broadly similar objectives. So it is on the basis of common problems —unemployment, inflation, attacks on trade union rights, the struggle against the capitalist organisation of work— that we must aim to stimulate and speed up on a European scale the absorption of the most advanced experiences from one country to another.
We must encourage the workers in one country to learn from the most advanced experiences of their comrades elsewhere. We must prevent them from having to cover all the same ground again, so as to be able to develop rapidly a level of struggle, or organisation, which corresponds to the objective [tasks] raised today by the structural and conjunctural crisis of the capitalist system, which can only be tackled resolved by [a] militant and conscious working class.
I would like to give several concrete examples of this, though the only one in which we directly took the lead was [illegible] instance where an effective and conscious integration of many different experiences has been carried out under Trotskyist leadership.
THE HOSPITALS
This long strike and struggle broke out in a country where there are no traditions of militancy, in a sector where there had never before been one single struggle in the whole history of Switzerland. The demands were for a 40-hour week and 300 francs (approximately £50) for all. The nature and forms of this struggle cannot be understood except in the context of Lip and the struggles in the French hospitals.
The Swiss comrades in Geneva had organised meeting after meeting in solidarity with the Lip workers. Comrade Piaget (CFDT union delegate at Lip) and others explained in detail how they were popularising their struggle, how they kept control over the negotiations, how they sought to create unity among different sections of the workforce. In fact, as experienced trade unionists they passed on every scrap of information which could be useful to young militants trying to bring together different categories of Swiss and immigrant workers and ensure the maximum involvement of all the hospital workers.
But one element was still missing. A hospital is not Lip you can't take it over to produce illnesses! The basic question is how to maintain health care while at the same time hitting the administration. For that you need the kind of experience of struggle that was developed around the administrative strikes in the general hospitals in Lyon and Tours in France.
So a comrade from Tours was invited to Geneva on the suggestion of the revolutionaries to take part in a trade union general assembly. In explaining how an administrative strike should be organised, and in giving concrete and detailed explanations on how to take such a struggle forward, he allowed these workers to absorb an experience which it would otherwise have taken them years to gain. Of course this development rested on one small but very important thing: the existence of the French and Swiss sections of the Fourth International, which made this transfer and conscious fusion of diverse experiences possible.
LIP
There is no need to expand on this struggle, for the general details are well known (see issues of Red Weekly in the second half of 1973, for instance). However, in Belgium [illegible] showed us [illegible] fruitful debates inside the workers' vanguard on the key question of workers' control. In Switzerland there were meetings which were extremely important in showing the Swiss watch-workers, who are faced with the same threats to their jobs, that it is possible to win a struggle. There was also a campaign organised by the Swedish comrades.
But on top of that, the struggle at Rhone-Progil can only be understood in the light of the Lip experience. It would never have taken place, let alone developed in the way it has done, if there had been no Lip. Lip has been a fantastic stimulus to other struggles, notably in its lessons for the popularisation and extension of the struggle. The struggle of the Ampex workers in Belgium, who took a 'war chest' of magnetic tape cassettes as hostage and so forced major concessions out of their American boss, is another example of how the Lip experience has been absorbed.
THE EXAMPLE OF GLAVERBEL-GILLY
I would like to end this section with an example of the integration of experiences at a regional level, together with those from past struggles, during the recent Belgian glassworkers' strike in the Charleroi area.
On 8 May this year, 4000 workers went on strike and occupied their factories. On 13 May the number of workers on strike grew to 12,000 and a regional strike committee was set up. On 27 May the strike ended in complete victory. This experience on the level of a region shows just how much better we can combine the unequal development of struggles on an international scale.
The importance of the glassworkers' victory becomes clear when one realises that in 1960-61 they were completely smashed when the bosses launched their counter-offensive after the Belgian general strike. A long period of reconstruction was needed, first centering on the Glaverbel-Gilly plant and then spreading to the rest of the glass sector. Its culmination in a general struggle highlights three important elements: 1. The absorption of the experience of a struggle at Glaverbel-Gilly in 1973. 2. The possibility for the first time of responding successfully to a sacking by a multi-national firm. 3. The ability to bring the multi-national BSN trust to its knees.
With regard to the first element: the essential point about the victory won at Glaverbel-Gilly in 1973, apart from the occupation, was the existence of a strike committee, elected in the workshops and in the different sectors. It organised the occupation, the pickets, set up a rota for maintaining the occupation, and in every aspect had real control over the occupation and its popularisation. The strike committee was in daily contact with the various political groups to push forward the extension of the struggle. Finally, the strike committee controlled the negotiations and, what is especially relevant to what may happen at Rhone-Progil, they controlled production.
The problem in the glass industry is this: one can't stop the production of glass for any length of time without damaging the machinery. In arriving at a solution to overcome this problem, the workers showed their evident ability to run the factory themselves —they decided to produce glass sheets which were not of the standard size, and so could not simply be sold by the boss afterwards. After the strike, they made sure that it wasn't sold off cheaply because of this. And if they then had to cut it to the right size...well, then they would have to be paid for the whole job. In this way production was continued throughout the strike without in any way benefitting the bosses. And this type of strike, initially launched by the workers of one factory, was adopted in seven [illegible] factories.
But this integration of experiences didn't just happen spontaneously. A major factor was the intervention of revolutionary militants inside and outside the factory through [the] bulletin of a class struggle tendency in the union called [illegible]. This [illegible] allowed the workers to re-live the experience of 1960-61, and took them through [the] victory in 1973 to its generalisation in 1974 to 11 factories, seven of which were occupied, linked up through a regional strike committee.
We must understand the decisive role played by 'The New Defence' in generalising the experience of 1973. We ourselves will be able to play this role on the international level—perhaps less efficiently, but its effect will be ten times as exemplary given the difficulties of doing it. The synthesis of the experience of the most advanced struggles carried out in the Charleroi region must be generalised to other sectors of the glass industry in France, England, etc.
The second key element of this strike lay in the workers' ability to respond to a sacking carried out by a multi-national company. A worker was sacked on the spot by the bosses for calling a meeting of workers in the refectory at the Multipane factory, against the advice of management and without the agreement of the trade union bureaucrats. At once the factory was occupied and strike pickets were organised. Immediately the demand for his reinstatement was included along with those concerning the contract renewal in the glass industry, and it was given equal weight throughout the struggle. In this way the bosses' counter-offensive was smashed, and the redundancy notice withdrawn.
This example must be developed, generalised, explained. The workers of a multi-national trust have shown that the international bosses cannot sack a worker without repercussions. The workers can make a multi-national pay for such attempts at victimisation. In large part, this success depended on the level of conscious organisation of the struggle. In this case, success could be achieved even without international co-ordination.
'The New Defence' declared in drawing the lessons of the strike: 'Just as it is our brawn and brains which normally keep the factory going, so we will be the masters during the strike and will take the decisions on the basis of our own interests.'
This wealth of experience must be assimilated by the workers' vanguard of the European glass industry. We must look into this kind of question in all our sections so that we can develop in our trade union work a level of international co-ordination to ensure that such an advanced experience in any one country can be organisationally assimilated. The struggle of the Belgian glass workers itself provides an example of the integration of struggles, since the Glaverbel workers played a decisive role in involving eleven factories in a strike which generalised at a very high level the lessons of a victorious struggle and a long preparation for the fight.
MORE ADVANCED EXPERIENCES
Today there are a whole series of sectors in which we will be able to generalise the experiences of more advanced struggles. For instance, the contracts in the US car industry provide for an annual guaranteed wage. If a worker is laid off he still gets about 85% of his normal wage. At Alfa-Romeo in Milan there is in effect a guaranteed wage —if a worker is laid off, he gets unemployment benefit from the state and the difference is made up by the bosses. Today such a demand is of key importance in the face of the rationalisation and redundancies that will be introduced by the car bosses in a period of slump. One sees here the importance of generalising experiences, if only to determine the objectives of struggle.
To conclude, there are two other aspects of our work which it is important to strengthen from the point of view of combining and assimilating the experiences of the most advanced struggles. The first is 'women's work'. In a series of countries where backwardness on this question holds back struggles we will be able to make important breakthroughs by drawing lessons from the struggles and the development of the women's movement in France and Britain.
Then there is the question of workers' self-defence, whose experiences must also be generalised. An important example of this is the way in which the flying pickets were organised during the miners' strike in Britain. From a central pool, dozens of miners could be despatched at need to strengthen this or that picket. This kind of experience must be incorporated into the general lessons that the workers' vanguard can draw from the struggles of recent years.
FOURTH TASK: POLITICAL SOLIDARITY
The mobilisation which took place all over Europe in 1970 in solidarity with the Basque militants sentenced to death by the Burgos military tribunal represented a high point of the political solidarity developed by the revolutionary vanguard with the struggles of the Spanish working class. For these demonstrations of support did not limit themselves simply to demanding the release of Izko and his comrades —even though that was of course essential— but based themselves on solidarity with the Spanish workers for the overthrow of the Francoist dictatorship and the achievement of socialism. Furthermore, this mobilisation was taken up by more than a million Spanish immigrant workers in France, Germany, Switzerland, etc. That indicates the kind of movement that could be developed in the event of a revolutionary upsurge in Spain.
Following on from the campaign in solidarity with the revolutionary struggle of the Vietnamese people, the Trotskyists set in motion throughout capitalist Europe a campaign in support of the armed resistance of the Chilean people. This campaign indicates on the one hand the new internationalist consciousness —unparalleled in the last 20 years— of the mass vanguard, on the other, it enables us to specify the objective tasks confronting the working class in its struggle against the capitalist system. Through this solidarity movement tens of thousands of militants have developed an internationalist and revolutionary consciousness.
This work of political solidarity is not some Trotskyist fetish. It is not for reasons of abstract internationalism that we think it is vital to develop struggles based on political solidarity. Certainly they can play a role in extending the impact of certain developments, but the key question is to prepare the European working class to oppose organisationally and as a mass any counter-revolutionary attempt to intervene against a victorious socialist revolution, in the first instance in one country alone. That is the main objective in developing the solidarity of the European working class with political struggles. That is why we attach so much importance to this work, and why we must develop it systematically to overcome the narrow limits of sectoral, trade union solidarity.
Without this conscious work we will be faced with big dangers. In the event of a revolutionary explosion in any European country there will undoubtedly be a semi-spontaneous movement of solidarity, but to be able to consolidate it we must strengthen and develop an internationalist consciousness on every possible occasion now.
When the workers at Cockerill Ougree and the dockers of Genoa go on strike in protest at the US invasion of Cambodia, we must draw the lessons of that. We must show that this type of initiative can be developed at other levels, that the solidarity which takes place during strikes is also relevant on the political plane.
BUILDING THE INTERNATIONAL
The implementation of these four major tasks requires on our part specific organisational initiatives.
We are convinced that the simultaneous construction of a national and international organisation is essential. First of all, it enables a thoroughgoing internationalist education to take place, developing a revolutionary consciousness which extends beyond the limits of regional, trade union and sectoral interests —limits which still exist inside our own movement, expressed in such ways as the difficulty of exchanging experiences or the mechanical understanding of experiences gained in other countries.
Furthermore this simultaneous construction of a national and international organisation helps us to avoid misunderstanding important aspects of the international situation and notably the dominant tendencies developing at the heart of the imperialist system. By misunderstanding these, we are in danger of making an impressionistic analysis on the basis of how they appear apparent at the national level. This can result in a vulgar theorisation of minor national or local experiences to demonstrate general tendencies.
We must struggle resolutely against these weaknesses, by simultaneously building a national and international organisation.
Finally —and at the moment it is the most concrete thing —we must co-ordinate our daily work and develop systematically, if modestly, experiences in internationalising workers' struggles. A start, however propagandistic, of work towards the internationalisation of struggles would represent a qualitative leap forward for the Fourth International at the present time.
We can do it —I have already sketched out some of the elements involved. But this flows from a conception which clearly rejects any federalist ideas about the International. There must be a political centralisation which enables us to understand both the particular and the general. This is also essential if we are to give a concrete content to one of our major achievements on the European level, the slogan of the United Socialist States of Europe, which is already being prepared through struggles which, in their turn, show its immediate objective necessity.