OME 600 enthusiastic militants, meeting in Liege, December 27th, decided to hold a constitutional congress at Charleroi February Ist to set up a new Left Socialist party. The projected name of the new organisation is Parti Socialiste des Travailleurs (Socialist Workers party). Its initial base will be in Wallonie; but as soon as similar organisations are set up in Flanders and Brussels, a federation will be organised on the basis of the three regional units. The Liege meeting was chaired by Fernand Massart, a Socialist member of Parliament from Namur, who left the Socialist party a year ago out of -disgust over the opportunist policies of the coalition government. The main report was given by Ernest Glinne, a Socialist member of Parliament from Charleroi and the only Socialist in Parliament who publicly denounced Spaak’s neocolonialist intervention in the Congo. Other key addresses were given by Francois Perin, a Liege University professor and main theoretician of the Walloon Popular Movement, and Ernest Mandel, editor of the Left Socialist weekly La Gauche. Jacques Yerna, secretary of the Liege Trade Union Federation, sponsored the meeting. The main leaders of the Jeunes Gardes Socialistes (Socialist Youth organisation) and the Socialist Students Federation were also present. The central feature of the gathering was the presence of the principal shop stewards and direct repre-
sentatives of the workers of Belgium's
most important plants in the Liege
and Charleroi heavy industry area.
The overwhelming majority of the
speakers were these workers’ repre-
sentatives. Speaker after speaker
went to the rostrum to declare the
disillusionment felt by the Belgian
working class over the cynical
betrayal of the objectives of the great
general strike of 1960-61 by the
reformist leaders who supported the
strike so loudly at the time. Speaker
after speaker denounced the aban-
donment of the fight for real social-
ist objectives by the leaders of the
Socialist party, the many anti-work-
ing class measures taken by the
present coalition government, and the
urgent need for a new party to pre-
vent demoralisation from spreading
among the vanguard of the working
class.
The Liege meeting was public and
open to the press. The Belgian radio
and television, as well as the daily
papers, gave it extensive coverage,
viewing it as an important turning
point in the political life of the
country.
Although it is too early to judge
the weight of the new party in the
parliamentary field (new elections will
be held in Belgium not later than
May 1965, and perhaps much
sooner, leaving little time for the new
party to become thoroughly organ-
ised and to prepare for an election
campaign), it is certain that it will
have a mass base in several key
working class areas.