ITALY people took part in the Milan demonstration, During and after these demonstrations, there were vigorous attacks against offices of the Movimento Sociale Italiano (MS| - Italian Social Movement) and other fascist organizations, against the editorial offices of a fascist paper, and against various public establishments owned by fascists or frequented by members of fascist goon squads. The most dramatic clashes occurred in the area around the regional headquarters of the MSI, which was defended by the police. Several caribinieri units fired into the crowd, and several trucks drove through the crowds at high speeds. It was one of these trucks that killed the worker Giovanni Zibecchi. Big demonstrations also took place on April 18 in Milan, Rome, and many other cities. The new incident of violence stirred especially great emotion because in preceding days the fascists had attempted to carry out two other attacks (which just barely failed): one against the Florence-Rome railroad line, and the other against the headquarters of the regional administration of Ancona. Only a short time before, a fascist bomb had destroyed part of the apartment of the editor of Avanti, the daily newspaper of the Italian Socialist party; the editor was saved only because he was temporarily out when the bomb went off. All these incidents clearly indicate that the fascist and parafascist groups that aim at using terrorism and indiscriminate violence to accelerate the crisis of the regime have not at all renounced their plans. Since December 1969 they have struck on many occasions, provoking moments of extreme tension. It is hardly necessary to state that they have been able and are still able to do this because they can count on important aid and complicity. Terrorists and potential putschists have allies and inspirers in certain circles of the military, and even more so in the secret services - not to mention the police, in regard to which the case of Rome is illustrative. The Fascist gangs there act with impunity, especially in certain areas of the city, even though the members of these gangs are well known. At the end of last February, after incidents in which a fascist Greek student, a member of the Italian fascist university organization, was killed under circumstances that were far from clear, bands of fascist goons committed repeated acts of violence for several days, without any sort of police intervention. The Fascists also find not inconsequential complicity among the magistrates. In fact, the judges often act even more openly than the police. Many of the best-known members of the fascist gangs have been arrested at least once on serious charges, only to be quickly released by sympathetic judges, especially in Rome. Some of these cases have been so serious that even the minister of the interior felt compelled to address some criticism 26 against certain judges during a parliamentary debate on April 17. The mass response to the attacks and acts of violence and intimidation has been very strong. This explains why the fascists have been unable to go beyond isolated actions or terrorist attacks. There have still not been actions of the type that were carried out by the fascist gangs at the beginning of the 1920s, when the workers movement and its organizations were directly and openly attacked. This has been made impossible by the current relationship of forces. The Communist and Socialist parties and the trade-union organizations are talking about the necessity of waging an intense campaign of struggle against the fascists, often taking the initiative in demonstrations. The trade unions in particular called for a one-hour national general strike on April 18. Nevertheless, the axis of their campaign continues to be "democratic" antifascism, that is, the call for a front of all the so-called consfitutionalist parties, including the Christian Democracy. A campaign is now being conducted to collect one million signatures on a petition asking the government and the authorities to apply the law against fascism and prevent the activity of the fascist gangs. The Christian Democracy especially is participating in this campaign, seeking to make people forget that it has been part of the government for more than thirty years now. In response to pressure from its rank and file and in order to close off the space on its left, the Communist party has on some occasions not refused to take the initiative in more decisive mobilizafions. One example: the March 7 mobilization in Milan to prevent a fascist demonstration, a mobilization that the partisan organizations and trade unions had made a decisive contribution to building (about 25,000 people were mobilized in a short time, a good number of them workers). The centrist organizations - Manifesto, Lotta Continua, Avanguardia Operaia - are also waging a signature campaign, around the slogan "Outlaw the MSI. " Many militants of these groups offer their own particular interpretation of this slogan: They insist that it is necessary to make it impossible for the MSI to function legally (and they are not opposed to carrying out very hard commando actions to attain that goal). But ambiguity remains on the political level. They offer the outlet of a legal solution to the struggle against fascism and defend the illusion that a "constitutional" solution to the problem is possible. They seek to link up with persons and forces that certainly do not give a revolufionary orientation to the antifascist campaign. For this reason, the militants of the Gruppi Comunisti Rivoluzionari (Revolutionary Communist Groups,
SRI LANKA "on the question of implementing this decision in respect of private sector employees enjoying the non-recurring gratuity, and plantation employees," the government would summon a conference of the Employers' Federation and the unions for further discussion. 3. A committee was to be appointed to "determine a realistic Cost of Living Index. When the JCTUO leadership tried to convince their own union representatives at a meeting at Saraswathie Hall, Colombo, that the position set out above was considered sufficient to justify calling off the token strike, they were met with strong protests and even hools of derision. Thereafter, in many establishments where the CMU token strike took place on January 31, despite the JCTUO calling off their strike, workers belonging to their unions expressed solidarity with the CMU strike and some even resigned from those unions and joined the strike. Furthermore, after January 31, particularly in a number of establishments engaged in the export trade, workers who had belonged to the long entrenched CP-controlled trode unions in that sector broke away from the CP union and applied to join the CMU. In one company they had been in the CP union continuously for over twenty-five years. Similar desertions also took place from LSSP unions. This development threatened the trade-union positions of the LSSP and the CP, particularly among manual workers in the private sector. Ir became more serious for them when the Employers' Federation categorically rejected the government's request that they should voluntarily make an additional payment of Rs 25 per month to their employees, who are paid cost of living gratuities under collective agreements. In desperation, the JCTUO then appealed to the government to enforce a pay increase in the entire private sector, in order to save their positions among the organized workers in that sector. After much deliberation, the government has finally, and with obvious reluctance, enacted a new regulafion granting a 10 percent increase for workers in the private sector, up to a maximum of Rs 25 a monih, but expressly excluding employees covered by the CMU collective agreement with the Employers' Federation. The CMU members covered by the collective agreement for non-manual workers receive bigger cost-of-living gratuities than manual workers in Federation establishments because the CMU won the right to a cost-of-living gratuity after a general strike in Federation establishments under the UNP government in 1966. Since the overwhelming mass of workers in the private sector receive very low wages, they will receive less than a Rs 25 increase in their monthly wages under the new regulation. On the plantations, 28 for instance, where the average monthly earnings are Rs 50 to Rs 60, the actual increase will probably be not more than Rs 5. This makes a mockery of the JCTUO demand for an "immediate payment of Rs 75 to all employees who draw a salary of less than Rs 800." The demand for the payment of Rs 2.50 for every point increase in the cost-of-living index also becomes a mockery in the light of the government's decision to appoint a committee only "to determine a realistic cost-of-living index." The much talkedof "nationalization" demand with respect to plantations, the banks, and the textile industry, meanwhile, still remains "under consideration." In short, the false "demands" of the JCTUO and its pretences in that connection now stand exposed more clearly than ever before in its short but infamous history. Thinking workers now realize that the JCTUO leaders cannot serve both the United Front government and the workers in their trade unions. They have now realized or dre beginning to understand that no "demands" and no announcements of "token strikes" can possibly be made by the JCTUO leaders without the knowledge and prior consent of their own political leoders in the three government parfies. In other words, they now see that the policy of the JCTUO in relation to the working class is to deceive the workers and to keep them passive, in continual expectancy of "favorable consideration" for their "demands" while the government pursues its essentially repressive and reactionary policy toward the working class. To combat this policy, the CMU has correctly stressed the necessity for the mobilization of the forces of the working class "under its own class banner, for effective action against capitalist exploitation and oppression under the present government or any other capitalist government that may replace it. The token strike of the CMU on January 31, embracing as it did over 25, 000 workers in over 250 establishments in the private sector and in state corporations, is an indication of the extent to which vanguard sections of the working class are ready to act today, in accordance with the class struggle line that the CMU has followed consistently for several years despite the grave setbacks suffered by the working class as a result of the treacherous policies of class collaboration that the JCTUO has followed. There is every reason, therefore, to be confident that more and more sections of the organized working class will combine with the CMU or come directly under its banner to go forward in the year 1975 in pursuit of the objectives set before the people by the CMU through its token strike on January 31.•
SWEDEN FOREST WORKERS On strike The biggest