reactions from the workers and revolutionary movement in West Europe, but has also generated uncommonly strong reactions among various Social Democratic governments in capitalist countries. Most West European governments recalled their ambassadors from Madrid for "consultations," and the France regime retaliated by recalling its own ambassadors from most West European capitals. (An exception was the Giscard d'Estaing government in France, which waited until four days after the executions before announcing that the French ambassador to Madrid, who was in Paris for personal reasons, would be delayed in returning to Spain.) Some prime ministers, Joop Den Uyl of the Netherlands and Olaf Palme of Sweden, for instance, denounced the senile Spanish dictator in terms rarely used of the "government" level by bourgeois statesmen. Mexicon President Luis Echeverria proposed to expel Spain from the United Nations until the regime is changed. What is the explanation for these strong reactions, which go well beyond anything that happened when the Basque revolutionary nationalists were condemned to death during the Burgos trials in 1970 or when Salvador Puig Anfich was actually executed in 1974? First, the mass reactions among the organized workers movement and the working class in general were much. wider and more universal this time, thus exerting greater pressure on the political establishment in the bourgeois-
REACT democratic countries. The systematic campaign of preparation and mobilization waged by united-front committees animated by far-left organizations, among them the sections of the Fourth International, produced good results and sensitized working-class opinion more than in the past. The West European governments would have had to pay an extremely heavy price for ignoring the wave of revulsion and mobilization that spread throughout the workers movement. They chose not to pay that price. Second, ever since the infamous "nonintervention" policy of the French Popular Front government (led by the Social Democratic Prime Minister Leon Blum) during the Spanish civil war, the Franco dictatorship in particular and the "Spanish question" in general have represented the "bad conscience" of West European Social Democracy. Spain also offers the Social Democratic leaders a good opportunity to "talk leff" without committing themselves to anything. Violent denunciation of a dictatorship in another country is an easy way of diverting attention from their own responsibility in whittling down democratic rights in many Western countries in which they share responsibility for government policies, like the repressive legislation enacted by the Social Democratic government in West Germany or the wage-freeze measures taken by the Labour government in Britain. On this occasion, however, the violence of mass sentiment and mass reaction forced them to make some gestures, to go beyond purely verbal denunciations. Withdrawing ambassadors seemed a good way out, be-