PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS all the workers: No worker must be sentenced by the court! Boycott the court! Refuse to pay the fines! If the bosses try to collect the fines by withholding wages, we must strike once again. FRANCE THE WORKERS MOVEMENT AFTER Our readers are familiar with the problems with which French capitalism is faced after the results of the May 19 presidential election (revolutionary rise of the masses, collapse of Gaullism, lack of solid bourgeois political structures). But the relative success of the Union de la Gauche (Union of the Left, the bloc of the Communist and Socialist parties supported by the "left radical" grouping) in the election has also posed new problems within the French workers movement, and more particularly within the French Communist party. Thèse problems had already asserted themselves after the March 1973 legislative elections, but now they are taking an ever clearer form. First, let us recall that when François Mitterrand took over leadership of the Socialist party he had to overcome the bankruptcy that had resulted from the policy the Guy Mollet leadership had been following since the end of the second world war, a bankruptcy that was reflected in the 5 percent of the vote received by SP candidate Gaston Deferre in the presidential elections of 1969. Mitterrand claimed that by orienting the policy of the SP toward seeking an alliance with the CP he was beginning to "rebalance" the French workers movement, that is, to reduce the disproportion between the two workers parties. To those who reproached him with having sat down to dinner with the devil while not possessing a very big spoon, he replied that he would make his party a valuable interlocutor within the Union de la Gauche. Mitterrand has effectively attained this initial goal of "rebalancing" the French workers movement. He has done even more than that. The form his campaign took and the way it was waged devolved essentially to the benefit of the Socialist party. To be sure, the CP also made gains: its leaders were recognized as "potential ministers. " But potential ministers are not yet ministers. In practice, the CP served mainly as a "point of support" for the Mitterrand candidacy and not as a motive force leading the compaign. For many years (and still in the March 1973 legislative elections) the CP had been winning more votes than the SP. Formally, the 13 million votes cast for the Union de la Gauche in the presidential campaign cannot be broken down, but all the polls indicate that the CP did not get much more than its usual 5 million or 5 and a half million votes, which means that the SP now ap-
This is the way to prepare an active working-class response to the coming attacks of the bourgeoisie. It is through the development of these struggles that the purely parliamentary orientation of the labor movement can be broken down in practice. Trem the by PIERRE FRANK pears to have an electoral potential superior to that of the CP. Moreover, while the CP is marking time or growing only slightly in the present situation, the SP is recruiting massively and is experiencing a sensational comeback -- to such an extent that it is no longer certain that the CP will be able to describe itself as the "first workers party." To be sure, the CP is still much more strongly implanted in the great battalions of the working class (metalworkers, railroad workers, construction workers, dockers, miners, etc.), and the support of many members of the CFDT (Confedération Française
CP leader Georges Marchais: with an open heart. 29
FRANCE Démocratique du Travail -- French Democratic Confederation of Labor) for the SP will not be able to significantly modify this situation. But just the same we are in a new situation, one in which the SP is no longer simply a party of elected officials. For the first time in a very long while it is recruiting workers. And there is another change. In the past, the SP always stood politically to the right of the CP, with the CP making gains on its right at the expense of the SP (an example being what happened in the teachers union). The CP began to experience difficulties on its left only after May '68. But now the SP is gaining not only on the right -- that is, among people who formerly voted for the bourgeois parties -- but is also making gains to the left of the CP, recruiting members of the PSU (Parti Socialiste Unifié -- United Socialist party, a centrist formation), the CFDT, and among the broad periphery that for the past several years has been (and still is) sympathetic to the far left. Thus, for the first time, the CP finds itself boxed in by the SP so to speak both on its right and on its left. So the current situation is not only new from a numerical standpoint, but also in the sense that the CP no longer has the initiative over the SP in all spheres the way it used to. Let us also mention -- even though this is not an element that really counts on the level of the masses -- that for some time the CP has been experiencing friction with the Kremlin; the Kremlin has been using the CP to avert a shift in French foreign policy, but it does not intend to aid the CP in coming to power along with an SP whose hardly pro-Soviet Europeanism the Kremlin still fears. The new situation therefore poses serious problems for the leadership of the French CP. It is advertising its satisfaction with the general results of the Union de la Gauche and is publicly saying that it is good that the CP and the SP are growing at the same time; but it is not unaware of the difficulties we have just mentioned. The fact is that the policy of the Union de la Gauche serves the SP better than the CP, since the SP adopted this policy only three years ago while the CP has been calling for it for fifteen years and lacks any alternative policy. Also, the CP leadership is trying to extract itself from this situation. First of all, after a period of silence, it has again taken up its attacks against the "ultraleftist" danger, directing them at members of the CP who did not understand why their party did not have its own candidate in the first round and who do not want to do all the leg work for the SP. Further, while insisting on the Union de la Gauche and its Common Program, the CP leadership is declaring that this does not imply that the Union de la Gauche or the Common Program necessarily constitute a passage to socialism; it is also outbidding the Gaullists on the question of "national independence, " construction of the Concorde supersonic aircraft, etc., hoping in this way to win over a part of the Gaullist electorate during the inevitable decomposition of the UDR (the Gaullist party) .
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The CP leadership is clearly seeking to attenuate as much as possible the effect of the conference that the SP leaders are also preparing for September with a view to "assembling" all the socialists who supported the Mitterrand candidacy, that is, apart from the SP, the leadership of a section of the PSU, the members of the CFDT, and various other groupings. The SP leadership is seeking to use its electoral success to strengthen and consolidate the positions of its party. (In less than three months we will see how much it will succeed in this.) The leadership of the CP also wants to divert the attention of its own membership from the problems that the new situation can create for them, so it is hurrying to direct their thoughts and actions around themes that it puts forward itself. But such measures --a policy that is more rightist in its form -- will not be able to elicit a real response, nor will it be a real solution to the problems raised by the revolutionary rise and the new relationship of forces in the workers movement. But the CP leadership will not get very far with this shift to the right -- which is not a real change in policy. In the immediate future, the CP leadership wants to give the impression that it is "renewing" the party, and to do this it has resorted to organizational gimmicks. First there is the so-called "with an open heart" campaign, which utilizes modern advertising methods. Everyone is invited to participate in meetings of cells, sections, or federal committees every week or two. Instead of going to the neighborhood movie house, go to the neighborhood cell meeting! The other, more important, measure is the convocation of a special CP congress in September. Why is this congress, which will not even have the formal "preparation" of previous congresses because it will be held right after vacations, being held? Let us sum up this new situation, which has so far only been sketched out and which will assert itself in more detail in coming months. For decades, the French workers movement has had two reformist parties, the SP more to the right, the CP more to the left. During the 1936 upsurge, the SP held numerical superiority, but since then the the CP has experienced a stronger dynamic of development than the SP. The CP had the numerical advantage during the 1945-47 upsurge, and after that it continued to grow, while the SP began to decline. The far left scarcely existed during these two upsurges. In the upsurge that began in May 1968, the formation of the
Union de la Gauche (the vehicle developed by the two reformist parties to canalize and block the upsurge) has led to the initiative and advantage little by little sliding toward the SP. But in this upsurge there is a far left, a substantial number of revolutionary Marxists. This is also a new situation for revolutionary Marxists in the French workers movement.
Their general orientation is determined by the tasks posed by this upsurge, which is affecting all Western Europe. They will have to apply this orientation under the new conditions of the structure of the workers movement: an SP that will be able to assemble a part of the centrist current born of this upsurge, a
CP that is facing difficulties on both its right and its left that it has never before experienced. In the immediate future the revolutionary Marxists will show the greatest possible number of militants who might be fooled by the SP "assembling" operation how fraudulent the operation really is. This immediate task in regard to relatively restricted layers is located within the context of the general struggle to give a revolutionary leadership to a workers movement in recomposition.
VIEINAMESE REFUCEES
HONG KONG 118 DEPORTEDTO SAIGON The war in Vietnam is not merely civil war between the reactionary Saigon regime and the liberation forces, the NLF and the DRV. Nor is it solely a struggle between American imperialism and the Vietnamese revolution. It is also a war of suppression of the Vietnamese people by the Saigon government. This is fully demonstrated by the tragedy inflicted on 118 Vietnamese refugees during the past two weeks. It began on June 2, when the British colonial government of Hong Kong arrested 119 Vietnamese refugees of Chinese origin at Lamma Island Channel on charges of having entered Hong Kong illegally. Among the refugees were 92 young men of draft age; the rest were women and children. They had risked their lives to escape the war, paying sums amounting to USS1, 300 each to a smuggling ring. After their arrests, they were held by the colonial government, which took an elusive stand unresponsive to the demands of friends and relatives of the refugees that they be allowed to settle in Hong Kong. It was later revealed that the fate of the refugees had already been decided by a secret deal between the colonial government and the Saigon regime. Meanwhile, Amnesty International of London and its Hong Kong branch, unaware of the secret deal and under the impression that the situation was not wholly lost, initiated negotiations with the Swedish, Dutch, French, Australian, and Macao governments, seeking to wres! the refugees from the cruelty of war and the repressive apparatus of the Saigon regime. For a while, developments seemed promising. The governor of Hong Kong, who was then in London, agreed to discuss with Amnesty International. But to no avail, for by that time the colonial government had already decided to deport the refugees. The governor's agreement to negotiate was nothing but a farce. The climax came on the night of June 16. In the middle of the night two planes sent by Saigon landed at Kaitak airport. It was obviously an attempt to get rid of the refugees quickly and quietly, before any mass protest could develop. But the plan had been leaked to friends and relatives of the sympathizer in the police). Hundreds of supporters rushed to the airport. Some hoped to see their relatives one last time. Others intended to free the refugees from the colonial government, for they knew that their lives would be in danger once they were returned to Saigon. The refugees' supporters were barred from seeing the refugees. They then raised a thirtyfoot banner that read, "We protest against the inhuman liqui-
_by S.S. WU dation of the Vietnamese refugees by the Hong Kong government! " Scuffles between the demonstrators and the police and riot police broke out. The police attacked the crowd with clubs; some cops took out their revolvers. A number of the protesters were injured. The protesters then broke out onto the runway. They smashed two windows of the plane. Heavily armed police intervened, arresting twenty-two protesters and eleven reporters. Altentrances to the airport were shut down and guarded by police armed with automatic rifles. It was under such conditions that 118 of the refugees were flown back to Saigon on the morning of June 17. One person, who was a Hong Kong citizen by birth, was allowed to remain. The next morning the refugees' relatives, along with members of the Daily Fighting Group (a revolutionary Marxist group), and the Federation of Hong Kong students protested at the consulate of South Vietnam. At the initiative of the refugees' relatives, the procession also went to the New China News Agency (Peking's de facto representative in Hong Kong). But the appeal to the Peking government was for nought. The June 18 issue of the daily Wah Kiu Pao wrote, "Right after the arrest was made by the (Hong Kong) government, an intensive investigation was conducted and approaches were made to London,