GREECE: Прострі Awy TY XupwY, сушдіте! Since the general strike and mobilization of the Greek working class on May 24 and 25 (see INPRECOR, No. 53, June 10, 1976), the Caramanlis government has escalated its repression against the leff and the labor movement. The strike and mobilization had been called to fight against passage of government anti-labor legislation that virtually bans strikes and institutionalizes state control of the trode unions. The purpose of the current intensification of repression is to drive the labor axes that common octivity between the Trotskyists of the LCI and PRT will be able to lead to the unificafion of the two organizations into a Portuguese section of the Fourth International in a favorable position to constitute an alternative pole to the capitulations of the reformists and the ultraleftism and centrism of the majority of the presently existing revolutionary organizations. July 13, 1976 FOOTNOTES:
1. On the economic situation, the projects of the go vernment, and a detailed analysis of the election results, see INPRECOR, No.55, July 8, 1976.
2. See the comparative table of results in the presidential and legislative elections, in INPRECOR, No.55.
3. MES: Movimento de Esquerda Socialista — Left Socialist Movement; PRP: Partido Revolucionário do Proletariado — Revolutionory party of the Proletariat; FSP: Frente Socialista Popular - Popular Socialist Front.
4. See INPRECOR, No.53, June 10, 1976.
5. See INPRECOR, No.52, May 27, 1976.
6. GDUP: Grupos Dinamizodores de Unidade Popular - Popular Unity Dynamizing Groups.
7. Anuário Estatistico, 1973, Vol.1, p.16ff. PubTished by INE. movement into an increasingly defensive position so that the government will have a free hand to pass the rest of its package of reactionary legislation without facing the sort of mass resistance it hod to contend with in May. Essentially, the proposed new legislation aims at restricting the right of assembly and demonstration. It includes
15
GREECE a law authorizing the police to open fire on any rally or demonstration whose participants refuse to disperse at police command. Another law limits freedom of the press and in circulation. In fact, both these laws are far more reactionary than the corresponding ones that were in force during the period of the military dictatorship. The repressive apparatus has begun enforcing these laws even before their passage by parliament. Dozens of young militants have been arrested for selling left papers on the streets, which is prohibited by the law the government is now preparing, and for distributing leaflets. Under the application of the anti-labor law passed in May, some 500 trade unionists have been fired, most of them because of the strikes of May 24-25 agairst this very law. After sentencing thirteen militants to prison terms ranging from five months to two years on charges growing out of the brutal police assault on demonstrators May 24-25, the government has now launched a new round of persecution of the alleged "instigators" of the May 24-25 actions. This new round is directed first of all against the far-left organizations, but in reality if is aimed at the labor movement as a whole, for the formulation of the charges is such that the same accusations may be filed against anyone who writes or speaks against government policies. During the past week dozens of militants have been interrogated by the secret police under the pretext that the articles in the newspapers of their organizations and the leaflets they have distributed indicate that they, "together with the other members of their organization, inciled the crowd to throw stones at policemen and to engage in violence against the police and the state." To give an idea of what these "extremists" actually wrote in their papers and leaflets, here is a quotation from a leaflet of the Organization of Internationalist Communists of Greece (OICG, Greek section of the Fourth International), on which the accusation is based: *We shall demand of the reformist leaderships that they broaden, coordinate, and escalate the struggle against the anti-labor draft law on a national scale, through union assemblies and the election of struggle committees to coordinate the struggle on a trade-union, city, regional, and national scale, On the basis of this paragraph, two members of the OICG, Giannis Felekis and Aleka Felekis- Ambaris, have been accused of being leaders of the OICG responsible for "instigating" the May 24-25 events. The accusation is formulated in such a way that it can be applied to anyone the secret police suspects of being a member of the OICG. According to existing legislafion, the possible prison sentences in this case are the same as those in the cases of those charged with having "conducted" the May 24-25 evenh: between five months and two years. The current attack on the labor movement and its politIcal organizations was prepared by a weeks-long campaign by the bourgeois press, the government, and the 16 state-controlled mass media. Long front-page articles with huge titles have been published demanding the smashing of extremist organizations, particularly the Trotskyist ones, because of the consistent role they have played in the struggle against the anti-labor legislation. This compaign has gone hand in hand with a coordinated campaign by the League of Greek Industrialists, which has included layoffs and lockouts aimed at smashing the wave of strikes. The two Communist parties have remained silent about this persecution and the imprisonment of those arrested on May 24-25. The Maoist groups, which have a rather broad influence, have also remained inactive, for their political analysis claims that any attack on the Caramanlis goverment would harm the anti-superpower bloc and would not be correct, since the main enemy of this stage is social imperialism." The centrist groups, the OICG, and two other Trotskyist groups, the Revolutionary Communist Front and the Internationalist Communist League (the latter was formed after a split in the Healyite organization in Greece) have initiated a defense campaign against the repression, in defense of democratic rights, and for the continuation of the struggle to repeal the anti-labor legislation. This campaign has included leaflets, posters, petitions, rallies in the streets, city centers, factories, and working-class neighborhoods, as well as press conferences and demonstrations. The government repression marks an important turn in Greek politics, It is the end of the period during which the bourgeois government followed a policy of selective repression aimed at maintaining the illusions of the masses so as to gain the time needed to stabilize the state and repressive apparatus and institutionalize repression of the labor movement. It also marks the beginning of an open and generalized repression, the initiation of an effort by the government to revive the anticommunist hysteria of the period that followed the civil war. It is, however, impossible to reestablish such an anticommunist hysteria today. But what the government can succeed in is to give fascist and reactionary elements a green light to step up their terrorist attacks on bookstores, headquarters, and individual militants of the left, attacks that are always conducted with the collaboration of the state apparatus and its repressive branches. It is this context that accounts for the recent assaults with arms and grenades on two headquarters of the Communist party (exterior) and the firebombing of left bookstores just after Caramanlis's statement that *the left and the labor movement are resporsible for all the problems." The vigilance and mobilization of the world working class and its organizations, especially in Europe, is needed for the maintenance and broadening of the frogile democratic rights the Greek workers and students have wan at the cost of all the blood shed in the struggle against the military dictatorship. O
THE RISE OFTHE SPANISH