SPAIN - THE SAME IT PAPER WORKS pro-Junta magazine Ercilla carried of.a fire in July at a paper and ard works owned by the big Edadri firm. The fire was clear: t of sabotage, coinciding with a spute over reduction of perred by the bosses. According a. Ina biaze aestroyed ended for the tailed reply for obvious reassecurity. But I can give you imple without being too specmportant shipyard was on nt of closing, and regular ladn't been paid for several . One of our militants sucen mobilising the whole of kforce, and they gathered of the firm's offices to demir money. A motion to this vas sent to the tribunal of conflicts. e passed, and as work didn't the bosses eventually agreed e up the arrears. That doesn't ery much. But for the workers ard, this little victory had a portance. It restored their conin the possibility of struggle. one example of our comrades' We are very aware of our own Alimitations and our weaknesses, faced with the enormity of the tasks facing Chilean revolutionaries and the extraordinary difficulties confronting them. But we believe that the possibilities of developing our work in Chile are real and important, even though we have no illusions about the extent of the defeat suffered by the Chilean working class.
In the past two years we have managed to hold two congresses, which have permitted us to unify the organisation politically. Our numbers have multiplied sixfold. We have developed from a tiny nueleus of militants to become a small but solid political organisation - an organisation in the process of carving out a real political presence in important sections of the working G25S The degree of conscious political commitment and courage which it requires to be a member of a revolutionary organisation in Chile is one indication of the quality of the militants who are engaged in building our organisation.
At the moment we are doing everything possible to strengthen one to replace him. now Minister of Foreign Affairs. War. his position for one simple reason - the different factions fighting it out inside the dictatorship cannot agree on anyOn one side there is the King and his backers: such people as Fraga Iribarne (previously Spanish ambassador to Britain). the new Minister of the Interior, and the Count of Motrico.
These men are Francoists to the core. Fraga Iribarne was Franco's Minister of Information for seven years, and drafted the press law under which Spanish newspapers are today regularly fined and suppressed for the least criticism of the regime. The Count of Motrico was a Franco supporter during the civil war, and was made mayor of the Basque city of Bilbao after the Franco forces captured it in 1937. He also served as Franco's ambassador to Argentina, where he negotiateu the important trade deals that kept the dictatorship afloat in the difficult years after the war, before becoming Spanish ambassador to the US at the height of the Cold However these veteran reactionaries are also closely tied to the most important circles of the Spanish capitalist class. They share the view that the existing policy of repression cannot work indefinitely, and should be replaced by a moderate programme of reforms designed to make Spain 'accJUAN CARLOS-put up by Franco to rule Spain eptable' in the rest of Europe. This would allow the ruling classes of 'democratic' Europe to bring Spain into the EEC and throw their collective weight behind the Spanish From the history of these men it is obvious just what they mean by "democracy' - a few changes that would still leave intact the Francoist engine of repression that has kept the Spanish working class down for torty years.
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