Use failure of the national trade union bureaucrats to take up the international struggle of the orking class has made the development of international trade union solidarity and generalisaon of national struggles much harder than is necessary. But they have not succeeded in stopng it. It is now possible to see a real development of international solidarity organised at a nk and file level.
Some of the most important recent examples this have been.
During the 1969 strike at the Belgian Ford ant at Genk, the workers contacted the Ford ant at Cologne in West Germany, The German orkers promised not to allow men to be sent Genk to do various vital jobs and not to low work from Belgium.to be transferred to est Germany.
-When the AZKO chemical trust threatened lay off 0,500 workers in four countries. ere were simultaneously organsed occupations the Dutch and German plants.
Worker at Rhone Proyil, part of the multitional Khone-Poulenc company, cut production phenol from 280 to 140 tons as part of an dustrial action The company threatened to ove production elsewhere or to obtain other pplies The workers immediately got in touch phone with the factory shop stewards at ayer in Cologne and Montedison in southern aly. The Bayer workers immediately replied at they wouldn't produce any extra phenol. ontedison replied that there was no problem they were on strike any way!
- During the long struggle for recognition the United Farm Workers in the United ates in the late 1960% the Union sent a full ne worker to Europe to organise dockers lo ycolt Californian grapes. This struggle cruded workers in Sweden, Britain and other By failing to take up practical European solidarity action in workers CONSTRIKE out at SEAT in June-October 1971, Agnelli was forced to give up his plan. But during the June October struggle another significant event took place. the French CGT union federalion, logether with the CGIL (both dominated by the Communist Party), sent a delegate to Spain. They asked a merber of the Spanish Communist Party to come and address the workers at Renault and Fiat. Clearly it was n chance for the CP to play up its internationalist intage while at the same time developing a purely verbal solidarity.
An alternative, however, was proposed by = militant in the workers commissions (underground unions). Very simply, he sugpested: *The delegare shoald be elected on the basis of a concrete programme of international solidarity. He proposed that a 'permanent baison
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