to develop international solidarity in workers' struggles.
Many of the interventions of the Fourth International are of course limited in scale, and consist of putting workers in various countries in contact with each other. For example, in the struggle at Rhone-Progit it was Trotskyist militants who were able to play a role in establishing contact between the various chemical factories, while in the case of Fiat-SEAT it was Trotskyist militants who were able to take initiatives both in Turin and at the SEAT plants.
In other cases, Trotskyists have been in the lead in establishing solidarity with struggles which, while they do not have. the impact of something like Lip, are nevertheless of real significance in an atra. For example, when workers at Uniprint in Denmark occupied their factory- the first real fight back against «temple, Cat in Iat country-le sections of the Fourth International were able to play a role in establishing not only support committees in Denmark but also in creating them in Sweden.
However with the development of the class struggle, and with the development of its own forces, the Fourth International is beginning to be able to go beyond such relatively simple acts of solidarity and set in motion real internatonal campaigns on a broader scale. Undoubtedly the most important examples of this have been the lip struggle and the strike of the Belgian glass workers of Glaverbel-Gilly.
LIP The first really ambitious international solidarity campaign around a major trade union struggle which the Fourth International has been able to develop in recent years was that around the Lip dispute. Inside France itself the Trot skyists played a leading role in organising VIVE L EUROPE FO The forces of the Fourth International are very limited. Most of its internationally organised campaigns are devoted to great issues such as Vietnam, Chile and Portugal. This is not merely objectively correct-these issues weigh far more greatly in the relationship of forces between the classes than any trade union struggle-but it also corresponds to the way in which the working class has historically always begun to develop an international consciousness.
Nevertheless, with the limited resources it does possess, the organisations of the experience of these struggles. What is more, the Fourth International is support committees for this struggle and in mobilising for the 100,000 strong solidarity demonstration which took place in September 1973. But this solidarity campaign was alsu extended abroad with solidarity meetings, collec tions and other support organised in Sweden, Belgium, Britain, Switzerland and many other countries Joint issues of the French and Swiss Trotskyist Dewsospers were oroduced and the Swiss section of the Fl distributed the demands and solidarity material produced at Lip to watch factories in Switzerland, where redundancy Was also a threat. In many cases these demands were pinned to notice boards in the factories and some were also adopted as demands of the Swiss workets. Finally, the French and Swiss Trotskyists were able to play a role in organising the joint demonstration of French and Swiss workers in solidarity with the Lip struggle at La Chaux-de Fonds, HOSPITAL What was particularly remarkable about this Lip solidarity was not only the general impact it had in popularising the struggle and gaining support, but in the very direct way it then interacted with the trade union strugele in Swizerland itself.
Charles Piaget, the leader of the Lip strike action committee, and other Lip workers, spoke at many solidarity meetings in Geneva and these coincided with the development of a struggle amongst hospital workers in that town. The Lif were popularising their struggle, how they kept control over negotiations, how they sought to create unity among difIcrent sections of the workforce.
IV INTERNATIONALE
workers.
Glaverbel-Gilly in Belgium. role.
They had been invoived. created. were able, from one of the most advinced workers struggles to have taken place in Europe, to pass on enormous amounts of information and experience to young militants who were trying to hing together different categories of Swiss and immigrant workers and ensure the in Paris maximum involvement of all the hospital Finally, bowever, yet another extension of international co-operation took place. While the Lip workers could give many important lessons, there are of course many specific things about a strupale in a hospital The basie question is how to maintain health care while at the same time hitting the administration.
INITIATIVE
Here again the Fourth International was able to take the initiative. At the suggestion of the revolutionaries a contade from the French city of Tours, where a successful administrative strike had already taken place, was invited to Genera to take part in a trade union un administrative strike should bo organised, and in giving concrete and detailed explanations on how to take such a struggle forward, he allowed the workers to absorb an experience which it would otherwise have taken them years to gain. What had started just as solidarity with Lip, and which did achieve real support for that fight, finished up as cooperation between workers from Toys and Lip in France, and Swiss and immigrant workers in Geneva, both in the Lip and in the Geneva hospital workers' struggle.
Another example where the Fourth International bas been able to develop a real international solidarity campaign was in the case of the glass workers of The Glaverbel factory in Gilly is part of the huge French-based multi-national BSN, which employs 73,000 workets and is part of the triangle-with St Gobain and Pilkington which controls the European glass industry. The factory at process Glaverbel has a leadership from the trade union tendency New Defence in which Trotskyists of the Belgian section of the Fourth Interpational play an important This factory had aiready been engaged in a very important struggle in 1973 in which an clected strike committee had been created to lead the factory occupation and in which the workers had main tained production during the strupale This experience had then been generalised in a second strike in 1974 in which 4.000 glass workers in the region of Charlerul This latter struggle was a combined one both for better wages and conditions and against the sackings of a union mil About half the glass factories in the region were occupied, in virtually every one a democratically clected strike committee was established, and finally an elected regional strike committee was This struggle was victorious.
CLOSURE PLAN Finally in 1975 the BSN company moved to close down Glaverbel-Gilly permanently. Rapid solidarity was organised in Belgiurn. The 600 workers of the factory occupied and set up. a strike committee to continue production which was sold to raise strike funds. A solidarity congress involving 5O0 Irade union delegates representing several tens of thousand of workers was held, International solidarity was developedmarlicularly by the French section of the Addres Fourth International. An eight page special supplement du the Helsian and In Germany solidarity bulletins were distributed by the section. Help was given in organising a demonstration of 1,000 Belgian and French glass workers, with some Germans, at the BSN main office In the end the struggle at Glaverbel-Gilly did not result in complete victory. One hundred woricers were laid off. However 500 jobs, five-sixths of the jobs in the factory, were saved. This was a Ternarkable outcome of a struggle of 600 poricers against a trust the size of BSN There is not the slightest doubt that it was the campaign of international solidarity which had a real effect in ensuring this outcome.
The Fourth International must be extremely modest about its role, It woud be insane tor a smail revolutionary organisation to attempt lo play the same role in international solidarity as should be played by the trade unions with their massive resources. The initiatives which have been taken must be seen as part of the fight against the reformist bureaucrats wilhin the trade union organisations themselves. In this direction the Fourth International has four main tasks:
Was well as the international cam paiges on the questions of the his political struggies, to carry out a campaign on an international scale for some of the most important demands of the working class movement such as the sliding scale of wages, workers control, tacties in the struggle against redundancy, ctc. There are a host of demands and examples an an international scale which can be used @to organise campaigns of international solidarity with key working class struggles such as Lip and Glaverbel-Gilly.
•to develop international co-operation between worker militants in the different countries The European workers conTerence, with the participation of representatives from the United States, which was held by the Fl last year in Belgium, was a real step forward in this #to demand continually that the unions take up their responsibilities on the international field. Central demands in this are the call for international union organisations, such as has just been set op for ICI, und the call for a European Congress of Labour to plan the struggle against the Ele and international capitalism.
The forces of the Fourth Intemational are very amall compared to what is But when the needs are great and no one cise is in a position or prepared to acl, the possibilities are also buge. H is through this work that we will begin to turn the international solidarity of the working class, and slogans such as the United Socialist States of Europe, into a living reabity.
Write co: ENG. 97 Cle
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red weekly, 24 april 1975
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the Fourth International have also been able to play a real, if still modest, role in developing international solidarity in trade union struggles and in generalising
the only organisation. particularly on a European scale, which both possesses organisations in every major capitalist country and is systematically attempting
A UNITED French sections hewspapers was produced
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