The memory of the movement
International Viewpoint, 1 and 15 June 1987
India
*The imposition of Presidential Rule in Punjab state [on May 11]... only confirms the bancruptcy of the Central government's policy" writes M. Navid. *Far from helping to contain and reduce communal polarization in Punjab, it is guaranted to make the situation worse, as the forces of law and order are let loose to widen the repression. This will further alienate the Sikh masses of the state and push them to support those sections of anti-Centre militants who argue that the only solution is the formation of a separate country ruled by a Sikh theocracy -Khalistan...
Only the construction of a truly secular, anti-communal front can point a way out of this tragic morass. In recent months, in parts of Punjab, there has been something of a revival of genuine anti-communalist activities, such as street theatre, demonstrations against terrorist killings, and unitary activities between Hindus and Sikhs in the villages. Cadre of the CPI. CPI-M and CPI-ML have played a prominent part. Whatever the failings of the political line of their parties, the secular belief and commitment of these cadres are beyond question. The success of these actions has made their organisers targets of the terrorists, hence the rise in the number of left wing cadres assassinated". *
Britain
"Socialist Outlook magazine was launched at a conference on May 9-10 1987 marking the culmination of an 18 month fusion process between currents around International and Socialist Viewpoint. Speaking on behalf of the USEC, Livo Maitan welcomed the fusion of the two magazines. He ... stressed the importance of measures to maximize the participation of women in the leadership of the Trotskyist movement". ** Spanish State
"The most important event in this pre-election period is [Basque nationalist party) Herri Batasuna's decision to campaign throughout the Spanish state. And that they have come to revolutionary organisations like the Movimiento Communista (Communist Movement, exMaoist] and our party [LCR], seeking our support. Agreement has been reached on a clearly revolutionary programme, on the basis of which we will form united-front committees to support the Herri Batasuna slate [which is] the most thoroughgoing way of expressing all the desires and reasons for opposing the government's policies. This will not be easy, after so many years of anti-Basque propaganda... but these are problers that a revolutionary organisation has to deal with". * *.*
Back issues of IV cost SUS 1.50/E1. The bound 1994 collection costs $25/£15, and older collections only $15/£10
33
International Viewpoint #267 June 1995
week without loss of salary, and a
Spain 1936: The memory tax on the highest fortunes. We think this was a programme of class demands, coupled with a clear line of opposition to the Dini of the martyrs government and its measures.
This allowed us to gather the votes of frustrated and desperate
Worlo left wing voters, including many
Ken Loach's new film "Tierra y Libertad - ordinary people who voted for a
Land and Liberty" provoked fierce debate right wing party last time around.
after its launch in Madrid earlier this year.
As Jaime Pastor reports, audiences
Our score improved in all parts of include militants themselves persecuted by the country, particularly in the the Stalinists in 1936, members of the working-class suburbs, where the
Spanish Communist Party, and a younger right is still very strong.
generation of militants eager to understand
Rifondazione is now an essential this dark page of their movement's history.
part of any potential left-wing
The Spanish Civil War of 1936 had a alliance. Our line so far is that we profound effect on the European labour
World News Reports...
have a different tactical and and socialist movement. International political perspective from the
Brgades were sent from many countries centre left, but that we are
'dissident prepared to join an electoral
But the liquidation of revolutionaries within the anti-fascist front coalition with them to defeat the by the agents of Stalin cast an especially right in the next parliamentary bitter shadow over the defeat of elections.
Republican Spain by Hitler and Mussolini.
The film itself is a moving homage to the
Franco Turigliato is a member of comrades of the Marxist Workers' the National Committee of
Unification Party (POUM) and the
Rifondazione Comunista, and one anarchists who struggled to combine the of the comrades producing anti-fascist struggle with a social revolution
Bandierra Rossa, the magazine of in the zones under Republican control.
Fourth International supporters in
Ken Loach uses the dramatised
Italy. He was interviewed by Nora experience of a member of the British
Venitia for the Belgian magazine
Communist Party who enlists in the POUM
La Gauche 10/95. * militia to introduce us to the main debates and conflicts on the left in Spain. The vitality of the debate, and the spontaneity of the actors avoids the simplification of these conflicts. The film concludes with one of the most tragic forgotten episodes of the war - the elimination of a POUM militia by an unit of the new Republican
Army led by Stalinist officers.
The great merit of this film is its contribution to restoring the memory of those Communists who struggled against
Stalinism, and who, in the midst of the
Spanish Civil war, became the victims of
Stalinist executioners, at the same time as the original Bolshevik militants were being liquidated in the Soviet Union.
The first Spanish veteran' to react to the film was Santiago Carillo. Nowadays he supports the ruling Socialist Party (PSOE).
But he telt obliged to detend his past in El
Reports...
Pais. He repeated all the old lies against those who combined war against fascism with social revolution, and accused Loach of failing to understand the nature of the anti-fascist struggle.
Several days later, former POUM youth leader Cde Solano responded in the same newspaper. He reminded Spaniards that it was not POUM which disrupted antifascist unity, but the policies which Stalin imposed on the Spanish Communist Party
(PCE) and the Catalan Unified Socialist
Party (PSUC), and which Carillo and his friends docilely followed."
Ken Loach's film was not meant to be an instrument of point-scoring, of 'I told you
34
International Viewpoint #267 June 1995
. As Solano stressed, the point of the film is to reclaim the memory of those who struggled for another kind of socialism -quite different from the Stalinist 'model' which dominated left thinking at the time. "Criticising and analysing Stalinism is a national sport now that it is dead and gone. This 'sport is so easy it hardly ears merit for its practitioners. But to expose Stalinism back then, as Leon Trotsky and a handful of others did, with their suicidal moral and intellectual energy, that was a way to sign your own death certificate. "Land and Liberty" retells the story of the suicide of the last - the only authentic Bolshevik revolutionaries." The Spanish left is still talking about the miser age in transit film. It will help the younger generation discover one of the key pages in Spanish history, and the history of the international labour movement. Let's hope that it helps many of our comrades in the Spanish Communist Party, with whom we work in the United Left (IU), to understand Stalinism better. * Who was the POUM? The POUM was founded in 1935 as a fusion of the Catalan wing of the Spanish Communist Party and the Spanish section of the Left (Trotskyist) Opposition writes Vincent Scheltiens. Trotsky himself opposed this fusion. He had urged the Left Opposition to enter the Social Democratic party, where a left wing current was developing around Largo Caballero. At its peak the POUM had 7,000 members, mainly in Catalonia. In 1936 the POUM and the anarchists entered the Catalan government. The movement's leader, Andreu Nin became Minister of Justice. Trotsky attacked this participation in a coalition government with the bourgeois parties. The POUM ministers were expelled from the government in May 1937, on Stalin's orders. The 'Communist line was that the Trotskyists were fascist agents who had infiltrated the Republican camp. The POUM and anarchist militias were crushed by force. All the remaining leaders were executed, many after torture. Despite the wide range of opinions and tradition represented in POUM, none of the leaders 'went over' to the Stalinists, and none was willing to sign an accusation of their former comrades as Trotsky-fascists' *