The Fourth Internationalists
Martens-Gol out. It's an illusion to think that this government is going to
It has to be thrown change its policy.
in the Belgian out.
- Neither Martens-Gol, nor Martenspublic workers strike
Spitaels (3) but a workers government.
A coalition government between the SP and the PSC-CVP will not solve any-
We need a government put in by a thing.
general strike and based on a trade-union united front. We need a government that itself to meeting all the will commit workers demands.
This government question was discussed a great deal during the strike. A lot of people asked "What are we going to put in to replace Martens-Gol?"
This is a crucial question.
As long as the trade- union movement has no alternative on this level, trade-union struggles cannot go all the way.
There is already a plan for such an alternative in the trade-union movement
It was worked out by the congress of teachers unions affiliated to the CGSP
Red flag placed by pickets (DR)
Froccia do/ Solo
10
A. TONDEUR The LRI railway workers were obviously the first to be affected by the conflict, which began in Charleroi. When the bureaucracy was still groping to see if it had to issue a national strike call, on Monday morning, the LRT railway workers in Ghent, Antwerp, and Louvain, for example, were working actively to extend the strike.
DON'T PUT THE CART BEFORE THE HORSE
In the second phase, public service workers explained in their workplaces and in their trade-union organizations that the struggle launched by workers was everybody's fight, and that it should be carried forward into a general strike in both the public and private sectors.
The very numerous sectoral and subsectoral union meetings that were held made it possible for them to see this view was shared by the great majority of the union members, and to explain that the struggle needed to be focused around a clear objective that could mobilize people - that is, the demand that the government rescind all its measures.
"This means not only the specific measures against the public workers but all the measures taken against the working class in the framework of the 1984 budget," the LRT members said in substance.
This point of view naturally led to arguing that it was necessary to build an all-sector general strike. The LRT members in the public services could see how much this slogan, which had been propagated for months by our party, corresponded to the climate of mobilization in these past weeks.
But it would have been wrong to put the cart before the horse. In the first days of the workers were the only ones to come out, the No. 1 task was to get a national strike call for all the public services.
As soon as this call came down, the LRT union activists, like all other fighttrade-unionists, faced the tasks of organizing the strike. They had to motivate and mobilize their fellow work-
This was essential to keep the strike from being a passive one.
Pickets had to be organized. In a lot of services, the railways in particular, the jobs are very dispersed. Coordination had to be organized between the various sectors and the two union confed-
ORGANIZE AND REINFORCE THE STRIKE
The response of the LRT union activists to these questions was the same everywhere: "In order to make the strike as effective as possible, we have to unite the two sectors and organize," this is what the LRT activists said everywhere.
This was made concrete by proposing regular, even daily, general assemblies of workers in all sectors with freedom of speech for all.
Such assemblies functioned in many centers. This was the case in Antwerp, Alost, Malines, Le Centre, Ath, Louvain And the LRT members played an active role, sometimes a leading one.
In Malines, for example, it was on the basis of such an assembly that a march was formed to go bring out the workers at the SNCB railway yard. In Ghent, Brussels, Liege, and Charlerois on the other hand, the union leadership was able to prevent meetings. And this had its effect on the organization of the strike.
The most advanced experience of organization was in Antwerp, where a united strike committee was set up. LRT comrades, including Paul Otte, played a key role.
### EXTENSION
TO THE PRIVATE SECTOR
The problem of extending the strike to the private sector was discussed by LRT members. Everyone saw the chance to pursue this opening to get all of the forces of the working class into action.
maneous take thou
formal call.
So, the main efforts of the LRT union activists in the private sector were focused on the unions. They demanded assemblies, executive committee meetings, all-trades regional congresses, etc. to discuss the situation and give a lead to the workers.
Unionists gather outside Catholic union headquarters, calling on them to join strike (DR)
The LRT activists waged this campaign on all levels, from the individual plant to the national leadership of the confederations.
Our comrade Andre Henry played an important role in the strike at the Glaverbel glass factory in the Charleroi region.
The LRT also intervened as a party, by selling its paper and distributing leaflets, in particular a leaflet calling for extending the strike against Martens-Gol to the private sector.
A CLEAR POLITICAL PERSPECTIVE
The real influence that the LRT activists gained in the public workers strike can only be understood if you take into account two elements: The first is that they were present on the ground, often in the very center of the struggle. The second is that they had a political line that corresponded to the aspirations of the masses of workers.
The LRT's political intervention was on two levels:
1) We put forward immediate demands, such as the call for the rejection of all the government's measures and re. jection of all the government's measures and rejection of the 1984 budget as a whole. "You have to get the money where it is," the idea has spread and is being taken up now in circles much broader than our party.
Such demands made it possible to give a concrete form to our perspective of unity in struggle of the working class, between the private and public sectors, between Flemish and Walloon, between FGTB and CSC.
To promote unity, since the LRT has a base in both parts of the country, we were able to take concrete initiatives to establish contacts between Femish and Walloon strikers. All such initiatives that we made proved very successful.
Basing ourselves on the political consciousness of the workers, which marked this strike, we tried to orient it toward a central political objective the ouster of the Martens-Gol government.
The clarity of the LRT's political line on this question gained respect for our party not just for the role played by LRT activists in the struggle but for the political weapons it offered to activists engaged in the political debate.
The course of the strike and above all its outcome have shown that there was no way to get around the question of an alternative to Martens-Gol.
Many• trade-union leaders said that their aim was not to change the government but to force it to change its policy. This is true, for example both of the Communist Party and the Labor Party of Belgium (PTB) (a group of Maoist