The workers wanted a general strike awn germent was clearly running strong.
The end of the Easter holidays was marked by a spectacular resumption of mass protests against the wage settlement imposed by the Schlueter government on all Danish workers. On Wednesday, April 10, a huge mass rally took place in front of the Danish parliament building, perhaps even larger than the March 29 demonstration, which was already reckoned to be the largest seen in the country since the Second World War. Once again the main centers were paralyzed by a de facto general strike. Workers rallied outside union headquarters demanding that their organizations open up the strike funds. Such action by the unions would mean direct defiance of the law, since after the parliament imposed a settlement all strikes became illegal and any move by labor leaders to support strike activity makes them liable to draconian fines.
Even the long Easter holiday had failed to break the momentum. A number of picket lines were maintained over the vacation period, cutting off oil supplies to Copenhagen and stopping some transport systems. In the Danish capital, where nearly half the country's population is concentrated, the bus drivers worked, but put up signs in their buses saying: "We're driving so that people can visit their families and friends during the Easter holiday and discuss how we can get rid of this government." The day people should have returned to their jobs, Tuesday, April 9, transport in the population centers was blocked by picket lines and a number of workplaces went out. Most of the participants in the April 10 demonstration who were interviewed on BBC-4 radio expressed strong support for
The sentiment for a general strike Gerry FOLEY
The upsurge of militancy brought an overflow attendance at the Copenhagen area shop stewards' meeting on April 9. Three thousand shop stewards crowded into the hall, and another thousand gathered outside. "A motion calling for the convening of a national shop stewards' meeting to organize an all-out general strike would have carried," Soeren Soendergaard, a leader of the Danish section of the Fourth International, told me in a telephone interview.
However, the chairperson was a member of the CP and managed to prevent such a motion from reaching the floor.
So the meeting called a national day of action for Wednesday, resulting in another de facto general strike, but offered no perspective for organizing the fight beyond that.
"Only a national shop stewards' meeting could organize a general strike," Soendergaard said, "since the union leaderships and the major workers parties are against it"- With no perspective for continuing the fight, after large numbers of workers had already been on strike for three weeks, about two thirds of the strikers returned to their jobs on Thursday. On that day also the Communist Party began to oppose a general strike openly.
Thus the CP seemed well on the way to liquidating the second general strike movement in postwar Danish history.
It was the Communist Party that defused the general strike of 1956. Two years after that, the CP split and lost its position as a major political force in the country. In the immediate sense, this crisis was the outgrowth of the reaction against the crushing of the Hungarian 8 to force out the a general strike to force the government to resign.
revolution. But the way was prepared for it by the steady decline of the CP in the 1950s, in which its betrayal in the 1956 general strike was a factor.
The Communist Party started out in a strong position after the Second World War because of the role it played in the resistance. In the first election after the war, the CP got 12% of the vote and was able to challenge the Social Democrats in the labor movement. This historically weakened the control of the Social Democracy over the labor movement. But after the 1958 split, the CP's vote in the parliamentary elections fell to a low of 0.6%. On the other hand, since the CP was excluded from the parliament, in order to survive as a political force, it had to build a rank-and-file movement in the unions. On the basis of a series of strong strikes at the end of the 1960s, it gave impetus to the development of the shop stewards organizations. Its influence here has now enabled it once again to defuse a decisive workers struggle at the key moment.
Following the failure of the Copenhagen shop stewards' meeting on April 9 to offer a lead, on Friday April 12, most workers had gone back. Strikes continued mainly where leading activists were fired. In fact, the rightist govern-
Carving up the unions for the benefit of the bosses (DR)
DA
International Viewpoint 22 April 1985
ment responded to the rise of the strike movement with a brutal repression that was a smaller version of the methods Thatcher used against the striking coal miners. Before the Easter holidays, the police attacked a demonstration in the city of Odensee, putting sixty people in the hospital. On April 11, they attacked a picket line at the main railway station in Copenhagen so violently that they provoked the first strike at least since the Second World War by the train drivers, who are legally prohibited from striking. The train drivers stopped work for an hour in protest against the brutality of the police.
Large numbers of activists were dragged off by the police. They were quickly released, but it is likely that the government will bring charges against them and victimize them when the strikes and protests ebb. Workplace activists, including shop stewards, across the country have been fired. Danish Fourth Internationalists playing an important role
Members of the Danish section of the Fourth International, the Socialist Workers Party (SAP), have been playing leading roles in the strike in many workplaces, and a number of them have also been fired. The SAP is beginning a campaign to defend them. If the protest movement is demobilized, as appears to be happening, the defense of the large number of victimized class-struggle fighters will become an important task for supporters of democratic and trade union rights in Denmark and internationally.
The April 12 shop stewards meeting in Copenhagen was probably the last chance to give new impetus to the strike movement. The SAP supported a motion from shop stewards representing 4,500 workers at a Copenhagen brewery calling for the meeting and representatives of major workplaces in particular to support a call for forming a national strike committee. The CP shop stewards were the decisive force in defeating it. The real attitude of the CP thus became clear to the workers vanguard, even though here they agreed to a national shop stewards meeting April 18, when it can be expected that the momentum of the strikes will have been lost.
Also in some workplaces, like the Aarhus shipyards, there has been a hardon confrontation between CP and revolutionary shop stewards. At Aarhus, the SAP activists have played a crucial role in keeping the yards out.
In Denmark today, unlike in 1956, there is a new layer of union militants formed by the struggles at the end of the 1960s. They have now gone through a powertul political experience. There is also a presence of revolutionary activists in the workplace and unions who can begin to crystallize an alternative, even if this strike movement ends in defeat, as now seems likely. International Viewpoint 22 April 1985
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