The legacy of the 'Easter rebellion' For three weeks around Easter, the Danish working class mobilized against the conservative government and the national labor contract that it imposed by law. This was the biggest mass movement since the Second World War, fitting into a general context of rising class confrontations throughout Europe.
The situation that made it possible for a "widespread" conflict to develop within a few days into an all-embracing general strike started to take form with the change of government in 1982. What was involved, in fact, was not an ordinary change of government but a turn by the bourgeoisie away from eighty years of class collaborationism.
Over the previous 35 years, there had been an almost unbroken chain of Social Democratic minority governments. But the deepening of the economic crisis meant that the bourgeoisie had to resort to more drastic solutions than the Social Democrats could go along with - cutting social services and wages and breaking the influence of the unions. It was for that purpose that the conservative Poul Schlueter took over the government.
to class collaborationism. But its partner, the bourgeoisie, has rejected this. And, on the other side, the demands from the workers are growing for the Social Democracy to offer an alternative to the bourgeois government.
So, the strategy of the Social Democ racy for the entire period has been let the bourgeois parties gover for the whole four-year maximum that they can remain in office befom calling an election. It has, thus, a maine hope of getting the opportunity "restore" the workers' standard of living. But the question is whether this strategs will ever be realistic.
So far, in any case, this line has led the Social Democracy to hold back every mobilization that could have led to the government's fall. The union leaders remain committed to class collaboration, which is the basis of their well paying jobs. But at the same time, a large part of the union bureaucracy has been subjected to direct pressure from the membership to give moral and economic support to groups of workers involved in struggles.
Such pressure from the membership has been particularly strong in the country's biggest union, the SiD [Speciellearbeiderfoerbund i Danmark Federation of General Workers in Denmark], which has 325,000 members. It has been hardest hit by the cuts and by bourgeois splitting maneuvers.
Pushed by the circumstances, the SiD leadership, with the union president, Hardy Hansen out in front, has had to lay out an alternative line to 100 percent passivity and offer economic support for strikers, although this is against the rules of the labor-court system.
The active line that the SiD has stood for has led to a significant split in the union bureaucracy, while at the same time the members in many unions have pinned their hopes on the development of action in the union movement as a whole. On the other hand, the bourgeoisie has fought the active line with all the means at its disposal, partly through a general witch hunt and partly by imposing heavy fines on the SiD through the labor-court system (on one occasion the fine was 20 million kroner, or about 1.5 million US dollars).
Another result of the many strikes and actions has been that the trade-union left wing has been strengthened. It is not so much the traditional opposition in the union movement led by the Danish CP that has benefited from this. To an increasing degree the lead is being taken by a new layer of union leaders who are either members of smaller revolutionary parties, independents, or members of the Social Democratic party who refuse to follow its passive line.
This new layer of union leaders has been strengthened by experience in struggle and drawn together by the fight against the Schlueter government. So, it is no accident that despite the limited positions it holds in the union movement it came to play a big role in
Joergen ARBO
The Schlueter government has ruled now for two and a half years on the basis of a bourgeois majority. And it has moved fairly rapidly to tackle some of the decisive problems for the bourgeoisie. Not the least important of its initiatives has been a direct assault on the trade-union movement, which up until now has been a strong bulwark for the working class, both because it is a unified movement and because 90% of the Danish working class is organized.
Poul Schlueter started his career as premier by making sharp cuts in the state budget and intervening into collective bargaining. He succeeded in liquidating some of the gains the union movement made in the 1960s and the 1970s. First and foremost, he got rid of the automatic cost-of-living increases, which offered protection against a decline in real wages, especially for the low paid. He also imposed a waiting period before workers could begin to draw sick benefits and eliminated the rule of parity for wages of private and public workers.
This offensive, which hit the low paid and unemployed particularly hard, was aimed at transferring income from wages to profits and breaking the unity of the trade-union movement. It was only the beginning. Further social cutbacks followed, in health, in education — in every area but military spending and support for NATO's stepped-up arms drive.
One of the major targets was unemayment benefits. This was to make possible to bring to bear more effectthe weight of unemployment 10%) to push down wages and the union movement. The attack monal Viewpoint 3 June 1985 was followed up by all sorts of attempts to split the union movement, directly by means of government legislation or by giving 100 percent political backing to the employers' divide-and-rule poliey.
The divisions between skilled and unskilled workers were widened by increasing wage differentials. Political support was given to union members who resigned from their organizations and who, in return for certain benefits, went over to yellow unions.
The Schlueter governments's previous "high point" came in the spring with two bills. One was clearly designed to remove the long-term unemployed from the labor market and consign them to living on social welfare. The second was to make it more expensive to get insurance against unemployment through the unions, in order to set in motion a mass withdrawal from the system and reduce the state contribution to unemployment insurance.
Right from the outset of the Schlueter government, the workers were ready to resist. Already in October 1982, the new government was met with massive strikes and demonstrations. And in the following two years, various groups of workers waged prolonged strikes against the government's offensive.
However, at no time did this resistance develop into a serious threat to the government. That was not owing to any lack of combativity in the working class but to the weaknesses of their leadership that is, the Social Democratic party and the Social Democrats in the top echelons of the unions.
The Social Democracy in fact abdicated governmental power without calling an election. Its problem for this entire period has been that it has to cling
the development of the mass actions around Easter.
The decisive event in the Danish labor market is the national contract signed every two years between the union movement (LO - Landsorganisation i Danmark, the Danish National Confederation of Labor) and the employers' organisation (DA — Danske Arbeidgiverforeningen, Danish Employers' Association).
Between contracts, relations between the unions and employers are governed by a system of labor courts that substantially restricts the right to strike. In other words, there is a solidly organized system of class collaboration in which the newcontract negotiations can serve as an outlet for the workers' discontent. In fact, in the past there have been extensive strikes when the national contract has come up for renewal.
Of course, it can be said that the LO and DA themselves establish the relations on the labor market. But nonetheless various governments intervened directly or indirectly. And during the 1970s it became standard practice for Social Democratic governments to step in directly and impose new contracts when the LO and DA could not reach agreement.
In this year's new-contract negotiations, the conditions were impossible. On the one side, the bosses, with the full backing of the government, refused to budge an inch, offering nothing to the workers. On the other side, the workers were in a fighting mood and united around some central demands, not the least of which was the call for a 35-hour week without loss of pay. So, the LO could not just sell out the workers' demands in order to keep on chummy terms with the bosses.
Conflicts - strikes and lockouts -The forces of law and order in Denmark 8 thus could not be avoided, and they started on Monday, March 25. As sure as there was going to be a fight, there was going to be government intervention. The question was when?
The government should have stepped in early so as to keep firms from losing business or late in order to be. able to take advantage of the depletion of the unions' strike funds and crush the combativity of the workers. As it happened, it did neither, but intervened after one week, when the conflict was underway and combativity was at its highest.
The conditions for launching the strikes. were thus quite exceptional. There was talk that the situation was quite normal, with the union bureaucracy in control. But, on the other hand, it was clear that the government was going to intervene, and then the union bureaucracy would be impotent. It would not lift a finger to keep the strikes going - quite the contrary.
At the same time, no one could doubt that one week's official conflict would not lead to any serious improvement for the workers. The government's intervention would inevitably take the form of passing a law that would impose a settlement in accordance with the employers demands.
So, the first week was distinguished by an exceptional level of activity and discussions about what should be done in the event of government intervention. In that week, the basis was laid for the coming weeks rebellion against the government. In various unions, shop stewards and other union activists got involved in organizing blockades, rallies, and demonstrations. The strike was not just an unwanted holiday but more and more became a mobilization of the new union activists.
When the government's move was announced on March 27, the line of many workplaces was clear - continue the strikes against the government. Already before the strike started that was the slogan put forward by a number of unions. Now almost all united around it.
A contributing cause was also the fact that the government's intervention corresponded fully to the workers' worst expectations. In the first place, it involved imposing a wage raise for both public and private workers of only 2% the first year and 1.5% the second. Secondly, the reduction of the workweek was kept to one hour, and it was to go into effect only from January 1, 1987, which can only be regarded as a mockery of our demand for 35 hours here and now. And finally, corporate taxes were cut, so that the bosses' real payments would amount to nothing, as they had demanded. This was simply a provocation, which brought two and a halt years' suppressed anger boiling over.
The government's intervention set in motion a dynamic out of the control of the Social Democracy and the union bureaucracy. They made a last desperate effort to put on the brakes by organizing a demonstration in front of parliament for the last legal strike day, on Friday, March 29. The idea was to make a "decent" protest before a return to work on Monday. The whole leadership of the LO, along with the chair of the Social Democratic party, Anker Joergensen, would speak and advise the workers to be sensible.
The demonstration turned out to be a militant one in which 125,000 workers rallied and loudly protested the leading Social Democrats' bowing to the government's legal ultimatum. This Friday demonstration was not a hail and farewell but a sendoff to the struggle for the workers' demands - 35 hours now and without any cut in pay, plus ouster of the Schlueter government.
In attempting to put the brakes on the movement, the Social Democratic leadership in the LO lost its grip on the developments. And it was subsquently to become clear that they had to get help from others to regain control.
The government had undoubtedly expected its intervention to be met with protests. It was clear that the three working days before the Easter holidays were written off to scattered strikes and protests, and after that they expected that peace and tranquility would prevail. That was an underestimation of the Danish working class, which not only threw itself into all-embracing strikes but at the same time rapidly became conscious of the stakes of the struggle and the means for waging it.
Monday, April 1, was marked not by scattered strikes but by a widening of the strikes, which came to embrace even more than the 300,000 private-industry workers involved in • the official conflict. As good as all the private work-
International Viewpoint 3 June 1985
places were paralyzed, and the public workplaces able to have an effect in shutting down the society followed suit - for example, bus drivers, teachers, radio and TV, postal workers, hospital personnel, and a lot of office workers.
Throughout the country, the situation verged on a general strike. And many workplaces set up action centers in which thousands of strikers organized blockades against strikebreakers and all nonessential services. For example, in Randers - a middle-sized industrial town - the employment services were shut down by a blockade and replaced by blockade services to which groups of workers could turn and get support for blockading their own workplaces.
In the rest of the country's industrial cities, moreover, the working class set the pace. Most cities reported a "near" general strike. Others did not need to use the qualifying adverb. For example, in Esbjerg and Aaalborg, where 50,000 of the cities 150,000 inhabitants joined in the demonstration.
From the first days' sweeping strikes and demonstration of the strength and cohesion of the working class, the understanding grew that the proper objectives of the struggle were to bring down the government and win the 35-hour week with full pay. In line with this, the means proposed became more and more ambitious - a general strike until the government fell, pressure on the union leaderships to provide economic support International Viewpoint 3 June 1985 from the strike funds, and withdrawal of the LO from the labor-court system (which is where the striking workers were fined in the sacred name of class collaboration).
These demands indicated the level of consciousness, and in practice they represented a revolt against class collaborationism and all the bourgeois propaganda about wage restraint and respect for the parliamentary system. Before the conflict, these demands were only put forward by a few people on the revolutionary left wing, and in fact even there some of the left regarded them as an escalation of rhetoric. But, nonetheless, they quickly became mass demands as soon as the struggle got underway.
The first three days of struggle against the Schlueter government showed with all the clarity you could want that the fight could have been won. But it was just as evident that the struggle needed a leadership able to offer a perspective for the next step in the fight.
Practically no one could have any illusions that the LO was the sort of leadership needed. It had abandoned the strikes and quickly went from passivity to collaboration with the bourgeois witch hunt against the strikers.
However, there were in fact good possibilities for an alternative national leadership. In the first years under the Schlueter government, the left wing in the union movement had been
Demonstrators on April 10 (DR) strengthened, and on the purely organizational level as well.
This organizational strength was reflected in the Tillidsmandsringe (Shop Stewards' Circles) in most big cities, which are made up of shop stewards from workplaces and unions and have the common objective of building activities in support of the workers' demands.
Before the conflict, the Tillidsmandsringe had a limited influence, because to a large extent they were limited to shop stewards from the Communist Party. But as the strikes developed, there was a massive influx into the Tillidsmansringe. Many new ones were formed, and in line with those already existing became a broad rallying ground for all the currents in the union movement that wanted to fight against the government.
The local Tillidsmandsringe were able at the start of the conflict to gather together the activists, but it was also necessary from the outset to build a national leadership with an eye toward national coordination and common guidelines for the fight. Here the responsibility lay on the Tillidsmandsringe in Copenhagen, which represented by far the largest section of the strikers. Thus, the meeting of this committee on the Tuesday before Easter was to a large extent responsible for the struggle's outcome.
Four thousand shop stewards met in a mood of conviction that the struggle
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today that was not there before in the could be won but also aware that the Tillidsmandsringe, became another day
Easter holidays could scatter and isowhen Denmark was shut down by a strength we have if we stand together and late the strikers. of the speakers a cheers and clappin a general strike u fell and for a na meeting to build struggle.
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These activities on particular imp holidays began anc tion threatened to and dissipate. Over on the day after, th so that at no time and quiet in the other than that b shutting off of the r
It was not onl actions that the played a decisive SO in advanci initiatives necessary For example at meetings it was they
Today, after the it can be noted tha tionists and were too late in as a united alterna ship in the Tillids question remains have brought the without a decisve sp
In any case, th were able to keep tion alive after The extensive
The great majority general strike. fight for our own interests. t the meeting drew If it were not crystal clear before what In the wake of the conflict, this g as they called for its position was, the CP nailed its colors consciousness has already been important. ntil the government to the mast at the meetings on the All the bosses' attempts to fire union tional shop steward Tuesday following Easter. Under no activists and shop stewards have been a leadership for the circumstances would they offer any met with strikes and solidarity from other guidelines for strikes after Wednesday's work places. And a great number of the end the meeting day of action, which was to be the last workplaces are striking these days for in support of those united protest against the government. higher wages.
owing solely to the And it was also noticeable that from In the second place, the layer of new line of the CP was Thursday on the CP shop stewards joined union leaders has been strengthened was not, and is not, in the chorus of the lead-bottomed Social More experience has been accumulated, ng a movement that Democrats, who were calling loudly for a both positive and negative, and a lot of and which could return to work. new people came into activity in the onary direction. The line coming from the CP was course of the three weeks. Not the least ablished core of the that we should continue the fight on important, the revolutionists in the the CP had control the local level. Through local wage union movement have been strengthened, id was able to out- struggles in individual workplaces, the and in the coming period there will be rity and avoid a vote. government's 2 percent wage ceiling was an opportunity to build up a coordination ig called only for a to be undermined. Only in very few, that in future mass actions can offer an • Easter and left the very strong workplaces could such a alternative to the reformist leaders in al workplaces. Against strategy actually be pursued. Of course, the Social Democracy and the CP. it was in itself in such places the CP has a number of The initial elements of the coordilost of the strikes shop stewards. Even though the strikes nation exist today, with closely conver continued another week in several big ging proposals coming from a number of ason why the strikes workplaces, the hope that continued trade-union groups. Most prominent in the obstacles were struggle could lead to victory was this respect are the proposals from the them and discussions definitively ended. building-workers from shop f the struggle, as well An alliance of the Social Democracy stewards in a number of big workplaces, raging it, ever present and CP leaders succeeded in stopping and from groups in the SiD. From these nese actions the new the mobilization that could have toppled groups has come extensive criticism aders that developed the government. And this happened of the betrayers of the Easter Rebellion. rs' struggle against precisely at a time when the sweep of the At the same time, they have pointed to central role as orga- strikes was undiminished deupite the lack united struggle as a means for mobilizing :ollaboration between of leadership and when the union leaders the working class in the future. And es and unions. were under pressure to open up the gradually people have come to agree irtant activities were strike funds. It was a betrayal of all of about offering an alternative to the ecame very extensive us who had been fighting for weeks with Schlueter government - a workers ipation of thousands a determiniation to win. government that will pursue a working In many places, the It neither can, nor should, be concealed class policy, repeal the bourgeois legisresentatives of revolu- that the "Easter Rebellion" ended in lation passed in the last two and a half he union movement. defeat. But at the same time the struggle years, and implement our demand for and blockades took has put the working class in a better a 35-hour week with full pay. irtance as the Easter position for the confrontations that are If it proves possible to unite these the strike mobiliza- healthy forces and others, the present come to a standstill In the first place, there has been a defeat can be turned into a victory for all the holidays and significant rise in trade-union activity the working class when the coming = blockades continued and consciousness. There is a confidence struggle is fought. was there any peace Danish workplaces, Holding the banner high — Danish worker on the April 10 demonstration (DR) rought about by the nachinery. y in organizing the new union leaders role. They also did 1g demands and to win the struggle. the shop stewards who took the lead. end of the conflict, t this layer of revolulitical independents presenting themselves O ive to the CP leadermandsringe. But the whether this could movement forward lit. e new union leaders the strike mobilizathe Easter holidays. strikes continued
Tuesday. And Wednesday, which was proclaimed a day of action by the
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International Viewpoint 3 June 1985
BRITAIN.