### Attacks launched on 'Youth for Jobs' campaign Since 1979 the Socialist Young Guard (JGS), in solidarity with the Socialist Workers Party (POS), the Belgian section of the Fourth International has been campaigning by means of a petition, for the organisation of a youth march against unemployment. (1)
The decision of the Christian Worker Youth (JOC) to take up such a campaign made it possible for a broad united front campaign called Youth for Jobs to get underway. This united front campaign brought together all the political and trade union organisations representing young workers and the left-wing and far left youth organisations. unemployment in Brussels. The demonstration was attacked by police. On e April 1982, 30,000 young people demonstrated against This repression was to benefit the bourgeoisie because two years later on May 13, 1984 only 15,000 young people participated. This time the police actually put a stop to the demonstration through the use of physical force. The demonstrators were completely dispersed including those on the main platform where a JOC leader was intervening at the time to demand that the police withdraw.
The unity achieved by the Youth for Jobs campaign and the two mobilisations which it initiated are something unique in the whole of Europe. Today this movement is in danger of being killed off.
perfect argument to begin to wind up the Youth for Jobs campaign.
From the beginning of the Youth for Jobs Campaign, the reformist leaderships of the two big unions (the socialistdominated FGTB - Confederation of Belgian Workers and the CSC - the Confederation of Christian Trade Unions - dominated by Christian Democracy) were disturbed by the scope of the mobilisation and especially by the rather rapid political radicalisation which was characteristic of it.
One of the factors that explains the smaller mobilisation for the second march was that the union leaderships were very luke-warm in their support compared to previous mobilisations. They even came out publically against the demands, calling them 'unrealistic'.
As far as the trade union leaderships were concerned, the time had come to get rid of the Youth for Jobs campaign for several reasons.
First, during the whole period of the mobilisations by Youth for Jobs the trade union leaderships had failed, despite all efforts, to channel the youth mobilisations into their own youth sections. The Youth for Jobs campaign remained an autonomous movement, and that was partly because the leaderships of those youth sections of the trade unions wanted it that way. This fact also led to the adoption of anti-capitalist demands. Youth for a workers' party
Several factors determined the attitude of the CSC - the largest union in the Flanders area. First, the JOC, the largest force in the Youth for Jobs campaign had become, in the process of the radicalisation that had caught them up in its momentum, a real pole of attraction and a reference point for the trade union base of the CSC.
The broad unity with other youth organisations in the workers' movement was in stark contrast to the politics of class collaboration conducted by the Cs. The clear, anti-capitalist demands were the opposite of the CSC's acceptance of austerity. The strategy of struggle and confrontation with the government was a million miles from the policy of talks behind the workers' backs in which the CSC was engaged.
The process of radicalisation of the JOC also constituted one of the many factors in the historic crisis of the main factors in the historic crisis of the main bourgeois political party in Belgium (the CVP/PSC). For example, today 30 per cent of those affiliated to the Christian Workers Movement (of which the JOC is a part) are in favour of an immediate break with the CVP/PSC and for setting up their own Christian Workers Party, which would constitute an historic defeat for the Belgian bourgeoisie.
The whole of the JOC is more or less in favour of the establishment of such
International Viewpoint 17 June 1985
Jipi DE LEY
The Belgian bourgeoisie were terrified at the alarming success of the first Youth March for Employment involving 30,000 young people. What frightened them even more was the adoption by the Youth for Jobs campaign of a set of clearly anti-capitalist demands and the acceptance of these demands by the largest organisation of young workers, comprising thousands of militants, the Christian Worker Youth (JOC). This organisation is linked to the main bourgeois political party in Belgium the CVP/PSC (the Christian Democracy)
For the government it became necessary at any price to break the momentum of radicalisation of young people especially in the trade-union movement. The relative sympathy that the Youth for Jobs movement had been receiving in the bourgeois press during its first campaign entitled 'We want
THE YOUTH FOR 1. Reduction of work hours at least and with proportional new hirings.
2. A minimum income of 19,000 ploved.
work' was transformed into a diatribe against 'Youth for Jobs'. . The aim was to discredit the movement just at the time when it had adopted, in the spring of 1983, clear, concrete and anticapitalist demands for the Second Youth March.
The bourgeoisie were not content simply to campaign against Youth for Jobs through the media, either. All local activity leading up to the Second
Youth March in 1984 was met with intense police repression, designed to dissuade youth from participating in the demonstration. A combination of police attacks on youth meetings, of a media campaign aimed at presenting the initiative as of interest only to a small group, and of police harassment all meant that the mobilisation on May 13, 1984, was less successful than the previous one. Finally the way in which the police dispersed the demonstration gave the trade union leaders the JOBS' PLATFORM to 32 hours per week, without loss of pay Belgian francs (£246) for all the unemployed.
3. Elimination of all second-class jobs and their replacement by stable jobs with the normal rates of pay.
Ending of the daily check of the unemployed, the 'delay', and of Article 143. (1)
5. Different more specific demands concerning training, public services, schools, etc.
1. The daily check of the unemployed is the requirement for every unemployed person to report to the town hall every day at a particular time (of which they are only informed the day before). The 'delay' is the period of six months after obtaining an educational qualification during which young people do not have the right to unemployment benefit. Article 143 is a measure that allows the state to deny unemployment benefit to a person whose period of unemployment is judged to be 'abnormally long' 12
a workers party. So, for the CSC leadership the aim of wiping out the Youth for Jobs campaign is combined with the need to call a halt to the mobilisation of thousands of young Christian workers that in itself is helping to strengthen a current in favour of breaking with the CVP/PSC.
The FGTB, which has always used the excuse that 'the Christians won't support us' in order to avoid struggle, also has its own reasons for wanting to dissolve the Youth for Jobs campaign. The leadership of the FTB is preparing for a return to power in the elections on December 8, 1985, of the Socialist Party in coalition with the CVP/PSC. And so it is seeking to sabotage any struggles. This includes the still tentative proposal of the Youth for Jobs campaign of organising a People's March against Unemployment in 1986. The mobilisation for this would have to begin in the autumn of 1985, that is before the elections.
But the main reason that the CSC and the FTB want to get rid of Youth for Jobs is that they want to put an end to the youth radicalisation that threatens their bureaucratic interests and their policy of class collaboration. By dissolving this movement the trade union bureaucracies want to get rid of one of the most significant autonomous youth movements that Belgium has ever seen. The radicalisation that this movement has brought in its wake is particularly dangerous for them because the Youth for Jobs campaign is centered within the trade union movement. Furthermore it provides an alternative line at a mass level to that of the reformist leaderships on the question of the need to struggle against austerity, and is doing so in front of hundreds of thousands of trade union militants.
In some ways this youth radicalisation was more important than any other form of political radicalisation for example, around the missiles question because it dealt with the key question of what strategy to adopt toward the capitalist crisis. Itexpressed unconditional rejection of austerity and the demand for making the banks pay for the crisis. The lack of a clear understanding of the need to outline a way forward on a political level, in terms of a perspective for a workers' government is, however, the main weakness of the Youth for Jobs campaign.
The reformist leaderships of the large youth organisations have finally capitulated to the pressure of their trade union bosses. Revolutionaries have been intervening, along with local Youth for Jobs committees, into the general assemblies after the second, 1984 march, in favour of retaining the programme of demands and for maintaining a struggle perspective. The reformist organisations proposed a project of broadening out the movement to embrace all youth organisations including bourgeois groups (such as the Boy Scouts). Their watchword was to limit struggle and to make International Viewpoint 17 June 1985 the 'platform of demands more attractive' in order not to alienate potential support. therefore, had virtually no mobilisations The Youth for Jobs campaign has, in the last year, and the much touted idea of broadening out has met with almost total failure.
The two trade union leaderships and the reformist youth leaderships have 'operation takeover' of the Youth for reached agreement on virtual Jobs campaign. The trade union leaderships have proposed to their respective youth organisations that in exchange for liquidating Youth for Jobs, a trade union campaign on the issue of, unemployment will be launched. The trade union leaderships have given a guarantee that they will give *special attention to the youth' and will propose activities. This has satisfied the youth leaderships. But nothing has been said about the structures for the mobilisation, about the future of the local Youth for Jobs committees which exist or about the demands to put forward and the type and timing of mobilisations and activity, etc. At the last General Assembly of Youth for Jobs on May 4 the leaderships of the JOC, and the youth sections of the CSC and the FGTB presented all this as a great victory for the movement saying that 'what we have always wanted is that the trade union front should take up our demands and that now this had become a reality. The CSC youth have now withdrawn from the Youth for Jobs and the JOC and the FGTB have yet to reach a decision. The exemplary united front that Youth for Jobs represented has now been all but taken over by the reformist trade union leaderships. The main battle that revolutionaries and all those left currents amongst youth have to face now is the battle for a united front with the leaderships of the youth organisations (the JOC, the FGTB-J the CSC-J) against an alliance of these
JOS organisations with the trade union leaderships and for the maintenance of the Youth for Jobs campaign as an autonomous movement of youth in struggle. This will be a difficult battle to wage but it is not impossible.
In the JOC in particular, which is the only organisation in the front with a mass base, the pressure from that base for maintaining the Youth for Jobs campaign will be very great and the leadership of the JOC has not yet come out clearly on the issue of the maintenance of the front. However, the JOC have just come out for an unconditional rejection of the austerity policies of the Martens' government. The Socialist Young Guard, JGS will do everything it can to ensure that the fight for the maintenance of the united front body of Youth for Jobs is victorious, thus paving the way for new mobilisations of youth against unemployment, austerity and the capitalist crisis.
The police intervene in a Youth for Jobs demonstration in Brussels (DR)
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FRANCE