The test of deployment
Since 1979, the fight against the installation of the 48 cruise missiles alloted to Belgium has been led by two coordinating, committees, the Flemish Committee Against Nuclear Weapons (VAKA) and the Walloon National Action Committee for Peace and Development (CNAPD). They have cooperated in organizing national demonstrations.
The pace for the antimissiles movement has been set by four big demonstrations in Brussels. The numbers grew from 50,000 persons on December ), 1979; to 200,000 on October 25, 1981; to 400,000 n October 23, 1983; and finally it was possible to bring out 150,000 people on March 17, 1985, in an emergency demonstration two days after the government decided to deploy the first 16 cruise missiles at the Florennes airbase. In all of these demonstrations, VAKA played the biggest role, with the great majority of the demonstrators coming from Flanders.
of the state which, while modest in itself, has nonetheless transferred some small powers to the Flemish and Walloon regional authorities. This has led to the division along language lines of every political party -with the exception of the far left - and of many other organizations. Thus, although the central government remains the final arbiter at all levels, the political dynamic, the evolutions of the parties, and the electoral contest are developing in a different way in the different regions.
For these two reasons, this article does not offer a rounded analysis of the peace movement but will concentrate on one particular aspect that is worth studying. It will review the history of the VAKA in order to highlight the specific features of its policy and indicate how the leadership of this coalition managed to build such a mass movement. From there, the article will go on to analyze the effects of the VAKA's activity on the main Flemish parties and
Moreover, the political life of the last 15 years has been marked by Guy HENDRIX
The VAKA sprang up in November 1979, just before NATO's "double-track" decision. The initiative was taken by some organizations belonging to the OCV, a very broad forum in which leaders of the various tendencies participated in order to discuss problems of peace and disarmament. The founding groups of the VAKA, most of them youth, sociocultural, or Third Worldist organizations, thought that it was necessary to respond by direct action, which the OCV, as a discussion forum, was not prepared to do.
At the outset, these organizations came together with the sole aim of calling a demonstration for December 9, 1979, three days before the meeting of the NATO Council at which Belgium was to take a position on the deployment of the Euromissiles. After the success of this demonstration and, noting the reservations that Belgium and the Netherlands expressed in giving their assent to the principle of the NATO "double-track decision," this initial nucleus of anti-missile activists decided to pursue the struggle and organize themselves in a more serious way.
As its name indicates, the VAKA confined itself to organizing mobilizations against nuclear weapons. Its aim is to eliminate nuclear weapons from the entire world. It took the form of a front of organizations without any individual members. The leadership was made up of one member from each of the 18 participating organizations. Political International Viewpoint 1 July 1985 country over the especially on the Socialistische Partij, the Flemish a reorganization
Socialist Party.
parties were excluded from membership.
The component organizations of the VAKA remained active in the OCV, with which a formal agreement was reached giving the VAKA an autonomy of decision making with respect to nuclear weapons. This agreement also provided for the OCV as a whole associating itself with the discussions or initiatives of the VAKA. In this way, an organic link was maintained with, for example, the political parties (Socialist parties, Communist parties, environmentalist formations, revolutionary organizations) and the two labor confederations -Catholic and Socialist which were represented in the OCV.
The VAKA leadership launched a major organizational drive leading to the formation of city and town committees throughout Flanders. These local groups were open to all persons who want to work actively for the coalition's objectives, regardless of whether they were members or not of the component organizations or of a political party.
In this way, a new sort of organizational network developed. It combined an autonomous leadership oriented toward direct action and shielded from partisan infighting that could paralyze its capacity for initiative, with an activist structure for mobilizing. (1) Moreover, this whole operation has functioned within the framework of a policy of ongoing collaboration with the organizations of the workers movement.
While it approved the NATO "doubletrack" decision in December 1979, the coalition government of the bourgeois Social Christian Party (CVP) and the Flemish Socialist Party (SP) at the same time reserved the final decision to deploy the Euromissiles in Belgium for six months. It made this conditional on an assessment of the negotiations with the USSR. In the spring of 1980, the decision was postponed again as the result of a government crisis.
The new CVP-SP government was to take the first opportunity for negotiations with the USSR - which appeared at the time of Helmut Schmidt's visit to Moscow on June 30, 1980 — to delay the decision again. In September of the same year, it reaffirmed its support for the NATO "double-track decision" and declared that it would wait to see what the results were of the coming negotiations.
In fact, the government declared that "as of now, it accepts the conclusions of the talks and the tasks that fall to Belgium in the framework of NATO if the negotiations fail." However, the execution of NATO's directives would not be automatic, but would remain conditional on the Belgian government's own evaluation of the situation.
The Belgian government maintained this ambiguous position for more than four years. First, it was waiting for the INF (Intermediate Nuclear Forces) 1. It has to be remembered in this regard that up to November 1981 the Flemish Socialiat Party was in the government in coalition with the bourgeols CVP but It nonetheless participated int the antimissile mobilizations in 1979 and 1981.
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negotiations in Geneva, which were to start only in the fall of 1981. Then, it was waiting for the conclusion of these negotiations, which was to come at the end of 1983, following the installation of the Euromissiles in West Germany, in Great Britain, and in Italy. And finally, it held off insisting that there was the possibility of new negotiations opening up.
At every half-yearly assessment, the decision was put off, and it was again in December 1984. It was only when the day arrived that had been set by NATO for the arrival of the first missiles, March 15, 1985, that the Belgian goverment suddenly gave the green light, sending shock waves through public opinion. In fact, the Belgian people only learned of this decision after the US airplanes carrying the cruise missiles were already on their way. For 'a unilateral step toward bilateral disarmament'
At the beginning, the VAKA demanded that the government negotiate before deciding on any deployment of the missiles. This point of view was shared by a very broad spectrum of organizations and defended within the government by the Socialist parties. The VAKA leadership came quickly to understand, especially after Ronald Reagan came out with his celebrated "Zero Option" formula, which was immediately supported by the Belgian government, that the antimissiles movement could not count on the negotiations to solve the problem.
The VAKA leadership, which was in no way tarred by the brush of the peace movement of the 1950s, drew a negative balance sheet of the whole process of disarmament negotiations, stating: "All negotiations in the past have led to new steps in the arms race."
It has to be understood clearly that this position did not come from a Marxist analysis of the arms problem, nor from a conception of the need for unilateral disarmament on the part of the imperialist states. It was based on seeing the impasse that resulted from every strategy for bilateral, simultaneous, balanced, and negotiated disarmament.
The thinking that inspired the VAKA came from a current grouped around the GRIT (Gradual Reciprocated Initiatives in Tension Reduction), which maintains that the process can be unfrozen by unilateral partial measures, which would elicit similar measures on the other side and open the way for new negotiations that would then really be directed toward reducing arms stockpiles.
It was from this standpoint that the VAKA was to focus on the demand that the Belgian government unconditionally reject the installation of a single cruise missile. This position was expressed in the slogan "Missiles, no way! A unilateral sten toward bilateral disarmament!" step toward bilateral disarmament. 20
AFBOU
SEER
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(ERNHAPENS
DESPOLTIEK
AN BELGIE !
ET IN BELGIE
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/ NIET IN EUROPA
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Brussels demonstration 25 October 1981 (DR)
This political orientation made possible a considerable growth in the strength of the antimissiles movement in Flanders in 1982 and 1983, enabling this movement in turn to become a major factor in the political life of the country.
After the November 1981 elections, the government that is still in office was formed by a coalition between the CVP, the main bourgeois party, led by the premier, Wilfried Martens; the PVV, the Flemish Liberal Party; and their Walloon partners, the Parti Social Chretien (PSC) and the Parti Reformateur Liberal (PRL). The Socialists were forced to go into opposition.
Although this new government maintained its predecessor's ambiguous attitude toward the antimissiles movement and continued to put off the decision on the installation of the missiles, there could be little doubt about the real intentions of such an all-bourgeois government. Nobody could believe that it would go against Washington and NATO. So, the determination of the VAKA and its broad base to fight this government started to grow.
Sustained propaganda and information campaigns by the VAKA have led more and more organizations to take a position of unconditional opposition to deployment of the cruise missiles. This includes not only the opposition parties, such as the SP, the Volksunie (the bourgeois Flemish nationalist party), and Agalev (the Greens), but also a great many Catholic organizations • that have traditionally been part of the social base of the CVP. The latter comprise the Pax Christi, Catholic Third World aid associations, all the Catholic youth organizations, the Catholic universitites, religious orders, and the sociocultural organizations of the Christian Workers Movement (MOC-ACW), which are genuine mass organizations deeply rooted in every municipality, every neighborhood, and every village in Flanders. (2)
The decision to hold a third demonstration in Brussels on October 23, 1983, which was announced a year in advance, opened the way for a broad campaign by the VAKA around the slogan "Missiles, no way!" and for broadening its local committees.
At the same time, in the OCV, the VAKA pursued an intelligent unity policy that led to the official participation of the whole of the Christian Workers Movement in the 1983 demonstration. Even though this movement is part of the CVP and does not hold a unilateralist position toward the missiles, it was possible to get its leaders to endorse the action. This is because they feared finding themselves at loggerheads with their own base, which was influenced to a considerable extent by the VAKA campaign and which participated in it actively.
So, the October 23, 1983, demonstration drew 400,000 persons, of whom three quarters were Flemish, that is 300,000 people out of the total Flemish population of 5 million, which is by far the highest proportion that we have seen in Europe, far greater even than in the Netherlands.
The demonstration reflected a real united front of the entire workers movement. Participating in it were the Christian and Socialist Unions, all the parties of the workers movement, and also tens of thousands of individuals who were not mobilized by the traditional apparatuses but directly by the structures of the VAKA. This strengthened the VAKA's position relative to the traditional reformist leaderships, confirmed its authority, and increased its margin for maneuver and its capacity for autonomous initiative.
After this demonstration, the vast network of local VAKA committees, most of whose members are independents, 2. The Christian Workers Movement (MOC/ ACW serves as an umbrella for all the Christian organizations in the working class - the confederation of Christian Unions (CSC), the Christian mutual-aid societies, cooperatives, educational bodies, etc. The MOC is linked to the Parti Social Chretien/Christelijke Volkspartij (PSC/CVP) through the Christian Democratic wing of these parties.
International Viewpoint 1 July 1985
demanded and got the right to send elected representatives to sit on the VAKA leadership. So, since the start of 1984, this leadership has included 15 representatives of the component organizations and 15 representatives elected by the committees (three per province).
Twice a year, a general assembly of the committees meets. It has no formal decision-making power, but has a real influence on the general orientations.
I will try to explain briefly some of the basic elements that make it possible to understand this rather special experience.
First of all, Flanders only went through its big growth of industry in the 1960s. These processes of urbanization and proletarianization reduced the hold of the Catholic church and the effectiveness of religion as an ideological cement of solidarity among the classes. In time, this evolution had to create tensions within the CVP, the bourgeoisie's main party, which got 40% and 45% of the vote respectively in the 1977 and 1978 elections. The Christian Workers Movement, which has a far larger membership than the Socialist unions, has historically been integrated into this interclass party. This latent contradiction surfaced slightly, if at all in the 1970s. It was later to explode over the missiles question, with the economic crisis helping to exacerbate the class tensions.
Moreover, the influence of the Social Democracy, whose historic bastions are in the Walloon industrial areas, has not spread very widely in Flanders. Because of its class-collaborationist policy and frequent participation in the various bourgeois governments since the Second World War, the Social Democracy has appeared to the young Flemish proletariat as an establishment party, lacking dynamism, ideologically rightist, and ageing. In a nutshell, the Socialist Party, whose vote fell continuously from 1961 to 1981, dropping to 22%, got no grip at all on the new radicalized generations after 1968.
Among the Flemish youth, the role of leadership was played by a great many different sorts of associations in which the initiative was taken by young activists not dominated by reformism, who threw themselves pell mell into all sorts of specific struggles and campaigns. It was out of this milieu that the founders of the VAKA came, along with a considerable part of its cadres.
Under the impact of the mass movement, Flemish Social Democracy underwent a spectacular evolution. After the old Socialist Party split along linguistic lines in 1978, the Flemish Socialist Party started up a vast rejuvenation operation under the aegis of its new chair, Karel Van Miert and a new generation of leaders. This operation in no way put in question the political orientation of the party, as shown by its continuous participation in the six governments that ruled between 1977 and 1981, which International Viewpoint 1 July 1985 introduced the first austerity measures, preparing the way for what has become a thoroughgoing poliey today.
At the time of the NATO "doubletrack decision" in December 1979, this class-collaborationist orientation was maintained. While formulating reservations about the Euromissiles, the Flemish Socialist Party gave its approval to the government's acceptance of NATO's plans. However, a third of the voting members of the SP Political Bureau opposed this position, which meant that they were ready to trigger a governmental crisis over this question.
The ambiguity of the SP's positions, with the party supporting the VAKA's demonstrations on the one hand and endorsing the government's decisions on the other, could only increase the profound distrust that the Social Democracy inspired in the nascent mass movement, who had previously turned against Social Democratic practices. But this movement of radicalization was affecting precisely the social groups that the SP's "modernization" operation was designed to attract toward the party.
After its umpteenth electoral defeat in November 1981 and its passage into the opposition, the SP progressively took up the demands of the VAKA and mobilized actively for the demonstrations of October 1983 and March 1984. From this point on, the SP distinguished itself from every other reformist current, including the PS (Walloon Socialists), in that it no longer opposed deployment only in the name of the need "to give negotiations a chance first to avert the stationing of the missiles." Its rejection of the cruise missiles became unconditional.
While the Walloon Socialist Party and the Christian Workers Movement never questioned the justification for the "double-track" decision itself and left the door open, therefore, for a deployment of the Euromissiles, the SP broke with this decision by NATO and with the political attitude it had held while it was still in the government. Preparing for elections
This change would never have been possible without the formidable pressure of the mass movement led by the VAKA. But, conversely, the support of the dominant workers party helped the VAKA to stick to its basic demand "Missiles, no way!" despite all the pressures brought to bear on it by the forces of the right.
In fact, while the SP was in opposition, it could take more radical positions without having to pay too great a price. The test came later when, in the beginning of 1985, the government began preparing to accept the installation of the missiles.
After some hesitations, which revealed that an intense internal debate had taken place, the SP finally came out for unconditional withdrawal of the missiles that had already been deployed, and without the agreement of NATO if need be. What is more, it pledged never to participate in a goverment whose program did not include this demand for the unconditional removal of the missiles already deployed.
This evolution was once again the result of the firmness with which the VAKA put its political demands to the parties. It also reflects, on the other hand, the SP's desire to regain its lost ground, to rebuild, and to better its electoral results. The SP has been obliged by the breadth and determination of the mass movement to identify itself as much as possible with its demands.
Moreover, this mass movement is far from being defeated because there has been an initial deployment of the missiles. It is in fact building a new mass mobilization for October 29, 1985 that is, six weeks before the nest elections, which are to be beld on December 8, 1985. It is demanding pure and simple removal of the 16 cmise missiles already installed in Belgium and it wants to bring pressure to beer an the formation of the new goverment.
This context, therefore, posed a very high hurdle for the SP, but it cleared it The SP's present line, thus, on one concrete point is in direct and open opposition to NATO, the United States and their imperialist policy. I# maintains this political orientation, any coalition with the CVP is out of the question. No bourgeois party is going to swallow that. However, inasmuch as the present government coalition of the CVP and the Liberals is in big danger of losing its majority in parliament in the upcoming elections, a political impasse is shaping up for the bourgeoisie. The latter may find itself incapable of putting together a government with any stability whatever.
However, despite its education on the missiles question, the SP has not broken with reformism. It does not itself exclude collaborating again in a goverment with the CVP. It accepts NATO and the concept of deterrent. It accepts the framework of peaceful coexistence and the French and British arsenals. And, finally, it supports a European defense.
So there is no guarantee that the SP will not capitulate sooner or later on the question of the missiles. However, if it does, a deepgoing crisis in the party is a certainty. The SP leadership in fact seems already to have gone further than it wanted to.
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Thus, the masses have a whole series of reasons to think that there is a real possibility for victory in the battle against the missiles. There is the vastness of the mass movement — the polls show that 78% of the population are against the missiles. There is the hope that the government will lose its majority ir the upcoming elections. And the SP and the Greens have committed themselves to getting the missiles removed. So, despite the deployment of some missiles already, the next demonstration is certainly going to be massive, because there has been no sign of demobilization.
Therefore, the pressure of this movement on the political parties will continue and will pose the key questions of a working-class strategy in Belgium. In the Christian Workers Movement, the unnatural link with the CVP has become the subject of wide-ranging discussion. The current that is fighting for an independent Christian workers party outside of the CVP already represents a third of the Christian Workers Movement. Although this tendency may also be the result of discontent with the Christian unions' support for the present government's brutal austerity policy, it has also been strongly influenced by the CVP's policy on the missiles.
On two occasions, there have been veritable shock waves in the MOC/ACW. About thirty members of parliament belonging to the working-class wing of the CVP demonstrated with the ACW on October 23, 1983. But two weeks later they voted en bloc with the CVP and the government, thereby stabbing the demonstrators in the back. On March 17, 1985, the ACW leadership refused to call on its members to support the emergency demonstration against the deployment of the missiles so as not to put the CVP and the government in difficulty again.
The ranks of the ACW revolted and demonstrated along with the VAKA any way. They did so openly, coming out in tens of thousands. Through these experiences in struggle, the perspective of an autonomous Christian workers party is gaining more and more credibility.
Moreover, the political perspective of the SP, which has never proposed any alternative except governing with the parties of the right, is also being discussed. On the basis of the struggle against the missiles, a lot of people are wondering what usefulness such coalitions could have. The perspective of a political front of the Socialist and Christian workers, based on unity of the two big labor confederations, is more and more coming to the fore as the oniy possible alternative.
So, the two main obstacles to the advance of the perspective of a workers government are being clearly exposed before the eyes of the masses and on an infinitely greater scale than before. Whatever the final balance sheet of the fight against the Euromissiles may be this political dynamic is not going to be the least of the peace movement's accomplishments. 22