IV436 - May 2011

IV 436 in PDF format for download
Download the May edition of IV in PDF format here

The movement has won its first victory against repression. The attempted eviction on Friday, May 27 of the camp at plaza Catalunya in Barcelona, the second largest so far in the Spanish state, met with a resounding failure. A week after the movement had politically defeated the prohibition of the Central Electoral Board on demonstrations during the election weekend of May 21- 22, early on Friday morning, the Catalan police tried to evict the camp at plaza Catalunya. Behind the intervention, a ridiculous and barely credible pretext of facilitating the cleaning of the square.

While the official unions in Japan argued that May Day mobilisations shoud not go ahead, as a tribute to those who died in the earthquake and tsunami, a number of radical unions took the opposite stance, calling for denuclearisation as a response to the man-made Fukishima disater. Below we publish an article about the demonstration in Onahama near Fukushima and two trade union appeals supporting denuclearisation.

Interview with Miguel Romero, member of the Anti-capitalist Left (“Izquierda Anticapitalista”, section of the Fourth International in the Spanish state) and editor of the magazine “ Viento Sur”. Interview conducted by Daniel Tanuro, May 21, 2011

The rally, organised by Labour Party Pakistan, was attended by over 2000 activists of different trade unions and Left organisation including most of the Left organisations in Lahore. The rally participants at Charing Cross started a sit in (Dharna) for over three hours. Labour leaders speaking at Chairing Cross in front of Punjab Assembly demanded a wage and pension increase of 100 percent in the forthcoming budget. They also demanded that a minimum wage of Rupees 15000 be fixed by the government for all government and non government workers for eight hours a day work.

The March-11 earthquake of magnitude 9 and the ensuing formidable tsunami that hit and devastated the vast area of Eastern Japan brought the number of deaths and missing persons to 25,000, and those people who are obliged to live at the various evacuation sites number 120,000 at present. Fukushima nuclear plant, whose crisis has reached the revel 7, comparable to that of Chernobyl, brought about meltdown of reactor cores and hydrogen explosions, continues to leak the radiation to the land, sea and air: calming down of the dreadful situation is not yet in sight.

On March 25, 26 and 27 Quebec Solidaire, the biggest left party that Quebec has seen for nearly a century, held its congress. The debate, which centred on ecological and economic questions as well as those concerning the social rights of workers, made it possible to adopt an orientation of going beyond capitalism.

"What we disagree with is the political premise, which suggests reform of the European Union in a general anti-capitalist direction while staying in the Euro is both possible and desirable. It is also claimed that staying in the Euro is more “European” and will strengthen internationalism rather than accommodate to an anti-European, rightward, nationalist shift."

This article outlines the origins of the current movement in the Spanish state not just in the economic crisis and austerity measures of the Zapatero government, but the impasse created by the trade union leaders’ decision to back off from confrontation with the government and agree to the cuts after the General Strike last year. It also has some strong words about the relative failure of the radical Left (of which the authors are a part) to have responded as well as it should, yet points hopefully to the way forward. (Note by the authors: This article, among other weaknesses, has been written at a time when events occur at great speed. Changes in the situation could alter the content and meaning of what is said here.)

There is no doubt about it. The wind that has electrified the Arab world in recent months, the spirit of the repeated protests in Greece or the student struggles in Britain and Italy, the mobilizations against Sarkozy in France... has come to the Spanish State.