April-May 1997 No. 2 $2 rnationalist Australia $2.50, Brazil R$2, Britai~£t5o, No Popular Front, Build a Trotskyist Party. .. 16 Canada $2.50, France 10F, Germany0M'3t Italy L3.000, Japan ¥200, M~xicql~. Ex-Far Left in the Reformist Swamp . ... 21 South Africa R5 , · 2 The Internationalist April-May 1997 Port Strike Against Union-Busting in Brazil In the early morning hours of April 15, some 500 heavily armed shock troops of Brazil's military and federal police stormed the port of Santos, near Sao Paulo. Their purpose was to break a work action by the water­ front unions in defense of the union hiring hall against attempts to break it by the privatized Sao Paulo steel company. Following the police invasion 2,500 workers occupied the port area. 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No. 2 April-May 1997 April-May 1997 The Internationalist 3 Workers, Immigrants: CD c - ~ C> al ~ e al C> i.L CD __J Over 100,000 poured into the streets of Paris February 22 to protest the vicious anti-immigrant Debre Law and growing threat of the fascist National ~ront. Crush the. Fascist National Front! the Christian, Free and Social Democratic parties alike-that Full Citizenship Rights gutted the constitutional right to asylum. In Italy, the neo- (and not-so-neo) fascists of the MSI/Alleanza Nazionale grew as for All Immigrants! the most hardline exponents of a broader bourgeois drive to Since the counterrevolutionary wave which swept through purge the state machinery arid "discipline" the working class East Europe and destroyed the Soviet Union in 1989-92, rac­ by slashing benefits and wages. In France, the fascist National ist reaction has been rampant across the continent. While po­ Front (FN) ofJean-Marie Le Pen is the cutting edge ofa broader groms against gypsies and national minorities raged in the East, racist backlash, as the "mainstream" right calls for "zero im­ immigrant workers and their families have been the target of migration" and the reformist left raises a clamor about "clan­ fascists in West Europe. And the onslaught wasn't triggered destine." migration. by isolated, fringe elements: those who lit the fires (often liter­ But while the reactionary ultras feed off the social insecu­ ally) ofracist terror were given the green light from the arson­ rity produced by double-digit unemployment, they have also pro­ ists at the heights of capitalist power. In Germany, Nazi/ voked an outpouring of opposition. The most recent example skinhead attacks on "foreign" workers served as extra-parlia­ was the March 29 European demonstration of 50,000 against the mentary pressure for anti-immigrant legislation-supported by FN congress in Strasbourg. Nowhere has the contradictory char- 4 The Internationalist April-May 1997 · acter of this reactionary of lodging, now their period been. more pro­ host would be obliged nounced than in France. to inform authorities of At the same time as the the departure of foreign right wing won the presi­ guests so that the police dentfal and legislative could launch a manhunt elections-beating the So­ to track down "clandes­ cialist (PS) and Commu­ tine" immigrants. Fifty­ nist (PCF) parties by o n e movie makers promising to create signed a statement de­ jobs!-every year for the manding to be pros­ last half decade there ecuted, declaring they have been outbreaks of had violated this police­ sharp class struggle. This state law and would do reached a high point in so again. The defiant the strikes and mass gesture spread like workers demonstrations wildfire, and in .little ofNovember-December over a week 55,000 1995 against plans ofthe people sent in state­ conservative regime of ments reporting them­ Gaullist president selves for refusing to Jacques Chirac and tum in foreigners. prime minister Alain On February 22, Juppe to gut pensions more than I 00,000 and medical care. The thronged through the mobilizations went on streets ofParis in protest for weeks, before they against the Debre Law. L'.Humanite Dimanche/Gautier Editing were called off at the de­ Marching from the Gare February 22 Paris protest against anti-immigrant Debre Law. cisive moment by the re­ de l'Est railroad station; formist union tops. They Demonstrators brought suitcases recalling deportation of Jews many carried suitcases flared up again in 1996 under WW II Nazi collaborationist regime of Marshal Petain (on to evoke parallels to the poster below) in Vichy France. with struggles in defense laws of the pro-Hitler of immigrants and the Vichy regime of Mar­ dramatic nationwide truckers strike shal Petain during World War II, when (see "France: Workers Struggles Shake it was decreed that the police be in­ Chirac-Juppe Government," Interna­ formed ofthe presence and movement tionalist No. 1, January-February of Jews and foreigners, who were then 1997). This year the polarization has deported. While the initiators of the sharply increased. protest focused on the scandalous fink On February 9, Le Pen's Na­ law, most marchers opposed the immi­ tional Front won local elections in gration bill as a whole and expressed Vitrolles, a commuter suburb north alarm over the growth of the National of the Mediterranean port city of Front. Although the marchers were Marseille, with 52 percent ofthe vote. broadly from the left, the PS and PCF This was the fourth town taken over only climbed on board at the last by the FN, and the first won by an minute. Surprised by the eX!ent of the absolute majority. The fascists' cam­ protest, the government backpedaled paign was directed against immi­ and.removed the most notorious pro­ grants, under the slogan "French visions. The filmmakers dissolved their First." The impact of the Vitrolles committee, PS leader Lionel Jospin de- election reverberated around the Le Figaro Magazine clared victory. But barely two weeks country. Warning against a spreading "lepenisation des esprits," after the march, the government rammed the slightly amended that is, the adaptation to Le Pen across the political spectrum, Debre law through the National Assembly and Senate. anti-racist intellectuals began to mobilize against the Loi Debre, While the union federations endorsed the February 22 the vicious immigration bill introduced by Interior Minister protest and attacked the immigration law, the reformist mis­ Jean-~ouis Debre. Under its provisions, not only would for­ leaders of labor did not mobilize the working class for this eigners staying in France have to obtain an official certificate crucial fight. Yet shortly afterwards, a new uproar broke out as April-May 1997 The Internationalist 5 the head of the formerly nationalized Renault auto company February). "The role of a woman," she says, "is to raise the announced the pending shutdown of its plant in Belgium. The children and support her husband" (Die Tageszeitung, IO Feb­ Belgian workers appealed for and received wide sympathy from ruary). In an interview after the election with the correspon­ French Renault workers (see "Europe: Workers on the Battle dent of a German newspaper, Catherine Megret spelled out Lines" on page 13). her program for running the municipality: A new opportunity for an all-out struggle against the right­ "We must hunt down and punish the criminals. And this isn't ist threat presented itself with the National Front congress in hard, either, it's always.the same ones who make our city Strasbourg at the end of March. Numerous appeals were is­ insecure. It's above all the immigrants. Their principle is, sued calling for counterdemonstrations against this provoca­ make a lot of babies, in order to get a lot of state aid, and tion; petitions protesting the FN congress gathered tens ofthou­ then don't care for the children any more. Already the chil­ sands of signatures. Following the February 22 demonstration dren of these immigrants are becoming criminals .... against the draconian immigration law, there were repeated "Our voters wanted us to make those who don't belong here sizeable and militant protests against FN events in cities around afraid. So what if some of them haven't been caught in a the country. What was called for was a powerful worker/im­ crime so far? That only means that they haven't been found migrant mobilization to sweep the fascist vermin off the streets out yet. These immigrants are right to be afraid. That's why and out of their meeting hall. But a determined fight to run Le we were elected .... " Pen and his cohorts out of town would necessarily come up -Berliner Zeitung, 24 February against the capitalist state.