discuss unemployment.
Meanwhile march on Paris on 23 March. the The French proposal to cut 23,000 jobs in the steel industry over the next two years has sparked off a mounting challenge to its entire ссолошс programme.
The Prime Minister, mond Barre, has staked his political future on 'making French industry competitive'. In the last year this has meant a 20 per cent rise in unemployment to 1.3 million, and huge price increases as controls have been scrapped.
Not that this has brought much action from the leaders of the two mass parties of the working class. Since the election defeat a year ago the Socialist and Communist parties have SUCTIL of their squabbling over who responsible.
These divisions have been mirrored in the two main trade THE FRENCH parliament is meeting in emergency session this week for the first time in twenty years to steelworkers are planning a massive union federations - the CGT, dominated by the CP, and the government's CFDT, which looks toward the SP.
So the last year has seen no concerted national action by the trade unions - merely the odd 'day Ray- separately by one federation or the other, plus stress on the need to negotiate with the government and the employers.
The steelworkers, however, have other ideas about how to save their jobs.
In the space of a few weeks their militancy unemplovment the number one issue in French politics. north and virtually closed down on 16 LEEC February when other workers was joined the steelworkers in a one-day general French daily reported:
were blocked, paralysed, Havange. completely for a few hours. searched.
increasingly organised a consistent were wounded quarters.
has made areas of east France were opulist Gaullist Le Monde ment.
*Motorways and rail lines factories were demonstrations occurred everywhere. In Lorraine, the cities of Longwy, and Rombas blockaded on Friday morning, as was Bries The government's response was to send in the riot police. In the northern town of Denain they fired teargas into a lorry full of workers returning from a meeting on Tuesday 6 March, forcing them out of the vehicle their hands up to be The reaction was swift. Next day 1,500 steelworkers drove bulldozers towards the police station in an attempt to storm it, and bitter clashes ensued. redundancies That night unknown snipers wounded seven policemen with rifle shots, and next day there this campaign were further battles in which more than 30 demonstrators in a police barrage of teargas at close observers began te and even recall the events of May '68 noting, however, that this time the police were not engaging students but trade unionists.
And under this pressure the party, the RPR, joined with the SP and CP that President Giscard d'Estaing convoke an emergency session of parliaThe RPR blames the steel steelworkers have even radio station in Longwy, which broadcasts every evening at 7pm.
on German competition. And the CP has been only too willing to join it in In demonstrations in Lorraine they have taken part with banners bearing such slogans as "Lorraine won't be sold off to the big German corporations' *1870, 1914, 1940, that's enough!' This criminal attempt to turn the anger of French workers away from their own employers and towards their comrades in the West German steel mills plays directly into the hands of the bosses' propaganda In reality the French lay-offs are only one part of a West European 'steel plan' aimed at drastically reducing the workset up their own private force in steel throughout the Common Market countries The recent strike by West German steelworkers for 35-hour week to stop redundancies shows that there is a clear basis for international action.
And at Saturday's conference of the LCDTU in London, a steelworkers' delegate from the threatened Corby plant announced that they planned to contact the French workers to discuss coordinated action in defence of jobs.
and not nationalist flag-waving, is the way mount a real challenge to the divide-and-rule tactics of the West European capitalists.