Workers' Liberty

Though Leon Trotsky’s writings on Spain fill a large volume, he wrote no concise overview of the Spanish revolution. Our “diary” is culled from the commentaries he produced all through the last decade of his life: the last item here is dated 20 August 1940, the day Trotsky was assassinated.

The great Spanish revolution of 1936-7, tragically betrayed and defeated, has gone down in history as “the Spanish Civil War” (1936-9). Civil war it surely was, but that designation, civil war, embodies the politics and the slant on history of those who crushed the workers’ revolution in Catalonia and elsewhere.

7.30pm, Thursday 12 October
The Plough, Museum Street
Nearest tube: Tottenham Court Road

In 1936, in response to a fascist coup, the Spanish workers rose up and seized the factories and land, but could not consolidate their power. What happened? Why did the fascists win? What role did Marxism and anarchism play in the struggle? And what can the Spanish revolution teach socialists and the labour movement today?

A leaflet advertising the meeting is attached. For more information email office@workersliberty.org or ring 020 7207 3997

It is usually called the “Spanish civil war”, the thirty month struggle that began in July 1936, when the Spanish military, led by three generals, Franco, Mola and Sanjurgo — of whom one, Franco, would emerge as dictator — revolted against the Popular Front government which had been elected five months earlier.

By Miriam Gould*

In many respects there were very close parallels between the proletarian revolutions of [Russia] 1917 and [Spain] 1936. Spain and Russia were both gripped by profound economic crises rooted in their semi-feudal land systems. Both were agricultural economies based on a poverty-stricken peasantry.

'Today' today had a feature on the 70th anniversary of the Spanish Civil War featuring historian Anthony Beevor and none other than Michael Portillo, who was there so that he could patronise his father who fought on the Republican side as a naïve intellectual. Their conclusion was that the best way to commemorate the Civil War was to forget all about it

The Basque Country, Euskadi, is a region in the north-east of Spain with a distinct language and culture. About two million people live there. There is also a smaller Basque population in France.

No more lies!

We reproduce a statement signed by 'The Families of the victims of the 11 March', delivered at 2am to the demonstration on 14 March. It appears in Spanish on the website of El Militante, a group linked to Socialist Appeal in Britain.

Against the terrorists - international working-class solidarity

The bombing which killed over 200 people at three railway stations in Madrid in the morning rush hour of 11 March was an unspeakable atrocity.

by Gerry Byrne

My immediate reaction to the Madrid bombing I imagine I shared with millions across the political spectrum. It is the second thoughts that divide us. I don't quite know how to express my disquiet at some of those second thoughts expressed on the left.

By Sean Matgamna

Our discussion about the unions, the Blair Labour Party, standing in elections, and the role of the AWL has raised many basic questions.

In fact, the differences reduced to practicalities are not, in my opinion, very large. But Tom's and Maria's document raises many of the basic questions the answers to which constitute the raison d'etre of Solidarity and Workers' Liberty. And indeed of all tendencies rooted as we are in the early Communist International and Trotsky's movement in the 1920s and 30s.

If Tom and Maria understand what they have written, and mean what they write, then the differences are very large indeed. Implicitly or explicitly, they raise many very important questions about the nature of working-class movements and of organisations like the AWL. The organisation is faced with a discussion of the basics of the Marxist conception of "the class, the party and the leadership".

Nowhere, except in the 1917 Russian Revolution, were the complexities of that question unfolded more clearly than in the Spanish Revolution of 1936-9.

In Catalonia the workers made a great revolution but were unable to consolidate it or even to defend it against the Republican bourgeois-Stalinist counter-revolution that destroyed it and prepared the way for fascist victory in the whole of Spain and 40 years of fascist rule thereafter.

Trotsky's writings on Spain during the 1930s have been collected into a large book, which those comrades who have not read it should read. I made the following collection of extracts from Trotsky's commentaries in 1995 for a special issue of Workers' Liberty on the Spanish Revolution. I believe it has much to say to our discussion now.

The last item is dated 20 August 1940, the day Stalin's assassin used an ice-pick to strike down Leon Trotsky. He died the next day. Trotsky's working title was, "The class, the party and the leadership". It is a tremendously valuable analysis of the fundamentals of the questions that concern us in our current "trade-union" discussion.

Read Trotsky on the Spanish Revolution here.

Fight for workers' rights across Europe!
By Lucy Clement and Hannah Wood

A general strike in Spain on Thursday 20 June was a resounding success. The trade union federations united to bring Spain to a virtual standstill. The UGT (socialist union federation) and CCOO (Communist union federation) reported 84% of workers across the country supporting the strike. That is, nearly 13 million workers went on strike!