AN ARMISTICE?

Barcelona, 25^th June - Rumours are circulating on the eventuality of a crisis in the government. To our view, if a new government was to be created, it would be one led by Martinez Barrio or Portela Valladares, professed friends of Franco. The Popular Front Government are doing their utmost to effect an armistice, to effect a reconciliation with Franco, and the main object of their policy has been to try and hand government power into the hands of Franco supporters.

If this government came to be, it would mean a return to the state of affairs prevailing before the 19^th July 1936. Even then when Franco made his bloody attack, the government refused to give the workers arms, and even appealed to Franco to stop (not to stop killing the workers) but to prevent the revolution from developing. In the first days of the revolution the government feared more the mighty power of the workers than that of Franco, and the same is true today, even more so.

Thus, today, the murderers of the Asturian miners, the bloody persecutors of the workers' organisations, are to be given the power of the "Popular Front Government" of Spain. This will involve mass sabotage, mass executions, mass murder of those who fight against Franco. These men will send to their death the flower of the Red Armies of Spain.

As for the C.P. reformists, when their work of handing back the power to the Spanish capitalist class is complete, they will be dispensed with, for the Government will then be capable of defending itself against the working class, and perhaps Franco will return to the fold as supreme commander of the republican forces against the workers, their common enemy.

All this could have been avoided (2 million dead) if the workers had taken control and eliminated the government, thus killing at one stroke a great force that has been working with Franco all along the line. The proletariat of Spain was lulled into political unconsciousness by the government which was supposed to be leading it.

It has taken the government two years to cripple the proletariat and its organisations. The FOUN and the Friends of Durutti are gone. The revolutionary sections of the CNT-FAl are persecuted and the whole of the effective organisations of the workers compromised to such a degree as to allow the anti-working class government of Spain to proceed without fear of opposition. And thus today the capitalist government of the "Popular Front" is slowly ending its task of liquidating the war and the Revolution.

The attack of the republican government and C.P. against the POUM is recognised by everyone. But the accusations are one thing and the facts another. The facts are that up to the present all the "evidences" have been proven false, got up to deliberately incriminate the POUM and thus justify the process of legal murder desired by the government and C.P.

There is absolutely nothing to incriminate the POUM, but the same cannot be said of their accusers. In the C.P., the labour party or the Socialist youth dozens of traitors have been found, and many had wormed their way into very responsible positions in the High Command of the republican army. For instance we have seen the entire Karl Marx Division, men and officers, passing over into the Franco lines. Yet the government still gives these posts to similar men.

(August 1938)