75 Years Since the Spanish Revolution.
What follows is my rough notes hastily scribbled from Socialism this year, and I shall be doing a lead-off as of tomorrow, starting at Newcastle branch.
We have seen the re-enactment of the Jarrow March. As we know this is a recreation of the march undertaken 75 years ago, during which time workers faced mass unemployment and struggled in their everyday lives. Workers in Spain at the time also faced poverty and struggle. Marx, Lenin and Trotsky all looked back at past attempts at revolution when looking at Spain. Spain should have moved over from the peasantry to a more capitalist class, but there was a strong monarchy, army and church which were all a weight on the peasantry. Spain has also been famous for oppressing much of South America. The Catholic church also sided with Franco and the fascists. This was a key area in influencing the population of Spain, as the church was responsible for the education of the children.
As some lefts wanted to join with the popular front – made up of liberal capitalists – there were echoes of the Russian revolution when Trotsky returned from exile. This had happened to the Bolshevik party. In Spain the heroism of Anarch-Syndicalists were crushed by the right.
A lot of left parties were in league to smash workers. There were illusions of peace with parliament. We can see this echoed today in some sense with Labour-led councils. However, the Popular Front led to conditions of fascism, and also gave the green light for Hitler.
1 month into the war, Stalinist leaders in Russia began the Moscow Trials. These leaders wanted a capitalist government, and many Spanish workers who fought were murdered in these trials. It has been stated many times that anarchists in Barcelona could have taken power but allowed weak capitalist leaders to take it back. Trotsky later said that no party at the time could have led a revolution.
The most socialist organisation at the time, the POUM, had no independent programme. Trotsky elaborates on this in Class, Party and Leadership.
When the Popular Front took over in 1936, workers saw it as a victory and immediately released prisoners and took over without waiting for the leadership. This is the main lesson to learn from this – we need to create a workers’ party before revolution, similar to the experiences of the Bolsheviks. Anarchists, different then than the anarchists of today, expressed themselves through trade unions. However, Stalin’s communists misled them.
A key lesson to learn from the war is that there was a tremendous amount of heroism and bravery of the Spanish fighters and international workers who joined them, 4000 of whom were from Britain. Because of this immense sacrifice, it is important to build a true socialist revolution. Not through fighting, but through the party.
Could it happen again? Southern Europe is the “weak link in capitalism”. People in Spain were suffering in living standards as today. Today left leaders are in bed with the Tories and big business.
There was also a lack of co-operation between left parties in the civil war, and this looks true today, and why it is important for us as a party to form alliances in organisations like TUSC.
In Grenada in Andalucia 8 million people supported the 15th May movement and the government sent in police to break it up. But an hour before this they were told that 2 police unions were not enforcing the law and refused to arrest protestors. Again, no revolutionary party was big enough to take this forward. It did show the unity needed of working people. The strikes that took place on November 30th was a major step in united the working-class under one banner.
