spoke about the 'rejection of the men of violence and the return to politics' by the minority. But in August the Provisionals broke out of their isolation. Mass action on the streets challenged British rule once more, and the Provos, despite severe blows, maintained their capacity to carry on the guerrilla war.
In the Assembly elections, the British and the SDLP temporarily cashed in on the contradictions which underly political life in the Catholic ghettoes. In the era of Stormont, elections for the Catholics were never about long term political principles, they were about putting into office someone who could be relied upon to distribute patronage, and to intervene within local government and Stormont machinery on behalf of the Catholic community. A breed of street corner politicians grew up, who had little in the way of political principles, but who, through wheeling and dealing, built up a personal power base.
When confronted with a ballot paper the CathoThis has been seen in the continual adoption of advanced methods of struggle (sit-in strikes, seizure of plant, wildcat strikes), and in the remedying of one of the weaknesses of 1968: self-organisation, the ability of the workers to take control of their own struggles out of the hands of the bureaucracy. The formation of strike committees has become increasingly common in recent struggles, provoking a big debate at the 36th Congress of the CFDT trade union federation. A whole generation of worker militants is emerging who have shown that they are capable of challenging the reformist bureaucrats for the leadership of the struggle. LIVING EXAMPLE In four months of struggle, the workers of Besancon have provided a living, daily example of the way in which to build up a favourable relationship of forces against the bosses. The organisation of the struggle, with commissions and a daily general assembly; the international solidarity of the Swiss watchmakers; the tremendous efforts to build support With the intervention of the police to take over the factory, and the wave of solidarity and protest which it unleashed in the middle of the August holiday period, Lip has become a major test of strength between the ruling class and the working class.
The government, which had first expected the Lip struggle to peter out, was surprised when it threatened to carry over into the autumn period. It craftily decided to attack in the middle of August, counting on only a token response from the workers' movement. But this short-term gamble was blocked by the actual response.
Since then, the government has opted for a policy of straight-forward repression. The prime minister, Messmer, has taken-personal responsibility for the decision to send in the police; the minister for 'industrial development, Charbonnel, has put forward a plan taken straight from the anti-working class projects of the former owners, Ebauches-SA; and there have been threats to close down the factory completely if the letters offering re-employment to some of the workers are not taken up.
Today, as the employers' magazine Les Echos points out, time is against the bosses. The number of 'Lips" threatens-to increase. The strikers stand firm on their demands: no redundancies, no reorganisation. So the ruling class are stuck: to raise the stakes still further would risk touching off a whole series of explosions, but equally a retreat would give a tremendous impetus to the struggles of the whole working class It is a sticky position for the Communist Party, too, with its reformist electoral perspectives. There are still two years to go before the next contest for the presidency, and the debate centres around how to develop workers' struggles like Lip. In many cases, the workers who protested against the intervention of the police at Lip were also expressing discontent at their own situation. Faced with the attitude of the government, a deep desire has developed to change the present order of things RULING CLASS IN CRISIS This crisis comes at a time when there are growing splits inside the Gaullist "majority' These are particularly expressed in the backstabbing which is going on in the search for a candidate to put up against the Union of the Left' (coalition of the Communist Party Socialist Party, and Left Radicals) in the presidential elections But the personal in-fighting conceals a rather more serious problem for the ruling class policy divisions, lack of an opposition capitalist party, lack of a Bonaparte who can take up the role played by de Gaulle.
The systematic use of repression by the government, incapable of working out and applying a coherent policy, is a sign of these internal difficulties and the weakness of its social base. This leads it to make tremendous miscalculations as far as its own interests are concerned.
At the same time, there is a growing crisis in the institutions on which the ruling class depends for its rule. There are divisions in the police force between an increasingly fascist