RED RULE IN SPAIN

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXX, Issue 4874, 23 July 1936, Page 2

RED RULE IN SPAIN

UNLIKELY EVENT. LEFTISTS STILL AT ODDS. When the leader of the Catholic Party in the Cortes read to the assembled deputies the figures detailing the number of outrages which have occurred in Spain since the new Government of the Left took office in February, he intensified the longexisting feeling of uneasiness in the outside world about the course of events here, wrote Frederick Birchall from Madrid to the New York Times on June 21. In four months or so, Jose Maria Gil Robles stated, 269 persons had been killed and 1500 seriously injured

in political disorders; 160 churches had been burned and 250 damaged; 44 newspaper plants had been wrecked or damaged and 340 strikes called by Socialist, Communist, and Syndicalist labour unions.

It was a more formidable list than anyone had expected. The Government has questioned these figures, but has presented none of its own. It has blamed recalcitrant and Fascist employers for many of the strikes, and has-charged that professional agitators had been hired to promote disorders.

However, the world effect of M. Gil Roble’s statement was immediate. Photographers hurried here to take pictures of future rioting and newspaper correspondents to find out whether Spain was really about to go revolutionary and Bolshevik in the Russian sense.

General Strikes.

To-day the general strike in Cadiz ended its fourth day. The general strike in Valladolid called to protest against the killing of two Communists by Fascists has ended, but the new public works in Murcia, recently authorised by the Government, which would give work to several thousand unemployed men, are being held up by strikes.

Indalicio Prieto, leader of the moderate faction of the Socialist Party, is in despair. He writes to-day in his newspaper, “El Liberal” of Bilboa: “I am discouraged and dejected. I see the Socialist Party, the backbone of the political left wing in Spain, travelling towards dissension and chaos. Socialist trades unions in many cases are being towed in the wake of terrorism by Syndicalists. Nothing is being done to alter their

course or to divert them from anarchistic methods and procedures which can only be disastrous to the working classes.

“I see the republic trembling, thanks to this phenomenon, and the reactionaries rejoice as they contemplate the panorama which could not be more promising for them.” . Nevertheless those who know Spain best and can view this situation with a certain detachment agree that the present conditions do not mean Spain is about to become Communist or Fascist. Communism and Fascism and, to a certain extent, Socialism, call for mass action which implies mass discipline. This Spanish population is probably the most individualistic, the least disciplined in all Europe. The masses demand better living conditions—that is all. Moreover, the masses are about to get

them. But the path is hard beset by many obstacles. Hopelessly Split. One of them is the number of radical parties in Spain and the apparent irreconcilability of their theories and the inability of the parties themselves to agree, even within their own ranks, on a political programme and the best method for promoting it. For instance, the Socialists are hopelessly split between the radicals led by Francisco Largo Caballero, who advocates the unification of all labour unions, Socialists, Communists, and Syndicalists, in a common front to destroy Capitalism and inaugurate a workers’ paradise by force, and the moderates led by M. Prieto, who says this is senseless under the present circumstances and who prefers to reach the millenium more gradually.

Then there are the syndicalists—who in the old days used to be called anarchists —who do not believe in government at all and whose programme, as far as can be ascertained, does not go further than the destruction of the present system leaving to everyone hereafter to do as he pleases with what is left of the remains. There are about 2,500,000 Syndicalists in the Spanish population of some 23,000,000.

Another obstacle is the atmosphere that pervades Spanish politics which may wreck all efforts to compromise. To the Spanish politics becomes a personal, vital, and fighting matter. American or British politicians may wage a contest in public yet privately be the best of friends in the world. It is not so in Spain. Here political disagreement merges into personal enmity. Even a neutral observer gathering facts has to be careful. To be seen in friendly conversation with members of one party may render one suspect and, therefore, to be avoided by members of opposing parties.

There are two Socialist newspapers in Madrid, an evening and a morning newspaper. Censorship is making internal news a scarce commodity and a large part of the columns of both are devoted to polemical discussions as to the advisability of Socialist union with other parties. One paper is for it and the other violently opposes it.

The result has been that when the two editors met recently in the street one punched the other on the nose. The Shades of Dana and Godkin, if they are cognisant of what was going on in Madrid at that particular day, must have been puzzled. Their controversies never extended to fisticuff's.

Yet these characteristics may prove to be Spain’s salvation. For while they exist in triumph here neither Bolshevism nor Fascism, involving mass action, unity, and subordination of personality to an ideal, becomes impossible. In a democracy only can in'dividualism flourish, so Spain seems likely to remain democratic according to its light.

Yet there are crying abuses to be remedied. With three-fourths of the population agrarian, dependent upon .the land, and living on wages of 3,2, or even a single peseta for a day’s work, something must be done to raise them to meet bare living standards. That wage means toiling for a wage ranging between 6%d and Is 7d_ a day. Other European countries, France, Russia, and now Germany, had their revolutions. Britain in its own way has changed and is still changing the conditions of her working classes by degrees without a revolution, but in a large part Spain’s mentality is still of the sixteenth century with working conditions of that period. Change has become imperative and it is taking place, but with turmoil and great travail. Perhaps one wonders that the disturbances have been no worse. In any case the p'resent Government might do well to hang up something like a sign once common in our Western dance halls, “Don’t shoot the pianist; he’s doing the best he can.”