THE CAMPAIGN FOR a referendum to take Spain out of NATO and remove US bases has involved greater numbers of people than any struggle in Spain. Last autumn the anti NATO committees which have formed in many towns, together with other pro-disarmament organisations, began a series of huge mobilisations demonstration of more than half a million people in Madrid on 3 June this year.
The very next day, Felipe Gonzalez, Spanish prime minister and leader of the governing Socialist (PSOE), made statement. He had i been forced to recall - publicly something. he would rather have forgotten: the promise made during the elections to have a referenuum which would finally decide the question Gonzalez has since continued to disguise his firm adherence to NATO by an intentional ambiguity, Nevertheless, the government will almost certainly have to call a referendum. tic ponucal cost or doing otherwise would be too gIcal.
As the pollabor 60 per favour other recent culminating in Spanish withdrawal, there serious setback for the nuclear allance. But the peace movement will have to exert all its strength to prevent Gonzalez turning a referendum clear issue NATO and US bases: yes or no? • into propagandistic support for the government.
Only last month, the PSOE's own previouslydormant anti-NATO wing registered a significant increase in strength. regional eSeptember, gresses of the party were held al over the countrv in preparation for the PSOE COLICS December. The anti-NATO current gained majority in elf out of 45 congresses, gained overal delegates than the 20 per cent expected.
Gonzalez saw this as a suf September tonatoe September that the government, the PSOE has the 'last word' on NATO.
This wing could prove an ally to the peace movement as struggles combat the fudge on the referendum and the power the pro-NATO bourgeois media. And keeping the pressure up Cause uccuci • divisions still at the PSOE congress.
However. an outright anti-NATO majority unlikely, ally way would be ignored by Gonzalez. Only an increase in the level of the mass campaign will ensure victory.
Preserve on omy of the mass campaign is all the more important as there is little hope, cast in ine short term, or a left wing surging up the base of the PSOE The party is bureucratically dominated. For instance. members, has an institutional list left The so-called 'socialist grouping. which is at the head of the anti-NATO current, essentially the opposition of part of the bureaucracy, formerly the majority but now lorcca into a minorily position.
Hence, for example, their calls for greater party On the econthe questions (Euzkadi, Paisos Catalans, Galiza) their positions are just as reactionary as those of the 'official' Gonzalez curI Call Abstention campaign Communist Party, PCE, is conducting its own) is that and feminists, logelner wiln tne lar leIl significant initiatives in the peace committees. These forces, in fact, are leading the campaign.
It the government tries to represent the increasing anti-establishment character of the peace movement as an attack upon its electoral mandate, the peace Movemen build a big campaign for neutrality, against American imperialism and bloc politics. It could show the government's wasteful military spending and the consequent threat to jobs were in fact bound up with its allegiance to a military bloc.
Thus the whole campaign could be centered around the twin, positive demands for neutral Spain, and for jobs, rather man Just spontaneous pro tests.
This would begin to pose a real alternative government policy, would same time give the movement moment would carry it past any defeat on a fudged referendum.
Socialist Action 26 October 1984