The Militant(logo) 
    Vol.61/No.4           January 27, 1997 
 
 
25 & 50 Years Ago  
January 28, 1972
Political turmoil in Yugoslavia has continued in the wake of the reactionary nationalist strike of Zagreb University students in the Yugoslav republic of Croatia. On January 11, 11 prominent intellectuals active in Croatian nationalist organizations were arrested on charges of preparing to overthrow the present Yugoslav economic system and plotting the secession of Croatia.

[President Josip] Tito is compelled to suppress such reactionary nationalist outbreaks and the growth of capitalist relations when these tendencies get out of hand in order to preserve the nationalized property system, which is the very base of his own power. But these problems of chauvinism and capitalist methods have in fact been encouraged by the policies of the Tito regime itself - namely, the policies of decentralization, "profitability" of factories, and a foreign policy that is not based on international working-class solidarity but on narrow national interests.

In December of 1967 a wave of student demonstrations swept Yugoslavia protesting U.S. aggression in Vietnam. Ten thousand students demonstration in Zagreb, and similar protests under student leadership took place throughout the country. Authorities ordered police to disperse the crowds with tear gas.

February 1, 1947
BRUSSELS, Belgium, January 17 - The stubborn, four-week strike waged by the dock workers of Antwerp against great odds, has ended in the greatest strike victory in this country since the "liberation."

The strike began on December 13, when 14,000 dockworkers walked off their jobs despite their reformist union leaders' efforts to stop them. The dispute began over the unloading of particularly heavy goods, but the actual cause was how wages in the face of rising prices.

After the union bureaucrats had proved helpless to end the strike, the government, led by the "socialist" Huysmans, sent 2,000 troops to the Antwerp docks to unload perishable goods. This was intended to intimidate the strikers as well as to check the paralyzing of the most important port on the continent.

All financial support was denied to the strikers. Trade union funds were barred to them and under an act introduced by the Stalinist minister Marteaux last year, the government refused them unemployment relief for taking part in an unauthorized" strike. The government, bosses, and union bureaucrats were trying to break the strike through hunger.  
 
 
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