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From Labor Action, Vol. 13 No. 50, 12 December 1949, p. 1.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
Some of the most representative figures of the French and European intellectuals – Andre Gide, Stephen Spender. Andre Breton, George Orwell, Carlo Levi, Jef Last, among many others – have just issued an urgent manifesto in behalf of the victims of Franco’s terror.
There has hardly been an occasion since the end of the Second World War when such a gesture was so justified and so necessary.
The Franco dictatorship – one of the cruelest and bloodiest known to history – imperturbably continues its labor of exterminating the best sons of the working class and people of Spain.
Six fighters of the underground resistance have been assassinated in the streets of Barcelona by the Falangist police. Juan Gil Heredia, CNT [Anarchist] militant, was executed in the Ocana jail. Jose Lopez in Barcelona, Gabriel Cruz Navarro in Zaragoza, Basilio Luna, Antonio Velasco, Juan Ortiz and Juan Velasco in Ocana – all of them trade union militants – have been condemned to death. Different military tribunals are in the process of sentencing many other militant workers. The rifles of the firing squads are ready for them.
The hour of action, of an energetic and powerful international action, lias sounded. The appeal of the ‘’Committee of Protection and Aid to Spanish Democrats,” simple, direct, concrete, must be the point of departure for a vast world movement against the Franco terror.
The crimes committed must be denounced. Those condemned to death must be saved. The hands of the Falangist hangmen must be paralyzed, and an end put to their hateful repressive measures.
On more than one occasion discussion has been provoked by the indifference of the masses before the crimes of our epoch. It has been stated and restated to the point of satiety that it is not easy to set movements in motion such as those which arose to save Sacco and Vanzetti or Thaelmann from death. Unfortunately, this is so.
The very fact that a group of intellectuals had to serve as the initiators of the action we are now engaged in speaks for itself. What is the workers’ movement doing? Will the large trade-union organizations of our day remain silent once again?
That the “democratic” strategists of the war remain silent, that these who in the shadows prepare the inclusion of Franco Spain in the Atlantic Pact refuse to speak out, that the reactionary Yankee senators – according to whom Franco is “a very sympathetic and pleasant man” – smile, all this can be explained. What has no explanation, what cannot be admitted, is the inaction of the leadership of the large trade-union organizations.
The “Committee of Protection and Aid to Spanish Democrats” has done its duty. To sustain its initiative, and to broaden it, this is now the immediate, urgent, and unpostponable task of the workers’ movement. All the more is this necessary inasmuch as the Stalinists, always active when one of their followers is the victim, do not lift a finger to help save the trade-union militants now threatened with death in Franco’s jails.
The large trade-union organizations were incapable of imposing a complete boycott against Franco. At the present time they tolerate – with the Stalinist World Federation of Trade Unions in first place – the gradual resumption of trade by Franco Spain with almost all the powers. The least that can be demanded of them – and this categorically – is that they contribute their efforts to an action which neither admits of delays nor excuses:
Save those condemned to death by Franco’s military tribunals! Stop the Franco terror!
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