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From Labor Action, Vol. 10 No. 17, 29 April 1946, p. 4-M.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the ETOL.
La Vérité (Truth), organ of the International Communist Party, French section of the Fourth International, is the only paper in France today which denounces the crimes of the French army in Indo-China and demands immediate freedom for colonial peoples.
Both the socialist and Stalinist parties have voted war credits for financing the repression of the Indo-Chinese.
Former German soldiers, including 4,000 SS men, have been inducted into the French Foreign Legion and sent to the Far East.
For manifesting sympathy with the Vietnam government, 10,000 Annamite workers out of 12,000 were laid off from their jobs in France, and hundreds were arrested, including many Annamite soldiers. At Oran 500 Annamite soldiers have been locked up with German prisoners or put in concentration camps.
In contrast to the cowardly policy being pursued by the Socialist Workers Party of the United States, the French party has begun a campaign of vindication of Leon Trotsky, addressing demands to the prosecution at. Nuremberg for the revelation of the alleged conspiracy between Trotsky and the Nazis.
An article in La Vérité states in part:
“... the monstrous campaign of lies directed against Trotsky and the Fourth International must be pitilessly unmasked, for it is the very negation of all honestly and all democracy in the labor movement. The International Communist Party, along side the English Revolutionary Communist Party and the Dutch Revolutionary Communist Party, must in its turn address the French and Soviet representatives at Nuremberg to demand the truth, the whole truth, on the ‘proofs’ of the Moscow Trial.”
As a result of the policy of the French government, a fascist movement is stirring into life in France. Known as the “Republican Party of Liberty,” its incubation period was shortened recently by a gift of millions of francs from large insurance companies.
Our French comrades have been active in exposing the movement and in rallying workers to the meetings of the fascists in order to combat them.
Significantly enough, the toleration of the open activity of these fascists by a government in which the Socialists and Communists are a majority coincided with the prohibition of the publication of La Vérité.
The French party has announced the coming publication of Lenin’s pamphlet, The Threatening Catastrophe and How to Fight It. It is a real event, for the occupation destroyed all Marxist literature. There is a terrible dearth of theoretical material in France. Even the Stalinists, with all their resources, have published strikingly little. The republication of Marxist classics, difficult though it is in impoverished France, is a necessary step in the political rearmament of the French working class.
The Socialist Appeal, organ of the English Revolutionary Communist Party, recently reported interesting data on the strike of Singapore workers which began on the 29th of January and extended for several days.
“Over 200,000 workers participated in the struggle, including the engineers, dockworkers, public employees, and even domestic servants and the shopkeepers responded to the call.
“The strike had been called because of the continued refusal on the part of the British authorities to release 14 trade union leaders and militants who had been imprisoned for their participation in a previous strike in December, which took place on the issue of higher wages and better conditions for the workers.”
The following appeal was addressed to British and Indian soldiers by the native workers:
“The workers of Malaya humbly request you to give us every possible help in the present ‘strike’ to raise our standard of living. You shall perform your duty in saving humanity from the imperialist yoke. If you are not in a position to help us, please be neutral. The British government may force you to open fire upon the unarmed and innocent people. Dear brothers, keep up the name of India and save mankind from poverty and death.
“Your brothers who are struggling for better living and New Democracy.”
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Last updated: 2 February 2019