European students, workers in motion

ITALY

Hundreds of thousands of workers in different sectors of the economy left their jobs Dec. 12 to take to the streets all over the country in the first general strike since the right-wing government of Premier Silvio Berlusconi was voted back into office last April. The strike takes place as economists predict a severe downturn in the Italian economy with a drop in the GNP of one percent in the coming year.

The largest demonstration took place in the city of Bologna, where 200,000 joined a march led by Italy’s General Confederation of Labor (CGIL), the only labor center that had called the strike. Tens of thousands more demonstrated in Turin, Milan, Venice, Rome and Naples, and other major marches took place in Florence, Ancona, Bari, Palermo and Cagliari. The marches included workers, students, teachers and others. At the main FIAT auto plant in Mirafiori, half the workers walked out.

On the day of the strike, Berlusconi announced a one-year suspension of the planned “reform” of higher education that students have been protesting throughout the fall. (Avante, Dec. 18)

FRANCE

Concerned that a planned “school reform” would cut teacher jobs, increase class sizes and in general diminish the quality of French secondary school education, 150,000 high school students hit the streets Dec. 17 in protest. In an immediate move to try to defuse the anger of the youths, Education Minister Xavier Darcos postponed the “reforms” and promised consultations.

According to reports in the media, French government figures feared that the high school protests would spill over into the kinds of street actions that were taking place in Greece. While the French economy has not experienced a severe downturn such as that in Greece, this may be on the agenda even in the most prosperous of the West European countries.

Youth in many of the high schools (lycées) continued the protests on Dec. 18, demanding guarantees that the government would postpone and re-discuss the proposed changes.

CATALONIA/SPAIN

University students have been occupying buildings and holding other forms of protest in different regions of the Spanish state since November to try to stop the government from imposing the so-called Plan Bologna. This “reform,” decided on in the Italian city six years ago, is meant to create a more nearly uniform curriculum in the universities of the European Union. But it also makes the courses more tuned into training students for professions and more linked to private corporations rather than exposing students to overall learning. In general, the process diminishes student input into university curricula.

More than 100 student representatives from universities in Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, Seville, Burgos, Zaragoza, Cádiz and Málaga met for the first time on a federal level on Dec. 13 and 14 in Valencia to coordinate their mobilizations to try to put a stop to Plan Bologna. The student takeover at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB)—located about 10 miles from the city center—began in mid-November and by early December these actions had spread to many other places.

On Nov. 28, invited by one of the student groups, leftist Belgian media expert and political analyst Michel Collon and Workers World managing editor John Catalinotto, who were in Barcelona for a series of forums (see next), spoke on the world economic crisis and the threat of war to some of the 600 students occupying offices. Youth in the Spanish state have been hit hard by the economic crisis, with unemployment for that group growing from 18 percent to 28 percent over the 14 months ending in October. (International Herald Tribune, Dec. 19).

Michel Collon and John Catalinotto, second and third from left with four activist students from the occupied Autonomous University of Barcelona, Nov. 28. WW photo

BARCELONA FORUMS

The Barcelona-based Pere Ardiaca Foundation invited political analysts from different parts of the world to a series of four evening discussions held starting Nov. 27 to discuss “Peace, War and Neo-liberalism.” Among those speaking were Samir Amin, Egyptian political analyst and head of the Forum of Alternatives; Catalinotto and Collon (see above); and three European political analysts—Daniel Cireira from the French Communist Party, Willy Meyer from the United Left in Spain and John Neelsen from the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation in Germany—who shared the Dec. 1 forum. Catalonian progressives introduced and chaired the discussions, which took place before audiences of between 50 and 100 people.

As the forums coincided with a deepening awareness of the depth of the current economic crisis, much of the commentary took up this harsh crisis and its likely impact on both the drive to war and the potential for mobilizing against war. The speakers represented diverse views on the left, but there was near unanimity that the capitalist crisis was severe, that the government intervention in the economies up to that point were solely directed at aiding the big financiers and capitalists, and that neither the new U.S. administration nor the European Union could be counted on to stop new wars or end the existing occupations.

—John Catalinotto