From The Marxist Archives -The Revolutionary History Journal-For Bread, for wages, general strike-PCI Declaration, undated, by internal evidence July 1947

... in times of class upsurge like after World War II in Europe (and for a shorter period in the U.S.) even small smart propaganda groups (in the Marxist organizational sense) can make great gains if they have the right programmatic calls and can agitate effectively.  

 

 

 

Click below to link to the Revolutionary History Journal index.

http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/revhist/backissu.htm

 

Peter Paul Markin comment on this series:

This is an excellent documentary source for today’s leftist militants to “discover” the work of our forebears, particularly the bewildering myriad of tendencies which have historically flown under the flag of the great Russian revolutionary, Leon Trotsky and his Fourth International, whether one agrees with their programs or not. But also other laborite, semi-anarchist, ant-Stalinist and just plain garden-variety old school social democrat groupings and individual pro-socialist proponents.

Some, maybe most of the material presented here, cast as weak-kneed programs for struggle in many cases tend to be anti-Leninist as screened through the Stalinist monstrosities and/or support groups and individuals who have no intention of making a revolution. Or in the case of examining past revolutionary efforts either declare that no revolutionary possibilities existed (most notably Germany in 1923) or alibi, there is no other word for it, those who failed to make a revolution when it was possible. 

The Spanish Civil War can serve as something of litmus test for this latter proposition, most infamously around attitudes toward the Party Of Marxist Unification's (POUM) role in not keeping step with revolutionary developments there, especially the Barcelona days in 1937 and by acting as political lawyers for every non-revolutionary impulse of those forebears. While we all honor the memory of the POUM militants, according to even Trotsky the most honest band of militants in Spain then, and decry the murder of their leader, Andreas Nin, by the bloody Stalinists they were rudderless in the storm of revolution. But those present political disagreements do not negate the value of researching the POUM’s (and others) work, work moreover done under the pressure of revolutionary times. Hopefully we will do better when our time comes.

Finally, I place some material in this space which may be of interest to the radical public that I do not necessarily agree with or support. Off hand, as I have mentioned before, I think it would be easier, infinitely easier, to fight for the socialist revolution straight up than some of the “remedies” provided by the commentators in these entries from the Revolutionary History journal in which they have post hoc attempted to rehabilitate some pretty hoary politics and politicians, most notably August Thalheimer and Paul Levy of the early post Liebknecht-Luxemburg German Communist Party. But part of that struggle for the socialist revolution is to sort out the “real” stuff from the fluff as we struggle for that more just world that animates our efforts. So read, learn, and try to figure out the
wheat from the chaff. 
******** 

5: For Bread, for wages, general strike-PCI Declaration, undated, by internal evidence July 1947

Working men and women,

Starting with the Renault strike, from April to July, most categories of workers have gone on strike to win better living standards.
Metal workers and office workers, railway workers and miners, public employees and agricultural workers have joined the battle against the bosses and the government.

The PCF, PS and CGT leaders have used the worst kind of manoeuvres in order to discredit and demoralise workers, to stop them from moving towards a general strike.
Hand in hand with the bourgeois ministers, Thorez, vice-president of the Cabinet, is the inventor of the wage freeze, as L’Humanité of 19 February 1946 testifies: “The government will maintain wages at their present level.”

Slanderers, like Victorien Duguet, Secretary of the Miners Federation, who dared to declare at the CGT congress that “strikes are the weapon of the trusts”.
The Stalinists, forced by the workers’ strength to leave the government, still remain a party of bourgeois government. Didn’t Duclos, that servant of social peace, declare in April: “Only fools are capable of talking about a general strike.”
For three months, they’ve used every crafty tactic to divide the will to fight of the workers, to distort and divert the direction of their class action, trying to get Renault to go back before Citroen comes out, the railway workers before the public services, the bakery workers before the railway workers; the loyal Stalinist lackeys of capitalism split the movement, and generalise sectional strikes as a divisive weapon to prevent a general strike of all trades, which would strike a decisive blow against the capitalist system which produces crisis, inflation and poverty.
All workers must draw the lessons of the powerful strike wave of April to July, which developed outside of, and against, the instructions of the Jouhaux-Fractions, who nevertheless succeeded in keeping control of these movements in the best interests of the capitalists.
Today, faced with the anti-working class measures of the Ramadier government, workers understand that they must fight together and unify their struggle for bread and wages through a general strike.
Platonic demonstrations at the Champs de Mars will only wear out the workers’ shoe-leather. These demonstrations and limited work-stoppages will only serve to exhaust the workers, in order to prevent them launching a general strike.
How should the general strike be prepared? Committees of struggle!
Workers can place no confidence in the leaders of the CGT to prepare, organise and launch the general strike. More interested in discussions with the top bosses of the CNPF [employers’ federation], Jouhaux, Frachon and Co intend above all to ensure social peace against the most legitimate interests of the working people.
Workers should count only on themselves to prepare action.
Irrespective of, and transcending, all party or union barriers, the advanced workers of the PCI, the revolutionary tendency of the CGT, the Workers Front, the CNT, the PCF and the PS, the Anarchists and those without a party who have understood the betrayal of the leaders of the big workers’ organisations, must get together to prepare action in committees of struggle.
What are committees of struggle? Towards a congress of enterprises!
During the engineering workers’ strike in February 1947, workers from different political and union tendencies got together in committees of struggle in order to discuss programme and the ways and means of conducting the strike. At Renault and Unic, they understood that within the framework of the bureaucratic discipline of the Jouhaux and Fractions they had no chance of preparing the struggle.
Today, at Peugeot in Sochaux, the committee of struggle has brought together the most militant workers. These committees of struggle need to be generalised, their experiences in preparing the general strike shared, in preparation for a congress of enterprises.
In every enterprise, the workers who are ready to go into action should get together and meet in order to establish a committee of struggle. They should, after work, convene meetings where the programme and methods for launching actions would be democratically discussed. The enterprise committees of struggle must make contact with each other and organise together around a central committee of struggle which must prepare a large-scale meeting where all the workers of whatever tendency would meet in a ‘congress of enterprises’ in order to launch and organise generalised strike action. There is no time to lose. We must move quickly. Today the provinces are restless. They’re waiting for help, for a push, for leadership from the workers of the Paris region.
How to conduct the general strike. For elected strike committees.
The PCF trade union bureaucrats want us to believe that they’re for action. They’re not. Their leftism only covers up their intention to keep control of the movement, to wear it down and sink it. At Sochaux, Lyon and Brest workers booed the Stalinist bureaucrats who preached quiescence and passivity.
There must be no confidence in these servants of the bosses in disguise. From the beginning of the strike, we must democratically elect a strike committee which will flush out all those who have preached “Produire d’abord” (production first) and the class collaborationist policies of the PCF for the past three years. Spreading the strike will be the work of those workers who, en masse, will go to other factories and call on them to elect strike committees which will be organised in a central strike committee.
The programme of the general strike
The results of three years of ‘Production first’ are laid out clearly in front of us: cuts in the bread ration and price increases. Aviation factories without work and 300,000 public employees threatened with unemployment in order to meet the 300 billion (franc) budget for the war in Indochina.
Inflation is rampant. The capitalist ship is leaking everywhere. The lot of the working masses gets worse every day.
The responsibility for the situation falls entirely on the leaders of the PS, PCF and CGT who for three years have had a policy of ‘unity’ with the patriotic bosses, the MPR and the bourgeois parties.
It is Ramadier who has taken all the anti-working class measures on behalf of the bourgeoisie.
The French Communist Party is even more responsible, if that’s possible, since, while having the total confidence of the working masses, it has been the initiator of the policy of collaboration with the bourgeoisie for the past three years. Thorez remained vice-president of the Cabinet, Croizat, Minister of Labour and Marcel Paul, Minister of Industrial Production, all in the governments whether of De Gaulle, Gouin, Bidault or Ramadier.
And today, after this disastrous experience, the PCF advocates that its ministers re-enter the government with the PS and bourgeois ministers.
This solution will bring no relief for the ills that are grinding down the workers. Because there is no solution in the framework of a system where the boss is the master of his enterprise and the government of the bosses remains master of the country.
Working class and revolutionary solutions? They exist for wages: a living minimum
The cost of living rises constantly. Since the beginning of 1945, when the CGT demanded a minimum of 4000E per month or 23 francs an hour, prices have quadrupled. Today, to have the same purchasing power as in February 1945, a labourer should receive 75 francs and the lowest monthly-paid worker, 13 000 per month.
Guaranteed by a sliding scale
No confidence should be placed in charlatans who daily promise to stabilise prices. As a first step against price increases, the general strike will impose a sliding scale. For every price increase, a wage increase, and then the bosses will think twice before increasing prices.
Stabilisation of prices under workers’ control
The price watch commissions, in which the CGT honchos collaborated with the bosses and the bourgeois state functionaries, have failed miserably, just like the enterprise committees.
The fight to keep prices down means the ending of business secrets and control, through elected delegates, of prices at all levels of production and distribution.
No invoice, no accounting document will be valid if not countersigned by the elected delegates of the workers’ control committee.
The general strike is the fight against inflation
By stopping the 100 million a day spent for the war in Indochina, by ending the 300 billion in military credits, and by the confiscation of the billions that the banks and big trusts have in reserve.
Expropriation without compensation of all national enterprises.
General strike for bread
The impotence of the bourgeoisie and its Stalinist and Socialist agents brings unending poverty. As a first step, workers in struggle will force the bourgeois state to maintain the bread ration.
The peasants want ploughs, fertiliser, clothes and tractors. The capitalists build bombers and explosives.
By instituting workers’ control of production, the workers will orient production towards peaceful works and basic necessities. If the peasants could buy what they need at affordable prices, they would deliver at affordable prices wheat, meat and potatoes.
For a workers’ and peasants’ government
Only a general strike of all sections of the working class can win these demands. The general strike is the question posed by the masses in struggle.
Will the capitalist anarchy continue?
Will the boss remain master in his enterprise?
Will the bourgeois government, manager of bourgeois business, remain master of the country?
The PCF leaders explain that everything will be solved if the Stalinist ministers return to government.
They are liars and traitors!
Is it possible to win a minimum living wage of 13,000 francs a month, to protect this minimum against price increases through a sliding scale and workers' control? Is it possible to win bread through workers’ control of production, with a government that defends the capitalists' interests and where Thorez and Croizat keep company with Bidault and Ramadier?
No!
Only an anti-capitalist government, a workers’ and peasants’ government, breaking the coalition with the bourgeoisie, supported and installed by workers in struggle can put in practice the programme of the general strike.
The proof of the betrayals of the PCF, the CGT and PS is that, having the confidence of the broad masses, they don't want to rely on this will to fight to constitute a government of the workers’ parties and the CGT, which would be controlled by the masses in struggle and by their organisations.
Build a revolutionary leadership! Join the PCI
To impose this revolutionary programme, we need a new revolutionary leadership. The Stalinist party, the Socialist Party, and the leaders of the CGT, have gone bag and baggage into the camp of the bourgeoisie. The workers’ vanguard, which has understood the betrayal of its leaders, must organise in the Parti Communiste Internationaliste (PCI), world party of Socialist revolution.
The only party whose programme is capable of leading the masses to victory against capitalism:
The Parti Communiste Internationaliste, IVe Internationale

************

4: Taking off again ...

From La voix des travailleurs de chez Renault, No.8, 3 June 1947

Taking off again – this time with the left foot forward!

According to official figures, production has doubled within the last year, but nevertheless, the situation of workers has got worse. In high places they try to confuse workers with ‘technical’ explanations and speeches about the “race between wages and prices”.

But if the situation is catastrophic for the masses, it is not so for everyone. We can be sure that the rich, despite the lack of bread, ate as usual, Monday as Sunday, today as yesterday, and will also do so tomorrow ... if workers don’t react. Because the explanation for the whole situation and all the difficulties for the masses is the action of all governments up till now, who have all had a policy in favour of the rich and against the poor.

With a government of the workers, wouldn’t the growth in production naturally improve the life of the masses? This is so obvious and the discontent so great that the entire working class, in the provinces and in Paris, the entire population, is indignant and wants to fight. All-out efforts were needed, not just official, but above all by those organisations which still pretend to be workers’ organisations, in order to keep this discontent from transforming into a groundswell.

But the wave is swelling. On Monday morning, several hundred workers and clerks demonstrated in front of the Hotel Matignon [Prime Minister’s residence]. In our factory, the Collas sector and Bas Meudon struck for a half-day in immediate reaction to the government’s manoeuvres. Indeed, it [the government] only pushed the bakery workers out on strike (their punishing work is very badly paid) with the unstated hope that this latter strike, which affects the whole population, would incite it against the strikes in general.

In addition, with what’s happening in the factories in the provinces and in Paris, we can see that the general strike movement (which the Collas strike committee called for) is tending, day by day, to become a reality.

The need for this struggle is making so much progress in the consciousness of the workers that the CGT leaders, who first presented a general strike as an idiocy, are now trying to say that it is premature, that “we don't know where it will take us”, that this will be an insurrectionary strike, that “the reaction is just waiting for this.”

Why are the CGT leaders threatening us with the reaction?

The working class has been through two general strikes: February 1934 and June 1936. In the first case, the general strike was intended precisely to crush the reaction, which had fed on passivity and parliamentary scandals. And, despite the formation of governments such as those of Doumergue or Laval, which were reactionary governments, the working class constantly improved its position through struggle and, finally, it was with the general strike of June 1936 that, for the first time, it succeeded in winning demands which were urgent and indispensible for its life: paid holidays, the 40-hour week, wage increases ... It is because later struggles, in 1937 and 1938, were sabotaged by the official leadership that the working class later pulled back.

The government is already relying on the reaction, on the capitalists, their high-level bureaucracy, and the corps of generals to smother workers’ struggles (through requisitions, etc). And it is only because these reactionary forces don’t feel able to attack the working class head-on that they hide behind a government which is socialist only in name.

It’s not insurrection that’s posed.

Today, as in June 1936, what’s posed is self-defence.

The CGT policy is everyone for himself, when only a general strike (not including essential services) can make the capitalists and the government capitulate. In a general strike of industries which are non-essential for daily life, the wages of bakery workers, for example, would go up like all the others, without them going on strike.

Isolated and dispersed strikes waste precious time; in the long run they wear down both the workers and the population. This is what the reaction is waiting for, and if the so-called workers’ representatives are supporters of these methods it is because their goal is above all to use workers’ struggles to accomplish their own ministerial designs, and not to defend the workers’ bread.

As in June 1936, the working class, all together, must once again put its left foot forward!

(please forward widely) The Campaign to Free Lynne Stewart. For doing her job of representing her client, Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman, Lynne Stewart, the “people’s lawyer” and UNAC coordinating committee member was charged with violating a government-issued SAM (Special Administrative Measure when she released a media statement on Rachman's behalf.  Such "violations" are usually punished with a legal "slap on the wrist," wherein the offending attorney is prohibited visiting rights for a period of time.  Indeed, then Attorney General Janet Reno declined to bring any charges against Stewart.  It was only two years later that Bush-appointed John Ashcroft decided to do so, charging her with conspiracy to aid and abet terrorism. Lynne initially was sentenced to 28 months in prison, but the government wanted to make an example of her to make sure that no other attorney dared to exercise due diligence in representing clients who had been falsely accused of engagement in so-called conspiracies.  Therefore, government prosecutors appealed the initial sentence and demanded that, Lynne's sentence be substantially increased.  The compliant trial judge, John Koeltl, complied and sentenced her to 10 years. In prison, Lynne Stewart's breast cancer returned, and the wholly inadequate prison medical system was incapable of providing her with the necessary care.  As the cancer metastasized to other parts of her body, her husband, Ralph Poynter, started an exemplary campaign to gain compassionate release for Lynne.  UNAC and others joined in to help.  Demonstrations and press conferences were held in New York, San Francisco, Washington, DC, Albany, NY and other places.  Thousands sent letters, signed petitions and made calls demanding her release.  On the last day of 2013, after a hard-fought campaign, the government finally relented, and Lynne was granted compassionate release.  During this time of precious few victories for our movement, this should be seen as one of the most inspiring.  The campaign for Lynne's release was non-sectarian. Everyone who wanted to support Lynne was welcome to do so.  Rallies included speakers from every group that joined the effort.  People were asked again and again to write, call, protest and spread the word about Lynne's plight. Those who supported her made sure that if they were not going to let her out, the governemnt would pay a political price for their attack on Lynne and their violation of democratic rights. Despite setbacks, the campaign continued  and succeeded in freeing Lynne, and, with the top-notch medical care afforded by the world-renown Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, perhaps extending her life for whatever additional time that science allows  At the same time, the Edward Snowden revelations about our  government’s illegal spying were spreading throughout the world.  The world watched Chelsey Manning get  sentenced to 35 years for telling the truth.  Perhaps to assuage its image on democratic rights as it seeks to "spread democracy" throughout the world, and in light of the mass campaign for Lynne's compassionate release, the US government reneged. We brought Lynne home to her family, her community and to the movement for social change that she was prepared to give her life for. Lynne’s victory is a victory for all of us. For more information, please visit http://lynnestewart.org/.   Seventeen People Tried for Portesting Drones in Upstate, NY On January 25, 2012, 17 people were arrested for symbolically blocking the gates at Hancock National Air Guard Base which is a site where MQ 9 Reaper drones are piloted over Afghanistan, and the domestic center for training MQ9 Reaper pilots and technicians.   They stood in front of the gates with banners and and signs calling for an end to drone warfare, and read an Indictment for Crimes Against Peace and attacks on civilians that are illegal under international war.  After more than two hours outside the gates, the protesters were arrested and arraigned on charges of Trespass and Disorderly Conduct, both violations.   The protesters were  also issued  Orders of Protection for Col Earl Evans which require them to stay away from the base.   Violating these OOPs, as they call them, carries potential misdemeanor or even felony charges.  On January 2nd of this year (2014)  the Hancock 17 went to trial in DeWitt, NY.   Fifteen defendants are going before the court Pro Se, i.e. they are representing themselves before the court.   They have prepared a defense based on the fact that they were not at the base to break the law, but rather to uphold the law.   The way the drones are used in Afghanistan violates Humanitarian Law and Human Rights Law.    There is little coverage of Afghan casualties in the mainstream news but according to a report by Press TV, there were 500 drone attacks in Afghanistan in the last year.    After 12 hours in the courtroom on January 2nd and 6th, the prosecution case is nearly complete.   The defendants had an opportunity to cross examine Col Evans, a civil engineer responsible for material operations at the base, and the Security Chief at some length.  There were a number of questions about the handling of events occurring outside the Military Installation (denoted by the fence) of the Base and in the Easement which includes a public thoroughfare.  It is expected that the defense case will begin on January 23 and continue on the 24th.     The defendants' case is supported by former Attorney General Ramsey Clark and Mary Ellen O'Connell of Notre Dame who is an expert on Drones and International Law, and by witness from an Afghan youth whose brother-in-law was killed in a drone strike in Maidan Shahr Wardak, Afghanistan.  For more information, please go to http://upstatedroneaction.org/     click here to donate to UNAC Click here for the Facebook UNAC group. To add yourself to the UNAC listserv, please send an email to: UNAC-subscribe@lists.riseup.net     --

From The Marxist Archives -The Revolutionary History Journal-The Stalinist Apparatus end the Renault Strike of May 1947

...there is a significant difference between Stalinism in the early 1930s when there  was a ton of mock ultra-leftism on display and even the Popular Front era of the middle 1930s when in order to maintain any relationship with working class militants the trade union cadre had to stay in step with the ranks and the post-war period when almost everything was dictated by the needs of Soviet foreign policy as the ice age Cold War set in. This acts as a backdrop to the perfidious Stalinist role in the Renault strike.   

 

 

Click below to link to the Revolutionary History Journal index.

http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/revhist/backissu.htm

Peter Paul Markin comment on this series:

This is an excellent documentary source for today’s leftist militants to “discover” the work of our forebears, particularly the bewildering myriad of tendencies which have historically flown under the flag of the great Russian revolutionary, Leon Trotsky and his Fourth International, whether one agrees with their programs or not. But also other laborite, semi-anarchist, ant-Stalinist and just plain garden-variety old school social democrat groupings and individual pro-socialist proponents.

Some, maybe most of the material presented here, cast as weak-kneed programs for struggle in many cases tend to be anti-Leninist as screened through the Stalinist monstrosities and/or support groups and individuals who have no intention of making a revolution. Or in the case of examining past revolutionary efforts either declare that no revolutionary possibilities existed (most notably Germany in 1923) or alibi, there is no other word for it, those who failed to make a revolution when it was possible. 

The Spanish Civil War can serve as something of litmus test for this latter proposition, most infamously around attitudes toward the Party Of Marxist Unification's (POUM) role in not keeping step with revolutionary developments there, especially the Barcelona days in 1937 and by acting as political lawyers for every non-revolutionary impulse of those forebears. While we all honor the memory of the POUM militants, according to even Trotsky the most honest band of militants in Spain then, and decry the murder of their leader, Andreas Nin, by the bloody Stalinists they were rudderless in the storm of revolution. But those present political disagreements do not negate the value of researching the POUM’s (and others) work, work moreover done under the pressure of revolutionary times. Hopefully we will do better when our time comes.

Finally, I place some material in this space which may be of interest to the radical public that I do not necessarily agree with or support. Off hand, as I have mentioned before, I think it would be easier, infinitely easier, to fight for the socialist revolution straight up than some of the “remedies” provided by the commentators in these entries from the Revolutionary History journal in which they have post hoc attempted to rehabilitate some pretty hoary politics and politicians, most notably August Thalheimer and Paul Levy of the early post Liebknecht-Luxemburg German Communist Party. But part of that struggle for the socialist revolution is to sort out the “real” stuff from the fluff as we struggle for that more just world that animates our efforts. So read, learn, and try to figure out the
wheat from the chaff. 
******** 

 The Stalinist Apparatus end the Renault Strike of May 1947

From Jeune Revolutionnaire, April 1971, pp23-28

Using iron bars, the engineering workers of the striking departments of the Renault Billancourt Factory, and of departments 6, 18 and 37 in particular, were trying to force the great metal gates of the AOC Department (the Central Toolroom).
The immense glass and steel doors had been welded together on the inside. This was the result of a decision taken by the leadership of the French Communist Party, which in this way hoped to isolate the AOC workers from the rest of the strikers who were spreading out over the largest metalworking factory in France.
It was 29 April 1947. The AOC workers were waiting behind the gates. When the welding broke and the doors opened an immense shout burst out, running along the girders and windows of the building. The workers threw their arms around each other and chanted in rhythm, “Our Ten Francs! Our Ten Francs!”
The Renault strike, which had begun on 25 April 1947, took on new momentum. The powerful Stalinist apparatus, with its cells strongly and solidly rooted, had failed to stop the strike epidemic. The Stalinist ministers of the De Gaulle government were going to have to leave their armchairs.
The iron bars breaking the doors of the AOC were symbolic of the elemental force of the working class, held back and constrained for too long, that was now rattling the bars of tripartism [1], the policy of “Production First, Roll Up Your Sleeves”, and “The Strike is the Weapon of the Trusts” (speech by Maurice Thorez, Secretary of the PCF, at Ivry).
In March 1946 the Engineering Workers’ Federation of France and the Colonies – CGT3 – had issued a pamphlet subtitled The Battle for Steel and entitled Produce or Die; this pamphlet was signed by Alfred Costes, the Secretary General of one of the CGT’s most powerful trade union federations, the CGT being at that time the one sole trade union federation in existence.
This pamphlet reproduced, by way of preface, the speech delivered by the Minister of Labour, Ambroise Croizat, one of the Stalinist ministers, at the National Conference of Works Committees held on 23 February 1946.
The title of the pamphlet, Produce or Die, was a slogan in itself. The workers were indeed dying of hunger. There was rationing for everything. The black market was on every street corner. Food produce was being distributed parsimoniously [4] and was of poor quality. Lodgings were impossible to find. There was not enough coal to warm yourself enough. The cost of living rose to catastrophic levels.
1944-45 saw Europe’s working masses lift up their heads again. Emerging from the worldwide imperialist slaughter, the workers in their millions, within the structures that they had inherited from before the war, tried to raise their problem forcefully, that is to say, that of the Socialist revolution. At every level their struggles and hopes tried to overcome the limits of those organisational and political structures which proved incapable of leading them where they wanted to go. The whole history of the years 1944-45 is that of the working masses at every stage seeking to find the path to the most resolute class struggle, starting off from their own reality as exploited classes dominated by the Stalinist and reformist apparatuses, and seeking their way through the very same organisations that had as their object to divert the masses from finding their own way.

Counter-revolutionary

Croizat, as Minister of Labour in a bourgeois government, was scrupulously to carry out the counter-revolutionary instructions of the Stalinist bureaucracy in Moscow.
At every stage of the class struggle he would strive to bring the masses back within the limits of the bourgeois society that they had, by their own movement, the irremediable tendency to break up. Thus in his speech that introduced the sinister pamphlet Produce or Die he declared: “Everyone to his place in an industry or factory ... We must avoid the serious mistake that would allow the factory to be run by the Works Committees, because they must not take the lead instead of, and in place of, the factory’s general management.” A few moments later he also added, with the cynicism common to all bureaucrats:

We have tried our best in parliament to bring about small improvements for the workers, as regards the introduction of an overtime rate, and this reform has a double importance; it strictly restores the principle of the 40-hour week law, along with the principle of overtime beginning with the forty-first hour.

A bureaucrat of the second rank, Alfred Costes, could hardly be behind the Minister Comrade who ranked as his superior; as he explained in a paragraph entitled Production and Morale, “On the other hand, it would be a good thing to open and get going farms near factories to share the produce among the workers, by means of the trade unions and Works Committees. The trade unions and Works Committees must also resolutely lead the movement in favour of individual kitchen gardens.”
These phrases appear to be utter absurdity at a distance of 25 years. They are not, however, mythical. This outrageous proposal had a precise political aim: to smother and crush the class consciousness of the workers on their way to emancipation, and to pull it back to the level of the working peasant and market gardening. The proposal’s unreality was determined by the bureaucracy’s counterrevolutionary orientation.
The tone was otherwise set by Thorez, one of the most important Stalinist bureaucrats in Western Europe. At Auby on 1 March 1946 he said to the miners of the North and of Pas-de-Calais:

Whoever can give his life can give his labour, above all when this labour has the merit of improving our people’s conditions of life.

Have the young people possibly forgotten this?

I too used to go dancing. I’ve had good times, but the next morning I was back at work. Nobody would have ever accepted skipping an hour.

Again in front of the miners, six months before, at Waziers on 21 July, the same Thorez 8 had declared:

Dear comrades, we ought here to salute the sacrifice of our engineering comrades, who have just given up their paid holiday to make pneumatic drills for you ...

Here is another example. The other day I was told that fifteen youths, pit lads, in one pit, the Escarpelle, had asked to leave at six o’clock in order to go dancing. I say that this is inadmissible ...

Dear comrades, and I am now talking with full responsibility in the name of the Central Committee, in the name of the decisions taken by the Party Congress [9]: I say quite frankly, it is impossible to sanction the slightest strike, above all if it breaks out outside the trade union and against the trade union, as it did last week in the Bethune mines. Disciplinary measures had to be taken. Out of four foremen, two have been reinstated, although on a lower grade.

De Gaulle himself had declared on the radio a few weeks before, on 24 May 1945: “In the situation we are in, a slackening of effort by the producers, or even strikes whenever they happen, can have no other result than to make the deficiencies of production worse, to the detriment of everybody.”
This is no chance coincidence. It was the Stalinist leadership alone that took up the interests of the bourgeoisie, and it alone could do the job properly, because the following question lay at the centre of all the major problems of the time: would the working class accept or not this policy, which obliged it to reinforce the capitalist system of exploitation at the expense of its own survival and blood by throwing overboard the essentials of its socialist and revolutionary aspirations?
In the back room of a little bistro in the Rue de Silly at Boulogne-Billancourt were seven Renault workers. It was in the month of February 1947. Most of them were young, very young. It was not the first time that they had met, either there or elsewhere. Apart from two or three, they were never the same. Their discussions always revolved around the same theme: the cost of living, the more and more intolerable living conditions, the policy of the government and the policy of the trade union leadership, which was practically the same as that of the government.

Resistance

Their problems all more or less boiled down to this: how to shake the formidable wall that consisted of the government in which the ‘Communist’ ministers sat, and to do away with its policy?
They were modestly labelled ‘The Committee of the Discontented’.
Their determination and will were nourished by the great hopes born of the ‘Liberation’ which had happened two and a half years before – already two and a half years ago! – but also by the partial strikes without direction that had sporadically broken out in the factory.
They were encouraged by the obstinate resistance offered by wider and wider layers of workers for more than one and a half years now to the common policy carried out by the government and the apparatuses.
A year before, on 26 January 1946, Paris had woken up without newspapers and on 28 January 1946 the printworkers had distributed a leaflet entitled Reply of the Striking Newspaper Workers to Monsieur the ‘Provisional’ Minister of Labour°, which began thus: “What first of all came out of your speech was your unexpected attempt to split the working class by arguments that up till now have been reserved for Sunday school pupils.”
These few young workers meeting in the little bistros of Boulogne-Billancourt, the ‘Committee of the Discontented’, had given life to the postal strike that ran from 29 July to 4 August 1946. From this strike a national strike committee sprang up on 1 August outside the trade union federation of the postal workers and which convened a conference of strike committees at Montrouge after the strike had ended. Two revolutionary organisations were represented amongst these people, all of them trade unionists of the CGT.
One was the Union Communiste, which survives today in the paper Lutte Ouvrière, and the other was the PCI (French Section of the Fourth International), the Organisation Communiste Internationaliste today (for the Reconstruction of the Fourth International) (OCI).
These ill-assorted and contrasting meetings, apparently ineffective and inconsequential, put down roots among the 45,000 workers of the Renault-Billancourt plant, who were going by their struggles to mark a new turn in the immediate postwar period. For during these meetings was formulated the demand which would influence some tens of thousands of metalworkers in the Parisian region, besides those at Renault.
The strike began in the Collas Sector. 500 workers of this sector voted to strike on Wednesday 23 April 1947, and adopted the demand of 10 Francs an hour rise for everyone. However, the strike in the Collas Sector did not set itself the aim of extending the strike to the entire factory of Boulogne-Billancourt. It was still only a strike like any other at this stage, partial, fragmented and isolated. Some even went so far as to construct a theory about this. Because the Collas Sector made gearboxes, it was enough to halt production there for a while in order to make the factory ‘seize up’. This was obviously an erroneous and irrelevant calculation, but that was the calculation of the UC. From the depths of the working class, and from these Renault metalworkers, thousands and thousands of working men and women were going to rise up and shout “No!” in the face of the government, and were by that same token going to pose the most advanced political questions, those of government. They posed everything, but they resolved nothing at all.

Strike Committee

However, a strike committee got down to work, and the echo of the strike was already loud in the entire factory. The work of the ‘Committee of the Discontented’ was bearing fruit.
The Collas Strike Committee met on Sunday 27th, along with workers from other departments. Their goal was a strike of the entire factory on Monday 28th.
The newspaper L’Humanité, silent on 25 and 26 April, published on the 27th an article entitled, Manoeuvres against the CGT and the Nationalisation, in which the following could be read:

Yesterday the reactionary press attempted to give an exaggerated importance to the movement unleashed at Renault by a handful of Trotskyites, who had succeeded in pulling out 1500 out of a total workforce of 30 000 in the factory ... There is no more to be said than that behind the instigators of this movement, members of the RPFIZ are attempting a manoeuvre against the CGT and the nationalisation.

From that point of view, as far as the counter-revolutionary Stalinist apparatus was concerned, that was all that there was to be said. Had not the Moscow Trials “completely rubbed out the Trotskyist beast from the working class”?
The movement, however, spread with an extraordinary rapidity. From Tuesday 29 April 1947 a central strike committee was set up. ‘The Committee of the Discontented’ was part of it, but only one part; through the Renault engineering workers it was the whole class starting to move through one of its decisive battalions.
The Central Strike Committee was a living reality. It sat in Department 78. Its sessions were public. Its organisation corresponded to the deep needs of the class in its movement against the state, whilst at the same time its political horizons were strictly limited by the weakness of the organised working class vanguard. The sole Trotskyist engineering militant at Renault celebrated his 22nd birthday on 28 April 1947. The OCI (the PCI at that time) concentrated its entire energy and pushed for extending the strike to the whole of engineering in the Parisian region. At a meeting in the Place Nationale on Monday 28th Comrade Lambert of the PCI launched the slogan “Uncouple the Machines”. Closing down Renault meant concentrating the entire strength of the working class against the political power, the power of the bourgeoisie.
The strike became general on the 29th. All the engineering workers had stopped. work, from the Seguin Island to Factory 0. The Central Strike Committee, representing the entire working class in struggle, had 80 per cent of the departments represented on it. The departmental strike committees were unorganised, or badly organised. The pickets were not organised, though it was better in the Collas Sector.
The Stalinist apparatus was going to make a very quick turn, at least in words. It was Duclos who was going to put the Stalinist tactics in a nutshell: “Never shall we allow ourselves to be turned to the left.”
May Day was about to take place. The newspaper workers had not forgotten their January 1946 strike, 15 months earlier. They distributed an appeal of the Central Strike Committee of Renault at their own expense, which went out to the entire engineering area of the Parisian region and on the May Day parade.
At the same time as the Stalinist apparatus made a turn in words, in order to take over the movement that had flowed over it, it poured out its violence against the vanguard. The Stalinist apparatus had employed violence against the strikers in the name of “the strike is the weapon of the trusts” ever since 28 April. From 30 April to 2 May it now tried to use this violence against the strikers yet again in the name of the strike itself.
The clashes were becoming violent. Engineering workers who were giving out the leaflet of the Central Strike Committee on the May Day parade, were beaten up by the Stalinists.
Some departmental picket lines were broken by the cadres of the PCF. But the vanguard held firm. In the Collas Sector, which had become the bastion of the strike, its efforts to fight back were crowned with success. But in spite of these efforts and of the depth of the strike that was going on, the vanguard did not succeed in extending the strike outside the limit that enclosed Seguin Island. Strikers’ delegates did try to, particularly in the Western suburbs of the Parisian region. The deadlock was all too obvious at Unic. In the name of ‘supporting’ the lads at Renault, the Stalinist apparatus refused to extend the strike.
Things moved fast. Not that the Central Strike Committee was too slow to react; its weakness was only that of the vanguard that led and tried to organise it. Its limitation was not a practical one – although that was a problem, but one that could be overcome. The Young Socialists of the Seine, who were led by Trotskyist militants, brought their support to the strike. A loudspeaker car lent by them to the Central Strike Committee was soon stoned by the Stalinist apparatus. The workers replied to these stones by covering the car of the ill-famed Henaff with spit when he attempted to venture into the Place Nationale.
On Friday 2 May things appeared to the Stalinist apparatus to be ripe enough for it to be able to take the situation completely in hand. It then organised a vote by secret ballot. The result of the vote showed the depth of the movement, but the very organising of the vote itself showed the weakness of the Central Strike Committee. 11,354 engineering workers voted to continue the strike and 8,015 were against. By organising this vote the Stalinist apparatus wanted to restore ‘order’ among the workers. The Stalinist leader Florimond Route clearly expressed the line of the leadership of the PCF on 5 May:

The PCF, whether it takes part in the government or not, will continue to regard itself as a party of government, all the more responsible to the country as it is the leading party in France. No proposal will be made which would be impossible for us to meet if we were in charge of the government.

As for Duclos, as far as the revolutionary aspirations of the masses were concerned, he clinched the matter in an interview granted to the New York Herald Tribune and reproduced on 8 May in the daily L’Humanite: “The people who talk about a general strike are imbeciles.”

General strike

It is necessary to translate here. Duclos had never understood anything about Marxism. He came straight out of the bakery into the counter-revolutionary apparatus of the GPU. His facile speech was a way of keeping imbeciles quiet. Duclos spoke of ‘people’ instead of workers, and of a ‘general strike’ instead of political power. For it was rather a question of political power, or, to be precise, of knowing whether the Stalinist leaders were going to remain in the government or not, which would mean a head-on clash with the masses who were very quickly deepening their own movement by taking up the demand for 10 Francs across the board, as the bureaucrats knew all too well. It would no longer be possible to contain the working masses any more, as had been the case at Citrof. In fact, the Stalinist leaders had no choice. They were obliged to leave the government, for that was the price they had to pay to be better able to help the bourgeoisie and to continue carrying out their counterrevolutionary policy.
This was a dangerous game, for by removing the obstacle set up by the slogan “the strike is the weapon of the trusts”, the Renault strike was going to pull out hundreds and thousands and millions of workers in a strike wave culminating in the General Strike of November/December 1947. It was impossible to hold back the flow of the masses and hem it in by remaining in the government; it was going to be very difficult to carry out this task even from outside.
Vincent Auriol, the Prexident of the Republic, reported what had happened to the Council of Ministers on 1 May 1947:

On the way out [of the Cabinet meeting] I kept back Maurice Thorez for a while and said to him: “You have been very brave all the time, and on several occasions you have taken part in the fight, do this again now, I beg of you, in the name of the Republic.” Very moved, blushing, he told me: “I can do no more. I have done all that I could. I am now at the end of my tether.”

“Perhaps something else could be done. See whether the stance Ramadier is prepared to take can also be yours, that is to say, production and productivity bonuses. This could be looked at in agreement with the CGT, which, moreover, seems to me to be favourable to this proposal.”

He told me: “I don’t think that this can come off. It is far deeper than that”.

Thorez knew what he was talking about, for it was deep inside the organisation of the PCF itself. Tens and tens of militants, both men and women, had torn up their party cards – that of the party they had joined in order to make the Socialist revolution, which they now saw setting about the workers with violence as the days wore on. It was the men of the apparatus wielding iron bars who had tried to drive off the Central Strike Committee’s pickets. It was the apparatus that did not want to break the umbilical cord that tied it to the bourgeoisie. The few revolutionary militants who were leading the strike were doubtless a pole of regroupment for some of them. The Renault strike, it is true, represented a mere episode within the class struggle, but it was pointing towards the deepening of the class struggle, and as it developed it could only pose one question: that of power.
The Stalinist apparatus has failed on what it had always considered as its own ground, its strongest and most impregnable bastion. Thorez was right and saw correctly: it was not a question of a simple wage demand. The Renault strike was clearly posing the political problem of power, and by the same token posing to tens of thousands of revolutionary militants the central question of their own organisation, which is the construction of the revolutionary party.
The confidence of the young revolutionary militants, which had won over tens and hundreds of workers, had to be able to translate itself into organisational terms. For that there had to be a policy, a clear understanding of what lay in front of there. By their strike of April-May 1947 the Renault workers had not settled their accounts with the Stalinist bureaucracy. True, it had been outflanked; but this outflanking was nonetheless limited, whatever the shock waves that it had caused, their importance or their resonance.
It was then that the leadership of the Union Communiste, today represented by Lutte Ouvrière, went on to make the Stalinist bureaucracy the most magnificent present it could have dreamed about.
We should recall that at that time there was only one trade union federation, the CGT; the trade union split was to come about eight months later". The repercussions of the strike were enormous inside the trade union organisation itself.
All the major political problems were confronted and debated there. This was such that the Stalinist bureaucracy felt obliged to sacrifice its leader, the aforementioned Pinet, on account of ‘errors’ committed during the strike. Such was the case that in the election for the executive commission of the trade union section of Department 37 two lists confronted each other, one, the ‘Workers’ United Front’ being led by the Trotskyists of the OCI, and the other being a Stalinist list. The Executive Commission was to be elected in proportion to the votes gained by each of the lists.
The Stalinist maxim, according to which “the cadres decide everything”, stemmed from what was really the Stalinist leadership, which controlled the mass organisations of the working class, and in particular the trade unions; from it flowed as well the absolute need for the bureaucracy to try to expel revolutionary militants. The apparatus knew by experience that if revolutionary militants did not challenge it for leadership in the stronghold that was represented by the trade unions, whatever the upsets it suffered, and whatever the crises that shook it, it would always end up dressing its wounds, closing up its splits and filling in its cracks.
And there, 25 years ago, the rotten ultra-leftism which we know today provided the first indications of its political blindness by creating the Renault Democratic Union (SDR).
Our leftists were proud of the immediate success this achieved. By opening up the perspective of an independent trade union in this way the leadership of VO (Voix Ouvrière) hoped to discover a political short cut, not only to the organisation of a vanguard party, but even to settling the question of the Stalinist bureaucracy. In that way they did succeed in bringing together a part of the vanguard.
It survived this ‘experience’ for only two years, and nothing was left of it – nothing apart from that by wanting to organise the vanguard outside the terrain of the class struggle that the trade union represents, the leftists had left the field clear for the Stalinist bureaucracy. But even now they have not understood this.
A new vote took place for a return to work on Friday 9 May. 12,075 workers decided on a return to work for Monday 12 May 1947, and 6,866 were against; the Renault strike was virtually over.
Under the pressure of the masses, the Stalinists were forced to leave the government. They left it to be better able to carry on outside what they had achieved inside.
The masses advanced towards headlong battles. Neither energy, devotion, nor tenacity were lacking. The only thing missing for a total victory over the capitalist regime was the decisive weapon: their revolutionary party!
François Tarrant
Notes
1. Tripartism: the three-fold alliance which had run the state since the end of the war and involved the Communist Party, the SFIO (French section of the Second International) and the MRP (Popular Republican Movement – the coalition of right-wing politicians).
2. PCF: Parti Communiste Franqais: the French Communist Party.
3. CGT: Confederation Generale du Travail: the General Workers’ Federation, the Communist-dominated trade union federation, then still united before the split with the Force Ouvriere
4. We should recall that at this time a coal face worker, because his job was considered as hard work, was entitled to a meat ration of 2,750kg a month, or 80g a day.
5. From April to August 1946 the retail price index rose from 325 to 730; at the same time the wages index went from 277 to 383, which represents a toss in purchasing power of 39 per cent over 16 months.
6. These works committees were created by a law drafted by the PCF Minister of Labour and agreed by General De Gaulle. They brought together representatives of the management and union activists elected by the workforce. Their initial aim was to involve union activists in helping restart production. As an incentive these committees were awarded a fixed proportion of the wages bill to pay for various welfare schemes, from running a canteen to organising holiday camps for the workers’ children. Through their hold on many works committees the CGT and the PCF built up huge economic power amounting to billions of pounds in today's money while the activists became entangled and separated from the workforce by having to manage these welfare schemes which could employ up to several hundred staff in some of the largest companies in the public sector.
7. Pas-de-Calais: the area immediately across the Channel around the port of Calais.
8. Thorez was then Minister of State in charge of civil servants under the order of De Gaulle, President of the Constituent Assembly. The Tenth Congress of the PCF was held in Paris in June 1945.
9. They had Ambroise Croizat in mind.
10. Still the main daily newspaper of the French Communist Party.
12. The right-wing Rassemblement du Peuple Franqais, which was headed by De Gaulle. The main body of the French trade unions had been the CGT. The Communists split it in 1922 to form the CGTU, but the two federations reunited in 1936 to set up the unitary CGT at the time of the Popular Front. It began under Social Democratic control, but by 1945 was under the control of the Stalinists. At the end of 1947 the Social Democrats, with much encouragement and financial assistance from the USA, split off to set up Force Ouvriere. Together with the CFDT, which had emerged in 1964 from the Catholic CFTC, there are now three major trade union federations in France. There are also a number of unions not attached to any of these federations, just as there were in the 1940s

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Dennis Loo writes about why the U.S. has not closed Guantanamo, and the curious continuation of the US prison at Bagram, after the U.S. has "turned over" the prison to Afghan authorities, but is still denying third country nationals habeas corpus rights because the prison's in a war zone: While Obama cites Congressional interference for his inability to close GTMO, he has not allowed Congressional interference and opposition to his drone assassination program to stop him from using drones to kill thousands. Why is the POTUS powerless in the first instance to act in spite of some Congressional opposition and all powerful in the second, again in the face of Congressional opposition? As reported by McClatchy on December 24, 2013, the US District Court of Appeals for D.C. upheld its earlier decision to once again deny four Bagram prisoners rights to habeas corpus appeals (the right to challenge their indefinite detention) on the grounds that Bagram is in a “war theatre” and therefore habeas corpus rights can be legitimately suspended. As McClatchy points out, the US is occupying, not waging war, according to its own statements. It can further be added here a) that the US is the foreign occupying force and any fighting going on is directly related to its continuing presence, and b) that Bagram prison has since March 2013 formally been under Afghan control. The ongoing power being exercised by the US occupiers, however, is evident in the Court’s ruling where they state: “We note that the Appellants’ current status is unclear. Although the Government represented in May 2011 that it detained them at the DFIP [Detention Facility in Parwan (DFIP), just outside Bagram], it has since ceded the DFIP to Afghan control. The record does not disclose whether, after that cession, the Appellants remain there or at some other facility and the Government has not informed us of the Appellants’ current location. The Appellants claim in their briefs—filed after the transfer of the DFIP to Afghan control—that the United States continues to detain them at ‘a separate prison facility at Bagram.’ …. Because the Government concedes its continuing custody over four of the five Appellants, we accept the Appellants’ alleged location of their detention as accurate for the purpose of our jurisdictional analysis.” Continue reading Why is Guantanamo Still Open? Dennis Loo will speak, along with Andy Worthington, at Cal Poly Pomona on January 17. The Close Guantanamo NOW Tour kicks off in NYC tonight! Follow World Can't Wait on Twitter and Facebook for tonight's livestream details and tune in no matter where you are. Due to an injury, regrettably, after January 9 in New York City, Debra Sweet will not be traveling on the Close Guantanamo NOW Tour, and will be replaced by other World Can't Wait leaders. January 9-17: the Close Guantanamo NOW Tour Full tour schedule and details. Above: Witness Against Torture protesting for Guantanamo detainee Shaker Aamer at Union Station, DC on January 8. Protest to Close Guantanamo NOW! Washington, DC, Miami, Santa Monica, Chicago, Honolulu, London... see the full list of events and details. Speak Out Against Prison for Non-violent Anti-Nuclear Weapons Protesters Nuclear weapons themselves are illegitimate, and only criminals use and maintain them. People who protest their use and maintenance are thinking about humanity and we support them. We received the following appeal: On January 28, 2014, three nonviolent protesters against nuclear weapons, Sr. Megan Rice, Michael Walli and Gregory Boertje-Obed, are scheduled to be sentenced in U.S. District Court in Knoxville, Tennessee, for the supposed crime of sabotage. Please write to Judge Thapar to encourage leniency for the Oak Ridge 3, nonviolent protesters of nuclear weapons. Background:Washington Post: The Prophets of Oak Ridge Daily News: Elderly Nun, 2 Other Protestors Found Guilty of Sabotage Transform Now Plowshares National Catholic Register: Trial Ends With Unusual Sentence Add your name to the petition here. Share this message: Let's get this tour on the road! Debra Sweet, Director, The World Can't Wait

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President Obama, Pardon Pvt. Manning

Because the public deserves the truth and whistle-blowers deserve protection.

We are military veterans, journalists, educators, homemakers, lawyers, students, and citizens.

We ask you to consider the facts and free US Army Pvt. Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning.

As an Intelligence Analyst stationed in Iraq, Pvt. Manning had access to some of America’s dirtiest secrets—crimes such as torture, illegal surveillance, and corruption—often committed in our name.

Manning acted on conscience alone, with selfless courage and conviction, and gave these secrets to us, the public.

“I believed that if the general public had access to the information contained within the[Iraq and Afghan War Logs] this could spark a domestic debate on the role of the military and our foreign policy,”

Manning explained to the military court. “I wanted the American public to know that not everyone in Iraq and Afghanistan were targets that needed to be neutralized, but rather people who were struggling to live in the pressure cooker environment of what we call asymmetric warfare.”

Journalists used these documents to uncover many startling truths. We learned:

• Donald Rumsfeld and General Petraeus helped support torture in Iraq.

• Deliberate civilian killings by U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan went unpunished.

• Thousands of civilian casualties were never acknowledged publicly.

• Most Guantanamo detainees were innocent.

For service on behalf of an informed democracy, Manning was sentenced by military judge Colonel Denise Lind to a devastating 35 years in prison.

Government secrecy has grown exponentially during the past decade, but more secrecy does not make us safer when it fosters unaccountability.

Pvt. Manning was convicted of Espionage Act charges for providing WikiLeaks with this information, but  the prosecutors noted that they would have done the same had the information been given to The New York Times. Prosecutors did not show that enemies used this information against the US, or that the releases resulted in any casualties.

Pvt. Manning has already been punished, even in violation of military law.

She has been:

• Held in confinement since May 29, 2010.

• Subjected to illegal punishment amounting to torture for nearly nine months at Quantico Marine Base, Virginia, in violation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), Article 13—facts confirmed by both the United Nation’s lead investigator on torture and military judge Col. Lind.

• Denied a speedy trial in violation of UCMJ, Article 10, having been imprisoned for over three years before trial.

• Denied anything resembling a fair trial when prosecutors were allowed to change the charge sheet to match evidence presented, and enter new evidence, after closing arguments.

Pvt. Manning believed you, Mr. President, when you came into office promising the most transparent administration in history, and that you would protect whistle-blowers. We urge you to start upholding those promises, beginning with this American prisoner of conscience.

We urge you to grant Pvt. Manning’s petition for a Presidential Pardon.

FIRST& LAST NAME _____________________________________________________________

STREET ADDRESS _____________________________________________________________

CITY, STATE & ZIP _____________________________________________________________

EMAIL& PHONE _____________________________________________________________

Please return to: For more information: www.privatemanning.org

Private Manning Support Network, c/o Courage to Resist, 484 Lake Park Ave #41, Oakland CA 94610

 

Note that this image is PVT Manning’s preferred photo.