[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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