The confrontation between the regime and the labor movement was brought to a head by the strike of 4,000 subway workers that began January 5. Following the example set by Franco during a similar strike five years ago, the government on January 7 ordered troops to run the trains.

The subway workers voted to return to work January 9, but vowed to go out again January 19 unless there was an acceptable response to their demand for a nearly 50 percent wage increase backdated to August.

On January 10 the state-owned subway company offered a $455 annual pay raise and promised no punitive action against the strikers even though their walkout was illegal under Spanish law.

The subway strike, which caused huge traffic jams in Madrid, successfully challenged the government's wage-control policy. The mood of the Madrid working class was shown by dozens of sympathy rallies and walkouts in banks and the metal and construction industries, in solidarity with the transit workers.  
 
January 22, 1951
The White House and the Pentagon are thinking of a negotiated peace in the Korea war. They have been confronted with three granite facts.

First, the combined strength of the Chinese and Korean revolutions has so far proved superior to the military power of U.S. capitalism. Second, there is a tidal wave of popular resistance all over the world to becoming involved in the Truman-MacArthur intervention in Asia. Third, the American people want the war stopped now.

The failure of American capitalist power to crush the Asian revolution despite superior arms has given new confidence to oppressed peoples everywhere. The decayed system of capitalism in Europe and colonial exploitation in Asia has one main "policeman"--the U.S. ruling class. And that ruling class no longer seems invincible.

As yet U.S. workers have not by and large connected the setback of their own ruling class abroad with their experiences at home. The unexpected failure of American arms in what was considered a minor foray against a weak people on a tiny peninsula has staggered the American public.

It is not news to American workers that the blustering monopolies can be whipped. They whipped them handily in the organizing drive of the late Thirties and early Forties. They again humbled the big corporations in the post-war strikes.  
 
 
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