THE ELECTION of the Popular Front governthan it did to the politicians, like Anzana and Prieto. Within four days of Anzana becoming president, the workers and peasants started to break open jails. They had decided to declare their own amnesty for the prisoners of 1934 While the Cortes deliberated in the manner bourgeois paraments. tion, the masses acted.
parliamentary Act that would force the employers to reinstate all those workers dismissed, the uprising in 1934 they simply arrived at their workplaces with the victimised workers and inSERICLeS EN G Bosses reinstate them there and LICH Peasants impatient to get their own and bean to and take for dica dILCI area, the hated clergy were expelled from the villages. By June 1936, in Valencia there was scarcely a church still open.
Meanwhile the govern ment gazed with horror at the emergence of the downtrodden workers and peasants acting as an in dependent torce tighting for their own aims and in ICICOLS. instead of accep ting what the capitalist politicians were prepared to grant them.
Strikes In parliament, Anzana promised that he would stop the strikes and seizures of the land. In Censors he protone press censorship April, only eight days before the municipal elec tions were due to be held he decreed indefinite postponement. In Spain's political climate at that штора сІсс tions would have resulted in sweeping victories for the workers' parties.
As Ventosa who was a spokesperson for the Catalan landowners hailed Anzana as 'the only man capable of offering the country security and defence of all legal rights, a squad of fascists and civil guards shot up a workers' street in Madrid.
On 17 April, the CNT called general strike fascist attack.
At first the UGT denounced the strike, as did the Communist Party. But there was massive response to the strike call the workers, inUGT members. The strike which nad been a gica success, received a belated and ungracious ment from the UGT and the Communist Party just before it was ended.
As the waves of revolufeet of the capitalists and around the feet of inel servants in ine cor tes, they began to discuss now to crush une workers movement tavoured the use of the military, but Anzana suggested using the workers eaders to do the job of Lool: bluc His solution was to get the Socialist meant different things to the masses leader Prieto to form a Prieto was only too but Caballero warned him that only the Socialist Party could give him permisand right then the Party was well to the left of Meanwhile the Madrid party the largest of Socialisi adopted a new program me, which stated that the bourgeoisie capable of carrying out tne tasks democratic revolution and could no settle the agrarian question. The programme sisted this could only be La proletarian revolution.
This programme was accepted the Caballero. Caballero man who had served under the dic tatorship of de Rivera and SECO SOCCE Minister of Labour in the Republican government of 1931, had 'converted' to revolutionary theory when for the first time in his life he had read Lenin, Marx and Trotsky during his imAccepting that only revolution could solve the problems of the democratic revolution Socialist Party should break -ERE Front Government pf Anzana.
Either lt could encourage the revolutionary and use it to break power Spanish capitalism, or it could try and divert it back into th parliamentary channels of class collaboration. The Prieto wing of the party unhesitatingly always choose the latter Law On 4 June the governAugosto Barcia, the synsisted in the the governdown the But unlike 1931 when the UGT time supCNT com the left party of demanding that the feed the Miners in calling condiMons On SIRe ment put up money to make up for the loss of crops.
Then on 8 July the students Barcelona's -BaC strike and called for the expulsion of the priests and their replacement by lay teachers. Invariably these struggles were supported by the local Socialist Parofficial Socialist Party counselled and against these attacks on the old order.
streets the workers and the fascists Dates the workers dealt the hardest and deadliest blows. Spain truly embarking on the path revolution and civil war. Goods Anzana was not able to deliver the goods for Spanish capitalism The right wing socialists under Prieto, and his allies in the Spanish Communist Farty cold not nold back the workers' movement because or tne power ol the mass movement, and the SECELLE socialists With the armed forces led by the officer corps Civil their disposal the capitalists decided they either had to organise an insurrection or be swept aside by the rising tide of revolution. Spanish SOCAL and particularly the Spanish Socialist Party was now going to face its biggest test.
this issue. 'conversion' had its limits. He argued 'the government has not yet entirely exhausted and that *trade union unity and the merger or une yarxist par precede the Caballero therefore justified hanging coat tails of AnSocialist abused the government but whenever it came to the critical ques tion they voted for it.
As Prieto stood for the right Caballero despite his newly learned Marxist language stood for the centre, on the left of the party were people like Javier Bueno, who writing in Claridad, of the left Socialists was demanding an end, not just the conciliations of Prieto but also to those of Caballero. Bueno. a leader Asturian rebellion urged a break from dependency on Anzana and the Republicans.
Across Spain, the rank and file of the Socialist Party took against the old the fight Greed the Prieto leadership indignantly denied that the peasants of Badajoz who were led by the Socialists, were going to "illegally' seize the land, 25,000 peasant families inspired by their local Socialist leadership took over the great estates.
In once powerful base of Prieto, a strike was ace eas the government on 13 June which called dismissal of the Ministers of Labour and Agriculture, the strike was supported by 90,000 miners Meanwhile Prieto dared not take up Anzana's vitation to go into the cabinet, because in such a of revolt would have destroyed any influence he had over the rank and file of the Socialist Party.
The official . paper of the Spanish Socialist Party recoiled in horror from the workers upsurge. Socialista denounced the independent activity of the masses saying: *The system is genuinely anarchistic and provokes the irritation of the rightists' As the upsurge of workers rebellion grew in the months between February and July 1936, every big city had at least general strike - the Party faced choice.