The Union General de Trabajadores
(UGT) was originally established in Madrid
by a group of printers led by Pablo Iglesias. Aligned with the Socialist
Party the UGT published a newspaper called El
Socialista where Iglesias advocated a programme of socialism,
trade unionism and republicanism.
The more radical National
Confederation of Trabajo (CNT) was established in 1911 and eventually
took over from the UGT as the largest union in Spain.
The first Russian
Revolution inspired the UGT and CNT to cooperate in a General
Strike in Spain in August 1917. After Lenin
gained power in Russia the UGT refused to
join the Comintern or a united front
with the CNT.
The UGT was opposed to
the dictatorship of Miguel Primo de Rivera,
but was willing to do deals with the regime and was eventually rewarded
with a cabinet seat. Whereas the more militant National
Confederation of Trabajo (CNT) became an illegal organization.
During this period
Francisco
Largo Caballero,
Julián
Besteiro, Indalecio
Prieto and Luis Araquistain
emerged as leaders of the UGT.
The UGT grew in influence
after the fall of Alfonso
XIII
and the establishment of the Second Republic. However, the UGT's policy
of trusting the government to mediate in labour disputes was unpopular
with its more militant members.
The election of a right-wing
government in 1933 brought an end to UGT's cooperation. The relationship
deteriorated when the the new government decided to overturn previous
measures such as socialist controlled labour exchanges and laws prohibiting
strike-breaking. This led to an insurrection of Asturian miners in
1934 that was put down by General Francisco
Franco and the
Spanish Legion.
On 15th January 1936, Manuel
Azaña helped
to establish a coalition of parties on the political left to
fight the national elections due to take place the following month.
This included the Socialist Party (PSOE),
Communist Party (PCE), Esquerra
Party and the Republican Union Party.
The UGT supported the
Popular Front, as the coalition became known, and its policies of
advocating the restoration of Catalan autonomy, amnesty for political
prisoners, agrarian reform, an end to political blacklists and the
payment of damages for property owners who suffered during the revolt
of 1934.
Right-wing groups in Spain
formed the National Front. This included the CEDA
and the Carlists. The Falange
Española did not officially join but most of its members
supported the aims of the National Front.
The Spanish people voted
on Sunday, 16th February, 1936. Out of a possible 13.5 million voters,
over 9,870,000 participated in the 1936
General Election. 4,654,116 people (34.3) voted for the Popular
Front, whereas the National Front obtained 4,503,505 (33.2) and the
centre parties got 526,615 (5.4). The Popular Front, with 263 seats
out of the 473 in the Cortes
formed the new government.
The Popular Front government
immediately upset the conservatives by releasing all left-wing political
prisoners. The government also introduced agrarian reforms that penalized
the landed aristocracy. Other measures included transferring right-wing
military leaders such as Francisco
Franco to posts
outside Spain, outlawing the Falange Española
and granting Catalonia political and administrative autonomy.
Membership of a union now
became mandatory and the UGT and the CNT grew rapidly. As a result
of these measures the wealthy took vast sums of capital out of the
country. This created an economic crisis and the value of the peseta
declined which damaged trade and tourism. With prices rising workers
demanded higher wages. This led to a series of strikes in Spain.
On
the 10th May 1936 the conservative Niceto
Alcala Zamora was
ousted as president and replaced by the left-wing Manuel
Azaña.
Soon afterwards Spanish Army officers, including Emilio
Mola,
Francisco
Franco, Gonzalo
Queipo de Llano and
José
Sanjurjo,
began plotting to overthrow the Popular Front government. This resulted
in the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War
on 17th July, 1936.
President Manuel
Azaña appointed
Diego Martinez Barrio as prime minister
on 18th July 1936 and asked him to negotiate with the rebels. He contacted
Emilio
Mola and
offered him the post of Minister of War in his government. He refused
and when Azaña
realized that the Nationalists
were unwilling to compromise, he sacked Martinez Barrio and replaced
him with José Giral. To protect the
Popular Front government, Giral gave orders for arms to be distributed
to left-wing organizations that opposed the military uprising.
Large numbers of UGT members
joined the Republican
Army and
in September 1936, its leader, Francisco
Largo Caballero,
became prime minister of the Popular Front
government. Largo Caballero tried to bring the UGT and CNT closer
together by appointing four anarchists to his cabinet: Juan
Garcia Oliver (Justice), Juan
López Sánchez (Commerce), Federica
Montseny (Health) and Juan Peiró
(Industry).
The conflict between anarchists,
socialists and communists continued and as a result of the May
Riots in 1937 Largo Caballero resigned and was replaced by Juan
Negrin. The new prime minister was less sympathetic to the unions
and the power of the UGT and the CNT declined under his administration.
This brought the two unions closer together and its leaders were involved
in plotting Negrin's overthrow during the final stages of the Spanish
Civil War.
(1)
Ilya
Ehrenburg, letter
sent to Marcel Rosenberg (17th September,
1936)
I spoke with Garcia Oliver.
He was also in a frenzied state. Intransigent. At the same time that
Lopez, the leader of the Madrid syndicalists, was declaring to me
that they had not permitted and would not permit attacks on the Soviet
Union
in the CNT newspaper, Oliver declared that they had said that they
were "criticizing" the Soviet Union because it was not an
ally, since it had signed the non-interference pact, and so on. Durruti,
who has been at the front, has learned a lot, whereas Oliver, in Barcelona,
is still nine-tenths anarchist ravings. For instance, he is against
a unified command on the Aragon front; a unified command is necessary
only when a general offensive begins. Sandino, who was present during
this part of the conversation, spoke out for a unified command. They
touched on the question of mobilization and the transformation of
the militia into an army. Durruti made much of the mobilization plans
(I do not know why - there are volunteers but no guns). Oliver said
that he agreed with Durruti, since "Communists and Socialists
are hiding themselves in the rear and pushing the FAI-ists out of
the cities and villages." At this point he was almost raving.
I would not have been surprised if he had shot me.
I spoke with Trueba, the
PSUC (Communist) political commissar. He complained about the FAI-ists.
They are not giving our men ammunition. We have only thirty-six bullets
left per man. The anarchists have reserves of a million and a half.
Colonel Villalba's soldiers only have a hundred cartridges each. He
cited many instances of the petty tyrannies of FAI. People from the
CNT complained to me that Fronsosa, the leader of PSUC, gave a speech
at a demonstration in San Boi in which he said that the Catalans should
not be given even one gun, since the guns would just fall into the
hands of the anarchists. In general, during the ten days that I was
in Catalonia, relations between Madrid and the generalitat on the
one hand, and that between the Communists and the anarchists on the
other, became very much more strained. Companys is wavering; either
he gravitates toward the anarchists, who have agreed to recognize
the national and even nationalistic demands of the Esquerra, or he
depends on the PSUC in the struggle against FAI. His circle is divided
between supporters of the former and of the latter solutions. If the
situation on the Talavera front worsens, we can expect him to come
out on one or the other side. We must improve relations between the
PSUC and the CNT and then try to get closer to Companys.
In Valencia our party
is working well, and the influence of the UGT is growing. But the
CNT has free rein there. The governor takes their side completely.
This is what happened when I was there: sixty anarchists with two
machine-guns turned up from the front, as their commander had been
killed. In Valencia they burned the archives and then wanted to break
into the prison to free the criminals. The censor (this is under Lopez,
the leader of the CNT) prohibited our newspaper from reporting about
any of this outrage, and in the CNT paper
there was a note that the "free masses destroyed the law archives
as part of the accursed
past."
(2)
Vladimir
Antonov-Ovseenko,
General
Consul of the Soviet Union in Barcelona
, top secret document sent to NKVD
(14th October,
1936)
The relationship between
our people (the Communists) and the anarcho-syndicalists is becoming
ever more strained. Every day, delegates and individual comrades appear
before the CC of the Unified Socialist Party with statements about
the excesses of the anarchists. In places it has come to armed clashes.
Not long ago in a settlement of Huesca near Barbastro twenty-five
members of the UGT were killed by the anarchists in a surprise attack
provoked by unknown reasons. In Molins de Rei, workers in a textile
factory stopped work, protesting against arbitrary dismissals. Their
delegation to Barcelona was driven out of the train, but all the same
fifty workers forced their way to Barcelona with complaints for the
central government, but now they are afraid to return, anticipating
the anarchists' revenge. In Pueblo Nuevo near Barcelona, the anarchists
have placed an armed man at the doors of each of the food stores,
and if you do not have a food coupon from the CNT, then you cannot
buy anything. The entire population of this small town is highly excited.
They are shooting up to fifty people a day in Barcelona. (Miravitlles
told me that they were not shooting more than four a day).
Relations with the Union
of Transport Workers are strained. At the beginning of 1934 there
was a protracted strike by the transport workers. The government and
the "Esquerra" smashed the strike. In July of this year,
on the pretext of revenge against the scabs, the CNT killed more than
eighty men, UGT members, but not one Communist among them. They killed
not only actual scabs but also honest revolutionaries. At the head
of the union is Comvin, who has been to the USSR, but on his return
he came out against us. Both he and, especially, the other leader
of the union - Cargo - appear to be provocateurs. The CNT, because
of competition with the hugely growing UGT, are recruiting members
without any verification. They have taken especially many lumpen from
the port area of Barrio Chino.
They have offered our people
two posts in the new government - Council of Labour and the Council
of Municipal Work - but it is impossible for the Council of Labour
to institute control over the factories and mills without clashing
sharply with the CNT, and as for municipal services, one must clash
with the Union of Transport Workers, which is in the hands of the
CNT. Fabregas, the councillor for the economy, is a "highly doubtful
sort." Before he joined the Esquerra, he was in the Accion Popular;
he left the Esquerra for the CNT and now is playing an obviously provocative
role, attempting to "deepen the revolution" by any means.
The metallurgical syndicate just began to put forward the slogan "family
wages." The first "producer in the family" received
100 percent wages, for example seventy pesetas a week, the sec- ond
member of the family 50 percent, the third 25 percent, the fourth,
and so on, up to 10 percent. Children less than sixteen years old
only 10 percent each, This system of wages is even worse than egalitarianism.
It kills both production and the family.
In Madrid there are up
to fifty thousand construction workers. Caballero refused to mobilize
all of them for building fortifications around Madrid ("and what
will they eat") and gave a total of a thousand men for building
the fortifications. In Estremadura our Comrade Deputy Cordon is fighting
heroically. He could arm five thousand peasants but he has a detachment
of only four thousand men total. Caballero under great pressure agreed
to give Cordon two hundred rifles, as well. Meanwhile, from Estremadura,
Franco could easily advance into the rear, toward Madrid. Caballero
implemented an absolutely absurd compensation for the militia - ten
pesetas a day, besides food and housing. Farm labourers in Spain earn
a total of two pesetas a day and, feeling very good about the militia
salary in the rear, do not want to go to the front. With that, egalitarianism
was introduced. Only officer specialists receive a higher salary.
A proposal made to Caballero to pay soldiers at the rear five pesetas
and only soldiers at the front ten pesetas was turned down. Caballero
is now disposed to put into effect the institution of political commissars,
but in actual fact it is not being done. In fact, the political commissars
introduced into the Fifth Regiment have been turned into commanders,
for there are none of the latter. Caballero also supports the departure
of the government from Madrid. After the capture of Toledo, this question
was almost decided, but the anarchists were categorically against
it, and our people proposed that the question be withdrawn as inopportune.
Caballero stood up for the removal of the government to Cartagena.
They proposed sounding out the possibility of basing the government
in Barcelona. Two ministers - Prieto and Jimenez de Asua - left for
talks with the Barcelona
government. The Barcelona government agreed to give refuge to
the central government. Caballero is sincere but is a prisoner to
syndicalist habits
and takes the statutes of the trade unions too literally.
The UGT is now the strongest
organization in Catalonia: it has no fewer than half
the metallurgical workers and almost all the textile workers, municipal
workers, service
employees, bank employees. There are abundant links to the peasantry.
But the CNT has much better cadres and has many weapons, which were
seized in the first days (the anarchists sent to the front fewer than
60 percent of the
thirty thousand rifles and three hundred machine guns that they seized).
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