Thursday 28 April 2016
Catalan Observatory
The Forging of a New Anarchism: the Grupos Obreros Autónomos (the Autonomous Workers’ Groups) in the neighbourhood struggle in Barcelona, 1968-1975
Speaker: Dr. Maggie Torres (Cañada Blanch Centre, LSE)
Chair: Prof. Paul Preston
Time: 18 h.
Place: LSE, Portugal Street, Cowdray House, 1st floor, Seminar Room 1.11
The importance of the neighbourhood struggle in the opposition against Franco has been increasingly recognised by historians. The working class neighbourhoods of Barcelona, in particular, were the scene of militant opposition to the dictatorship from the mid-1960s, and were thus an important arena of ‘intervention’ by the various Leftist political forces active at the time. In this paper Dr. Maggie Torres explored the emergence of an ‘independent’ or ‘autonomous’ tendency within some of the Barcelona neighbourhoods, in response to the extraordinary fragmentation of the Left that occurred – especially from 1968 – and which particularly affected Barcelona. The nature of these groups was examined alongside their ability to forge a movement which registered some notable successes in the early 1970s. Torres also looked at their political and ideological evolution and their adoption of a sui generis anarcho-Marxism, which emerged from a synthesis of Western European New Left thinking and the ethics of Spanish libertarianism.
1969-1975 represented a profound crisis for the Franco dictatorship, and the radicalisation of the labour movement that occurred during this period was met by severe repressive measures by the Francoist authorities. The controlled ‘apertura’ (opening) of the final years of the dictatorship - mistaken by a number of historians as a liberalisation of the regime - had to be reined in, resulting in increased repression of workers' groups, and this seems to be have been particularly harsh in Barcelona.
Maggie Torres provided the background and historical context out of which these movements grew, exploring the role played by Catholic workers group and the Spanish Communist Party (PCE) within the Comisiones Obreras (The Workers' Commissions or CCOO).
Also explored was the part played by neighbourhood associations in the mass protests of 1967 and how splits within the PCE, dating back to 1963, resulted in the emergence of Maoist and Trotskyist factions, and acted as a spur to the development of more localised groupings.
As a result of the greater level of repression of workers by the dictatorship, particularly in Barcelona in the late 1960s, the CCOO were forced to be increasingly clandestine in their activities, which resulted in increased bureaucratisation. This coupled with the PCE’s failure to react to the repression in an appropriate manner led to the demise of their influence in the CCOO, which in turn led to an increase of independents within the Workers’ Commissions and the growth of autonomous groups within a number of neighbourhoods.
