The shameful attacks on the CNT-AIT Spain continue while syndicalists sit on the fence.
Once again we are writing about the vindictive attacks on our Section in Spain, the CNT-AIT, as 16 unions of our organization must go to court to face the attempts to destroy the anarcho-syndicalist union. These attacks are made by the shameless union of the International Confederation of Labor, (ICL-CIT) which also shares the name CNT. It has deferred to the state to force their former comrades of the CNT-AIT to stop using the name but not only that. It demands unreasonable financial compensation for so-called „moral damage”. It also demands imprisonment of some comrades and wants a state-imposed gag order on members of the CNT-AIT. This would force them to keep silent about the serious problems that their members face and faced when once together in one organization with the „renovado” CNT – in other words, the „reformed” CNT, which began divesting itself of many of its libertarian ideals some time ago.
The IWA stands in solidarity with the CNT-AIT and the values it represents: horizontality, mutual aid, a rejection of the statist methods which have infected various formerly libertarian unions, in both the past and in the present. These statist methods are epitomised by the use of the state in attempt to punish and destroy the CNT-AIT for daring to remain true to its principles.
One of the things that many have admired about the CNT-AIT is that it is able to organize not only in the large urban centers of Spain, but also in smaller towns and rural areas. However, this became a huge issue some years ago as some of the larger urban unions of the now CNT-CIT sought to impose a model of leadership, in particular on these unions from other areas in their region which, due to their locations, were often smaller. Padding the membership of these unions with passive membership who gave up their votes to a handful of leaders and even occassional by paying for more members than they actually had to manipulate the votes, these unions began their attempts to silence the membership of many unions in order to move the union towards a service model, more in-line with the mainstream.So, it is no surprise that the lawyers of the CNT-CIT, infamous for their disdain of anarchism and their deferrance to the legalism of the state, focused on those unions who the CNT-CIT had already tried to destroy. Lawsuits were brought against the CNT-AIT unions of Elda, Chicland, Murcia, Torrelavega, Alcoy, La Safor, Cadiz, Granada, Camp de Morvedre, Albacete, Marina Alta, Alicante, Toledo, Pa Plana, Cartagena and Lugo. They are no doubt hoping that the courts will be more ameniable to a union that defers to the state, as opposed to one which sees the state in a different light.
The CNT-CIT seeks to financially cripple these unions with ridiculous lawsuits. If these unions are registered, the officers of the unions may be held personally liable for damages and may also face jail time if they are unable to pay them. The CNT-CIT also tries to take the property of the CNT-AIT local unions, regardless of whether it has any legitimate claim to it. They have used violence to raid the union of Cadiz, stealing the library which was built up by the rank-and-file membership. They try to lay claim to different premises, even ones that predate the very existance of the CNT, such as the one in Alcoy. It is speculated that part of the desire to eliminate these unions was to sell-off the property and divert the money from the localities to the larger union centers.
The CNT-CIT membership was quite contemptous of the CNT-AIT, claiming that it is just a few dozen people and that it has no importance at all compared to the CNT-CIT. Yet one of the arguments it makes in the lawsuits is that the CNT-CIT „cannot grow” due to the fact that the CNT-AIT has a similar name and that workers „don't know what union they are joining”. As we have pointed out before, we think that the workers of the CNT-AIT know exactly what union they are joining and why. We are not very sure how much somebody joining other unions to get legal and other services know but we will not insult the common sense of working people. If CNT-AIT is just a small group of „extremists”, as the CNT-CIT tends to call them, then why do they whine that they prevent them from growing. Or maybe the problem is that the CNT-AIT is growing and the CNT-CIT cannot stand that anybody prefers to work in a truly libertarian union.
As many members of IWA unions hold the libertarian principles of the IWA very dear, we remind people of some basic ideas of the anti-statist ideology which brought us together. The first being that when we tell people that the state isn't necessary and that we can resolve various issues ourselves, we mean that. When people ask us more and question as to how this is possible, we refer to the many ideas of justice without state intervention and punishments such as jail. So it is painfully obvious that those who both explicitly ask for jail for comrades, as well as create situations in which that might happen, are not adherent to this ideology in any way but are resorting to the repressive power of the state.
We are aware that CNT-CIT is an organizations whose leaders for some time do not always ask their members their opinions, but often make decisions and, maybe if somebody complains, later seek the approval of these decisions posteriously. This lawsuit was initiated by lawyers without the decision of the membership, something fundamentally against any horizontalist principles. However, the membership in the years that followed did not call off their dogs – or rather, their masters.
These facts were brought to the attention of many organizations which also have claims to be in a libertarian tradition, but we see that they are not really libertarian enough to admit what is happening with those they imagine to be their allies.
We believe that everybody has the right and even responsibility to ask for accountability from the organizations they are in, from those in representative situations, etc. and that this is a cornerstone of anarcho-syndicalism. When something has gone wrong, it is the responsibility of the organization to try to correct it but those of the CNT-CIT come from a tradition of handling such issues only one way: with repression. This new era perhaps started with expelling those who found corruption, with a commission proving the problems. Despite this, the corrupt stayed and those who called it out were purged. When they decided to create CNT-CIT, the problem of co-existence in one organization was solved and they had their own organization which could function as it wanted, but then it started to go after CNT-AIT, which wanted to function on its prior libertarian principles. CNT-CIT is simply seeking to destroy those who do not agree with it, to get the state to impose a censorship on them and to punish them for their thoughtcrimes.
They cannot silence us all. We roundly condemn these statist and repressive actions brought by the CNT-CIT and call them plainly what they are: inconsistent with libertarian morality and tradition, vindictive and horrendous.
Standing in solidarity with the CNT-AIT Spain, we stand in solidarity with a set of values which they cannot destroy, no matter how hard they try.
Long live the CNT-AIT!
Long live anarcho-syndicalism!
IWA Secretariat