‘The struggle is class . . . against class’

- Ceci n’est pas La matraque des profs contre la hausse

‘Strike or no strike, the struggle continues’

 

Introduction

The following is my translation of a feature article in the Autumn 2012 issue of a 16-page tabloid produced by Profs contre la hausse (Profs against the fee hike), the group of university and college professors that helped to mobilize support for the striking students in Quebec’s “printemps érable,” or maple spring. The newpaper bears the evocative masthead “Ceci n’est pas La Matraque des profs contre la hausse,” the matraque, or police truncheon, referring of course to the brutal repression of student demonstrators by the cops.

During the strike this spring, a statement (“We are all students”) issued by Profs contre la hausse was signed by more than 2,000 professors.[1] The current issue of the profs’ newspaper, which is subtitled “The spring continues,” states on its front page: “We present this newspaper to the students, who, through their unprecedented mobilization, were able to revitalize the Quebec political landscape. Their powerful speeches and their creative opposition to the bards of austerity and the ‘fair share’ inspire us in our own practices of political freedom.”

– Richard Fidler

* * *

The political economy behind this year’s student struggle and the increase in Quebec tuition fees

by Eric Pineault, Université du Québec à Montréal (UQÀM)

The spring student strike is quite probably the inaugural act of a new period of social conflict in Quebec, analogous to the struggles that are traversing the other societies beset by the similar exhaustion of a neoliberal political economy. After three decades of relative “civil peace” (1982 to 2012) and neoliberal bracketing of conflicts, Quebec could be entering an era of political and cultural awakening in which it is once again possible to hope for a fundamental transformation of economic and social relations. Such changes do not occur without arousing strong resistance, and the social offensives needed to drive them forward must be equally combative.

It was precisely based on such analyses that the ASSÉ, then the CLASSE,[2] prepared the big strike of 2012. It was necessary, from the outset, to link the fight against the increase to a more comprehensive challenge to the neoliberal state model, in particular the so-called “cultural revolution” of fee-based public services, a regressive tax system and privatization of the common heritage of the Québécois and aboriginal peoples. So for the CLASSE, at least, it was not simply a fight against the fee hike — which, to be sure, would have soon unraveled in a negotiated increase. Rather, it was a social struggle for free education and for a decommodification of the university system.

The so-called “radicalism” of the CLASSE is derived, as the expression suggests, from the fact that the analysis framing its strike action went to the root of the problem and grasped it in its totality: the fee increase and the commodity and corporate drift of the university system are products of a neoliberal political economy that is imposed on all aspects of Quebec society. This political economy is not an invention of Jean Charest’s Liberals; they systematized and adapted a more general model applied pretty well everywhere in North America, some key aspects having been installed by the PQ in the socio-economic summits following the 1995 referendum.

The former Conservative turned nationalist Lucien Bouchard passed the torch of austerity and competitive deregulation to the former Conservative turned Liberal Jean Charest who, at first, simply developed in complete coherence what was already implicit in Bouchard’s zero-deficit policy, then accelerated and generalized the establishment of the neoliberal model in Quebec. These developments followed a long period, between 1982 and 1995, of exhaustion of the social model established in the traces of the Quiet Revolution. The Quebec model of neoliberalism was also prepared through the construction at the federal level of its neoliberal macro-economic framework: free-trade agreement, conversion of unemployment insurance into “employment insurance,” a disinflationary monetary policy, financial deregulation, lower taxes and the fight against the deficit they provoked.

It can be said that the crisis of 2008 marked the end of this ascendancy of neoliberalism, both here and elsewhere in North America and Europe, for it was the crisis of the economic model it had spawned. Since then we have been caught in a trap that combines economic stagnation with austerity. There is nothing in the policies responding to this crisis that eases this tendency to stagnation. The elite has apparently turned its back on the growth on which, in theory, the viability of advanced capitalism rests.

Such is the political economy context of the coming social conflicts in Quebec: an anaemic economy, most incomes stagnating, and a state caught in the vice-like grip of an austerity that generates further stagnation, with greater austerity in response. This context is not peculiar to Quebec; the essential sources of this stagnation trap lie elsewhere, in the United States and Europe, and by opening up our economy we have made ourselves dependent on economic cycles over which we have no influence. The Plan Nord can only accentuate this dependency. In this context, what are the possible sequels to the social movement of the spring of 2012?

One way of thinking about the last three decades of neoliberal hegemony is to see them as thirty years of a one-sided “class struggle,” and one way of making sense of what began in the spring of 2012 is to understand it as the end of this one-sidedness. The class struggle is now working both ways. How can we understand neoliberalism as a one-sided class struggle? To understand that, a small detour through history is necessary. For the greater part of the 20^th century, the political economy regime was characterized by a certain compromise between capital and labour, between big corporations and employees. The profits of the first rested on the consumption of the second, and firms were constrained to share their productivity gains with the workers so that the latter could (over)consume massively what was (over)produced massively. That was the major lesson learned during the crisis of the 1930s, a crisis of overproduction, underconsumption and under-investment.

From 1939 to 1980 in North America and Western Europe, real wages of the majority progressed from year to year, while everywhere the share of the wealth going to the most well-off (the highest 1% of incomes) decreased year by year, from the ceiling of 1930 to the floor of 1980. It was not through kindness or necessarily by far-sightedness that the capitalists were led to share the proceeds of economic growth. On the contrary, it was essentially thanks to the strength of the trade-union movement, the pressure exerted on the state by a mobilized citizenry, the presence in the political arena of left-wing parties, and the counter-model constituted by the so-called “communist” countries that the welfare state, and a form of partially socialized capitalism, developed.

Quebec’s Quiet Revolution arrived toward the end of this period, and constituted for us a sort of catching-up with an historical trajectory that was much longer elsewhere. Within a few years, Quebec acquired a modern social state and a progressive labour law; nationalized some major sectors of its economy; created the Caisse de Dépôt et Placement, the public university and college networks, and the health care system; made working conditions in the public sector a lever for raising conditions in the private sector; and, finally, equipped itself with the tools to develop its natural resources under its own control. Added to all this, a progressive tax system that took more from the well-off than from the majority, and that tapped into profits almost as much as wages, gradually but ineluctably reduced the power of the business elites and big corporations in the society and the economy.

Neoliberal policies are a struggle by the elites to reconquer the economic and political power they lost to the workers, whom they have managed to fragment into a multiplicity of groups, each forced onto the defensive, each attempting to preserve some acquisition that guarantees its dignity. The great secret of neoliberalism is that what we understand as the dismantling of some part of the social state, the privatization of some public service, the imposition of market competition in some sector, the deregulation of this or that is in fact a vast transfer of resources, wealth and power from “the commons” to the hands of the elite and their big corporations. That has been the true nature of the one-sided class warfare waged by the elite against society, for some thirty years.

That warfare could continue uninterrupted for as long as it held the promise that this was the only way to guarantee economic growth that would eventually allow the workers to increase their living standards. After the crisis of 2008, belief in the need for austerity helped to extend this context of one-sided struggle. But with the spring of 2012, the veil was lifted and the elite appeared for what it is: a class of “appropriators” who live and enrich themselves by transforming our collective heritage into their individual wealth and into assets for the big corporations. The future of the universities did not escape this logic, and the fee increase was an essential tool in this strategy of incorporation of the university. By challenging the increase in the name of free tuition, the movement altered the context. The struggle is now being waged by both sides. It is possible to think of a post-neoliberalism, and to go about constructing it. Over and beyond the electoral pause, a new era of change and social debate is opening before us.

---

[1] For an English translation, see “Massive demonstrations support Quebec students striking against fee hikes”; the statement is appended to the article.

[2] Association pour une solidarité syndicale étudiante – Association for student union solidarity (ASSÉ); Coalition large de l’ASSÉ – Broad coalition of the ASSÉ (CLASSE).

‘The struggle is class . . . against class’

- Ceci n’est pas La matraque des profs contre la hausse

‘Strike or no strike, the struggle continues’

 

Introduction

The following is my translation of a feature article in the Autumn 2012 issue of a 16-page tabloid produced by Profs contre la hausse (Profs against the fee hike), the group of university and college professors that helped to mobilize support for the striking students in Quebec’s “printemps érable,” or maple spring. The newpaper bears the evocative masthead “Ceci n’est pas La Matraque des profs contre la hausse,” the matraque, or police truncheon, referring of course to the brutal repression of student demonstrators by the cops.

During the strike this spring, a statement (“We are all students”) issued by Profs contre la hausse was signed by more than 2,000 professors.[1] The current issue of the profs’ newspaper, which is subtitled “The spring continues,” states on its front page: “We present this newspaper to the students, who, through their unprecedented mobilization, were able to revitalize the Quebec political landscape. Their powerful speeches and their creative opposition to the bards of austerity and the ‘fair share’ inspire us in our own practices of political freedom.”

– Richard Fidler

* * *

The political economy behind this year’s student struggle and the increase in Quebec tuition fees

by Eric Pineault, Université du Québec à Montréal (UQÀM)

The spring student strike is quite probably the inaugural act of a new period of social conflict in Quebec, analogous to the struggles that are traversing the other societies beset by the similar exhaustion of a neoliberal political economy. After three decades of relative “civil peace” (1982 to 2012) and neoliberal bracketing of conflicts, Quebec could be entering an era of political and cultural awakening in which it is once again possible to hope for a fundamental transformation of economic and social relations. Such changes do not occur without arousing strong resistance, and the social offensives needed to drive them forward must be equally combative.

It was precisely based on such analyses that the ASSÉ, then the CLASSE,[2] prepared the big strike of 2012. It was necessary, from the outset, to link the fight against the increase to a more comprehensive challenge to the neoliberal state model, in particular the so-called “cultural revolution” of fee-based public services, a regressive tax system and privatization of the common heritage of the Québécois and aboriginal peoples. So for the CLASSE, at least, it was not simply a fight against the fee hike — which, to be sure, would have soon unraveled in a negotiated increase. Rather, it was a social struggle for free education and for a decommodification of the university system.

The so-called “radicalism” of the CLASSE is derived, as the expression suggests, from the fact that the analysis framing its strike action went to the root of the problem and grasped it in its totality: the fee increase and the commodity and corporate drift of the university system are products of a neoliberal political economy that is imposed on all aspects of Quebec society. This political economy is not an invention of Jean Charest’s Liberals; they systematized and adapted a more general model applied pretty well everywhere in North America, some key aspects having been installed by the PQ in the socio-economic summits following the 1995 referendum.

The former Conservative turned nationalist Lucien Bouchard passed the torch of austerity and competitive deregulation to the former Conservative turned Liberal Jean Charest who, at first, simply developed in complete coherence what was already implicit in Bouchard’s zero-deficit policy, then accelerated and generalized the establishment of the neoliberal model in Quebec. These developments followed a long period, between 1982 and 1995, of exhaustion of the social model established in the traces of the Quiet Revolution. The Quebec model of neoliberalism was also prepared through the construction at the federal level of its neoliberal macro-economic framework: free-trade agreement, conversion of unemployment insurance into “employment insurance,” a disinflationary monetary policy, financial deregulation, lower taxes and the fight against the deficit they provoked.

It can be said that the crisis of 2008 marked the end of this ascendancy of neoliberalism, both here and elsewhere in North America and Europe, for it was the crisis of the economic model it had spawned. Since then we have been caught in a trap that combines economic stagnation with austerity. There is nothing in the policies responding to this crisis that eases this tendency to stagnation. The elite has apparently turned its back on the growth on which, in theory, the viability of advanced capitalism rests.

Such is the political economy context of the coming social conflicts in Quebec: an anaemic economy, most incomes stagnating, and a state caught in the vice-like grip of an austerity that generates further stagnation, with greater austerity in response. This context is not peculiar to Quebec; the essential sources of this stagnation trap lie elsewhere, in the United States and Europe, and by opening up our economy we have made ourselves dependent on economic cycles over which we have no influence. The Plan Nord can only accentuate this dependency. In this context, what are the possible sequels to the social movement of the spring of 2012?

One way of thinking about the last three decades of neoliberal hegemony is to see them as thirty years of a one-sided “class struggle,” and one way of making sense of what began in the spring of 2012 is to understand it as the end of this one-sidedness. The class struggle is now working both ways. How can we understand neoliberalism as a one-sided class struggle? To understand that, a small detour through history is necessary. For the greater part of the 20^th century, the political economy regime was characterized by a certain compromise between capital and labour, between big corporations and employees. The profits of the first rested on the consumption of the second, and firms were constrained to share their productivity gains with the workers so that the latter could (over)consume massively what was (over)produced massively. That was the major lesson learned during the crisis of the 1930s, a crisis of overproduction, underconsumption and under-investment.

From 1939 to 1980 in North America and Western Europe, real wages of the majority progressed from year to year, while everywhere the share of the wealth going to the most well-off (the highest 1% of incomes) decreased year by year, from the ceiling of 1930 to the floor of 1980. It was not through kindness or necessarily by far-sightedness that the capitalists were led to share the proceeds of economic growth. On the contrary, it was essentially thanks to the strength of the trade-union movement, the pressure exerted on the state by a mobilized citizenry, the presence in the political arena of left-wing parties, and the counter-model constituted by the so-called “communist” countries that the welfare state, and a form of partially socialized capitalism, developed.

Quebec’s Quiet Revolution arrived toward the end of this period, and constituted for us a sort of catching-up with an historical trajectory that was much longer elsewhere. Within a few years, Quebec acquired a modern social state and a progressive labour law; nationalized some major sectors of its economy; created the Caisse de Dépôt et Placement, the public university and college networks, and the health care system; made working conditions in the public sector a lever for raising conditions in the private sector; and, finally, equipped itself with the tools to develop its natural resources under its own control. Added to all this, a progressive tax system that took more from the well-off than from the majority, and that tapped into profits almost as much as wages, gradually but ineluctably reduced the power of the business elites and big corporations in the society and the economy.

Neoliberal policies are a struggle by the elites to reconquer the economic and political power they lost to the workers, whom they have managed to fragment into a multiplicity of groups, each forced onto the defensive, each attempting to preserve some acquisition that guarantees its dignity. The great secret of neoliberalism is that what we understand as the dismantling of some part of the social state, the privatization of some public service, the imposition of market competition in some sector, the deregulation of this or that is in fact a vast transfer of resources, wealth and power from “the commons” to the hands of the elite and their big corporations. That has been the true nature of the one-sided class warfare waged by the elite against society, for some thirty years.

That warfare could continue uninterrupted for as long as it held the promise that this was the only way to guarantee economic growth that would eventually allow the workers to increase their living standards. After the crisis of 2008, belief in the need for austerity helped to extend this context of one-sided struggle. But with the spring of 2012, the veil was lifted and the elite appeared for what it is: a class of “appropriators” who live and enrich themselves by transforming our collective heritage into their individual wealth and into assets for the big corporations. The future of the universities did not escape this logic, and the fee increase was an essential tool in this strategy of incorporation of the university. By challenging the increase in the name of free tuition, the movement altered the context. The struggle is now being waged by both sides. It is possible to think of a post-neoliberalism, and to go about constructing it. Over and beyond the electoral pause, a new era of change and social debate is opening before us.

---

[1] For an English translation, see “Massive demonstrations support Quebec students striking against fee hikes”; the statement is appended to the article.

[2] Association pour une solidarité syndicale étudiante – Association for student union solidarity (ASSÉ); Coalition large de l’ASSÉ – Broad coalition of the ASSÉ (CLASSE).

Quebec nationalist leader critiques PQ’s anti-immigrant ‘charter of exclusion’

Introduction

As I mentioned in my report on the Quebec election, among the issues championed by the Parti québécois was that of strengthening Quebecois identity, focused around the PQ demand for a charte de laïcité or Charter of Secularism that would effectively exclude women wearing the Muslim hijab or scarf from employment in government or public services. PQ leader Pauline Marois drove the point home by parachuting a notorious Islamophobe as the party’s candidate in the riding of Trois-Rivières. Djemila Benhabib was defeated, but not before this provocative action had been widely publicized.

Now a powerful voice has been raised within Quebec nationalist ranks in protest against the PQ position. In a major op-ed article in the September 22 issue of the Montréal daily Le Devoir, Jean Dorion explained why the PQ’s position on “secularism” had convinced him not to support the party in this election. Dorion is a former MP of the Bloc québécois, a former official in PQ governments and former president of the Saint-Jean-Baptiste Society of Montréal. The SSJB is an historic Quebec institution, founded by leaders of the Patriote movement in the years leading up to the 1837 revolt against British colonialism and today is a leading secular voice in the broader nationalist and sovereigntist movement.

It is to be hoped that Dorion’s statement, which I have translated below, will open up a much-needed debate within sovereigntist ranks on such issues as what is meant by secularism, the difference between state neutrality toward religion and freedom of religious belief, and the related questions of the role of immigration and the challenge of finding ways to welcome and integrate oppressed and visible minorities within Quebec society.

There is much confusion on these questions, and it extends through much of the left as well. An example is the record of the left party, Québec solidaire. At its November 2009 program convention, QS adopted what it termed a “model of secularism” that, among other things, defended the right of “state agents” (i.e. employees and officials) to wear insignia of their religious beliefs, if any — a position that would oppose the PQ’s proposed charter with its imposed dress codes. (For a full report, see “Quebec left debates strategy for independence.”)

In a follow-up article in Le Devoir, published January 18, 2010, QS co-leaders Françoise David and Amir Khadir defined the party’s position on the wearing of “ostentatious” signs of personal religious belief as “neither obligation nor prohibition”: that is, no one should be required to wear such signs nor should they be prohibited from doing so if they so wished. The article strongly defended individual freedom of conscience and the need to protect it from state intrusion.

However, since then QS leaders have backtracked somewhat on the party’s adopted positions. Early this year Khadir and David gave critical support to the Charest government’s Bill 94, which would deny government-funded health care, education and child care services to all whose clothing prevents disclosure of their face, and would bar them from government and public-service employment. The bill patently targets a tiny number of Muslim women who wear niqabs or burqas.

And when some Sikhs sought to appear before a parliamentary committee to express their opposition to Bill 94, Amir Khadir added his vote on a PQ motion, supported by the other parties, to exclude them from the National Assembly because they were wearing their ceremonial dagger, the kirpan, even though it could hardly be termed a “weapon” as alleged.

Although the PQ campaigned prominently around narrow exclusionary identity issues, the QS platform in this election did not address them. It did not reiterate the party’s formal position in support of freedom of religious belief, although it did advocate affirmative action to promote the employment of immigrant women and visible and ethnic minorities in the public service.

Here, then, is Jean’s Dorion’s explanation of why he chose not to vote for the PQ and to vote instead for another party in this election.

– Richard Fidler

* * *

Charter of secularism – When a separatist separates

The polls announced a PQ government and we have one. At least, my electoral turn-about cannot be treated as opportunistic; for the first time since the PQ existed, I did not vote for this party.

I was torn by this break. It will lose me some friends, disappoint some sincere militants, be misinterpreted. I did not reveal it prior to the election; it would have been seen as treachery instead of an opportunity for reflection. No, I am not the Guy Bertrand[1] of modern times. And I refuse in advance any invitation to come and relax at Sagard.[2] But a time comes when a decision must be taken.

I simply cannot come to the defense of the PQ’s Charte de la laïcité, a bogus project that if pursued will divide a society that is already too divided. It will make the independence of Quebec even more difficult by alienating us from liberal public opinion in the rest of the continent, the only sectors otherwise likely to respect our choice. And it will devastate for a long time our relationship with the greatest Francophone immigration Quebec has ever experienced — a milieu, even yesterday, relatively open to our aspirations. The PQ had four Muslim candidates in 2007, none this year. The chickens do not vote for Colonel Sanders.

Screen for intolerance

And we do not need any such charter! Apart from some minor adjustments, Quebec is already a secular society, as a result of measures taken by the Quiet Revolution, crowned by the deconfessionalization of the school system.[3] Bravo to the people who called for this — I was one of them — and to Pauline Marois who got it written into the law and the constitution.

Alas, when a political personality can boast of success in one area, she seems incapable of letting go, in the belief that “more of the same” [in English] will be even more pleasing. The secularization Part II project of the PQ would concord with Karl Marx’s saying that History repeats itself, the second time as farce.

What indeed are we to say about a party that votes to maintain a crucifix in the National Assembly but at the same time advocates a prohibition on working in the public and parapublic sectors for ordinary citizens who, in their personal capacity, wear a religious sign such as the Muslim scarf or the Jewish kippa? The crucifix does not prevent me from sleeping, but secularism as a screen for intolerance does.

I tried for four years to convince many PQ MNAs to avoid this trap. The final response to my discreet representations and to those of others was the parachuting of Ms. Djemila Benhabib into Trois-Rivières, an augury of a secularism locked twice-over.

I have read the books of this woman of a single cause. She has suffered much and seems very sincere to me. I would say as much of Senator Pierre-Hugues Boisvenu, the scourge of crime. Unfortunately, having suffered and having accounts to settle does not necessarily make someone the most judicious counsellor. The Senator’s remedies against crime (more repression than prevention) would increase criminality. The PQ’s discriminatory Charter, unparalleled in North America, would play into the hands of the Islamic extremists, who must be hoping for its adoption with baited breath.

Compatibility of views

I will always defend the right of anyone to criticize any institution, including religions. But the choice of a candidate by a party is not a matter of right but of relevance. I have known and appreciated quite a few Muslims, Sikhs and Jews; I was the government’s liaison agent with these communities. Ms. Benhabib’s parachute candidacy in Trois-Rivières is as great a misstep for the PQ in the Muslim community as the choice of Stéphane Dion as leader of the federal Liberals was for that party in French Quebec. In both cases, a party became infatuated with a member of a minority not because of that person’s efforts to increase understanding of the minority, but solely because of the compatibility of his or her views with the phobias of the majority.

I do not personally know each of the 200,000 Muslims in Quebec, but all those I do know, practicing or not, saw the parachuting of the author of Ma vie à contre-Coran [My life against the Koran] as a provocation. How would Christians react (practitioners or even those non-practitioners who want a crucifix in the National Assembly) to the candidacy of a person whose proudest merit was a book entitled My life against the Gospel? In my opinion, those responsible for this choice do not display the judgment and sensitivity required by a project as complex and demanding as the accession of Quebec to sovereignty. Like Maurice Duplessis, who also built part of his electoral career on the back of a religious minority (the Jehovah’s Witnesses), they are more interested in their re-election than in the future of Quebec as a society.

Is France a model?

Some seemingly respectable arguments are invoked against the presence in the public services of women wearing the scarf. That, it is claimed, is how they will be “liberated,” as if a job and salary were not the primary guarantors of their freedom. But the most obvious reason is the fear of what is alien, as the contradiction over the crucifix illustrates.

The second most important reason is probably, among some baby-boomers, an inverted legacy of a Quebec now gone: the obsessive hostility toward religions and scorn for their adherents. This hostility, this contempt will yield no good in a Quebec in which diversity is increasing. The stigmatization of believers is unlikely to create any empathy among and towards immigrants who, in their majority, attach great importance to their religion — Christian, Muslim, or other.

The model to be imitated, it appears, would be France, a country I passionately love, but not to the point of folly. Since the Second World War France has held the western world’s championship for its electorate’s support to an openly xenophobic party, if we consider both the scope and duration of that support. In France, looking like someone from North Africa will often have the police asking you for “Your papers!” every day — as reports none other than Djemila Benhabib in Ma vie à contre-Coran (p. 190).

And what about the angry young people from the immigrant communities who set fire to hundreds of cars each year on the night of July 14 [Bastille Day]; do we see such things in Montréal on the 24^th of June [the Fête nationale], in Toronto on Canada Day, in New York on July 4?

Annoying the rest of the continent

Quebec is in America. Some of us are beginning to discover, with surprise, how much a secularism of exclusion shocks the prevailing ethic in the United States, as in Canada. On July 4, 2009, President Obama denounced the prohibition of the hijab in the West; he was criticized very little for that in his country. In Canada, three turban-wearing Sikhs, elected in majority non-Sikh ridings, sat in the House of Commons when I was there myself, without anyone taking offense. One of them is now a minister.

In Quebec, with the Charter planned by the PQ, he could not even be a clerk in a government liquor store. The countries of Protestant origins value freedom of conscience. In the United States, secularism means strict separation of Church from State, not a prohibition on the expression of beliefs.

Of course, we can choose to annoy all the rest of the continent, I have often done so myself on the language, but it is still necessary that the issue be worth the trouble. If we multiply the cases, we allow our adversaries to link them together in order to paint Quebec as a fortress of intolerance in all respects.

Charter of exclusion

Treating Québécois as racists is unfair, agreed: a recent poll showed we are more open to immigration than Ontarians. But when it comes to accusations of intolerance toward religious minorities, a good way to refute them, or to discredit those who make them, would be not to show ourselves as worse than our neighbours in this area.

There are Jews and Muslims everywhere in the United States and Canada, countries that have some sixty state or provincial legislatures with comparable powers, overall, to those of our National Assembly. Name me a single one of these legislatures or, in recent times, a major party that has proposed a charter of exclusion like the one advocated by the PQ. Halal and Kosher rites are practices in all these states and provinces. Name me one of their legislatures or a major party that has recently made such a song and dance over this (complete with a news conference!) as the PQ did in the National Assembly last March.[4]

Could it be that all these other legislatures, without exception, are controlled by “useful idiots” in the service of the Islamists? Might it not be, instead, that our insecurity and our religious antecedents sometimes inspire in us reflexes that are excessive, unfair and counter-productive? Of course, some will see in the singularity of our conduct some (further) proof of our intellectual and moral superiority. Chauvinism is the contrary of patriotism: instead of encouraging the nation to improve, we exalt its errors; and that generally ends up badly.

I have therefore left it to those who dream of living some day in the only corner of North America in which a mother could be deprived of a livelihood for wearing a Muslim scarf the responsibility of their project. I remain an independentist, a radical defender of French.

It was necessary to vote and I chose Option nationale (ON). This party had the good idea, in its platform, to advocate the secularism of public institutions, not the forced secularization of each of their employees. I know many of these militants, young people for the most part. They would not make that kind of mistake.

[Note by Le Devoir] Jean Dorion. A sociologist, the author has been a political attaché of Immigration Minister Jacques Couture, chief of staff of minister Gérald Godin, liaison officer with the cultural communities, president of the SSJB de Montréal, delegate general of Quebec in Tokyo and MP for the Bloc québécois.

---

[1] Guy Bertrand is a Quebec City lawyer, once a fervent sovereigntist (he even ran for the PQ leadership), who became an equally fervent federalist in the 1990s, and sometime later reverted to sovereigntism.

[2] A town in Charlevoix region containing the sumptuous residence of the very well-connected billionaire Paul Desmarais. It is frequented by the who’s who of the Quebec and international Francophone elite.

[3] In 1997, the addition of s. 93A to the Constitution Act, 1867 made possible the abolition of denominational school boards in Quebec and the reorganization of Quebec's school boards on the basis of language. Marois was the PQ minister of Education who piloted this constitutional amendment from Quebec’s side.

[4] André Simard, a PQ member of the National Assembly, with the support of his colleagues, campaigned in March against halal ritual slaughter practices, claiming (against all evidence) they were becoming the norm rather than the exception in Quebec.

Quebec nationalist leader critiques PQ’s anti-immigrant ‘charter of exclusion’

Introduction

As I mentioned in my report on the Quebec election, among the issues championed by the Parti québécois was that of strengthening Quebecois identity, focused around the PQ demand for a charte de laïcité or Charter of Secularism that would effectively exclude women wearing the Muslim hijab or scarf from employment in government or public services. PQ leader Pauline Marois drove the point home by parachuting a notorious Islamophobe as the party’s candidate in the riding of Trois-Rivières. Djemila Benhabib was defeated, but not before this provocative action had been widely publicized.

Now a powerful voice has been raised within Quebec nationalist ranks in protest against the PQ position. In a major op-ed article in the September 22 issue of the Montréal daily Le Devoir, Jean Dorion explained why the PQ’s position on “secularism” had convinced him not to support the party in this election. Dorion is a former MP of the Bloc québécois, a former official in PQ governments and former president of the Saint-Jean-Baptiste Society of Montréal. The SSJB is an historic Quebec institution, founded by leaders of the Patriote movement in the years leading up to the 1837 revolt against British colonialism and today is a leading secular voice in the broader nationalist and sovereigntist movement.

It is to be hoped that Dorion’s statement, which I have translated below, will open up a much-needed debate within sovereigntist ranks on such issues as what is meant by secularism, the difference between state neutrality toward religion and freedom of religious belief, and the related questions of the role of immigration and the challenge of finding ways to welcome and integrate oppressed and visible minorities within Quebec society.

There is much confusion on these questions, and it extends through much of the left as well. An example is the record of the left party, Québec solidaire. At its November 2009 program convention, QS adopted what it termed a “model of secularism” that, among other things, defended the right of “state agents” (i.e. employees and officials) to wear insignia of their religious beliefs, if any — a position that would oppose the PQ’s proposed charter with its imposed dress codes. (For a full report, see “Quebec left debates strategy for independence.”)

In a follow-up article in Le Devoir, published January 18, 2010, QS co-leaders Françoise David and Amir Khadir defined the party’s position on the wearing of “ostentatious” signs of personal religious belief as “neither obligation nor prohibition”: that is, no one should be required to wear such signs nor should they be prohibited from doing so if they so wished. The article strongly defended individual freedom of conscience and the need to protect it from state intrusion.

However, since then QS leaders have backtracked somewhat on the party’s adopted positions. Early this year Khadir and David gave critical support to the Charest government’s Bill 94, which would deny government-funded health care, education and child care services to all whose clothing prevents disclosure of their face, and would bar them from government and public-service employment. The bill patently targets a tiny number of Muslim women who wear niqabs or burqas.

And when some Sikhs sought to appear before a parliamentary committee to express their opposition to Bill 94, Amir Khadir added his vote on a PQ motion, supported by the other parties, to exclude them from the National Assembly because they were wearing their ceremonial dagger, the kirpan, even though it could hardly be termed a “weapon” as alleged.

Although the PQ campaigned prominently around narrow exclusionary identity issues, the QS platform in this election did not address them. It did not reiterate the party’s formal position in support of freedom of religious belief, although it did advocate affirmative action to promote the employment of immigrant women and visible and ethnic minorities in the public service.

Here, then, is Jean’s Dorion’s explanation of why he chose not to vote for the PQ and to vote instead for another party in this election.

– Richard Fidler

* * *

Charter of secularism – When a separatist separates

The polls announced a PQ government and we have one. At least, my electoral turn-about cannot be treated as opportunistic; for the first time since the PQ existed, I did not vote for this party.

I was torn by this break. It will lose me some friends, disappoint some sincere militants, be misinterpreted. I did not reveal it prior to the election; it would have been seen as treachery instead of an opportunity for reflection. No, I am not the Guy Bertrand[1] of modern times. And I refuse in advance any invitation to come and relax at Sagard.[2] But a time comes when a decision must be taken.

I simply cannot come to the defense of the PQ’s Charte de la laïcité, a bogus project that if pursued will divide a society that is already too divided. It will make the independence of Quebec even more difficult by alienating us from liberal public opinion in the rest of the continent, the only sectors otherwise likely to respect our choice. And it will devastate for a long time our relationship with the greatest Francophone immigration Quebec has ever experienced — a milieu, even yesterday, relatively open to our aspirations. The PQ had four Muslim candidates in 2007, none this year. The chickens do not vote for Colonel Sanders.

Screen for intolerance

And we do not need any such charter! Apart from some minor adjustments, Quebec is already a secular society, as a result of measures taken by the Quiet Revolution, crowned by the deconfessionalization of the school system.[3] Bravo to the people who called for this — I was one of them — and to Pauline Marois who got it written into the law and the constitution.

Alas, when a political personality can boast of success in one area, she seems incapable of letting go, in the belief that “more of the same” [in English] will be even more pleasing. The secularization Part II project of the PQ would concord with Karl Marx’s saying that History repeats itself, the second time as farce.

What indeed are we to say about a party that votes to maintain a crucifix in the National Assembly but at the same time advocates a prohibition on working in the public and parapublic sectors for ordinary citizens who, in their personal capacity, wear a religious sign such as the Muslim scarf or the Jewish kippa? The crucifix does not prevent me from sleeping, but secularism as a screen for intolerance does.

I tried for four years to convince many PQ MNAs to avoid this trap. The final response to my discreet representations and to those of others was the parachuting of Ms. Djemila Benhabib into Trois-Rivières, an augury of a secularism locked twice-over.

I have read the books of this woman of a single cause. She has suffered much and seems very sincere to me. I would say as much of Senator Pierre-Hugues Boisvenu, the scourge of crime. Unfortunately, having suffered and having accounts to settle does not necessarily make someone the most judicious counsellor. The Senator’s remedies against crime (more repression than prevention) would increase criminality. The PQ’s discriminatory Charter, unparalleled in North America, would play into the hands of the Islamic extremists, who must be hoping for its adoption with baited breath.

Compatibility of views

I will always defend the right of anyone to criticize any institution, including religions. But the choice of a candidate by a party is not a matter of right but of relevance. I have known and appreciated quite a few Muslims, Sikhs and Jews; I was the government’s liaison agent with these communities. Ms. Benhabib’s parachute candidacy in Trois-Rivières is as great a misstep for the PQ in the Muslim community as the choice of Stéphane Dion as leader of the federal Liberals was for that party in French Quebec. In both cases, a party became infatuated with a member of a minority not because of that person’s efforts to increase understanding of the minority, but solely because of the compatibility of his or her views with the phobias of the majority.

I do not personally know each of the 200,000 Muslims in Quebec, but all those I do know, practicing or not, saw the parachuting of the author of Ma vie à contre-Coran [My life against the Koran] as a provocation. How would Christians react (practitioners or even those non-practitioners who want a crucifix in the National Assembly) to the candidacy of a person whose proudest merit was a book entitled My life against the Gospel? In my opinion, those responsible for this choice do not display the judgment and sensitivity required by a project as complex and demanding as the accession of Quebec to sovereignty. Like Maurice Duplessis, who also built part of his electoral career on the back of a religious minority (the Jehovah’s Witnesses), they are more interested in their re-election than in the future of Quebec as a society.

Is France a model?

Some seemingly respectable arguments are invoked against the presence in the public services of women wearing the scarf. That, it is claimed, is how they will be “liberated,” as if a job and salary were not the primary guarantors of their freedom. But the most obvious reason is the fear of what is alien, as the contradiction over the crucifix illustrates.

The second most important reason is probably, among some baby-boomers, an inverted legacy of a Quebec now gone: the obsessive hostility toward religions and scorn for their adherents. This hostility, this contempt will yield no good in a Quebec in which diversity is increasing. The stigmatization of believers is unlikely to create any empathy among and towards immigrants who, in their majority, attach great importance to their religion — Christian, Muslim, or other.

The model to be imitated, it appears, would be France, a country I passionately love, but not to the point of folly. Since the Second World War France has held the western world’s championship for its electorate’s support to an openly xenophobic party, if we consider both the scope and duration of that support. In France, looking like someone from North Africa will often have the police asking you for “Your papers!” every day — as reports none other than Djemila Benhabib in Ma vie à contre-Coran (p. 190).

And what about the angry young people from the immigrant communities who set fire to hundreds of cars each year on the night of July 14 [Bastille Day]; do we see such things in Montréal on the 24^th of June [the Fête nationale], in Toronto on Canada Day, in New York on July 4?

Annoying the rest of the continent

Quebec is in America. Some of us are beginning to discover, with surprise, how much a secularism of exclusion shocks the prevailing ethic in the United States, as in Canada. On July 4, 2009, President Obama denounced the prohibition of the hijab in the West; he was criticized very little for that in his country. In Canada, three turban-wearing Sikhs, elected in majority non-Sikh ridings, sat in the House of Commons when I was there myself, without anyone taking offense. One of them is now a minister.

In Quebec, with the Charter planned by the PQ, he could not even be a clerk in a government liquor store. The countries of Protestant origins value freedom of conscience. In the United States, secularism means strict separation of Church from State, not a prohibition on the expression of beliefs.

Of course, we can choose to annoy all the rest of the continent, I have often done so myself on the language, but it is still necessary that the issue be worth the trouble. If we multiply the cases, we allow our adversaries to link them together in order to paint Quebec as a fortress of intolerance in all respects.

Charter of exclusion

Treating Québécois as racists is unfair, agreed: a recent poll showed we are more open to immigration than Ontarians. But when it comes to accusations of intolerance toward religious minorities, a good way to refute them, or to discredit those who make them, would be not to show ourselves as worse than our neighbours in this area.

There are Jews and Muslims everywhere in the United States and Canada, countries that have some sixty state or provincial legislatures with comparable powers, overall, to those of our National Assembly. Name me a single one of these legislatures or, in recent times, a major party that has proposed a charter of exclusion like the one advocated by the PQ. Halal and Kosher rites are practices in all these states and provinces. Name me one of their legislatures or a major party that has recently made such a song and dance over this (complete with a news conference!) as the PQ did in the National Assembly last March.[4]

Could it be that all these other legislatures, without exception, are controlled by “useful idiots” in the service of the Islamists? Might it not be, instead, that our insecurity and our religious antecedents sometimes inspire in us reflexes that are excessive, unfair and counter-productive? Of course, some will see in the singularity of our conduct some (further) proof of our intellectual and moral superiority. Chauvinism is the contrary of patriotism: instead of encouraging the nation to improve, we exalt its errors; and that generally ends up badly.

I have therefore left it to those who dream of living some day in the only corner of North America in which a mother could be deprived of a livelihood for wearing a Muslim scarf the responsibility of their project. I remain an independentist, a radical defender of French.

It was necessary to vote and I chose Option nationale (ON). This party had the good idea, in its platform, to advocate the secularism of public institutions, not the forced secularization of each of their employees. I know many of these militants, young people for the most part. They would not make that kind of mistake.

[Note by Le Devoir] Jean Dorion. A sociologist, the author has been a political attaché of Immigration Minister Jacques Couture, chief of staff of minister Gérald Godin, liaison officer with the cultural communities, president of the SSJB de Montréal, delegate general of Quebec in Tokyo and MP for the Bloc québécois.

---

[1] Guy Bertrand is a Quebec City lawyer, once a fervent sovereigntist (he even ran for the PQ leadership), who became an equally fervent federalist in the 1990s, and sometime later reverted to sovereigntism.

[2] A town in Charlevoix region containing the sumptuous residence of the very well-connected billionaire Paul Desmarais. It is frequented by the who’s who of the Quebec and international Francophone elite.

[3] In 1997, the addition of s. 93A to the Constitution Act, 1867 made possible the abolition of denominational school boards in Quebec and the reorganization of Quebec's school boards on the basis of language. Marois was the PQ minister of Education who piloted this constitutional amendment from Quebec’s side.

[4] André Simard, a PQ member of the National Assembly, with the support of his colleagues, campaigned in March against halal ritual slaughter practices, claiming (against all evidence) they were becoming the norm rather than the exception in Quebec.

Major victory for Quebec students, environmental activists

Their demonstrations have shaken Quebec in recent months, and yesterday students and environmentalists won major victories.

At her first news conference as premier, Pauline Marois announced that her Parti Québécois government had cancelled the university tuition fees increase imposed by the Charest Liberal government, and would repeal the repressive provisions of Law 12 (formerly Bill 78) Charest had imposed in his efforts to smash the province’s massive student strike. Among other things, this will remove the restrictions on public demonstrations and the threat of decertification of student associations.

In addition, Marois has ordered the closing of Gentilly-2, Quebec’s only nuclear reactor, while promising funding to promote economic diversification to offset job losses resulting from the shutdown. And she will proceed with her promise to cancel a $58 million government loan to reopen the Jeffrey Mine, Quebec’s last asbestos mining operation.

The new Natural Resources minister, Martine Ouellet, followed up by announcing an end to shale gas exploration and development in Quebec. “I do not see the day when there will be technologies that will allow their safe development,” she said. Residents of dozens of Quebec communities have been mobilizing against shale gas. As of March, there were 31 wells already drilled, and 18 had been fracked. The shale gas industry, which has spent some $200 million to date in Quebec, had plans to dig up to 600 wells a year by 2015.

A former president of Eau Secours!, a water protection group, Ouellet is one of three new ministers with strong environmentalist credentials, the others being Environment minister Daniel Breton, a co-founder of the Parti Vert, the Green party, and his deputy Scott McKay, a former Montréal city councillor and one-time leader of the Greens.

Student leaders were jubilant at the cancellation of the tuition fees increase. “Bravo to the striking students,” tweeted Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois, the former co-spokesman for the CLASSE, the most militant of the student groups that led the unprecedented four-month student strike in Quebec’s “printemps érable.”

“It’s a total victory!” said Martine Desjardins, president of the FEUQ, the university students’ federation. “Sept. 20 will be etched in the annals of history in Quebec,” tweeted the FECQ, the college students’ federation. The students also welcomed Marois’ announcement that her government would maintain the $39 million boost to financial assistance introduced by the Liberals to offset their tuition increase.

The PQ government is committed to holding a summit on education as early as this fall to debate and propose new arrangements for funding higher education in Quebec. Marois says she will be defending her party’s proposal to index tuition fee increases, which she says amounts to a freeze on current levels. The CLASSE pledged that it will continue to fight for free tuition, as did Québec solidaire.

Marois also announced cancellation of the $200 per person health tax imposed by Charest, which would have brought almost a billion dollars into the government coffers. The loss of this user fee will be made up by a tax increase on incomes over $130,000 a year and a 25 percentage point decrease in the capital gains exemption, she said.

Marois also confirmed her determination to bring in a balanced budget by 2014, which means that these popular decisions will no doubt be followed by major cutbacks in spending in other areas, yet unspecified.

However, it was a good day for the new Parti Québécois government. Predictably, it was met by cynical reactions in the capitalist media. Typical were the editors of the Montreal Gazette, who expressed the hope that the right-wing opposition parties would come up with what they described, in a mixture of hope and prediction, as “a persuasive alternative to what might probably be the shambles of PQ governance.”[1]

In a more sombre vein, Le Devoir’s environment columnist Louis-Gilles Francoeur drew attention to the powerful business interests who will be quick to campaign against even modest efforts that threaten their profits.

“The lobbies that profit from the lack of rules governing wetlands, for example, have already claimed the head of Thomas Mulcair, then Environment minister.[2] The review of [Charest’s] Plan Nord and the changes that will be made by minister Ouellet — to whom we owe some caustic analyses of the proposed overhaul of the Mining Act — will no doubt provoke a groundswell of protest from the major investors... for whom the green economy is still an irritant and not a potential.

“Then we will see whether minister Breton took his dreams for reality when he declared that the greens were now in power....”

---

[1] Later changed in on-line versions to “what may likely be,” etc.

[2] Mulcair was Charest’s Environment minister, who quit and later joined the federal New Democrats, whom he now leads. (Francoeur’s column is locked to non-subscribers.)

Major victory for Quebec students, environmental activists

Their demonstrations have shaken Quebec in recent months, and yesterday students and environmentalists won major victories.

At her first news conference as premier, Pauline Marois announced that her Parti Québécois government had cancelled the university tuition fees increase imposed by the Charest Liberal government, and would repeal the repressive provisions of Law 12 (formerly Bill 78) Charest had imposed in his efforts to smash the province’s massive student strike. Among other things, this will remove the restrictions on public demonstrations and the threat of decertification of student associations.

In addition, Marois has ordered the closing of Gentilly-2, Quebec’s only nuclear reactor, while promising funding to promote economic diversification to offset job losses resulting from the shutdown. And she will proceed with her promise to cancel a $58 million government loan to reopen the Jeffrey Mine, Quebec’s last asbestos mining operation.

The new Natural Resources minister, Martine Ouellet, followed up by announcing an end to shale gas exploration and development in Quebec. “I do not see the day when there will be technologies that will allow their safe development,” she said. Residents of dozens of Quebec communities have been mobilizing against shale gas. As of March, there were 31 wells already drilled, and 18 had been fracked. The shale gas industry, which has spent some $200 million to date in Quebec, had plans to dig up to 600 wells a year by 2015.

A former president of Eau Secours!, a water protection group, Ouellet is one of three new ministers with strong environmentalist credentials, the others being Environment minister Daniel Breton, a co-founder of the Parti Vert, the Green party, and his deputy Scott McKay, a former Montréal city councillor and one-time leader of the Greens.

Student leaders were jubilant at the cancellation of the tuition fees increase. “Bravo to the striking students,” tweeted Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois, the former co-spokesman for the CLASSE, the most militant of the student groups that led the unprecedented four-month student strike in Quebec’s “printemps érable.”

“It’s a total victory!” said Martine Desjardins, president of the FEUQ, the university students’ federation. “Sept. 20 will be etched in the annals of history in Quebec,” tweeted the FECQ, the college students’ federation. The students also welcomed Marois’ announcement that her government would maintain the $39 million boost to financial assistance introduced by the Liberals to offset their tuition increase.

The PQ government is committed to holding a summit on education as early as this fall to debate and propose new arrangements for funding higher education in Quebec. Marois says she will be defending her party’s proposal to index tuition fee increases, which she says amounts to a freeze on current levels. The CLASSE pledged that it will continue to fight for free tuition, as did Québec solidaire.

Marois also announced cancellation of the $200 per person health tax imposed by Charest, which would have brought almost a billion dollars into the government coffers. The loss of this user fee will be made up by a tax increase on incomes over $130,000 a year and a 25 percentage point decrease in the capital gains exemption, she said.

Marois also confirmed her determination to bring in a balanced budget by 2014, which means that these popular decisions will no doubt be followed by major cutbacks in spending in other areas, yet unspecified.

However, it was a good day for the new Parti Québécois government. Predictably, it was met by cynical reactions in the capitalist media. Typical were the editors of the Montreal Gazette, who expressed the hope that the right-wing opposition parties would come up with what they described, in a mixture of hope and prediction, as “a persuasive alternative to what might probably be the shambles of PQ governance.”[1]

In a more sombre vein, Le Devoir’s environment columnist Louis-Gilles Francoeur drew attention to the powerful business interests who will be quick to campaign against even modest efforts that threaten their profits.

“The lobbies that profit from the lack of rules governing wetlands, for example, have already claimed the head of Thomas Mulcair, then Environment minister.[2] The review of [Charest’s] Plan Nord and the changes that will be made by minister Ouellet — to whom we owe some caustic analyses of the proposed overhaul of the Mining Act — will no doubt provoke a groundswell of protest from the major investors... for whom the green economy is still an irritant and not a potential.

“Then we will see whether minister Breton took his dreams for reality when he declared that the greens were now in power....”

---

[1] Later changed in on-line versions to “what may likely be,” etc.

[2] Mulcair was Charest’s Environment minister, who quit and later joined the federal New Democrats, whom he now leads. (Francoeur’s column is locked to non-subscribers.)

Massive demonstration of up to two million for independence in Catalonia

La Vanguardia, Barcelona

While in Europe this summer, my partner Cristina and I spent a week in Barcelona, a vibrant and historic city, the second largest in Spain and the capital of Catalonia, the largest and one of the most industrialized of the 17 autonomous regions in the Spanish state. We were surprised at the omnipresence of the Catalan language, the first (and sometimes only) language of signs and the day-to-day language of much of the population — about one third of Barcelona, according to statistics, but more prevalent in the rest of Catalonia.

Catalan is certainly a distinct language; to my untutored ear it seemed as different from Castilian (Spanish) as is Portuguese. It also has obvious resemblances to French, all of these languages being rooted in the Occitan or Gallo-Romance groups of languages.

The recent history of the Catalan language and national consciousness is one of remarkable resilience. The language was banned from schools and government ministries under Franco, who in the early years of his dictatorial regime actively repressed its expression in public. In Franco’s time all signage and business correspondence were in Castillian. Since Franco, however, affirmative legislation (inspired in part, we were told, by Quebec’s Law 101, the Charter of the French Language) has ensured that Catalan is now the language of politics, education, and much of the media.[1]

In the following article, my friend Dick Nichols — who, along with his Catalan partner Montserrat, hosted us for a wonderful evening in Barcelona — reports on the amazing demonstration for independence of up to two million Catalans on September 11, their national day. And he provides an extremely informative account of the background to this event and the rise of pro-autonomy and pro-independence feeling in Catalonia. Dick appends to his article a helpful glossary of Catalan nationalist organizations. Republished with permission from Links, International journal of socialist renewal.

– Richard Fidler

* * *

Farewell Spain? Catalan independence march sends shockwave

By Dick Nichols, Barcelona

September 17, 2012 – On September 11, the Catalan National Day, politics in the Spanish state suffered a massive shock: up to 2 million people (more than 25% of the population of Catalonia) marched through the streets of Barcelona shouting one word, “independència”. It was a day when countless Catalans discovered that others felt the way they did—it’s time to drop Spain for a state of our own.

Who were they? And why is support for an independent Catalonia—from 1990 to 2008 as low as 15% of the population in some polls—now running at around 50%?

This was a very different Diada (Catalan National Day, remembering the 1714 fall of a besieged Barcelona in the War of the Spanish Succession). Besides the usual morning ceremonies involving cultural acts before political, business and social dignitaries, an evening march behind the banner “Catalonia, A New European State” was organised by two new nationalist networks, the Catalan National Assembly (ANC) and the Association of Municipalities for Independence (AMI).

The signs that the march would be huge were clear before the day. Around 1200 coaches had to be booked to bring people to Barcelona from the regions and on one rail line special trains had to be limited because the system had run out of carriages.

Catalan politicians who don’t support independence—like Josep Duran Lleida, leader of the Catalan conservative nationalist Convergence and Union (CiU) fraction in the national Spanish parliament—decided at the last moment that they had to be seen at a demonstration opposed to their politics. Nine cabinet members of the CiU government in Catalonia said they would be attending “in a personal capacity”.

Key Catalan state institutions were directed to help organise and publicise the event. This was one protest that notorious police minister, Felip Puig, jailer of unionists and basher-in-chief of indignados, would actually help to build. It would also get live coverage on Catalan state TV’s Channel 3. When the day was over the Catalan police would be defending an attendance figure of 1.5 million (as against the 600,000 figure of the central Spanish government representative in Barcelona).

The Catalan government’s motive was to use the march as a demonstration of support for its proposed “fiscal pact” with the national government of the Popular Party’s (PP) Mariano Rajoy. Supported by all Catalan parliamentary parties with the exception of the Socialist Party of Catalonia (PSC) and the Popular Party of Catalonia (PPC), the fiscal pact would give the region similar financial powers to those enjoyed by the Basque Country (Euskadi) and Navarra—to levy taxes and then decide what proportion should be forwarded to the Spanish state.

This would enable Catalonia to reverse a situation where, according to Catalan government calculations, the region loses €16 billion a year to “Madrid” and the 16 other autonomous communities (states) into which Spain is divided.

On the day

Attendance on the day exceeded all expectations and planning capacity. This was the largest march in Catalan history—bigger than the 1977 march for Catalan autonomy, the 2000 march against the murder of PSC leader Ernest Lluch by Basque Homeland and Freedom (ETA) and the 2003 protests against the Iraq War. It was also bigger than the million-plus 2010 protest against the ruling of the Spanish Constitutional Court that sections of the 2006 Catalan Statute of Autonomy were unconstitutional.

Central Barcelona froze solid as a march supposed to take two-and-a-half hours to reach its destination outside parliament house lasted more than five hours. Such was the crush that the delegation that was to present the demands of the demonstration had to be whisked to parliament house ahead of the march to meet parliamentary representatives (and Channel 3’s program schedule). Mobile phone networks collapsed completely.

The demonstration was all Catalonia coming to town. Entire families, from faced-painted toddlers to grandparents waited patiently as “castlers” castled, folk bands played and “giants” moved among the crowd. When the march finally began families from towns and villages from the remote Pyrenees and with accents odd to Barcelona ears marched behind their placards: “Sant Pere de Riudebitlles says independence now!”; “Llambilles says: Premier Mas, lead or leave!”

There were delegations from the historic Catalan Lands beyond present-day Catalonia—Valencia, the Balearic Islands, the eastern, Catalan-speaking, strip of Aragon and the Rosellon area of France (annexed in 1659). Delegations from the Basque Country waved red, white and green national flags in solidarity.

Social sectors and institutions rushed to identify with the cause. The Barcelona Football Club announced on the day that the strip of its B team would henceforward be the yellow and red stripes of the senyera, the official flag. On the march there were “Police for Independence”, “Firefighters for Independence”, “Pensioners for Independence”, and “Teachers for Independence”.

The Barcelona Stock Exchange building, prime candidate for physical attack at any protest, draped itself in a protective five-story estelada (the Catalan independentist flag which, inspired by Cuba’s, adds a blue white-starred triangle to the stripes of the senyera).

At the other end of the spectrum, the main union confederations, the Workers Commissions (CCOO) and the General Union of Labour (UGT), demanded “fewer cuts and more self-government”, while an anarchist collective carried a huge banner that read “Catalans, your main enemy is at home—CiU and La Caixa”, a reference to the country’s political and economic establishment (the Catalan La Caixa is one of Spain’s biggest banks).

However, the overwhelming message of the demonstration was for independence. Hardly any other slogan—certainly not for the fiscal pact—had a chance against the incessant chant of “in-de-pen-dèn-cia”. The only competitor was “Whoever doesn’t jump is a Spaniard!”—especially popular among the hundreds of thousands of young people present.

The feeling that it is high time to leave the suffocating Spanish State was overwhelming and reflected in placards in other languages, including Castilian (Spanish)—“Spain, your robbery is genocide”, “Your hatred is our good-bye”, “Farewell, Spain”, “Catalonia is not Spain” and “Yes we Cat!”.

The clear predominance of estelades over senyeres floating above the march reinforced the independence message. But what sort of independence? While the blue-triangled estelada predominated, the yellow-and-red esteldada—designed in the 1960s by the Socialist Party of National Liberation (PSAN) and variously interpreted as the flag of the entire Catalan Lands or as the symbol of an independent socialist Catalonia—was also massively present.

Then there was the singing—of the national anthem, "The reapers", and of classics of the Catalan protest movement against the Franco dictatorship, like "The stake" and "What do these people want?" Catalan singer-songwriter and composer of "The stake", national idol Lluis Llach, a former PSAN member, was among the lead marchers.

With half the demonstration still to enter Ciutadella Park in front of parliament, the final act of the day began. In 20 different languages non-Catalan residents of Catalonia expressed their support for the country’s right to self-determination. The most moving moment came when one speaker read (in Spanish translation) the "Ode to Spain" of Catalan poet Joan Maragall, a powerful denunciation of the slaughter of Catalan sailors in the 1898 Spanish-Cuban war and ending with the words “Spain, farewell!”.

The act concluded with a mass showing of green cards for independence, infusing a green tinge into the sea of yellow and red. When one Catalan hero, former Barcelona trainer Pep Guardiola, showed his green card by video link from New York, the park went beserk.

And all the time this was happening, separate demonstrations under the slogan “Neither Fiscal Pact Nor Social Pact” were organised in five major centres by various left and revolutionary independentist organisations. According to one of these, the Popular Unity Candidacy (CUP), they drew between 25,000 and 30,000.

Wellsprings

The huge protest happened because of the past three years of social aggression and maiming of Catalan national rights. Matters have reached this point because:

• In 2010 the Spanish Constitutional Court supported important aspects of the PP appeal against the 2006 Statute of Autonomy, passed by the Spanish and Catalan parliaments and ratified by referendum in Catalonia (albeit with a very high abstention rate of 51%). The message of that decision was that even the weak 2006 statute was too much for Spanish centralist forces.
• Both the PSOE and the PP when in government nationally refused to agree to a serious reworking of the system for financing the autonomous communities. Catalonia has suffered under this arrangement with its per capita income dropping from fifth to ninth of the 17 autonomous communities after the share-out. When the post-2008 economic crisis arrived Catalonia, a centre of the real estate bubble, was among the hardest-hit of the autonomous communities.
• Since the May 2011 elections to the autonomous communities and the return of the PP to government nationally, the Spanish-centralist war on Catalan culture and language has intensified, with the PP government of the Balearic Islands reintroducing Castilian as a language of school instruction on an equal footing with Catalan, the PP government in Aragon redefining the Catalan spoken in that community’s eastern strip as “Eastern Aragonese”, and the PPC launching a court case to have Castilian made an equal language of instruction with Catalan in Catalonia itself.
• Since 2009 the intense rise in social struggle in Catalonia has fed into the rise of left nationalist forces, in particular the CUP, which had over 100 councillors elected in the May 2011 local government poll. Previously, Catalan Solidarity for Independence (SI), a coalition of small nationalist groups, had won five seats in the 2010 elections to the 135-seat Catalan parliament. In March 2012, the 16th Congress of Democratic Convergence of Catalonia (CDC), the major party within CiU, adopted the goal of forming a Catalan state.

The rise was also due to disillusionment with the tripartite coalition government of the PSC, Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC) and Initiative for Catalonia-Greens--United and Alternative Left (ICV-EUiA), which had governed the region between 2003 and 2010. The tripartit introduced many reforms into Catalonia, especially in health, education, child care and training, but its budget increasingly depended on tax revenue generated by the soon-to-collapse real-estate bubble, with the deficit widening rapidly after 2009.

CiU opposition to the tripartit was mainly in a nationalist vein. That government’s shortcomings were supposedly due to the influence of the “Spanish” parties PSC and ICV (i.e., Catalan affiliates of all-Spanish organisations) and of the capitulation of the ERC to them. This despite CiU’s much worse record of dirty dealing with Madrid.

When CiU was returned to government in 2010 and began its program of cutbacks in health, education and welfare and tax breaks for the rich (agreed with the PPC), the only tactic left for deflecting rising popular anger was to blame Madrid and to try to spook the Rajoy government into accepting a new fiscal deal.

When Catalan premier Artur Mas was forced in late August into a humiliating application for a €5 billion loan from the new Spanish bailout fund, the pressure to blame Madrid just increased, especially as CiU had been falling in the polls because of its austerity attacks (from 38.4% at the 2010 Catalan elections to under 30%--the main winners have been ICV-EUiA and ERC).

Yet, while CiU is the main political expression of Catalan independence sentiment and is trying to manipulate it to its advantage, it would be a serious mistake to see it mainly as a product of that party’s electoral needs. The sentiment for independence has grown, especially among the younger generations, because increasing numbers simply see no alternative road out of the Spanish mess. The feeling is: “Let’s get our own house, then we can fix it up.”

This situation is also a reflection of the ambiguities and divisions over the right to national self-determination within the all-Spanish left beyond the PSOE, exclusively stressing the all-Spanish social struggle against the austerity of the Rajoy government. Eloquent has been the silence (to date) of the national United Left (IU) web site on the Barcelona demonstration.

Organising the movement

The new rise in pro-independence sentiment became increasingly organised from late 2009. In September that year the local council of Arenys de Munt, where left nationalism has been strong and where the CUP now holds the mayoralty, asked its citizens to vote on the question “Do you agree that the Catalan nation should take the form of constitutional state, independent, democratic and social, and integrated into the European Union?” 96% said yes. By December 169 of Catalunya’s 947 municipalities had organised similar consultations, with a similar result.

The initiative of Arenys de Munt lay at the beginning of the two forces that organised this year’s Diada protest—the ANC, founded in March this year and the AMI, founded in December 2011, to which a majority of local councils (532) are now affiliated. Their broad form has allowed Catalan nationalists of different backgrounds who had often been involved in bitter disputes in the past to collaborate on clear and concrete objectives, spreading the network of municipalities for independence and building the 2012 Diada as a step along the road to a national consultation on independence for Catalonia.

In March, the AMI executive adopted the goal of reaching a coverage of 60% of the Catalan population in the councils affiliated to it as the threshold for demanding a referendum of the Catalan government.

The AMC is the activist network of the movement, with 9000 members and 15,000 sympathisers recruited in half a year, now grouped in 300 local assemblies. According to ANC president Carme Forcadell, “The local assemblies are the important thing. They include party members, but what counts is working for independence.”

In June, the AMC and AMI came together to plan their “march to independence”, beginning with the Diada demonstration. A manifesto was agreed stating that if the CiU government called early elections with independence as the central issue and if the resulting parliament committed to a plebiscite on self-determination under international guarantees then the Mas government “could count on our unconditional support”.

In addition, “if the Catalan people vote in favour, or if the Spanish State prevents the free exercise of this right, the elected deputies would have to proclaim national independence and constitute the sovereign Catalan state.”

Clearly, the purpose of the statement was to reduce the Mas government’s wriggle room as much as possible.

Support for independence

The 532 councils affiliated to the AMI cover around 32% of the population of Catalonia (see http://www.municipisindependencia.cat/que-es-ami/implantacio). This reflects the fact that support for independence is strongest in the smaller towns and villages and is weakest in the biggest cities, especially Barcelona. Of the three other regional capitals, Tarragona, Lleida and Girona, only the last is affiliated to the AMI. No council in Catalonia´s most populous shire, the Barcelonés with a population of over two million, belongs to AMI.

This geographical spread of support for independence correlates closely to the power base of CiU, whose mayors and councilors enjoy a clear majority on AMI leadership bodies. Only one town of more than 50,000 not governed by CiU (Cerdanyola de Vallés where the PSC rules in alliance with ICV) belongs to the AMI.

Yet, despite this CiU organisational predominance a June poll by the Catalan Centre of Opinion Studies stated that 70% of independence supporters described themselves as left or centre left.

The reality behind the statistics is that the Catalan nationalist movement is a socially very mixed movement, stronger among small business and the middle classes, but with real support among workers, students and people on welfare. Independence is certainly not the preferred road of Catalan big capital, which actually favours the CiU trying to increase its weight within all-Spanish politics (by demanding positions in the national cabinet, for example). The Catalan 1%, working feverishly behind the scenes, prays for some fiscal pact deal that leaves its access to Spanish markets and collaboration with Spanish capital as undisturbed as possible.

The working class in Catalonia is split. Support is lowest among immigrants from the rest of Spain, concentrated since the 1960s in heavy industry and construction. A March 2010 TV3 survey showed support for Catalan independence at 19% among residents of Catalonia born elsewhere in Spain, an attitude often driven by a healthy hatred of the Catalan employing class.

In the same survey support for independence from immigrants from “the rest of the world” stood at 40%.

This reality is reflected in the spread of support among voters for the parliamentary parties. In June, a poll by the Catalan Centre of Opinion Studies showed that support for independence was a majority among ERC voters (95.7%), CiU voters (64.5%), and ICV-EUiA voters (53.2%). But only 29% of PSC and 8% of PPC voters supported independence.

Watershed

The outpouring on September 11 took place with polls showing around 50% prepared to vote for independence, 20% against, and 30% undecided or not voting. It is the background to an event that has forced all political forces in Spain and Catalonia into a rapid rebooting of positions.

Mas had no choice but quickly to place himself at the head of the movement. After meeting ANC leaders on Friday, September 14, he told Spanish commercial radio that, even if a fiscal pact was achieved, Catalonia would still be walking the pathway to independence if its people so desired.

No end of manoeuvring can be expected from Mas, Duran Lleida and other CiU politicins, who have spent a lifetime doing deals with the Spanish right in all its forms, usually along the lines of crumbs for Catalonia in return for their support for regressive social and anti-worker policy nationally.

The most recent example was CiU enthusiastic support for the Rajoy government’s “labour reform”, the most brutal attack on worker and union rights since the end of the Franco dictatorship. Mas and Co. have also boastfully taken the lead in implementing austerity. In this, as in so much, the line is that Catalonia just so much more efficient than the rest. “We are the Germans of Spain”, was one of Mas’s more recent pearls.

But September 11 and the huge boost it has given to independence sentiment has sharply narrowed Mas’s room for manoeuvre for the time being. Also, within CiU the pressure is on the Catalan premier to stay true to the independence cause, especially from the Pujol dynasty of father Jordi (premier of Catalonia from 1980 to 2003) and son Oriel (CiU president, presently being investigated for involvement in a party funding scandal).

In the next session of the Catalan parliament Mas will face calls from ERC and SI to organise a referendum on independence (illegal under the Spanish constitution), as all nationalist forces engage in the race for the independence vote. Against Mas’ preference for terms like “autonomous Catalan state structures” ERC parliamentarians like Alfred Bosch joke “Come on Artur, it’s not hard to say—in-de-pen-den-ci-a.”

The nationalist movement is already implementing its next tactic, led again by Arenys de Munt, of declaring its municipalities zones liberated from the application of the Spanish constitution.

The reaction from the Spanish right has been according to the old scripts. PPC president Alicia Sanchez-Camacho, hitherto loyal ally of Mas on austerity and social policy, is now describing the premier as “Catalonia’s Ibarretxe”, a reference to the former Basque Nationalist Party (PNV) premier of Euskadi, whose 2005 and 2008 attempts to organise referenda in that region were voted down in the Spanish parliament and then outlawed by the Constitutional Court.

Sanchez-Camacho wrote in the September 12 La Razón: “Without doubt a large number of people took part in yesterday’s demonstration, but it is equally certain that a much larger number of Catalans did not and do not share the separatist goal…We cannot allow the CiU government to convince anyone that independentism is a majority option…We do not want the radicalisation of these last days to lead us to social, economic and institutional breakdown.”

Dolores de Cospedal, The PP’s national secretary general and premier of Castilla-La Mancha, paints Catalan independence as a road out of the euro and the European Union and into an irrelevance. The hint is that the Catalans should not be allowed to wreck their future and that of Spain.

Provocative Madrid PP premier Esperanza Aguirre has given a speech in which she stated that the Catalans and Basques were obviously unhappy with Sapin’s system of autonomous communities, in her mind an argument in for a return to a more centralised and “efficient” Spanish state structure. What Aguirre thinks should “be done about” the Basques and Catalans was left unsaid.

Spanish centralism’s other political voices, the Union for Progress and Democracy (UPyD) and, within Catalonia, Citizens (Cs) have gone out of their way in boosting the politics of fear—an independent Catalonia would make its non-Catalan residents second-class citizens and victims of Catalan chauvinist discrimination.

For the Socialist Workers Party of Spain (PSOE) and its affiliate the PSC (whose leadership did not take part in the march but whose “Catalanist” minority did) the answer is assertion of a “new federalism” against the centralising tendencies of Rajoy and Co.

At the same time the Spanish centralism of the PSOE mainstream—which only grudgingly accepted Zapatero’s Statute of Autonomy deal with the tripartit in 2006—has been on display in a stream of speeches and articles about national independence being a “nineteenth century concept” and stressing the supposed high cost to an independent Catalunya of accessing water and energy.

The problem for the PSOE—indeed for all all-Spanish political forces—is that after 30 years of life within Spain, the federalist alternative in Catalonia has exhausted practically all attraction, especially among young people. Brought up within the half-way Catalan institutions allowed under the system of autonomous communities, their instincts lead them to prefer an independent Catalonia under CiU than more decades of pseudo-negotiations and low-intensity warfare with Spain.

Reconstituting Spain?

At its 6th national congress in May the Catalan affiliate of IU, EUiA, adopted a perspective of refounding the left in Catalonia on the basis of the struggle for social and environmental justice and Catalonia’s right to self-determination. The EUiA resolution envisages the broadest possible front of independentists, autonomists and federalists, linking social and national struggles together in a bloc to make the exercise of Catalonia’s right to self-determination politically unstoppable.

After September 11, EuiA said: “The days of betting on an obsolete institutional framework into which Catalonia doesn’t fit are long past. EuiA puts its money on the development of a plurinational federalism where the right to decide is recognised ... one in which the Spanish state meets the challenge of understanding and listening to the national sentiment of the peoples that make it up.”

But maybe the outraged national sentiment of Catalonia today makes even this progressive position obsolete. There is a very slim chance that this might change after the October 21 elections in Galicia and the Basque Country, where the left Basque nationalists of EH Bildu have a good chance of emerging as the leading party and the new Galician formation ANOVA (“the Galician Syriza”) could make a strong showing. More likely, however, is that reactions from Madrid to such an advance for left nationalism would only strengthen the Catalan desire to close the door on Spain.

The original Comintern perspective for Spain and Portugal was of a socialist confederation of Iberia, a perspective that still makes a lot of sense. However, in today’s world, in which support for the socialist alternative is much weaker and important parts of the Spanish left still don’t really embrace the right of self-determination, the path to such a future more feasibly lies through an independent and socially progressive Catalonia and Euskadi leading the way in the demolition of the Spanish “prison of nations”.

The situation is challenging for EUiA. Already the United Left in the Basque Country (Esker Batua) has fragmented and will probably lose parliamentary representation. Sections of the EUiA base are suspicious and fearful of right-wing Catalan nationalism, did not attend the September 11 demonstration, and also point out—correctly—that having Catalonia as a new state in Europe will by itself solve little or nothing of the country’s social, economic and environmental problems.

On the other hand, if EUiA loses the connection and hearing it has among the younger generation of Catalans who yearn for independence it would lose its own future.

To end on a lighter note, some issues that before September 11 were the stuff of conversation in bars have become more pressing:

1. Would an independent Catalonia have an army? Artur Mas, knowing the intense anti-war and anti-militarist sentiment of the Catalans, has already said no.

2. How would an independent Catalonia “enter Europe”? An EU spokesperson said it would first have to “leave” and then ask for permission to join the European Union. Two days later a correction was issued: Catalonia could enter Europe if Spain and Catalonia agreed that it could.

3. In an independent Catalonia in what football league would Barcelona play? Would games against the beloved enemy Real Madrid come to an end? Would fans just have to get used to the best club in the world thrashing Sabadell 8-1 in a new Catalan League? Barcelona Football Club president Sandro Rosell has rushed to assure the nation that he was “sure” that Barcelona would continue to play in the Spanish league—like Monaco in the French league.

[Dick Nichols is Green Left Weekly’s European correspondent, based in Barcelona. A shorter version of this article appeared in the September 19, 2012, issue of Green Left Weekly.]

 

Appendix: Catalan nationalist organisations

Parliamentary parties

Convergence and Union (CiU). The ruling right-nationalist party in Catalonia, composed of the majority Democratic Convergence for Catalonia (CDC) and the Christian democrat Democratic Union of Catalonia (UDC).

Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC). Founded in 1931 through the fusion of Catalan State (leader Francesc Maciá), the Catalan Republican Party (leader Lluis Companys) and other smaller forces. Maciá was the elected as the first leader of a Catalan state on the basis of the 1932 Statute of Autonomy, negotiated with the Spanish parliament. On Maciá’s death in 1933, Companys replaced him, to be executed at the end of the Spanish Civil War by the Francoists.

Catalan Solidarity for Independence (SI).Formed to promote the immediate move to Catalan independence. SI is a seven-party coaltion made up of Solidarity for Independence, the Catalan Republican Party, The Greens-Green Alternative, the Socialist Party of National Liberation, Catalonia Nation Independence, Action Catalonia and the Catalan Sovereignty Bloc.

Left nationalists

Forward—Socialist Organisation of National Liberation (Endavant-OSAN).Founded in 2000. Endavant’s goals are independence and socialism, with the fight conducted against national, social and patriarchal oppression. Slogan: “Without economic sovereignty there is no true independence”:

Movement for the Defence of the Land (MDT). Pan-Catalanist revolutionary independence movement with long history going back to PSAN.

Maulets. Youth movement associated with MDT. “Maulets” was a satirical name given to the supporters of Archduke Charles, ally of Catalonia in the War of the Spanish Succession.Coordinating Committee of Youth Assemblies of the Independentist Left(CAJEI). Coordinating body of local collectives of revolutionary independentist youth.

Arran. New (2012) organisation of revolutionary Catalanist youth, fusion of Maulets, CAJEI and local groups.

Popular Unity Candidacy (CUP). The electoral voice of revolutionary Catalan independentism. Supported by above organisations. A municipally based network made up of local assemblies.

Right nationalists

Platform for Catalonia (PxC). Xenophobic, islamophobic and racist, with neo-Nazi elements. Has 60 councillors and a recent poll in La Razón shows it entering the Catalan parliament.

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[1] Developments in Catalonia have understandably attracted considerable interest in Quebec. Two books that include extensive discussion of Catalonia, comparing it with other national minorities in Europe such as Scotland, are Christian Rioux, Voyages à l’intérieur des petites nations (Montréal: Boréal, 2000), and Michael Keating, Les défis du nationalisme moderne: Québec, Catalogne, Écosse (Montréal: PUM, 1997), a translation of Nations Against the State: The New Politics of Nationalism in Quebec, Catalonia and Scotland (London: Macmillan Press, 1996).