After the Belgian Riots:
TAS, SAL
Bold economic program needed to heal national rift After the Belgian Riots By Sal Tas Brussels Now that the Government of Premier Gaston Eyskens has won a temporary reprieve from further...
...they were no hungry proletarians on the march for basic necessities...
...Although no one originally wanted it or planned it that way, the protest movement soon mushroomed into a political battle...
...Leadership then fell into the hands of André Renard, Deputy Secretary General of the Socialist General Workers Federation of Belgium and bead of the Walloon trade unions...
...Why didn't they act more positively to halt them...
...As a result, Flanders, with 50.7 per cent of the total population, accounts for 68.8 per cent of the nation's unemployed...
...Thus the competition between the two areas has become a fight for hegemony...
...When the Eyskens Government introduced a bill for economic reform, the Socialists immediately attacked the bill as "black reaction...
...Still, the prestige of the Eyskens Government is so low that while the Belgian Socialist movement lost the strike, no one can say that the Eyskens forces won a victory...
...Under the banner of a "class war," the Walloon workers of Liege marched against their poorer Flemish brothers: Nothing more provincial or absurd could have been invented...
...The struggle became most intense when Belgium's whole economic picture was clouded by the Congo crisis...
...The same intolerance that rules relations between the Belgium classes is found in political life...
...when a spontaneous strike broke out among municipal workers, it jumped on the bandwagon...
...Between 1953-59, industrial production rose only 2.94 per cent annually, as against an increase of 5.64 per cent in the Netherlands and 7.23 per cent in France...
...By the time Renard's real purpose became clear—when he started his movement for Walloon separation— it was too late to prevent the worst...
...But it is obvious that this strike provided Renard with an opportunity to try to win control of the national trade union group...
...The country itself had suffered only moderately from the war, and its uranium-producing colony in the Congo remained untouched...
...What is more important, this complacency has obscured the real cause of Belgium's present difficulties, the fact that it is composed of two areas separated by language, religion and economy-Flanders and Wallonia...
...Given this eupheric condition, no Belgian Government bothered to deal with the country's basic economic problems...
...His class struggle views reflect a significant strand of Walloon tradition, for the Belgian industrialists always have been extremely reactionary and the antagonism between the classes is sharp, especially in the social and cultural fields...
...Neither Socialist, Liberal nor Catholic Governments seemed to care...
...There is less conflict in the economic area, since Walloon workers are among the best paid in Belgium...
...The Socialists, of course, were justified in believing that such a program could not be realized against labor's opposition...
...all parties, including the Socialist party, must share responsibility for what happened...
...This is one of the reasons why Paul-Henri Spaak resigned as Secretary General of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization...
...Unfortunately, the Belgian Socialist party lacks leaders of stature...
...After World War II, Belgium was rich in surplus dollars, primarily earned in the busy port of Antwerp, one of the main supply depots of the Allied armies...
...It would have been logical for them to oppose the bill by democratic parliamentary methods, and to work for more adequate legislation under Socialist leadership...
...Leo Collard, President of the Socialist party, and his colleagues knew that the uprisings were dangerous to their party and their nation...
...Even the subsidies which the Coal and Steel Community gave to Belgium (to assist in the reorganization of outdated coal mines) seeped away in dividends or premiums without visible effect...
...A real "New Deal," though, could not be introduced by a Government so weakened by the Congo affair and so low in public esteem...
...Yet it is doubtful that Spaak's prestige outside Brussels is enough to save the party...
...Nor did the catastrophe of Marcinelle, which threw such a glaring light on the backwardness of the Belgian mines, stimulate Government action...
...Once the strike gathered momentum, the Socialist leaders were unable to exert any control...
...However, the loss of their African colony did force the Belgians to shed the complacency that had retarded their growth...
...Wallonia, with 33.9 per cent of the population, accounts for only 19.6 per cent...
...Of the country's total 1960 investments, for example, 40 per cent went to Liege and more than 20 per cent to the province of Brussels...
...the Socialists charged that the law bore too heavily on the working class...
...As for Belgium itself, it is desperately in need of a bold economic and social program for industrialization, introduced by a period of austerity...
...The simple truth is that these men lacked the necessary courage to restrain Renard...
...At this point, Socialist leaders saw only one way out of the mess they had created: to increase the chaos so that the Government coalition would be forced to save the Socialists from the results of their own errors...
...Belgium's standard of living and way of life were the envy of Western Europe...
...One of the oldest industrial centers in Europe, Wallonia has long dominated predominantly agricultural Flanders...
...The charge was a gross exaggeration...
...A left-wing Troskyite, Renard joined the Social Democratic movement for purely tactical reasons...
...Later, the Flemish Catholics turned to the streets to fight the school program of a Socialist minister...
...And again in December the Belgians took to the streets to settle political differences...
...When King Leopold wanted to return to the throne, the Walloons revolted and the issue was fought out in the streets...
...His return to the Socialist party will give it at least one dynamic leader with a national reputation...
...Furthermore, a truly comprehensive reform bill requires the backing of the labor movement, which inevitably would have to bear the burden of sacrifice...
...The strike had reverted to the traditional struggle between Walloon and Flamand, and the economic issues were obscured...
...They now face a split along linguistic lines, and their prospects for the coming elections are dismal...
...The Government said the law was necessary to counter the blow administered to Belgium's finances by its loss of the Congo...
...its citizens bought huge American cars and costly nylon stockings while other countries embarked on programs of austerity and reindustrialization...
...In recent years, the economic gap between the two communities has been bridged by foreign capital that has naturally gone to Flanders, because of its low wage rates and high unemployment...
...The photographs of the street demonstrations, for example, show only well-fed, well-clothed workers and their wives...
...Bold economic program needed to heal national rift After the Belgian Riots By Sal Tas Brussels Now that the Government of Premier Gaston Eyskens has won a temporary reprieve from further strikes and street fighting at the hands of Belgium's Socialist trade unions, the pressures that set off the recent violence and threatened to rend the nation have come into full view...
...According to Renard, the strike became primarily a Walloon affair because the Flemish half of the trade union movement refused to participate...
...Much more is needed than the timid beginnings toward administrative control, economic readjustment and austerity that the bill provides...
...Communists and juvenile delinquents, however, were responsible for most instances of sabotage...
...And only a coalition Government, which includes Socialists, can carry out such a program...
...The bill did contain some unjust provisions, but its main proposals were sensible and, if anything, inadequate...
...For the Socialists, of course, the strike was a disaster...
...Renard transformed the workers' protest into a general strike with revolutionary overtones...
...Perhaps the most striking aspect of the Congo disaster is that no one did anything to prevent it...
...Actually, however, the friction which culminated in the month-long paralysis began long before the Congo crisis...
...Ostensibly, the strike was called to protest a proposed economic reform law...
Vol. 44 • February 1961 • No. 8
