The Greek Labour Movement And Greek Politics

Dr. Gary K. Busch

Greece goes to the polls today to elect a new government; one which

is likely to demand a change in the relationship between Greece and

the Eurozone. Greece had had a very difficult time economically;

unable to fund its external debt and dependent on ‘loans’ or a

‘bailout’ by the Eurozone. As a result it became enmeshed in a

program of severe austerity imposed by the Troika and a victim of

little growth and massive unemployment of its workforce.

These programs of austerity have led to mass protests by the Greek

workforce and students but have not put in power any political party

willing to stand up to the Troika and say that its requirements for

the handling of Greek debt are too restrictive and ultimately

counter-productive and they do not provide for growth. In the

election Syriza is expected to attain power in a broader coalition

united on a platform of resistance to the demands of the Troika.

Syriza is unlikely to win an outright majority so will have to form

some type of coalition with other parties. It portrays itself as an

anti-establishment alternative to the current series of Greek

governments but seems disunited and conflicted about a clear pathway

to reform, other than promising to alleviate the pain suffered by a

large part of the population due to austerity measures. Even this

issue of militancy is likely to be tempered by the need to attract

other parties to the coalition and the presence in Syriza of many

politicians who have come from the failed mainstream parties..

There has been pain indeed for Greeks. According to the EC’s

recently released report on Employment and Social Developments in

Europe 2013, 35.7% of all Greeks were on the verge of poverty or

social exclusion in 2013, while the unemployment rate of the

economically active population (25-64 age groups) stood at 49.3%. At

the same time the Far Right Golden Dawn Party has increased its

strength and militancy throughout Greece, especially on the issue of

immigration.

What most observers miss, amid the flash and dazzle of Tsipras and

Syriza. is that Syriza is not the dominant party of the Left in

Greece. After all, Syriza is not the only left-wing party in Greece,

and by some measures it’s not even the largest. In organizational

terms, the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) is bigger. Ignoring it,

as most of the Left and the Eurozone is content to do, means

ignoring a force with important roots in the trade union movement

and the longest history of all surviving Greek parties. Communist

Party representatives hold ten out of the forty-five seats on the

board of Greece’s labour confederation, and in the last student

union elections in 2014, its lists received 18.5 percent of the

vote. Those affiliated with Syriza got only 6.5 percent.

Even more importantly, many of the labour struggles of the last

years cannot be understood without recognising KKE participation,

and in some cases — like that of the nine-month steel worker strike

in Athens — it was KKE unionists who led the struggle. Even in

electoral terms, the Communist Party had the largest share of votes

on the Left from the fall of the dictatorship in 1974 until Syriza’s

rise in May 2012.i It has, however, refused to agree with any

potential Syriza coalition.

The programs of the KKE are directed against the European Community

as a whole on the basis that EC represents a failing capitalist

model, ultimately incapable of reform; a system which exploits the

Greek workers by saddling their nation with debts which reduces or

removes the programs of social welfare and improvement for which the

KKE has struggled for many years. The egregious failures of the

Socialist PASOK and the Centre-Right New Democracy to deal with the

needs of the Greek people or put their needs first have shown that,

once again, Greek political parties are exposed as the root of the

failure of the Greek economy and their unwillingness to adopt a

program of reform of their corrupt system of governance. Examining

the history of the Greek labour movement is very important for

understanding the configuration of the battle for the Left in Greece

and the loyalties of the Greek working class.

THE ORIGINS OF THE GREEK LABOUR MOVEMENTGreek labour organization is centred on craft and trade unions and

public sector workers. These local units are usually affiliated with

national federations in both given industries and in geographic

labour centres. The secondary organizations combine in turn to form

the national labour body, the GSEE, the General Confederation of

Greek Workers (Γενική Συνομοσπονδία Εργατων Ελλάδας).The GSEE is

made up of 83 worker unions and 74 departmental secondary

confederations. The Civil Servants and public sector workers are

organised into a separate federation ADEDY (Ανώτατη Διοίκηση Ενώσεων

Δημοσίων Υπαλλήλων These two have dominated the Greek labour

movement since 1918. The GSEE was formed in 1918 but split into

communist and non-communist factions a few months after its

inception.

The history of the GSEE has been one of constant factional

fighting. The state-domination of the GSEE and organized labour

was made easier by the factionalism which divided the trades

unionists. There was a continuing struggle for power among trade

union factions fostered by the political parties to which they

were aligned as well as by the various Greek governments which

intentionally corrupted the trade union leaders through

favouritism and fostered splits and breakaways by setting one

trade union faction against another.

The root problem for the Greek labour movement has always been

that it was caught up in the international struggle for control

of the Greek working class movements by Greek Communist,

Socialist and Christian political movements, and with the

internal factions which divided them. The formation of the GSEE

and the Greek Communist Party (KKE) in 1918, following the

Bolshevik October Revolution in Russia, was coincidental with

the fight in Russia and Europe as a whole between the defeated

Socialists and Social Revolutionaries who believed in a mass

party of workers and unions and the Bolsheviks of Lenin who

believed in a small Communist Party which, as the ‘vanguard of

the proletariat’ would lead the working class worldwide and

would maintain control of that movement to serve and protect the

needs of the Russian Communist Party.

The insistence by Lenin and his followers that the safety and

success of the Russian Bolshevik Party was the primary concern

of the world communist movement reflected their real fears that

the hostility of the world against their revolution in Russia

and their subsequent defeat of the White Army and the Mensheviks

would lead to military action against them.

In March 1919 they decided to create a worldwide organization of

communist parties which would both spread the campaign against

the capitalist system and which could block any military

activities by hostile states against the new Soviet state by

threatening internal disorder in these states through the

Communist-controlled unions and working class parties. They

created an international organization to enforce this

discipline, the Communist International (‘Comintern’ or Third

International). Later, in July 1920 they convened a meeting of

revolutionary trades union organisations in Moscow at which the

union leaders of Russia, France, Spain, Italy, Georgia, Bulgaria

and Yugoslavia joined together, under the auspices of the

Comintern, to form a Red Trades Union International (better

known by its Russian abbreviation, the “Profiintern’).

The Socialists already had their own pre-war international

Socialist movement; the Socialist International or the Second

International and an international trade union federation of

Socialist and Social Democrat unions; the Amsterdam-based

International Federation of Trade Unions (IFTU). The forces of

socialism reacted quickly to this challenge by the Comintern. At

the request of the British Labour Party, an international

conference of socialist parties was convened in Berne where the

Second International was reconstituted. This Second

International played an important role in the Versailles Peace

Treaty negotiations and succeeded in creating an International

Labour Organisation (ILO) under the auspices of the League of

Nations to promote labour interests. These two Internationals

competed for dominance and control of the working class parties

and unions worldwide.

One important group of European socialists, including the

remnants of the dwindling numbers of European anarchist

movements, attempted to bridge the gulf between the socialists

and the communists. This `Marxian centre', led by Friedrich

Adler and Otto Bauer of Austria, Leon Blum of France and Otto

Hilferding of Germany, was able to cobble together an

international organisation of its own. This new international,

the International Association of Workers (best known as the Two

and One-Half International) had a membership of about two

hundred thousand with affiliates in Spain, Germany, France,

Holland, Sweden, Portugal and the US. Its attempts to bridge the

two rival currents of socialism and communism failed and the

organisation dissolved in 1923. Most of its members rejoined the

Second International. The rest, primarily the anarchists, joined

the Comintern.

The Communists believed that the Socialists were not reliable

allies in the fight to preserve the Bolshevik Revolution because

many Socialists had served in governments in Europe in 1914 and

voted war credits which allowed for the militarization of the

continent and the outbreak of the First World War. The Comintern

and the many organisations under Comintern control (the

communist `front' organisations) were established, funded and

directed as an integral part of Soviet Russian foreign policy.

The controversies which emerged in the international communist

movement arose primarily when national Communist Party policies

and aspirations conflicted with Soviet foreign policy

objectives. The debate within the European socialist parties

over whether to accept the twenty-one points of the Comintern or

to rejoin the Second International led to many splits and

divisions.

GREEK UNIONISM IN THE INTERWAR YEARSThis struggle between the two Internationals and their competing

loyalties was the main focus of Greek unionism and the factional

fights reflected this competition. The GSEE initially accepted

the twenty-one principles of the Comintern and followed its lead

on policies and programs. However, much of this was of academic

interest as the end of World War I saw the beginning of the

Greco-Turkish War from 1919-1922 which cost vast amounts of

Greek treasure and lives and ended with the Turks stalemating

the Greeks at the Battle of Sakarya in 1921 and the Turkish

retaking of Smyrna in 1922, ending hopes for the Megali (Great)

Idea of a Greater Greece.

The relationship between the Comintern and the Socialists was

usually conflicted. There was a major shift for the worse in

1928 with the resolution at the Sixth World Congress of the

Comintern that there should be no co-operation between the two.

Communist policies during this ‘Third Period’ were marked by extreme

hostility to political reformism and political organizations

espousing Socialism and Socialist trade unions as impediments to the

movement's revolutionary objectives. The Communists severed all ties

with the Socialists in the trades unions and labelled them as

“Social Fascists”.

As a result of the worldwide Depression the forces of the Left grew

stronger in Greece. Between 1934 and 1935 the GSEE was an important

player in Greek economic life. It became so strong that there was a

powerful reaction against the unions. Buoyed by the rise of Italian

Fascism under Mussolini and the victory of the National Socialists

in Hitler’s Germany the battle for control of political power in

Greece was centred on the battle between King Constantine and

Venizelos, .the Prime Minister.

The King was supported by General Ioannis Metaxas who led the

Royalist loyalists after George II (Constantine’s son) returned

to office in 1935. Metaxas become Prime Minister in the

elections of 1936 and declared a State of Emergency on August 4,

1936 to wrest control of the country from the KKE which held the

balance of power.

Metaxas instituted a Fascist structure of governance based on

the model created by Mussolini in Italy. Metaxas banned political

parties (including his own), prohibited strikes and introduced

widespread censorship of the media. He abolished the previous

political parliamentary system, which was seen as having left the

country in chaos. He promulgated a wide range of anti-communist

decrees.

The Metaxas dictatorship united the labour movement into what

was essentially a labour front and created a system of national

dues payments in 1938. Under this system the employer deducted

the union dues of the workers and sent them to the Bank of

Greece where they were credited to the account of the GSEE. The

GSEE, after deducting its share, apportioned the remainder to

its affiliates. This effectively centralised power in the GSEE

and gave the government, through the Bank of Greece, a strong

weapon by its ability to cut off funds to the GSEE. This system

prevailed during the occupation of Greece and was carried on

afterwards in the reconstruction.

In many ways this became the model for Greek unionism. Political

parties made the deals and compromises and rewarded the

unionists who followed them. The politicians drew their strength

from the numbers of voters in the unions and competed in

building social welfare programs which would sweeten the pot for

the union leadership. Many of the union leaders sat on the

boards of these social welfare programs and profited from their

participation.ii

Under Metaxas the Communists and the Socialists were driven away

from the GSEE. A further split soon occurred between the

reformists and the Socialists; at the Sixth GSEE Congress in

1932, neither Communists nor Socialists were present. Some of

them were imprisoned. Others joined the political underground

and later became the nucleus of the national liberation movement

against the National Socialists and Fascists who occupied Greece

between 1941 and 1944. Under Metaxas the GSEE became part of the

Greek corporate state and remained so during the beginning of

the Second World War.

In 1933 the international Communist movement (Comintern,

Profintern, etc.) became frightened at the rise of the Nazi and

Fascist states in Europe as the policies of Nazi Germany were

seen as a direct threat to the Soviet Union. The Politburo in

Moscow sent out orders that the hostility towards the Socialists

and the Socialist unions must be dropped and a new program of

co-operation introduced, the Popular Front. In 1937 the

Profintern was dissolved. The GSEE was reunited and the European

Left was encouraged to co-operate with each other. The Socialist

Left was very wary of this change in tactics by the Communists,

especially in Spain during the Spanish Civil War where the

Communists turned on the Anarchist and Socialist POUM, even

though they were both fighting together against Franco and his

Fascist “Movimiento”.

The Socialist fear of the Communists was fully justified when

there was another shift by the Soviet Union which required a

reversal of the Popular Front policies of the Communist parties

and its unions. On 23 August 1939 the Nazi and Stalinist

Governments signed a mutual non-aggression pact. The pact also

included a secret protocol that divided the territories of

Romania, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Finland into

German and Soviet “spheres of influence”. A few days later, on 1

September 1939, Germany invaded Poland, followed by a Soviet

invasion of Poland on 17 September.

The Soviets issued directives to all the world’s Communist

parties and trades unions that they must cease any anti-fascist

activities, break all ties with the Socialists, and co-operate

with the Nazi and Fascist authorities. In countries like France,

where the French Communist Party was very powerful and the

French national labour centre, the CGT, the dominant force in

the labour movement the unionists and politicians gave their

full support to the Vichy Government. The French Communist

newspaper, L’Humanite was the newspaper chosen by the Nazi

occupiers of Paris in which to publish their decrees and orders.

As Socialist French trades unionists were rounded up with the

French Jews and sent off to labour and concentration camps the

French Communists applauded these efforts in their journals and

assisted Vichy in administering town halls and villages. The

Italian Communist party mimicked this co-operation in Italy.

Throughout Europe, Asia and North America this sudden switch to

a pro-Fascist policy by the Communists and their unions caused

immense problems. However, in Greece, the previous restructuring

of the GSEE and its inclusion in the economic programs of the

Metaxas Government structures marked no real change. The

socialists, and many moderate reformists, were forbidden to hold

any trade union office. Some of them were imprisoned. Others

joined the political underground and later became the nucleus of

the national liberation movement against the National Socialists

and Fascists who occupied Greece between 1941 and 1944.

This co-operation between the Fascists and the worldwide

Communist movements and unions lasted until June 22, 1941 when,

under “Operation Barbarossa” Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet

Union. The immediate response to this attack was a demand by the

Soviets of their international Communist organisations and

unions to turn against the Fascists and seek to take a prominent

role in whatever Resistance groups were forming to fight Fascism

and to work with the Socialist unions. This effort often

produced bizarre actions.

In India, for example, the Indian Nationalists had resisted the

British declaration of war on behalf of India in 1939 and took

to strikes, protests, satayagrahas and hartals as part of the “Quit

India” campaign. Many of the political activists of the Congress

and the Indian Communist party were arrested and jailed for

their opposition to the war. Then, when the Soviet Union was

invaded, the British Government requested and received from

Harry Pollitt, the head of the Communist Party of Great Britain

– CPGB, a letter to all the Indian Communists and unionists

demanding that they co-operate fully with the British Raj in its

war efforts. The British then sent Sir Reginald Maxwell, the

British Home Secretary in the Government of India to Deoli

Detention Camp where most of the Communist leadership was

imprisoned and delivered Harry Pollitt’s letter by hand.

Together with the British they planned a campaign of

collaboration, leaving the Congress Party and the Congress

Socialists still in jail. This type of interaction was repeated

across the world.

The World War II enemy occupation of Greece completely

dislocated the labour movement. Those unions that had managed to

survive became liaison bodies between the authorities and the

workers, both as auxiliary employment offices and as cooperative

societies engaged in buying and distributing foodstuffs and

other necessities. Political factionalism went underground, and

there emerged three types of trade union leaders: those who

collaborated with the occupying authorities; those who, without

collaborating, kept the trade unions alive and tried to maintain

tolerable conditions for their members; and those who worked

underground as part of the national resistance while preparing

to take over the movement after liberation.iii

THE WARTIME GOVERNMENT-UNION NEXUSDuring the Second World War the Allies recognized that the war would

have to be fought on many levels. In addition to the straightforward

military confrontation there was a need for interaction on a

civilian basis, an interaction with the political resistance in

occupied Europe. The best vehicle for this interaction was the

trades union movement which had maintained broad international

contacts with foreign unionists from the earliest days of the Second

International. The British created a special labour desk in the

Foreign Office. This was relatively easy as the Foreign Secretary at

the time was Ernest Bevin, a former Secretary-General of the

Transport & General Workers Union and the head of the International

Transport Workers’ Union. He brought in specialists from the British

TUC into government service to assist him in this effort.

The U.S was aided by the fact that the American Federation of Labor

had created its own Free Trade Union Committee (FTUC). With the

support of its president George Meany and union leaders Matthew Woll

and David Dubinsky the FTUC hired Jay Lovestone, the former

Secretary of the U.S. Communist Party but now an arch anti-communist

to run it, along with his close colleague Irving Brown. The CIO was

not initially a participant in the effort until after June 1941 when

they were more sympathetic.

Under the guidance of Lovestone, American labour of the AFL wing

(and later with the active participation of the CIO) established a

close working relationship with the OSS, the wartime US intelligence

service. Lovestone, once described as `a real mystery man, whose

personality is part cloak and dagger and part cloak and suit"

established strong ties with European trades unionists operating

underground on the continent during the war and established ties

with Third World unionists in Asia, Africa and Latin America. The

medium was the OSS.

The OSS, started under the guidance of the British, was largely the

product of `Wild Bill' Donovan. It brought together specialists from

all areas of the political spectrum in an organisation dedicated to

fighting the Axis powers. An OSS colonel, Herbert Blankenhorn,

suggested that a vital area of activity should be the labour

movements around the world. He won the support of Donovan and began

recruiting for the OSS Labour Division, based at 72 Grosvenor Street

in London. In the early days of 1942, Blankenhorn enlisted the

talents of George Bowden who brought with him, as his assistant, the

CIO's chief counsel, Arthur Goldberg. By March, Goldberg was

operating as OSS labour chief out of Allen Dulles' office in New

York. Goldberg began to hire hundreds of trades unionists and labour

attornies to work with the labour branch. (Arthur Goldberg later

became a Justice of the Supreme Court).

In mid-1942, Goldberg and Bowden met with Omar Becu, the general

secretary of the International Transport Workers' Federation (ITF).

The ITF had moved its entire operations to London into Transport

House where, in co-operation with the former ITF president, Ernest

Bevin, it collaborated with British intelligence in providing

information on transport movements and labour conditions in occupied

Europe. Becu met with Goldberg and urged him to establish a working

relationship with the anti-Nazi union cells across Europe through

contacts in London. Goldberg and George Pratt came to London to set

up the labour operation. Pratt stayed in London to run the labour

branch, meeting regularly with German socialist and labour refugees.

He paid them small retainers so that they could survive.

The OSS attracted a large number of key American unionists who

served in virtually every theatre of the war and later in the

Occupation... In Latin America, the work of the unionists was placed

under the control of the Office of InterAmerican Affairs (OIAA)

headed by Nelson Rockefeller. Rockefeller recruited labour men like

Dave Saposs and John Herling to co-ordinate US labour initiatives

throughout the hemisphere. The AFL set up a major cadre of union-OSS

(later CIG and CIA agencies which replaced the OSS) in Paris under

Irving Brown. The CIO set up a similar office in Paris under Elmer

Cope, Victor Reuther, Lew Carliner and others. They maintained

contact with the liberated European labour organisations. They

became major players in the Cold War battles in postwar Europe.

The problem for the British and the Americans after the end of the

war in 1945 was that the aftermath of the war in Europe left a

Europe in ruins. It also found that the Soviet Union was

successfully reconstructing its Communist unions, parties and front

organisations across Europe. In Postwar France the Communist Party

had three ministers in the French government who served until they

withdrew in 1947. The Italian Communist party and its CGIL trade

union body made great gains in restoring their organisations after

the war. In a divided Germany the Soviets had taken control of the

government and the labour movement in the East; and in Eastern

Europe they were gradually ousting the Socialists and Nationalists

from political office through sponsoring labour dissent.

The response of the U.S. to the urgent need to rebuild Europe was

the Marshall Plan. The Marshall Plan was opposed by the Soviet Union

and the Communist parties of Europe. Communist unions in the docks

attempted to block the ports to Marshall Plan aid. They refused to

truck this aid on the roads or on the railroads. The U.S. and the

British replied by using their trades union contacts and

collaborators to split the monolithic union bodies controlled by the

Communists. They split the French CGT into the CFT-Force-Ouvriere.

The CGIL was split in Italy into two additional federations. The

U.S. labour arm in Europe hired Perre Ferri-Pisani of the Union

Corse to beat up the Communist dockers blocking the Marshall Plan

shipments, and Lucky Luciano of the Mafia was hired in Italy to

break the control of the Communists there.iv A delegation from the

British TUC was sent to Germany to supervise and direct the

reconstruction of the German labour movement and organisations.

This was the model that was used to restore order and discipline in

Greece.

GREEK LABOUR IN THE POSTWAR YEARSThe Greek labour movement played a crucial role in the rebuilding of

Greece after the war. It was an arena in which the British and the

Americans fought their most overt battles for control of the country

with the Soviets. This battle has shaped Greek history and labour

relations.

British troops entered Greece in October 1944. War damage had been

extensive and the relief activities of the United Nations Relief and

Rehabilitation Agency (UNRRA) and the British Military Liaison (BML)

were essential in a chaotic situation. The British arrived to

restore order under the terms of the Lebanon agreement; they found

that the communists had won control of the political and military

wings of the resistance movements. The Greek Communist Party (KKE)

had helped to build a united resistance movement in which the other

parties of the left participated.

This group, the National Liberation Front (EAM), maintained its own

armed troops in the Greek Popular Liberation Army (ELAS). When the

British, under Major General Scobie, installed George Papandreou as

premier of a government of national reconciliation at the end of

the war, they allocated seven ministries to the EAM. Despite the

fact that neither the EAM nor the ELAS was composed of only KKE

loyalists, by the time of the British occupation KKE elements had

taken effective control of both these groups and had begun to

replace the outgoing civil authorities and courts with cadres from

the ranks of the KKE. They also began to move ELAS troops from the

provinces to Athens.

During the war the EAM had founded a clandestine labour

organisation, the Workers' National Liberation Front (SEAM), whose

leadership came from the KKE unionists of the discredited GSEE.

This EEAM was responsible for a number of strikes and

demonstrations against the Germans which prevented the Germans from

completing their plans for the conscription of forced labour. With

the ousting of the Germans the EEAM took control of the trade

unions and began to purge all unionists who had continued to

function or collaborated during the German occupation.

The new minister of labour, Porfirogenis of the KKE, was of great

assistance in the expulsion of non-communists from the GSEE. It soon

became clear to the British authorities that the situation within

Greece was very delicate. On the one hand the Communists posed a

military threat through their control of their own armed forces; on

the other they posed a political threat by their control of the most

powerful organisation within postwar Greece, the unions. If

reconstruction was to proceed, then union co-operation was vital.

The non-communist military and political forces in Greece were

deeply divided between the supporters of a rightist, monarchist

group and a smaller centrist republican group. The Communists were

able to play on this division to further their interests. It was

clear that some compromise would have to be achieved. After several

political initiatives by the British had failed the ELAS forces

attacked and the British sent in Field Marshal Alexander with his

Fourth Division to put down the uprising.

When the British forces became engaged with ELAS the conflict was

expanded to the political field. Throughout Eastern and Western

Europe Communist unionists conducted a campaign of anti-British

propaganda. They sought to show that the British were attempting to

use force to restore the Greek monarchy rather than to put down a

communist uprising. This was very difficult to deny, especially when

the Papandreou government fell, to be replaced by one under General

Plastiras. The British Labour Party, then in a coalition government

under Churchill, was subject to heavy pressure from the TUC and

constituent Labour parties about its supposed support for the

monarchists. Despite denials by the foreign minister, Ernest Bevin

and others the Labour Party faced constant attacks from the left of

the party and the unions on the Greek situation. The British

government recognised that the best strategy in Greece was to fight

the Communists on two fronts; the military and the union front. It

engaged the services of the British Trades Union Congress (TUC) in a

major program to win the support of Greek working people.

The first of these initiatives occurred when a group of 15 non-

communist unionists in Greece proceeded to the British embassy in

Athens in January 1945 and told the British ambassador, Leeper that

they wished to rebuild a non-communist GSEE. They requested that the

TUC be invited to Greece to study conditions there and to supervise

democratic elections. Headed by Walter Citrine (General Secretary of

the TUC) himself, the delegation was composed of G H Bagnall

(National Union of Railwaymen), G Chester (National Union of Boot

and Shoe Operatives), and Ernest Bell of the TUC's international

department.

The delegation stayed in Greece for twelve days. It met both sides

and attempted to mediate. However, on the arrival of the TUC

delegation the Minister of Labour, Sideris, unilaterally suspended

his recognition of the communist unions and recognised a new GSEE

led by the 15 unionists who had approached the British embassy. This

provoked a great deal of friction, so Citrine sent a secret cable to

the Greek prime minister to ask him to call a meeting of both sides

at which he could act as mediator. At this meeting Citrine won

acceptance of a compromise (the Citrine Agreement) which would

permit the TUC to supervise a free election. It was clear that the

British were trying to use the conflict in the labour movement as a

test balloon for a wider political agreement. Soon after the

agreement in the labour sphere the political movements agreed to end

hostilities and, under the Varkiza agreement, proceeded to move

towards a new constitution and free elections.

Throughout this period trade union initiatives preceded political

agreements; trade union elections preceded political elections.

Vincent Tewson, who replaced Citrine as head of the TUC, arrived in

Greece at the head of a second TUC delegation to supervise the

planned union elections. By this time, however, both parties wanted

to amend the Citrine agreement. A new agreement (the Tewson

Agreement) was arranged and was followed by another formula agreed

under the auspices of Vic Feather, another TUC delegate (known as

the Feather Agreement).

In the political sphere problems continued, largely because there

was a dramatic shift within Eastern European communist parties away

from collaboration with the bourgeois parties in postwar coalitions.

The Soviets demanded a harder line from the Greek Communists; a hard

line which resulted in a dramatic right wing shift in Greek

politics. The Greek, military demanded a plebiscite on the return of

the monarchy before any elections but were overruled by the British.

Despite Soviet objections in the UN Security Council, the elections

were held and boycotted by the Communists. The monarchists took

power and cracked down on all leftists and some centrists, exiling

and deporting 'leftists' to remote Aegean Islands. The plebiscite

which followed permitted the return of the king. He returned to

Greece on September 27, 1946, and the civil war began.

The British had attempted to forestall these events by pursuing

initiatives in the trade union area; even inviting World Federation

of Trades Unions (WFTU) leaders to Greece to participate in

supervising the Greek union elections. The rightist unionists,

however, were encouraged by the military to boycott these

elections, thus giving victory to the left. This did not last very

long because the national political elections the same day were won

by the monarchists who recognised, not the victors of the WFTU-

sponsored elections, but the rightist unionists in alliance with

the 'monarchists. This new union group, EREP, was led by a young,

aggressive, anti-communist, Fotis Makris.

As might be expected, the WFTU was very concerned that the victory

of the left unionists in the election they supervised was ignored.

They organised a worldwide protest against the British and

telegrams of support were received in Greece from unionists

throughout areas of communist influence. The WFTU sent Leon

Jouhaux to Greece in July to try and arrange a solution through

the courts. The Greek government decided that in the light of all

the protest they would void the GSEE elections and disband the

EREP; creating a situation in which no one was in charge of Greek

unionism. By the time Bevin and Tewson could intervene to create a

compromise in which all factions were represented in the GSEE, the

civil war was under way.

The Greek Civil War was fought from 1946–49 between the Greek

government army—backed by Great Britain and the United State and

the Democratic Army of Greece –DSE (the military branch of the

KKE) with the support of Tito’s Yugoslavia, Albania as well as

Bulgaria which Communist-led governments. Many of the DSE fighters

were ex-partisans who had fought against German and Italian

occupation forces during the Second World War and by the KKE union

leaders at the regional level who had been thrown out of the GSEE.

The support and intervention by the U.S. Government was crucial.

When the British were no longer able to fund and assist the Greek

Government in February 1947 it requested the U.S. to take its

place in fighting communism in Greece and in Turkey which was in a

similar position. In March 1947 Harry Truman appeared before

Congress and proclaimed the Truman Doctrine; a policy which became

the template for U.S. foreign policy in the Cold War world. It

stated that to contain communism in Europe and elsewhere the US

could and would support any nation with both military and economic

aid if its stability was threatened by communism or the Soviet

Union. The U.S. sent assistance to Greece under the terms of the

Marshall Plan and paid for U.S. unionists to stay in Greece to

administer the Marshall Plan aid and to rebuild free unions in

Greece.

The opponents of the Americans and British in Greece were not only

the Greek Communists but the forces of the new communist

international; the Communist Information Bureau (Cominform). In

September 1947 the representatives of the communist parties of

Yugoslavia, Poland, Hungary, Rumania, Bulgaria, Italy,

Czechoslovakia, France and the USSR met in Warsaw and formed a new

organisation to promote Stalinist control of the non-Soviet

parties. This had a dramatic effect on the Greek civil war, as

Greece's neighbours, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia and Albania, all sought

to assist the Greek Communists by providing arms, sanctuary and

other support. The U.S. rushed in both military and civilian aid

to Greece and sent in numerous advisers including labour advisers.

These US labour advisers co-ordinated British and US initiatives

in creating a free Greek trade union movement by providing needed

equipment, transport and funds. The leader of this effort was

Irving Brown, then AFL representative for Europe. In 1947 Brown

was sent to Greece where he and the US labour attaché Sam Berger

worked with the British labour attaché Braine to assist Greek

unionism. This was a Sisyphean task, as each faction was allied

with a different section of the military and they refused to

pursue unified policies. Brown argued that the U.S., as paymaster

of Greek unionism, should force Makris to form a united non-

communist movement, but the U.S. State Department was unwilling.

The US unionists who made up the American Economic Mission in

Greece administering the Marshall Plan aid (Allan Strachan of the

UAW, Clint Golden of the Steelworkers and Maurice Goldbloom of the

Teachers) had to content themselves with trying to keep the peace

among the non-communist unionists.

The Greeks gradually adopted a labour structure which put the GSEE

in charge of most labour programs under the guidance of the George

Papandreou government. They maintained order and the government

gave them much of what they asked for. Wages rose and a whole raft

of social programs were introduced. There were thousands of “ghost

workers” on the payroll of the Greek State (most of the employment

was in public sector unions). Short hours, long holidays, fringe

benefits were available as long as the unions kept the peace and

harmony. It was not a condition which created great economic

wealth but it allowed most people to prosper, especially unionists

Despite its poor record, the postwar leadership of the GSEE was

able to remain in power for nearly twenty years, thanks to a

combination of such important factors as the right to distribute

government-collected dues, favourable government legislation

concerning trade union administration, and the retention of the

old centralised structure. There were occasional efforts at reform

but they were often cosmetic. The first real effort at reform was

made by the government in 1964 through a legislative decree that

abolished the compulsory dues system and legislative support for

GSEE bylaws that discriminated against organizations with a large

membership.

Further efforts at reform were interrupted by the resignation of

the George Papandreou government. The split in the political

Centre Union movement resulted in a series of short-lived

governments. The King, Constantine, was afraid of the younger

politicians who had returned to Greece. Elections were scheduled

for 28 May 1967, with expectations of a wide Centre Union victory.

A number of conservative National Radical Union politicians feared

that the policies of left-wing Centrists, including Andreas

Papandreou (the son of Georgios Papandreou, Sr.), would lead to a

constitutional crisis

Constantine sent his representative, Demetrios Bitsios, to Paris

to meet with former Prime Minister Constantine Karamanlis to

persuade him to come back to Greece. Karamanlis responded that he

would only come back if the king would declare martial law. As the

tensions rose on 21 April 1967, just weeks before the scheduled

elections, a group of right-wing army officers led by Brigadier

General Stylianos Pattakos and Colonels George Papadopoulos and

Nikolaos Makarezos seized power in a coup d'etat. Using their

contacts in the Army Pattakos took over the parliament and

arrested 10,000 key politicians, including acting Prime Minister

acting Prime Minister Pangiotis Kannellopulo. Georgios and Andreas

Papandreou and others. The Constitution was suspended and the

dictatorship of the Colonels was in operation.

The National Radical Union government asked King Constantine to

immediately mobilise the state against the coup; he declined to do

so, and swore in the dictators as the legitimate government of

Greece, while asserting that he was "certain they had acted in

order to save the country.” The King appointed Konstantinos

Kollias as Prime Minister, legitimising the coup. On 13 December

1967 King Constantine tried to make a counter coup but it failed

dismally. The generals supported the king but the middle ranks

refused and arrested the generals. The king went into exile.

Papadopoulos had himself declared regent and Prime Minister. The

coup leaders then instituted a program which saw the removal of

almost all the civil liberties of the population. The unions were

effectively made illegal and all protests were banned. However,

they remained as a participating member of NATO with U.S. support

and member of the Council of Europe where Britain and Germany

continued to vote for Greece’s inclusion.

There were protests all over the world at the attack on civil

rights in Greece. The United Auto Workers in the US and Canada

attempted to build international support for a free Greece and to

raise support for the Greek unions. Victor Reuther, Guy Nunn and

Gary Busch, along with Maurice Goldbloom who had worked in Greece

as part of the Marshall Plan set up the Committee For Freedom and

Democracy in Greece and invited Melina Mercuri to be its

President. She agreed and large protest meeting was held outside

the White House. It kept up its efforts for a number of years but

was regularly frustrated by the venality and machinations of its

Greek associates, both political and labour.

THE RESTORATION OF GREEK DEMOCRACYThe Greek junta generated a great resentment among the Greek

populace at the removal of civil liberties. However, despite this

loss of freedom the economy improved. The 1967-73 period was marked

by high rates of economic growth coupled with low inflation and low

unemployment. Economic growth was driven by investment in the

tourism industry, loose emigration policies, public spending, and

pro-business incentives that fostered both domestic and foreign

capital spending. The Greek farmers strongly supported Papadopoulos

because he cancelled agricultural loans and fostered the

agricultural sector. There was a massive housing and construction

boom. There was a new prosperity but the price was the lack of

democracy and civil rights.

On November 3, 1968 there were mass demonstrations in Athens against

the junta by crowds mourning the death of George Papandreou .A large

number of arrests were made. Protests continued but quietly. On

September 19, 1970 a Greek student in Genoa, Italy, Kostas

Georgakis, burnt himself to death in his protest against the junta.

After supressing a Navy coup Papadopoulos moved to reform the system

but found it was not enough to persuade his fellow citizens of his

move back towards democracy. On June 1, 1973 he abolished the

monarchy and made himself President of Greece. This outraged the

public and he was not supported by any of the political leaders. The

students at the Polytechnic in Athens began a mass sit-in and on

November 17, 1973 Papadopoulos ordered in the troops to disperse the

students. The Army occupied Syntagma Square.

There was general disorder but the most oppressive of the junta

generals, Dimitrios Ioannides, took over with an iron hand against

any and all protestors. A few months later the Greek Junta supported

an anti-Makarios coup in Cyprus which brought in Turkish forces

which occupied the North of Cyprus. It was clear that the Junta was

posing dangers to NATO and the southern tier of Western defence in

Europe. The U.S., the British, the French and the Germans began to

re-activate their ties with the legitimate Greek parties to prepare

for the ouster of the Junta.

Initially there was no agreement on who should be brought in to take

over. A meeting was called for a preliminary agreement on the

succession. The meeting took place at Frankfurt Rail Station.

Present at that meeting were Constantine Karamanlis, Constantine

Mitsotakis, Apostolkis and Andreas Papandreou. Assisting in the

organising of the meeting were Professor Stephen Rousses and

Professor Christos Jecchnis. It was agreed at that meeting that

Karamanlis would become Prime Minister and Giscard D’Estaing sent

his presidential plane for Karamanlis to return to Athens, He, and

his New Democracy party won the elections of November 1974. Later

the Junta members were tried for their crimes.

POST JUNTA GREEK UNIONSThe restoration of democracy in Greece led to a return of Greek

unions to the mainstream of Greek politics. However, it has

reinstituted the structure of political dependence of the unions on

the party in government which supports them The Government rewards

the unions for their support and has allowed them a relatively free

hand in exploiting the opportunities which have been presented. The

militant labour movement that emerged in the wake of the major

political changeover of 1974.This was consolidated with the rise of

the PASOK socialist party in power in 1981. It has not yet managed

to minimise the dependency of trade-union structures on the state

and the governments in office.

Although it moved towards becoming an autonomous social partner with

the democratic organisations this move seems incomplete. The reason

is that three traditional relationships have not been radically

transformed, namely, the ones between the state and labour unions,

between political parties and labour unions, and between trade-union

officers and activists and their rank and file. The financial

independence of unions from the state has not been attained and thus

the links between trade-union officials and their members has

remained weak. The political parties-trade union relationship has

been organised on the basis of a traditional model, with the labour

union political factions being merely the front men of political

parties. Hence, the relationship between trade-union officials and

workers has remained distant and unstructured with policy direction

coming from the political party in power to the workers. Funding

follows the same direction.

Under these circumstances the active trade-unions and the militant

labour force segments of the last two decades has not really managed

to evolve into an autonomous (in political and financial terms)

national trade-union structure. The uneven development of Greek

trade-unionism has become a constant feature throughout this period.

Trade-union membership has been constantly decreasing since 1985,

and the trade-unions, structure has remained widely fragmented. The

massive layoffs which accompanied the Eurozone’s austerity programs

have weakened them further. This lack of strength has been coupled

the inability to develop efficient services to trade-union members

through social dialogue institutions and funds, the limited role of

unions in the workplace, and the decentralisation tendencies in

private-sector collective bargaining under the umbrella of the

General National Collective Labour Agreement).

The austerity program has sparked a number of new unions which

oppose the traditional unions which belong to the GSEE or ADEDY. One

of the most successful is the Libertarian Syndicalist Union

(Eleftheriaki Syndikalistiki Enosi –ESE) which has attempted to organise rank

and file unionists. The problem is that Greek unions continue to

strike and demonstrate against austerity with little acomplished.

Whenever there is a call for a debate or votes on austerity the

workers demonstrate in large numbers. There have been several

general strikes. Periodically they stop work across Greece. Flights

to and from the country are stopped; train and ferry services are

interrupted; there is no public transport or taxis and state

hospitals have to run on emergency staff. At the last protest more

than 35,000 people marched in two separate demonstrations in Athens

organized by labour unions. Another 20,000 gathered to protest in

the country's second largest city of Thessaloniki there is militancy

but without a result.

The problem is that the parties can safely ignore the demands of the

workforce. Both PASOK and New Democracy claim to speak about

representing workers. They point to the great benefits they have

provided to Greek unions over the years; many of which are at the

root of Greece’s economic straits. They feel that they can safely

ignore the unions as they are now relatively weak and even more

dependent on the political parties. The KKE is still militant and a

power within the GSEE but is far from taking political power (in the

last election they won only 4.5% of the seats), coupled with the

fact that they have ruled out any coalition with any current party

in today’s election.

That leaves Syriza in a good position as a party of the Left, but

one which few Greek workers believe will markedly change their

fortunes. Many of the Syriza politicians are the same people who, in

Pasok and the KKE, have ignored the needs of Greek workers in their

top-down policies with the governments since 1985. They promise to

reduce the effects of austerity but have been trimming their sails

every day, refusing to push for a Grexit and a reintroduction of the

drachma. Their baby-steps towards opposition will do very little to

assist the unemployed. They offer little hope to the lost generation

of Greek youth. And yet, they seem the most preferable of the lot as

the others are worse.

One can only hope that today’s election will stiffen the backbone of

the Syriza leadership to act in the interests of the entire Greek

people. As the Romans used to say “bonitas non est pessimis esse meliorem” (It is

not goodness to be better than the worst).

i Nikos Lountos,”Understanding The Greek Communists”, Jacobin 21/1/15.ii Christos Jecchinis, Trade Unionism in Greece, Roosevelt 1967iii Joan Campbell, European Labor Unions, Greenwood 18992iv Gary Busch, The Political Role of International Trades Unions, Macmillan 1980