10: 1930 – A Revolutionary Instrument

By the beginning of 1930 the unionist faction held the upper hand; they had their own paper, Acción, and were in full control of the National Committee. Pestaña’s meeting with General Mola had secured legal recognition for the union, which was now beginning to reorganize nationally. More and more of the leading cenetistas openly began to press for closer contacts with republican politicians, not just in a tactical alliance but also as a strategy to ensure the future growth of the union.

The degree to which tactical collaboration led to reformism and tied in the leadership of the anarcho-syndicalist union with the bourgeois republican politicians became clear with the publication of Inteligencia Republicana in March 1930.

This political and statist document had been signed by Joan Peiró and other well-known confederal leaders such as Marti Barrera, Pere Foix, José Viadiu, and others. It gave the seal of approval to the social-democrat thesis that parliamentary democracy permitted the labor movement to achieve worthwhile social and political benefits within capitalism. [79]

As José Peirats noted, dryly:

‘Some cenetistas were reticent in breaking relations and persisted in an ambiguous position. This gave rise to suspicions. Their argument was one of expediency. Given the current state of moral disorder and economic disarray caused by the disintegration of the old regime they claimed it was the duty of all men of goodwill to join together to help restore normality and reestablish legal order under popular sovereignty:

‘We state that we stand ready to put in the spadework in order to ensure a new political order which, rooted in the supreme condition of justice, may thwart subversion of authority once and for all and lead the country along the juridical byways indispensable to the progress of nations.

‘This new political order, the Federal Republic, may be broken down roughly into the following basic points:

“I— Separation of powers.

“II— Recognition of equal individual and social rights for all citizens.

“III— Recognition of the full entitlement of groups federated through their express collective will to use their own language and develop their own culture.

“IV— Freedom of thought and conscience. The separation of Church and State.

“V— Agrarian reform and the breakup of the big latifundist estates.

“VI— Social reforms on a par with the most advanced capitalist states.”’ [80]

As the swing toward class collaboration gathered momentum, the Peninsular Committee of the FAI warned against the ‘profoundly reformist deviationism of those militants who, during the dictatorship, had linked themselves, intentionally and premeditatedly, to ‘political principles’. The Committee suggested that on return to full normality the union cadres should transform themselves into militant nuclei to prevent the permeation of the CNT by political and authoritarian tendencies. [81] The ‘pure’, non-anarchist unionists seized upon this statement as a declaration of intent on the part of the FAI to transform the existing union cadres into FAI groups.

Peiró’s alliance with republican and separatist politicians was not surprising. The close friendships forged between libertarians, politicians and disaffected military elements in the joint struggle against the dictatorship had sucked them, inexorably, into the dubious political maneuvers and secret lobbying which led up to the proclamation of the Second Republic.

As José Peirats points out:

‘Confederation members and political leftists had linked arms in the common aspiration of bringing down the dictators; no matter that the aspirations of the former with regard to revolutionary aims may have been more ambitious. Jointly they participated in conspiracy and jointly they suffered the punishment of exile. And this circumstantial camaraderie of arms, which, in strict doctrinal terms, should not have induced certain CNT members to commit themselves, overmuch, flattered the age-old politicians’ illusions about bridling the CNT, or at least seeing it become just another faction embroiled in the concerns of parliamentarism. And, in so far as the CNT had the capacity to reveal its true strength, the deputies and ministers of the future showered their importuning and flattery upon the visible heads of the confederal organization.’[82]

Such public support from the confederal leadership for political collaboration with bourgeois politicians threatened to provoke an open split in the union. In the face of massive pressure from union members, Viadiu and Pere Foix recanted and withdrew their signatures but Peiró insisted on standing by his support for the republican document. He had become enmeshed in the all-too-human predicament he had created for himself by separating his principles and practice. He now found himself obliged to act against the dictates of his conscience: as an anarchist, in theory at least, he was compelled to believe in certain principles, as a union leader he was obliged to act as though he did not.

Unwilling to weaken or compromise the CNT in any way, Peiró announced his resignation from all positions of responsibility within the organization:

‘It is evident that, in signing the manifesto at odds with my beliefs, I accept that my action, mistaken or not, was perpetrated in full awareness of the fact that I was striking a contradictory stance. Let me state formally that it was then and is now a purely personal act of my own. No one can claim that I have tried to influence anyone into following my example…

‘Given the reasons which prompted me to endorse it, I find no reason to withdraw my signature; aside from which, the act of canceling my signature would not — if there was any obscenity in what I did — absolve me of my error. The only course left open to me is to pay the price of my error, if error it be, by prostrating myself.

‘This being so, I hereby declare that, in order to avert any sort of threat to things which, for me, must remain sacred, I henceforth stand down from whatever activities I have been engaged in with the organization, in the realm of ideas and in the press and thus come to be only one among the many who follow in silence the vanguards which guide our ranks.’[83]

Peiró’s isolation was apparent rather than real. Although few would have admitted it publicly, his views were shared by a substantial number, if not all, of the members of the National Committee of the CNT. Since the advent of the Berenguer regime, this body had adopted an openly reformist and collaborationist position that was virtually indistinguishable from Inteligencia Republicana. The month after the republican document had appeared, the National Committee, following the Plenum of Regionals held on 16 and 17 February 1930, issued a manifesto, approved by a number of individual regional committees, which recognized the need to convene a Cortes (parliament) to revise the Constitution and introduce a new legal and political structure for the country ‘in which we have to live’. It also demanded the reestablishing of constitutional guarantees, freedom of union organization, an eight-hour day and an amnesty for all political prisoners. Ignoring the rhetoric, it was a declaration of intent to collaborate with the political parties in the reconstruction of the State. The National Committee, conscious of the controversial repercussions this would cause within the movement, tried to cover themselves by adding, almost as an afterthought, that the manifesto did not represent the official position of the CNT, simply that of some Regionals, and that ‘One should not read into this manifesto support for political candidates nor, even less, suggestions that one should vote in the elections.’ [84]

How reformists and ‘gradualists’ managed to establish themselves in positions of prominence within an avowedly revolutionary body such as the CNT is one of the central questions with regard to the CNT, indeed in any consideration of any mass revolutionary movement. One reason is that the leadership of the CNT was never recruited from among anarchist militants, who shunned all permanent positions of responsibility within the union. They preferred, instead, to retain their independence as rank-and-file activists. This meant the higher committees were inevitably drawn from among those who saw the CNT first and foremost as a politically neutral union, not as the instrument for overturning an unjust society and building a new one in its place. Joan Domenech, secretary of the Catalan glassworkers union explained:

‘When you joined the CNT as a worker, no one asked what you believed or thought. A carpenter joined the woodworkers’ union, a barber the barbers’ union, and that was all there was to it.’[85]

It would be presumptuous to assume CNT members of the period were somehow more revolutionary than workers in other unions; it would be equally presumptuous to assume that anarcho-syndicalism, i.e. democratic revolutionary unionism, did not satisfy the workers’ needs at the time and reflect their awareness that they were involved in a bitter class struggle with a ruthless ruling class. Undoubtedly, the majority of workers were attracted to the CNT not just because of its democratic and revolutionary content but also because it was the only union willing to challenge both the State and employers. It was also a leadership that, because of its anti-political constitution, was less likely to sell them down the river in negotiations with employers and deals with political parties maneuvering for power. In spite of its reformist dynamic the CNT leadership was, they undoubtedly felt, sufficiently controlled by an aggressive and non-deferential ‘conscious minority’, through a directly democratic structure, to ensure their interests as workers (in the semi-feudal and early capitalist society that was Spain in the 1920s and 1930s) would be safeguarded and advanced.

For the leadership, the revolutionary rhetoric, objectives and zeal of the ‘conscious militants’ were powerful bargaining weapons in negotiations with a violent, reactionary and totally unbending ruling class. But at the end of the day the leadership of the CNT saw their sole function as securing immediate economic gains. This was reformist not revolutionary activity. So far as the mass of the members were concerned, as long as no problems occurred and the ‘influential militants’ continued to fulfill their leadership role with relative effectiveness they were happy to defer to them. Unfortunately they did so with a trusting pride, which wholly undermined traditional anarchist opposition to the leadership principle.

The ‘conscious minority’ of anarchist workers were aware of the anti-democratic and anti-revolutionary degeneration inherent in unionism, but they appear to have believed it was a process that could be controlled (or at least kept in check) through the democratic apparatus of the union and their revolutionary example at rank-and-file level. They seriously underestimated the tendency of power, even in avowedly anti-authoritarian and democratic organizations, to become concentrated in the higher committees, a tendency which was accelerated by the long periods of enforced clandestinity in which the base of the CNT had little contact with or control over the leadership.

It should also be pointed out that in spite of its revolutionary objectives, the practice of the CNT proved not to be directly democratic. Surprisingly, CNT delegates were non-revocable. If a delegate failed to act on the instructions of his or her branch there was no procedure for recalling them. A further flaw was that the locus of decision-making had gradually shifted from the general assemblies at workplace and local federation level to the five-yearly national congresses.

Effectively, there was no provision for an independently appointed body that could monitor and reassess CNT policies regularly and frequently, and provide an independent system of checks and balances by which the national and regional committees could be controlled.

With its statutes approved by the civil governor of Barcelona on 30 April 1930, the CNT finally emerged from clandestinity. This had been the result of much backstage negotiation with the authorities, including a meeting on 4 April between the director general of security, General Mola, and Ángel Pestaña. The union leader stressed to Mola that the CNT did not constitute a revolutionary threat and, although unable to co-operate overtly with the state, it would maintain an attitude of benevolent neutrality.

The legally constituted Confederation returned to center stage as the predominant union organization in Spain. In the early months of the Republic its growth was spectacular, quickly reaching a membership of 500,000. It retained its traditional ascendancy in Catalonia, the Levante, Eastern Andalucia and Aragón. In Seville, however, an earlier CNT stronghold, the communists had managed to seize control of most of the unions.

Joan Peiró had been publicly rehabilitated in the spring of 1930 by the CNT leadership at a public meeting called to explain the National Committee’s attitude to the Berenguer government, which had taken office on the departure of Primo de Rivera. Speaking on the same platform as Pestaña, Peiró received an enthusiastic welcome from a mass audience that spilled out from the Teatro Nuevo into the adjacent Parquelo. Given up for dead by reactionaries such as Martinez Anido and even, as we have seen, some of the union’s own leaders, the CNT had sprung fully armed upon an unsuspecting bourgeois society. As if to underline his restoration to grace — if he had ever fallen in the first place — Joan Peiró was appointed the first editor of the newly revived Solidaridad Obrera.

In August 1930 representatives of the socialist, nationalist and republican parties, the parties of the capitalist and professional classes, met in secret in San Sebastián to form a Revolutionary Committee and plan the strategy for toppling the old regime and seizing political power for themselves. The CNT, as a revolutionary working-class body, was not officially invited to these meetings, but ‘unofficial’ representatives were requested to attend as ‘informal observers’. The representatives who attended were Progreso Alfarache, a member of the National Committee of the CNT and a member of the Peninsular Committee of the FAI, and Rafael Vidiella. [86] As José Peirats points out, ‘It was an intrigue by which the politicians were trying to embroil the Confederation in a revolutionary revolt without entering into any formal agreement with it.’ [87]

As the world slump hit Spain and political discontent began to bite deep, the winter of 1930–31 saw a massive wave of strikes sweep the country. For four days, from 15 to 19 November, Barcelona was paralyzed by industrial action. The CNT threw its full weight behind the Republican, socialist and young officers’ conspiracies aimed at toppling the Berenguer regime.

The year ended with unsuccessful republican uprisings in the Jaca and Cuatro Vientos garrisons. The refusal of the king to pardon two young officers involved in the risings and their subsequent execution exacerbated hostility towards the monarchy. By February 1931 Berenguer had no option but to resign. A caretaker government under Admiral Juan Batista Aznar was formed and municipal elections were announced for 12 April.

On 19 March, during the run-up to the April elections, a National Plenum of the CNT was held in Valencia. The Plenum agreed to advise members, ‘without political compromise’, to vote, tactically, for the leftist candidates. The overwhelming Republican–socialist victory in the elections, assisted by a ‘massive turnout of confederal voters at the polls’[88], provoked the final collapse of the monarchy.