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Manifesto of the POUM During the Barcelona May Days

This proclamation appeared in the pages of La Batalla on Tuesday, 4 May 1937 at the height of the Barcelona street fighting. Whilst claiming that ‘the working class is strong and will know how to crush all attempts at counter-revolution’, it says nothing about what should actually be done about the Stalinists who were responsible for them, or about the central and regional governments on whose behalf they were organised.

The working class faces the attack of the counter-revolution. The counter-revolution has a plan. The reformists of the PSUC have called it the ‘Victory Plan’. The latest events are stages of this plan. Attempts to seize Puigcerda by the police force, an attempt to seize the city of Figueras, a punitive expedition to Molins de Llobregat. Disarming of workers in the street and yesterday evening an armed assault on the telephone building in the square of Calalunya. Counter-revolutionary provocations to test the working class’s capacity for resistance. Preparations for an attack on the basic conquests of the revolution.

But the working class response couldn’t have been stronger. Thousands of workers have taken to the street, arms in hand. Factories, workshops, stores, have stopped work. The barricades of freedom have reappeared all over the city. The spirit of 19 July 1936 has emerged with renewed strength in Barcelona. The majority of the towns of Catalonia have responded to the capital’s gesture. The working class is strong and will know how to crush all attempts at counter-revolution.

We have to remain alert with gun in hand. We have to maintain this magnificent spirit of resistance and of struggle, the guarantee of our triumph, and we have to make sure that the counter-revolution never raises its head again.

Therefore we demand:

• The resignation of Rodriguez Salas, Commissioner of Public Order who is directly responsible for the provocations.
• Abolition of the public order decrees.
• Public order in the hands of the working class.
• A revolutionary workers’ front of the organisations which fight for triumph over fascism at the front and victory of the revolution in the rear.
• The creation of Committees for the Defence of the Revolution in all the districts, towns and places of work.

Executive Committee of the POUM.
Executive Committee of JIC.

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Last updated on 30.12.2002