Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! 36, February 1984
Many have seen in the post-war Labour government a glimpse of what a proper socialist Labour government might achieve if it were elected in the future. In fact, this government was as brutal and reactionary an imperialist government as any British one before or since. In one sense, it was far worse, for it was elected to office with phrases about freedom, democracy, justice and social progress springing in torrents from the lips of its spokesmen, only to trample them down and drown them in blood throughout the world.
The end of the second imperialist war found British imperialism almost bankrupt. It was heavily in debt to US imperialism; and there was no immediate prospect of these debts being honoured. To finance the war effort, it had sold off a third of its overseas investments, cutting its net overseas income to below half its pre-war level. There had been massive disinvestment through failure to replace plant and machinery. Not only that, it was under immense threat throughout the world from the rising tide of socialist and anti-colonial struggle. Provisional governments based on liberation movements which had gained immense strength in the struggle against the Japanese occupation had been established in Vietnam, Indonesia and North Korea. In China, the Communist Party, with the overwhelming support of the peasantry, was continuing the struggle against the pro-imperialist Kuomintang forces. In Burma and Malaya, liberation forces headed by the respective Communist Parties, had the overwhelming support of the oppressed. India was in an uncontrollable ferment.
Decisive action was required, if British imperialism was not to sink altogether. The Labour government was not lacking in the required determination. In this immediate post-war period, it was to act as a world policeman, ensuring the maintenance of imperialist world rule wherever it felt able, brutally suppressing the risings of the oppressed. Its policeman’s role started whilst it was still in coalition with Churchill in 1944 – in Greece.
GREECE: THE RISE OF THE FREEDOM STRUGGLE
From early 1941, Greece lay under the yoke of German occupation. A quisling puppet government had been installed, supported by its own small security force, the Security Battalions, and by no less than fifteen to twenty German divisions and some Italian forces. Guerrilla resistance started in early 1942; in December, the Greek Liberation Army (ELAS) was organised as the armed wing of the Greek Liberation Front (EAM), in which the Greek Communist Party (KKE) was the leading force. Over the next 18 months, EAM/ELAS was to grow rapidly in influence and military strength, despite the hideous barbarity of the occupation forces. It built its own youth, working class, women’s and relief sections. It was the first time that women had been involved in any political life; for the first time, they were able to vote, in EAM-organised elections, and to play a full part in the political and armed struggles. Prior to the German invasion, Greece had been governed by the fascist-monarchist Metaxas regime. All working class organisations and democratic rights had been suppressed. Hence the EAM/ELAS programme was a democratic one, which apart from calling for active resistance to the occupying forces, and those collaborating with them, also demanded that after the expulsion of the occupying forces there should be a provisional government based on the resistance organisations, with the restoration of all democratic rights, and elections to a national constituent assembly. Other resistance movements, which had links with the exiled monarchy, and which were not averse to collaborating with the quislings or Germans against EAM/ELAS, were completely eclipsed by the strength of EAM/ELAS.
By the time British troops arrived in October 1944, the ascendancy of EAM/ ELAS was not in doubt, even in the eyes of its bitterest enemies. In a land with a population of some seven million, its membership was estimated by British military observers as anything up to two million. It controlled virtually the whole of the countryside; it had the support of 80% of the population of Athens. ELAS had between 40 and 60 thousand freedom fighters under arms. The pro-royalist Chief of the British Military Mission to occupied Greece could not deny its influence:
‘The initiative of EAM/ELAS justified their predominance. Having acquired control of almost the whole country, except the principal communications used by the Germans, they had given it things that it had never known before. Communications in the mountains, by wireless, courier and telephone have never been so good before or since; even motor roads were mended and used by EAM/ELAS . . . The benefits of civilisation and culture trickled into the mountains for the first time. Schools, local government, law courts and public utilities, which the war had ended, worked again. Theatres, factories, parliamentary assemblies began for the first time.’
EAM/ELAS was the rebellion of the oppressed – of women, the working class and the peasantry. The suffering of the Greek people had been immense. Over a quarter of a million had died in a famine in Athens in 1942 alone. Another quarter of a million had died in the struggle against the German occupation, many when whole villages had been massacred as reprisals for ELAS operations. Yet the Greek people were not to be allowed to reap the reward of their heroic resistance. From a client state of German imperialism, it was to be turned into a client state of British imperialism, and that neo-colonial status was to be continued afterwards, under US tutelage. Tens of thousands more lives were to be lost, and in this bloody train of events, the Labour government of 1945-51 was to play a crucial part.
ELAS guerillas
POPULAR POWER DENIED
A Greek government-in-exile had been established under the aegis of British imperialism, consisting of various royalist and republican politicians. British intentions were to impose this government on the Greek people following German withdrawal, and use it as a lever to restore the monarchy, an institution which had been a powerful supporter of the major British financial and economic interests in the country before the war. The government was only titular – it lacked any social basis whatsoever. Its members therefore spent their time intriguing against each other. On one point they were in complete agreement: their hatred for EAM, and their desire to find any means to destroy it. Their intrigues involved the royalist officers who commanded the Greek army in exile, which, like the government, was based in Egypt. The mass of the army were EAM supporters, and they were deeply suspicious of these intrigues, believing that the royalist officers would call on the army to suppress EAM/ELAS on their return to Greece. Continual attempts were made to undermine EAM influence within the army; in April 1944, these came to a head, and the army mutinied. The rebellion spread to the navy based in the Egyptian port of Alexandria; the main demand was for a Government of National Union to be formed, to include substantial EAM representation, and the removal of certain royalist officers. The mutiny was suppressed, and ten thousand troops marched off to concentration camps. The army was reformed under total royalist control, its main units being the Sacred Battalion, entirely made up of royalist officers, and the 3rd, or as it was soon to be known, Mountain Brigade.
British troops arrived in Greece on 15 October 1944, with instructions that ELAS was to place itself under the orders of the British commander, General Scobie, and disarm itself. ELAS had agreed to this, on condition that the Security Battalions, the Sacred Battalion and Mountain Brigade and the quisling gendarmerie were also disarmed. This was to be the stumbling block. The Greek government, led by George Papandreou, with five EAM ministers, refused along with General Scobie to honour these agreements. Not only would they not disarm the units of the royalist army, which had arrived a few days after the British, but they also refused to disarm the quisling police force and Security Battalions. On 7 November, Churchill had already confided: ‘I fully expect a clash with EAM, and we must not shrink from it, provided the ground is well chosen’. Greece was essential to British imperialism’s control of the Mediterranean and Middle East – there was no possibility of it allowing a revolutionary democratic government to come to power. On 13 November, General Scobie made these intentions plain to General Sarafis, administrative commander of ELAS:
‘ELAS is exercising terrorism and will not allow people to have any relations with the British. If the situation continues and friction and clashes arise, the British government will take all measures necessary to impose respect, so bear it in mind that a guerrilla army is not able to face a modern army with heavy arms, tanks, aircraft and a fleet at its disposal.’
Throughout these negotiations, the Greek army was being reorganised under British control; ELAS members were being excluded, whilst leadership was being kept firmly in the hands of the royalists from the Sacred Battalion and Mountain Brigade, whom even Scobie described as ‘very rightist’. On 18 November, the British placed royalist generals in complete control of the Supreme Military Council. General Scobie issued orders that ELAS was to give up its arms by 10 December. Fascist bands drawn from the Security Battalions, started to attack EAM supporters. EAM ministers resigned from the government, and a demonstration was called for 3 December to protest against the disarmament. Between 60 and 100,000 marched in Athens only to be fired on by the police. 28 were murdered, and scores injured. A general strike was called for the next day, and up to half a million marched in memory of the victims. Once again, the crowd was fired on, by supposedly disarmed fascists held in a hotel. That evening, skirmishes took place with British troops; Scobie issued a proclamation imposing martial law, instructing ELAS to vacate Athens, threatening the suspension of food supplies to the city if they did not comply – thus raising the spectre of a second, hideous famine. On 5 December, Churchill issued instructions to Scobie on behalf of the British cabinet:
‘It would be well of course if your commands were reinforced by the authority of some Greek government, and Papandreou (who had handed in his resignation) is being told by Leeper (the British ambassador) to stop and help. Do not however hesitate to act as if you are in a conquered city where a local rebellion is in progress.’
The next day, the RAF strafed EAM working class strongholds in the city; but attacks mounted by the Mountain Brigade were repulsed by ELAS. Two days later, Churchill was again emphasising what was at stake:
‘The clear objective is the defeat of EAM. The ending of the fighting is subsidiary to this. I am ordering reinforcements.’
And British imperialism desperately needed reinforcements. For what the British Ambassador had called ‘a silly band of communists’ had within a few days taken over the whole country. British forces outside of Athens were neutralised, or driven back onto the boats from which they had landed; over a thousand troops were made prisoner. In fact, all that remained in the hands of the British were a couple of square miles in the centre of Athens, an airbase and a few other garrisons in the city area. On 13 December, Field Marshal Alexander, Middle East supreme commander, arrived in Athens to declare:
‘You are in a grave situation. Your seaport is cut off, your airport can only be reached by tank or armoured car, you are outnumbered, your dumps are surrounded and you have three days’ ammunition.’
LABOUR LENDS A HAND
At this moment of critical need for British imperialism, help was at hand. For in these December days, the Labour Party was holding its conference. Ernest Bevin, who as Minister for Labour had been party to all the cabinet decisions, made his reasons very clear:
‘The British Empire cannot abandon its position in the Mediterranean.’
A motion condemning that British attack and calling for the withdrawal of British troops was overwhelmingly defeated, to be replaced by one calling on the government
‘… to take all the necessary steps to facilitate an armistice without delay.’
But British imperialism was doing just that, by sending in the reinforcements necessary to defeat ELAS. On 15 December, the first of these troops began to arrive: two divisions and a brigade, raising the number of British troops from 13,000 to over 40,000. The fighting in Athens intensified. The RAF Headquarters was captured by a mainly woman ELAS commando unit, who took 47 officers and 538 men prisoners. But the immense increase in British fire-power started to tell. Backed by the RAF, they started to push ELAS out of Athens. As they pushed forward, so thousands of suspected EAM supporters were arrested and deported to concentration camps. By the end of December, 5,000 ELAS fighters had been killed. Negotiations for a ceasefire were opened, but soon collapsed, their only consequence being the formation of a new government led by a supposed republican, Plastiras. By 5 January, ELAS forces were in full retreat from Athens, harried by RAF bombers. Negotiations were opened for a ceasefire, leading to agreement on 12 February. Although ELAS remained in control of three quarters of the countryside, and retained 75,000 troops, the ceasefire represented a severe defeat. Many years later, the KKE was to admit that its lack of preparedness for the December fighting was a major mistake, whilst the ceasefire, known as the Varkiza agreement, was ‘an unacceptable compromise, and, basically, a capitulation in the face of the English imperialists and Greek reaction’.
THE FASCIST OFFENSIVE
What followed can be best described in Connolly’s words as a ‘carnival of reaction’. The Varkiza agreement called for the disarming of ELAS, the legalisation of KKE and EAM, elections and a plebiscite on the return of the monarchy within one year, a political amnesty for all those involved in the uprising, and an immediate start to a purge of the Security Battalions, gendarmery and quisling elements in the public services. But with the Mountain Brigade and Sacred Battalion allowed to keep their arms, and with the royalists in complete control of army and state, it was obvious that the agreement was hollow. Instead, a regime of fascist terror ensued. In April The Times reported:
‘EAM and its followers are being penalised in a variety of ways. Former ELAS men are beaten up, arrested, and tried on trumped-up charges. Hundreds of employees of public utility companies in Athens are being dismissed for what is described as ‘anti-national’ activities, which simply means membership of EAM…’
Between February and July, there were 20,000 arrests, 500 people murdered by fascist gangs, and 3,000 officially sentenced to death. By December 1945, 50,000 had been prosecuted for EAM/ELAS activity, 18,000 were in prison. So much for the amnesty – indeed, ELAS members were prosecuted for shooting Germans during the occupation. Gendarmes who had joined ELAS during the occupation were charged with desertion. Thousands of civil servants were fired for EAM sympathies, as were university lecturers, and even priests and bishops in the Orthodox Church were victimised. Hence the ‘purge’ was directed entirely against the democratic forces. Commanders of the Security Battalions were simply transferred into the new army under British direction. The judges were all appointed under the Metaxas regime or during the occupation, yet retained their positions, to give a legal authority to the terror. In January 1945, a law was passed which imposed stringent property qualifications on potential jurors, so that the middle class could sit in judgement on the working class and peasant supporters of EAM, and could equally make sure that any collaborator or royalist escaped punishment. Beatings and torture were a routine occurrence both in the police cells and prison, where the administration remained as that under the German occupation. The ordinary members of the Security Battalions and supporters of the fascist ‘X’ organisation found their way into the National Guard, set up during the December fighting. In May, the Plastiras government fell, to be replaced by one headed by Admiral Voulgaris, who had led the attack on the naval mutiny the previous year. The most serious blow to the revolutionary forces came on 12 June, when General Aris Velouchiotis, ELAS’ field commander and a brilliant guerrilla leader, was murdered by the royalist army, and his severed head placed in a gibbet on public display.
A British guard standing over a prisoner at Trikalla concentration camp. (Photo: Popperfoto)
This terror took place under the direct control and supervision of the British occupation forces; the advent of the Labour government made not the slightest difference. One Labour MP who visited Greece in early 1946 commented on the extent of British domination:
‘Britain’s power of intervention in Greek affairs is, of course, based on the presence of British troops, which number at least 40,000. A British “advisory” mission under General Rawlings has a direct say in all military questions. A police mission under Sir Charles Wickham has complete supervisory powers over the Greek gendarmerie and police. Greek currency is now under the control of the Currency Committee, on which there are a British and US representative, and whose decision must be unanimous. To complete the picture, there is a “highly qualified consultative mission on financial, economic and industrial matters” under the leadership of Lt.-Gen. Clark. Nor must one forget the British representatives working in a number of Greek Ministries. Thus is justified EAM’s complaint that “the colonisation of Greece is complete”.’
As soon as Labour took office in August 1945, Ernest Bevin, appointed Foreign Secretary, made clear that there was to be no change in policy with respect to Greece:
‘His Majesty’s Government adheres to the policy which they publicly supported when Greece was liberated. We stated then that our object was the establishment of a stable democratic government in Greece, drawing its strength from the free expression of the public will.’
He also made reference to ‘the communists seeking to obtain a minority government to control the country’, echoing the royalist justification of their brutal onslaught. Labour policy received full support from the TUC. At Churchill’s behest, Sir Walter Citrine, General Secretary of the TUC, visited Greece in January 1945. His report was of great propaganda value. Prominence was given to EAM/ELAS ‘atrocities’, carefully manufactured for him by the fascists, whilst the royalist terror was dismissed as ‘isolated cases of reprisal’. He dutifully reported that the British occupying troops felt that ‘ELAS were the dirtiest lot of fighters our chaps had ever encountered’ concluding that ‘if British troops were recalled there would be a massacre’. Malaya, Kenya, Aden or Ireland, the phrases of these labour aristocrats were the same, a portable phrase-book to justify the crimes of British imperialism. In Citrine’s case, the imperialists made the job easier, by giving him a royalist interpreter whose father had been executed by ELAS for collaborating with the Nazis.
Conditions in Greece were appalling apart from the terror. The German occupation had left 110,000 homes destroyed, and half a million people homeless; in the two years after the war, only 20,000 houses had been repaired. The communications network created by ELAS fell into disrepair; reconstruction was deliberately held back by the British economic mission appointed by the Labour government in November 1945. This stipulated that no more than 10% of financial aid could be devoted to reconstruction, whilst 38.5% was devoted to military purposes. In May 1947 the effects were such that edible fats and oil output was 15% of the pre-war level, mining output 13%, metallurgical industry 25% and building materials 32%. Unemployment, 18% in 1945, rose to 29% by early 1947, at a time when 30% of the workforce had been drafted into the armed forces. The value of the drachma collapsed – from 1,100 to the gold sovereign in 1939 to 180,000 in November 1945. The inflation imposed an enormous burden on the working class – wages fell to between half and a third of pre-war levels. Malnutrition affected 75% of the population. A semi-official American report, described the situation thus:
‘While the people of Greece shiver in their rootless houses and walk through snow without shoes and overcoats, fortunes are amassed in Athens. In the swank shops luxury goods from the far corners of the globe are brilliantly displayed …Swiss watches, French silks and perfumes, American cosmetics, fountain pens and cigarettes. And there are enough people to buy them … Look at the list of machinery imported into Greece and you won’t find a lathe in it. What you will find is 132 brand-new high-priced automobiles for the use of the bureaucrats and politicians in mud-and-buggy Athens.’
Whilst the oppressed approached destitution, the wealthy grew wealthier. They received their income in gold, which was non-taxable; hence four-fifths of all taxes were collected through indirect taxation, and therefore added to the burden of the poor.
Not surprisingly, the re-built trade union movement was terrorised as much as EAM/ELAS. Part of the purpose of Citrine’s January 1945 visit had been to establish tame, British-style trade unions. The leaders of the free trade unions which had been destroyed by the Metaxas regime refused to come to any agreement with Citrine, however, because free trade unions could only be a fiction with so many trade unionists either in prison or in hiding. The only signatories he could find were either former collaborators with Metaxas and the German occupation, or declared royalists. After Citrine’s departure, elections were held to form a provisional executive to organise a conference of the Greek Confederation of Labour. The Workers’ Anti-Fascist Coalition, ERGAS, a wing of EAM, gained 71% of the votes to the executive, the royalists 21%. At the Congress itself, which took place despite immense obstruction and harassment from the government, ERGAS swept the. board, winning all 15 seats on the Executive. Three months later, in June 1946, the Greek government passed a decree limiting representation by any one political group on the Executive to five seats. The High Court then declared the election null and void, removed the executive, and replaced it with one with a royalist majority, the Chairman being a prominent collaborator with the Germans. The Labour government declined to intervene directly, but asked a TUC representative to go to Greece and mediate. The suggestion the latter came up with was in the finest tradition of British trade union compromise and contempt for the oppressed: an executive of 15 with 5 ERGAS, 5 royalists and 5 ‘centrists’.
LABOUR TIGHTENS THE SCREWS
In November 1945, Hector McNeil, Under-Secretary of State in the Labour government, visited Greece to impose tighter economic control on the Greek government. Voulgaris was replaced by an ageing ‘liberal’, Sofoulis, and elections were ordered for 31 March 1946. In the prevailing conditions of terror, it was obvious that the elections would be a farce; however, Labour was more concerned with political stability than electoral niceties. McNeil himself declared in January 1946 that ‘Britain must not lose Greece as she would lose Italy and Turkey as well.’ Elections would be a way of legitimising the destruction of EAM/ELAS. Yet even the petit-bourgeois liberals that made up the Sofoulis government began to have their doubts about British policy as the elections approached – royalist terror did not discriminate between them. and EAM. Demands were made to Labour to postpone the elections, and when this was refused, a succession of ministers resigned in protest. Amongst them was the Foreign Minister, who stated that free elections. were impossible unless ‘a wide amnesty is granted … Terrorism by state organs ceases … and the state machine … (is) purged of all fascists and reactionary elements.’ Another was Vice-Premier Kafandaris, who declared that the British military and police missions had prevented the Greek government from making changes of personnel in the police, army and gendarmerie, whilst the Greek people remained under the impression that the government itself was refusing to make the necessary purge! In the year following Varkiza, over 1,200 people had been murdered, over 6,000 wounded, over 31,000 tortured out of 100,000 arrested. Bevin was unmoved by the pleadings of Labour’s puppets; in reply to Sofoulis, he stated:
‘I am much surprised by your statement that armed “X” Organisations will be reinforced by almost the whole of the police and gendarmerie. Such a statement is not borne out by the reports which I have received. In any case, I cannot see how “X” organisations can compel the electors in the countryside to vote in a manner contrary to their convictions, provided a secret ballot is secured.’
The next day, Sofoulis declared that a purge of the fascists and collaborators from the army and police was impossible, because this would mean the ‘virtual abolition’ of these forces. Forces, be it noted, established under the direction of the Labour government.
The elections went ahead according to Labour’s timetable. EAM boycotted them. The electoral register was based on pre-war data; of its 2.2m names, 500,000 were of non-existent people. Women were not allowed to vote. Despite massive intimidation, forgery, personation and every other imaginable trick, the turnout was only 50%; royalists took half the votes but had a landslide of seats. As one opportunist socialist said:
‘We Socialists in Greece are compromised by his (Bevin’s) policy, as the people say to us: “If you are of Bevin’s party, we cannot join you,” and they turn more to the Left.’
CIVIL WAR
Armed resistance was now the only possible avenue for the democratic forces to follow. Former ELAS units came together to form the Democratic Army, commanded by Markos Vafiadis, a former associate of Aris Velouchiotis. By the end of 1946, it had some 10,000 armed combatants in the mountains, some 20% of whom were women. Despite the terror, the mass support for the freedom struggle was evident in events like May Day 1946, when 80,000 marched in Salonika and 150,000 in Athens. As a reflection of this, the Greek Army, made up of conscripts, proved far from reliable. Mass desertions were common as units tried to join the Democratic Army; in the year following June 1946, 32 soldiers were executed for refusing to fire on partisan units, and another 230 sentenced to long terms of imprisonment. In an effort to strengthen the morale of the Army, the British Military Mission opened up 400,000 police files from occupation days to help weed out those who had suspected EAM sympathies; these were then sent off to concentration camps. A manual published for use by the gendarmerie contained this advice:
‘Soldiers will approach dead bandits in groups of three. One will hold his weapon in readiness while the other two cautiously examine the bodies to ensure that they are not simulating death and holding grenades or other weapons in their hands. By using this method our soldiers will be able to avoid possible surprise attacks. The bodies should be searched minutely. They should not be left until all weapons and identification have been removed. They should then he decapitated and their heads placed in a bag and taken to the nearest command post for public exposure.’
US IMPERIALISM MOVES IN
The failure of the Greek Army to make any headway against the Democratic Army made it apparent that the Greek freedom struggle could only be defeated with the expenditure of even more resources. The attempt to subdue the Greek people had already cost British imperialism approaching £100m by the first months of 1947 – much more than that would be needed for the future. This British imperialism was in no position to afford. In adopting the role of world policeman, it had taken on massive commitments – in Indonesia, Vietnam, India, Palestine, Egypt, Western Europe and Africa. Furthermore its parlous financial position had been exposed in January 1947 with the near-exhaustion of a US loan of $4.75bn made in December 1945, and originally scheduled to last at least four years. The crisis was made all the worse by the appalling winter, when whole sections of industry closed down for a while, throwing two million people temporarily on the dole. In February, the government sent an appeal to US President Truman, implying that unless aid was forthcoming, Britain would have to withdraw from Greece. As Prime Minister Attlee later explained:
‘We were holding the line in far too many places and the Americans in far too few. By giving America notice at the right moment that we couldn’t afford to stay … we made the Americans face up to the facts in the eastern Mediterranean.’
On 12 March 1947, President Truman went before Congress with a request for $400m aid to Greece and Turkey – with the former taking $300m. He declared that every nation was faced with a choice between alternative ways of life:
‘One way of life is based on the will of the majority, and is distinguished by free institutions, representative government, free elections, guarantees of individual liberty, freedom of speech and religion and freedom from political repression.
The second way of life is based on the will of a minority forcibly imposed upon the majority. It relies upon terror and oppression, a controlled press and radio, fixed elections and the suppression of personal freedom.’
This was US imperialism’s declaration of war against the struggle for socialism and national freedom. It was the US Which would now act as world policeman, because it alone had the resources. Within a few months, American aid and military equipment was flooding into Greece, together with military and economic advisers. As when British imperialism was in control, little of the aid was directed towards reconstruction. Part was spent on the import of luxury goods, the rest went into speculation and mammoth embezzlement schemes. An official report concluded that of $150m allocated for imports in 1946, only $58m was actually spent on imports – the rest disappeared one way or another into the pockets of the rich. In 1947, part of American aid came in the form of 109 Liberty transport ships. The Greek Minister of Shipping promptly handed them out to 23 shipping families and ten other companies. Such widespread corruption was of some embarrassment to US imperialism. Britain had already replaced the Tsaldaris government formed after the elections, forming a new government under General Maximos in January 1947. Now it was the US’s turn: in September, they opted for the ageing ‘liberal’ Sofoulis as someone who could provide a democratic cover for the repression.
Yet even with the enormous US commitment, the Greek Army made little headway against the Democratic Army. Instead of engaging the Democratic Army, much of the effort of the Greek Army went in ravaging the countryside in an attempt to deny any supplies to the partisans. Destroying the peasants’ crops rendered them destitute, and forced them to become refugees. They were then herded into ‘refugee camps’, which were guarded by the Greek Army. Although this placed great restrictions on the ability of the partisans to recruit new volunteers, by early 1948 they had 25,000 under arms. Yet by this time, there were some 500,000 refugees, 50,000 in concentration camps, trade unionists were being tried and executed. Bounty hunters operated in the countryside, returning with severed heads as evidence of their success, which were then put on public display. Mass executions were common: 35 on 23 November 1947, bringing the total number of deaths by then to over 45,000; 238 more between 1 and 3 May 1948. The new head of the US Military Mission, General Van Fleet, announced ‘Greece is our laboratory experiment’, which it certainly was, with the first use of chemical defoliants and the dreaded napalm.
Operating throughout the length and breadth of Greece, the Democratic Army had fought the 180,000 strong army of reaction to a standstill. A Provisional Democratic Government was formed on 23 December 1947 with a radical democratic programme: agrarian reform, the erection of a system of popular justice, nationalisation of industry. In spring 1948, a US senator, Glen Taylor, was complaining that US spending had reached an average of ‘$8,600 for each ragged, ill-fed partisan holding the mountains’. He added:
‘This is one of the costliest; most extravagant. military operations in history, in which our wastefulness has only been equalled by our inefficiency.’
Yet in 1948, the tide turned. This was not a consequence of the superior forces of the reaction, but of crucial mistakes in the political leadership of the struggle. From the early days of EAM/ELAS, there had been a split in the KKE between a revolutionary and opportunist wing, the former based in ELAS, the latter in the city hierarchy. At crucial moments of political conflict, it was the opportunists who predominated. The revolutionary ELAS wing had been against concessions to the government-in-exile in 1944, for the immediate establishment of a revolutionary provisional government in October 1944, against British intervention, against the Varkiza agreement in February 1945, especially its disarmament provisions, and for a more extensive guerrilla struggle in 1946. It was the opportunist wing who prevailed, however, and made unnecessary concessions to the exile government in 1944, which held off against the British in late 1944, which concluded the Varkiza agreement, and which also tried to make accommodations with the puppet governments of 1945-46. The worst example of this was an official denunciation of Aris Velouchiotis just days before his murder as an adventurist and renegade. With the start of the civil war, the opportunist leadership sought to restrict the scope of the armed struggle by forbidding supporters in the towns and cities from joining the Democratic Army, and ordering them to remain to organise legal political struggle. This left them easy prey for the police, especially when the British released the police files; many were arrested – 20,000 alone in a six-week campaign in summer 1947.
The final dispute centred on the tactics of the armed struggle: whether it should take the form of guerrilla warfare, or set-piece confrontations in the hope of capturing major towns. Given the immense disparity between the opposing forces, it was obvious that the latter strategy was suicidal. Yet this was what the opportunists had decided on, and the political dispute ended with their triumph, and the removal and denunciation of General Markos Vafiadis as commander of the Democratic Army, in August 1948. The dispersed partisan units were congregated into larger units, and despite their heroism, were defeated in the set confrontations that followed. By early 1949, they were in retreat from the Peloponnese in the south. The final battle took place in August, on Mount Grammos, close to the Albanian border. With 40 of the latest fighter-bombers loaned by the US, government forces defeated the last group of 4,000 partisans. On 15 October, the Provisional Democratic Government announced it was suspending hostilities.
Greece had been saved for imperialism. It had required five years of fascist terror and the death of over 150,000 people. Not that the official end of the military struggle brought any respite for the working class. Under the direction of US imperialism, successive Greek governments sustained the machinery of vicious repression against the Greek people: there were no meaningful democratic rights, the secret police had free rein, torture was endemic. The re-emergence of the mass movement in the mid sixties came to an abrupt end with the 1967 Colonels’ coup and the subsequent seven years of brutal military dictatorship. Today, Greece remains a weak capitalist power, where the working class is at the mercy of the current imperialist crisis. Forty years ago, they were on the road to revolution. But the obstacle on which their drive for liberation foundered was the Labour government of 1945 to 1951.
Robert Dornhorst
