Japan 1: How management control Japan's unions (continued)

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"The Japanese capitalist class have a tremendous ideological domination" demonstration against relaxation of import note ti tionary proportions, was banned by McArthur, who proceeded to carry out a purge of tens of thousands of members of the JCP and trade union militants from the factories.

Strikes in the public sector were banned. On the eve of the Korean war, the JCP was banned, and basic freedoms restored at the end of the war were suppressed.

Military

Under these conditions Japanese reaction began to re-establish itself. The USA began a programme of massive military aid. Arms factories closed after the war were re-opened. Military bases were reactivated for the Korean war. A new Japanese army - the National Police Reserve -was established, in violation of McArthur's own constitution.

Sambetsu, which was under JCP leadership, was greatly weakened during this period. Its membership dropped by 75%.

Sohyo, the only progressive trade union federation in Japan today, was born in this period as a reactionary initiative.

As soon as the Korean war began, a movement inside Sambetsu which had been fighting for democratisation against the Stalinist leadership joined together with a number of rightwing anti-communist federations and formed Sohyo.

It joined the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU), and declared support for the United Nations/US forces in Korea. Sambetsu was decimated in the process.

Sohyo, however, quickly. radicalised, swinging to a militant position and opposing militarisation. In alliance with the JSP, it was to become a major political controls force in Japan.

Sohyo's second conference, in 1951, called for a peace treaty with all the allied powers, including the USSR and the People's Republic of China, Japanese neutrality in the Cold War and the Korean war, removal of US bases, and opposition to rearmament.

The US occupation of Japan ended in April 1952, with the signing of two treaties - the Peace Treaty and the USA/Japan Security Treaty.

The treaties made Japan the USA's strategic outpost in the Far East. They provided for the free use of Japanese military bases by the USA, and the separation of Okinawa from Japan to become , the USA's biggest foreign base.

The conditions in the treaties provoked massive anti-American riots in Tokyo on May Day 1952.

The first half of the 1950s were a period of considerable class struggle, as the resurgent capitalist class fought to take back the gains that the independent trade unions had made in the immediate post-war period.

Nissan

Huge battles took place in a number of key industries. Nissan car workers fought pitched battles against lockouts, thugs, and the police, as the employers moved to smash the independent Nissan Workers' Union - the most important union affiliated to the National Car Workers'

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Organiser no.121 February Page