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From Socialist Worker, No. 92, 12 October 1968, p. 2
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
GERY LAWLESS and Chris Gray have taken exception to my report Home Rule Threat to Franco. I certainly intended no aspersions on the Basque language and culture; but I still take leave to doubt whether an organisation like the ETA, basing itself primarily on the demand for total separation from Spain and upon a Basque linguistic tradition, can provide effective leadership within a region dominated by a working class in huge industrial centres which have sucked labour from non-Basque areas for several decades.
As a pro-ETA writer in a recent issue of Black Dwarf admits, ‘Basques’, defined in national terms, may well be in a minority in these provinces. Whatever degree of autonomy may be exercised by the Basque country in the territory at present known as Spain, total separation is not calculated to further any sense of solidarity with workers and peasants in other regions.
None of these observations is intended to contradict the right to self-determination possessed by every people or to imply anything more than unconditional encouragement for the anti-Franco activities of the ETA. However, in seeking a way out from what they justly term ‘the Spanish prison-house of nations’, these comrades seem to run the risk (if I may paraphrase your famous English proverb) of putting all their Basques into one exit.
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