The German-Dutch Communist Left - Libcom

This ‘broad’ policy towards other organisations underlined the ambiguity of the organisation’s orientation, and
its difficulty in appearing as an autonomous internationalist current. The fact that, during the same period, the
left socialists of the BRS and the trotskyists of the GBL asked to merge with it – a request which was rejected in
both cases – only confirmed this. 1152
Two events precipitated the political evolution of the MLL–Front: the strike of February 1941 and the German
attack on Russia on 22 nd June 1941.
The strike of February 1941 and its political consequences
The strike in February (‘Februaristaking’) was provoked as much by the German authorities’ persecution of the
Jews as by the growing discontent of the Dutch workers who were subjected both to great material misery and to
deportation to the factories of the Reich. 1153
Reich Commissioner Seyss-Inquart, had already adopted anti-Semitic measures by the end of 1940, with the
support of Mussert’s NSB (National Socialist Union), a small Dutch nazi party. All officials of Jewish origin
were forbidden any promotion; jobs in the public sector were forbidden to Jews. These measures led to student
strikes in Delft and Leiden. Despite these the occupying authorities and the Dutch Nazis continued their
persecution of the numerous Jewish population of Amsterdam. Cafes and cinemas were closed to them and from
1941 they were forced to register on a special list.
The movement of protest against anti-Semitism – which shocked the whole Dutch population – was at first
largely the work of the students. They showed their hostility to anti-Semitism from a nationalist viewpoint,
demonstrating on January 31 st in schools and in the streets to celebrate the birthday of Princess Beatrix, exiled in
London. The bombardment of Rotterdam in June 1940 which caused the death of 30,000 people, along with food
shortages, developed a strong anti-German feeling in the population.
For the MLL Front, it was particularly important that the – legitimate – hostility to anti-Semitism should not lead
to the exacerbation of Dutch nationalist and pro-British feeling. The struggle against anti-Semitism could only
take place in the general struggle against the whole of the capitalist system.
In its intervention the MLL Front called for a boycott of establishments which showed hostility to Jews, although
it was conscious that a general boycott was hardly likely. It took care that the struggle was not against anti-
Semitism alone and called on Jews to struggle for socialism; it recalled that the liberation of Jews was only
possible under socialism and denounced Zionism as a dangerous aspiration to a national state inside the capitalist
world. 1154
At the same time as a profound hostility was developing towards the anti-Semitic measures the discontent of the
workers was growing. Unemployment hit them particularly hard: in Amsterdam there were 40,000 unemployed
in August 1939; 60,000 in July 1940, as many as in the worst years of crisis. Unemployment affected 300,000
workers in The Netherlands as a whole. In one year the price of basic foodstuffs rose more than 36%, deepening
the general poverty still further.
1152 Cf. Wim Bot, op. cit, p. 28.
1153 A serious history of the February 1941 strike is that of Benjamin Aäron Sijes: De Februari-staking, 25-26 februari (The
Hague: Becht, 1954). Sijes, an ex-member of the GIC, played a big role in the strike when he was a docker in Amsterdam.
At the time of the debacle of the German army, he and some comrades took hold of the archives of the police and German
authorities before they were destroyed. Sent to the Royal Institute of Documentation on the War (Rijksinstituut voor
Oorlogsdocumentatie), they allowed him to work at the Institute and write his book, which came out in 1954. The
conclusion of the English resume written in the 60s, shows that Sijes was far from his positions of the 30s and 40s: “...the
February Strike not only gave the strikers a new found feeling of self-confidence; it was a brilliant example for the whole
population of Holland” (p. 228).
1154 Cf. Wim Bot, op. cit., p. 39.
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