Part 1

The other 9/11, 11 September 1973, saw a military coup which did not just overthrow the elected Chilean government of Salvador Allende but unleashed savage repression, which left 30,000 workers dead and countless others tortured, maimed, without work and hungry. This was one of the aims of the coup, to fragment and dismember one of the most insurgent working classes on the continent.

Writing of the savagery, Mike Gonzalez described it thus:

‘Thousands were raped, subjected to inhuman torture, starved, abused, murdered. In the following 12 months 30,000 people were killed. They were the best and most courageous leaders of their class, systematically picked off with sophisticated foreign intelligence help. And they were not just killed—they were torn apart, to warn and terrify the next generation. The rest were dealt with arbitrarily, to terrorize the population and give graphic notice that the new regime would give no quarter. That was the significance of the maimed bodies that floated every morning along Santiago’s River Mapocho.’[1]

Allende led the Popular Unity alliance whose two biggest components were the Socialist Party and the Communist Party, but included smaller parties ranging from liberals to those which regarded themselves as revolutionaries.

Allende was a longstanding reformist parliamentarian, but when needed he could come out with Marxist rhetoric, and the left wing of his Socialist Party regarded itself as Marxist. He was a friend of Cuba’s Fidel Castro. But he was completely committed to working through legal, parliamentary channels.

The Popular Unity programme

Popular Unity entered the elections of 1970 on a programme promising economic growth, based on raising the level of consumption, through increasing wages; land reform; and a programme of nationalisation. The primary target was the US-controlled copper mines, which produced Chile’s key export, but it was also aimed at the oligarchy; the 2% of the population whose wealth was based on their dominance over the land, but extended into finance, industry and the media.

Yet compensation was offered on generous terms. Just 150 out of 3,500 firms were to be taken into state ownership – and this number would later be reduced. Some 60% of the country’s industry would remain in private hands.

Popular Unity polled the largest number of votes in the elections of September 1970 (36.2%), but it did not receive an absolute majority. The main party of the Chilean ruling class, the Christian Democrats, had split, with a right winger standing and receiving 34.9% and a liberal one standing too, receiving 27.8%. The latter was supposedly more open to working with the left.

Allende, therefore, had to negotiate with him to gain a majority in Congress. The result was a watering down of the platform upon which Popular Unity had been elected. He signed a ‘Statute of Guarantees’, promising not to interfere with the church, the education system, the media and the armed forces; in other words the Chilean state.

Allende made it clear he would play by the rules. As he would discover, the Chilean elite, the military and their US allies would happily ignore those rules to extract bloody revenge. From the outset, Washington suspended aid and demanded repayment of loans it had previously granted.

But because the right was divided, during the first eighteen months of his government, Allende saw his support rise. In the April 1971 local elections, he got more than 50% of the vote. The copper mines were nationalised, the country saw the greatest ever measure of land reform, wages and the economy grew.

Yet the economic improvements came because the global economy was still in the final years of the great boom which had followed World War II, and Keynesian measures, such as those Allende was pursuing, still had purchase.

However, the divisions within the parliamentary right meant right-wing opposition to Allende radicalised.

… the Chilean bourgeoisie quit biding its time and organized a major protest to coincide with the month-long visit of Fidel Castro at the end of 1971. In the infamous March of the Empty Pots in December, bourgeois and middle-class women, many of whom dragged their maids along to carry and bang on kitchen pots and pans, filled the streets.

But behind the protests over consumer shortages lay another and more far-reaching purpose: to mobilize the middle classes, to warn the bourgeoisie on an international scale of the battles to come, and to express bourgeois scepticism as to the UPs [Popular Unity’s] ability to contain the working class.’[2]

Workers’ mobilisation and right plotting

What scared the Chilean elite was not so much Allende’s reform programme but the fact that the election of a left-wing government had given confidence to the working class, who now began to take matters into their own hands, striking, occupying and forming cordónes: coordinating committees linking together workers in different factories and workplaces.

Between January and December 1971, the number of strikes reached 1,758, and there had been 1,278 land invasions. Workers wanted more than state ownership. They wanted a say in how their workplaces were run, and this the bourgeoisie could not tolerate.

In early 1972, a US reporter, Jack Anderson, revealed that a US multinational, ITT, International Telephone and Telegraph Corporation, ‘had told the White House in 1970 it would be prepared to “assist financially in sums up to seven figures”’ to block the impending inauguration of Allende as President. Moreover, ITT was involved in efforts to provoke the Chilean military into a coup, and to cut off all international financial aid to Chile. ITT had also funded Chile’s right-wing press.

In 1970, the Richard Nixon administration in Washington was not ready to back a coup. Internally there was not sufficient support, the working class was too strong, while the White House’s attention was on Vietnam. But the Americans were out to destabilise Chile: the CIA poured $8 million into efforts to ‘destabilise’ the Allende government and to bribe Chilean congressmen to vote against Allende.

In the autumn of 1972, lorry-owners organised a strike – a bosses’ strike. The plan was to bring the country to a halt, create economic chaos and force Allende to resign or abandon his reforms. Workers responded by organising general assemblies in working-class neighbourhoods, forming committees to expropriate food from the supermarkets, to organise self-defence and to run education and health services.

The bosses’ strike failed because of this, but the country was polarising. Allende responded with appeals for calm and for workers to increase production to help the economy. When in the spring of 1973, copper miners, one of the best organised sections of Chilean workers, went on strike, Allende denounced them for being too highly paid already.

The right wing now talked openly of the need for the military to intervene. Sections of the working class influenced by the far left began to arm. Allende responded by stating:

‘There will be no armed forces here other than those stipulated by the constitution … I shall eliminate any others if they appear.’[3]

The first coup attempt

On two occasions, Allende reorganised his government, giving senior positions to generals, in order to show his willingness to work with the military. The first occasion followed a coup attempt on 29 June 1973:

‘When Colonel Robert Souper declared a coup and rolled his tanks onto the streets of Santiago, leading officers within the armed forces viewed Souper as acting prematurely and withheld their support. But none of the opposition parties, including the Christian Democrats, decried the coup attempt. It was a clear signal of a more ominous military threat.

The working class once again sprang into action to thwart the coup attempt.

The workers’ reaction was once again magnificent. Hundreds of factories and offices were occupied around Santiago. On 30 June a giant demonstration surged onto the streets. In the provincial cities, hitherto slower to mobilize than the capital, cordones and communal commands suddenly mushroomed. Cordón Cerrillos began taking decisions as a workers’ council … Suddenly everything was possible. The enemy was vacillating, confused.’[4]

In the immediate aftermath of this, the radical left, the MIR (Revolutionary Left Movement) and the left of the Socialist Party called for the armed defence of the government, but they also continued to declare their loyalty to the Popular Unity leadership. Yet this was the moment to break from Popular Unity and to operate independently, arguing for unifying and centralising the cordónes, arming the working class, and repudiating Allende’s compromises with the bourgeoisie.

The head of the military, General Prats, had stayed loyal to Allende and personally ordered troops off the streets. His colleagues were more interested in the response of the working class, what arms they had taken up, and what defensive positions they had occupied. All of which information would be of great use in the future.

In August 1973, right-wing terrorists exploded bombs outside the homes and under the cars of Cuban Embassy officials and a power plant was sabotaged. Shopkeepers went on strike. A cabinet crisis developed as the New York Times reported:

‘President Allende acknowledged his need of military assistance on August 9 when he appointed the commanders in chief of the three branches of the armed forces and the head of the national police to his Cabinet of National Security.

The latest Cabinet crisis began Friday when President Allende’s firmest supporter among the military, Gen. Carlos Prats Gonzalez, was forced to resign from his posts of Minister of Defense and army commander in chief.

Most high‐ranking army officers are said to have reproached General Prats for his “unconditional” support of President Allende and to have pursued his resignation. General Prats said he had resigned “to save the unity of the army” and “not to serve as pretext for a coup d’etat.”

President Allende immediately named a new army commander in chief, Gen. Augusto Pinochet Ugarte.’

Prats, in exile in Argentina, would be assassinated following the coup. Pinochet ordered his killing.

11 September 1973

On the morning of 11 September, the Moneda Palace was bombed by the air force, and tanks began shelling it. Salvador Allende was killed. At just after 9 in the morning, he made his final broadcast. In it he told listeners:

‘Workers of my country. I want to thank you for the loyalty you have always shown me, the faith you have shown in one man who was merely the interpreter of your search for justice, who gave his word to respect the Constitution and the law, and who kept his word.’[5]

The majority of the Socialist Party and the Communist Party had long heeded that word and now began to pay a terrible price for it.

The butchery that followed was appalling. Prisoners were herded into Chile’s national stadium where they were tortured and killed, among them one of Chile’s finest musicians, Victor Jara. Soldiers broke his right hand so he could never play again, before finishing him off.

Shortly after the coup, a reporter for Newsweek managed to enter Santiago City Morgue, using press credentials issued by the Junta. He found some 200 naked corpses, crushed together on the floor:

‘Most had been shot at close range under the chin. Some had been machinegunned in the body. Their chests had been slit open and sewn together grotesquely in what presumably had been a pro forma autopsy. They were all young and, judging from the roughness of their hands, all from the working class. A couple of them were girls, distinguishable among the massed bodies only by the curves of their breasts. Most of their heads had been crushed. I remained for perhaps two minutes at most, then left.’[6]

The more militant workers, together with the MIR (probably 10,000 strong) responded to the coup by taking over the factories and their neighbourhoods, but there was no co-ordination and few weapons. The military could pick them off one by one.

To have had any chance of resisting the coup required also having a political strategy where the cordónes needed to have been built into a national organisation with a presence in every town, city and shanty town and among the rural proletariat. As well as organising workers militias and procuring arms, it also required agitation among the military rank and file. Above all it meant breaking with Popular Unity.

In Washington, the Nixon administration, the CIA and the military were jubilant. Three weeks after Pinochet’s successful military coup, a U.S. Department of Defense memorandum dated 1 October, 1973, referred to this 11 September as ‘our D-Day’ and stated that ‘Chile’s coup de ‘etat [sic] was close to perfect.’

Under General Pinochet and the Junta, Chile became the proving ground for the first neoliberal experiment. Faced with 600% inflation, the Junta accepted the ‘remedy’ of Milton Friedman, who flew to Santiago, to demand a ‘shock treatment’ that would restabilise prices at the cost of increasing unemployment. The resulting recession brought mass unemployment, hunger and suffering to add to the daily reality of repression.

The Tory journalist Peregrine Worsthorne was a guest of Pinochet a year after the coup. Afterwards he wrote in The Times, then still regarded as the mouthpiece of the British elite, that: ‘If a British equivalent of the Allende government ever came to power, I hope and pray our armed forces would intervene to prevent such a calamity as efficiently as the armed forces did in Chile.’

Fast forward and here is Daniel Finkelstein writing in The Times about Jeremy Corbyn, then leader of the Labour Party, under the headline, ‘Jeremy Corbyn’s obsession with Chile explains everything about him,’ arguing: ‘The Labour leader blames America for coup against Chile’s socialist government and fears history could repeat itself.’

Corbyn had visited Santiago as a teenager and had married a Chilean exile. Perhaps he had reason to be ‘obsessed’ about what happened on 11 September 1973, and the lessons it might teach us.

He might also recall that The Times said this on 13 September 1973:

‘… whether or not the armed forces were right to do what they have done, the circumstances were such that a reasonable military man could in good faith have thought it his constitutional duty to intervene.’

Part 2

On 11 September 1973, I was working at a summer job between school and university. The radio was on and in the early afternoon a news bulletin announced that there had been a military coup in Chile, the presidential palace had been attacked by warplanes (British supplied), and President Salvador Allende had been killed.

This was not unexpected news. There had been a failed coup early that summer, the military high command wasn’t ready and didn’t back it, and since then expectations were high that another would follow. Despite that, on hearing the news I burst into tears, knowing that terror was being unleashed against the people of Chile.

Very quickly solidarity actions and meetings sprung up, for good reason. The Tory government in London welcomed the new dictatorship. The government of Edward Health recognised Pinochet’s Junta withing eleven days. ‘Now is the time to get in’, a head diplomat urged the government immediately following the coup, warning that a delay in expressing this friendship would create ‘difficulty in finding a comfortable seat with the new military regime.’ From Santiago, the British ambassador pointed out: ‘There is no doubt that Chile under the junta is a better prospect than Allende’s chaotic road to socialism … investments should be better.’[7]

Also, British Hawker Hunter jets had bombed the Presidential Palace in Santiago and that was a matter of shame for the left. But there was another good reason why we felt the necessity of organising solidarity. We had been watching and discussing events in Chile for some time. It was an experiment which required attention.

In the summer of 1972, I recall selling a socialist paper, Red Mole, at a mass meeting of striking building workers. One asked me what needed to be done in Chile. I replied, ‘arm the workers.’ I was sixteen so it was a bit crude, but he seemed to like it (he joined us shortly afterwards). For three years, the workers and peasants of Chile had been an inspiration to those of us on the revolutionary left. The election of a Popular Unity government exactly three years earlier had ignited a major debate across the left, here and internationally, into which I had thrown myself.

Revolution or reform debate

Popular Unity united the powerful Socialist Party, the Communist Party (itself a major force), with lesser groups, including some that identified themselves as being revolutionary. The new president, Allende, pointed to similarities between Chile and the UK: the strength of parliamentarianism, the commitment of all to parliamentary means and the refusal of the armed forces to become involved in politics. Left Labour MPs and the Communist Party, a major force in the trade unions, pointed to Chile as proof that their programme of getting a left-wing government elected to bring fundamental change via parliament, was being enacted in Chile.

We revolutionaries countered that whether in Chile of the UK, the capitalist state was not neutral and had often used extra parliamentary means, often bloody, to maintain capitalism. That debate did not end on 11 September 1973, indeed it intensified. As news of these terrible events spread, there were two responses on the left. Those such as the communists and social democrats drew the lesson that Allende had been too radical, while those on the revolutionary left saw the bloodbath as the inevitable consequence of not building new forms of workers’ power capable of confronting the state.

In Italy, the largest communist party in the world outside Russia and China, declared Allende had moved too quickly, and that prudence was necessary. Accordingly, the Italian Communist Party stated that a ‘Historic Compromise’ was needed with the historic party of the Italian elite, the Christian Democrats. Their general secretary, Enrico Berlinguer, stated:

‘Great changes cannot be brought about by antagonizing powerful oppositions by splitting, as it were, society into two hostile camps. Rather, such changes can be accomplished only by forging alliances with a variety of different social groups and with the mass parties which represent them.’[8]

The general election of June 1976 saw the Christian Democrats (DC) emerge as a minority government, and they understood that to govern Italy, they needed the involvement of the PCI in some form or other.

A bargain was struck; in return for sustaining the DC in office, the PCI would receive explicit recognition of its increased importance in Congress and the Senate, including being granted several important chairmanships, and the office of Speaker of the House. June 1976 also saw Berlinguer declare that he felt ‘safer under NATO’s umbrella’.[9] Soon after, they began championing the joys of austerity as the solution to Italy’s ailing economy. The effect was to dampen working-class struggle. The Christian Democrats gained and by 1979, the Historic Compromise was a dead letter.

Solidarity campaigns

Meanwhile, the left of all shades was building solidarity with Chilean workers, including refugees who quickly turned up in Edinburgh needing support. Within days of the coup, the student rector of Edinburgh University, Gordon Brown, organised a meeting for the ousted Chilean ambassador. It filled the university’s largest auditorium. It was tepid fare for my comrades and myself. To our delight, one refugee turned out to be an active member of the MIR (Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria; Revolutionary Left Movement) and we worked closely with him.

The Chile Solidarity Campaign (CSC) was initiated by the Communist Party and involved a number of left Labour MPs: Martin Flannery, Judith Hart (who would become Minister of Overseas Development in early 1974, when a Labour government was elected), Eddy Loyden, Neil Kinnock, Jo Richardson, Ian Mikardo, Greville Janner, Clinton Davis, Tony Benn, and Eric Heffer. Nineteen trade unions affiliated to it.

The election of a Labour government in February 1974 gave new impetus to solidarity campaigning. Surely Labour would have to deliver over things like arms sales to the regime in Santiago, if not breaking off diplomatic relations.

But the Communist Party and their Labour left allies were caught in a dilemma. The CP’s membership was based largely among shop stewards who were some of the best class fighters. But their strategy centred on capturing positions within the trade-union machine and building a close alliance with left trade-union leaders. However, the latter were loyal supporters of Labour, and with it back in government, their instinct was not to rock the boat. The CP did not want to break with them, so accordingly trailed along behind them.

An ‘action conference’ called by the CSC in March 1974 showed the resulting problem. The keynote speaker was Ricardo Figueroa, an exiled Chilean Communist, who told the gathering: ‘the Popular Unity had made mistakes – they had tried to go too fast.’

The conference then split into three workshops. At the one on ‘Other Forms of Solidarity’, Tariq Ali pointed out that Ron Hayward, Labour’s general secretary, and a minister in the new government, Judith Hart, had called for the breaking ‘of all relations’ with the dictatorship. He proposed a demonstration in May to take up that call. This was opposed by the CSC secretary, Steve Hart, but the workshop voted in favour of the demo. Somehow when Steve Hart reported back from the workshop, he didn’t mention the proposed demo. The chair, a leading figure in the Communist Party, then ruled against any discussion from the floor.

In April 1974, Foreign Secretary Jim Callaghan announced that the Labour government had authorised the delivery of two Oberon frigates, and two Leander submarines would also be delivered to the Pinochet dictatorship.

Demonstration and boycotts

The demonstration Tariq had proposed went ahead on 5 May in London with some 8,000 people marching. The biggest contingents were from the International Socialists and the International Marxist Group. Red Weekly, the IMG paper, reported: ‘There was a fair sprinkling of trade union banners. Labour Party, Communist Party and local Chile Solidarity Committee contingents were also there.’ Speakers included Jack Collins of the Kent mineworkers, Ken Coates of the Institute for Workers Control, Ernie Roberts of the AUEW [the engineering union] and Stan Newens MP. The central theme of the march was for a boycott of all goods waiting delivery to Chile from British factories and shipyards.

On the first anniversary of the coup, the Labour Party National Executive Committee voted to back the march called by the CSC. Speakers included Ron Hayward, Labour’s general secretary, Hortensia Allende, widow of the murdered president, Jack Jones, head of the Transport and General Workers Union and Tariq Ali for the IMG. Because the latter was speaking, the Trades Union Congress refused to back it! Then in the week before, because a general election had been called, Labour requested it be postponed. This the CSC rejected. On the day, 10,000 demonstrated in central London.

To conclude, I want to recall two significant acts of solidarity, both carried out in Scotland. A year after the coup, a Chilean submarine arrived to have its tail shafts replaced at the Rosyth naval dockyard. Shop stewards refused to carry out the work, and wrote to the Ministry of Defence stating: ‘No future Chilean Navy work will be done in Rosyth dockyard until the fascist junta is removed and a freely, democratically elected government put in power and human rights restored in Chile.’ The boycott of work for the Chilean navy remained in place for four years until the MoD agreed they would not be asked to do such work.

Meanwhile, Rolls Royce workers in East Kilbride refused to release engines for the very planes that had bombed Allende’s presidential palace.[10] The Engineering Union asked the workers to lift their boycott on the grounds Rolls Royce was a nationalised industry! Eventually in February 1975, under pressure from the union leadership the boycott was called off.

The action of Scottish workers had an impact within Chile itself:

‘One Chilean exile, Sergio, recounted that he was in prison when he heard the news from the guard’s radio that British workers had blocked Chilean weapons. He recalled this as a moment of hope for him which gave him the strength to continue. When he was exiled to Britain, he returned to visit the workers of East Kilbride who had refused to work on Chilean weapons, to thank them for their act of solidarity.’[11]

Such actions by workers in Scotland were not just an inspiration, they showed what real solidarity could deliver, and what was possible if the entire left had put their backs into building it.

Notes

[1] Mike González, ‘Chile 1972-73: The Workers United,’ in Revolutionary Rehearsals, ed. Colin Barker (London: Bookmarks, 1987), p.81.

[2] Mike González, ‘A People’s Tragedy’, Socialist Review, No.222 (September 1998), p.19.

[3] Kyle Steenland, ‘The Coup in Chile’, Latin American Perspectives, Vol. 1, No. 2, Chile: Blood on the Peaceful Road (Summer, 1974), pp.9-29.

[4] David Beecham, ‘Chile: The End of the Parliamentary Road to Socialism’, Socialist Review 57, September 1983.

[5] Grace Livingstone, America’s Backyard: The United States and Latin America from the Monroe Doctrine to the War on Terror (Zed Books 2009), p.76.

[6] Ralph Miliband, ‘The Coup in Chile,’ Socialist Register 1973 (Merlin Press), p.464.

[7] Shirin Hirsch, ‘A Quarrel of Limited Concern to the People of this Country’?: The British Labour Movement and Chile Solidarity’, Labour History Review 81.3, 2016, pp.237-57.

[8] Giacomo Sani, ‘The PCI on the Threshold’, Problems of Communism 25, November-December 1976, p.40.

[9] James E. Dougherty and Dianne K. Pfaltzgraff, ‘Euro-Communism and the Atlantic Alliance’, Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis, 1977, p.40-2

[10] Chris Bambery, A People’s History of Scotland (Verso, 2014), p.250.

[11] Shirin Hirsch, ‘A Quarrel of Limited Concern to the People of this Country’?: The British Labour Movement and Chile Solidarity’.

(Chris Bambery is an author, political activist and commentator, and a supporter of Rise, the radical left wing coalition in Scotland. His books include ‘A People’s History of Scotland’ and ‘The Second World War: A Marxist Analysis’. Courtesy: Counterfire, a British socialist organisation that also runs a website.)