A-Infos (en) IWA on Lawsuits Brought by CNT-Splitters (ca)

On April 30, 2018, the IWA General Secretary visited the legal counsel of the CNT-AIT 
concerning lawsuits brought against some of its member unions and later participated in a 
press conference together with representatives of the Secretariat of our Section in Spain. 
The purpose of this conference was to publically clarify positions and present facts 
concerning this case. ---- Background ---- The CNT-AIT is the Section of the International 
Workers' Association in Spain and the IWA has recognized it as the continuation of the 
CNT-AIT. At the same time, there is an organization called CNT, which is split from the 
IWA and thus the CNT-AIT. There are also at least a dozen other organizations called CNT 
which are neither federated in that CNT Confederation, nor the CNT-AIT. These are mostly 
organizations which left or were expelled - either according to the Statues or not - from 
the CNT Confederation which currently is headquartered in Bilbao. We will refer to this as 
CNT-R (CNT renovada or CNT reformed).

Almost a decade ago, the CNT-R began an ideological drift - one of many that occurred in 
the history of the organization. As part of this drift and echoing the drift that took 
place from 1979-1984, when what is now the CGT created a split in the organization, the 
CNT-R began to reassess its relationship with the International Workers Association. The 
CNT-R presented numerous proposals which would marginalize or eliminate the majority of 
the international Sections, therefore they were rejected by 3 Congresses. The continual 
attempts to split the IWA according to the size of the unions, combined with attempts to 
create new networks with other organizations finally led the CNT-R to actions aimed to 
undermine the IWA and to attempt to coerce it into accepting its positions. The results of 
this will be presented further.

The Genesis of Splits in Spain

In Spain, in order to accomplish the ideological drift, a series of purges in the 
organization had to be carried out. At the same time, increasing irregularities appeared 
in the organization which on various occasions went against the statutes of the CNT-AIT. 
The 9th Congress of the CNT was already marked by irregularities. Following this, a 
scandal occurred within the CNT which gave shape to many of the current problems. This 
scandal started in 2008 and involved the buying of votes by the local Federation of 
Seville and other anti-statutory acts, such as dual membership and helping a parallel 
organization which participated as representatives in the work councils. The scandal led 
to an internal investigation which ended in several expulsions of individuals from that 
organization. However, as things progressed in Seville and the Andalucian regional 
organization, it turned out that in reality, there started a conflict about the future 
direct of the organization. Those who held positions of authority and leadership in the 
Committees responded to growing criticism of what was happening by various expulsions.

One of the people involved in those internal conflicts was the lawyer, Escribiano, who is 
now suing several unions of the CNT-AIT. This lawyer was one of the anti-heros of the 
first series of purges which took place in the Andalucian region. He was inhabilitated by 
the comrades of his union but after some while, the higher instances decided to give the 
SOV of Sevilla an ultimatum: to fully accept Escribiano as a member, despite threats he 
made against other members, or to be expelled from the CNT.

In such ways, several radical unions of the Andalucian region were expelled or decided to 
leave. Following this, other unions of that Regional decided to maintain contacts with 
those defederated unions rather than to deal with the unions which began to dominate the 
Region.

Following the X Congress, more purges were in sight - some successful, some not. Various 
unions left the organization and continue on as local groups. One entire Regional 
(Levante) was later expelled, but in a way that is not in accordance with the CNT-AIT 
statutes. Therefore it cannot be said that the Levante Regional was correctly expelled, 
but only that the entities that dominate the current CNT-R yet again broke the statutes of 
the CNT-AIT.

Anti-Statutory Actions against the IWA

At the same time, the CNT-AIT, which the CNT-R faction was member until recently, faced 
various challenges to its statutes by the practices of the CNT-R faction which, by virtue 
of purges and practices, slowly became the dominant faction. One of the numerous 
violations of the CNT-AIT statutes was the incompliance of binding agreements towards the 
IWA, which occured in an anti-statutory manner. The CNT-AIT statutes clearly state that 
they are a member of the IWA and the budgetary agreements require the Treasurer to pay IWA 
dues out of each members dues. Without any decision of the organization, the Treasurer, in 
agreement with the Secretary, withheld dues that were paid by the membership on several 
occasions. This was a serious breach of its mandate and statutory obligations for which 
they only received consent in December 2015, during the XI Congress in Zaragoza.

During this time, numerous unions of the CNT-AIT complained to the IWA that the 
organization had gone into arrears and faced expulsion from the IWA due to the 
anti-statutory actions of the executive, which unfortunately could not be held accountable 
to the organization. When speaking of anti-statutory actions, it should be specified that 
the executives, which came from the CNT-R faction, broke both the Statutes of the 
International Workers Association and the CNT-AIT.

The unions of the CNT-AIT consider that what is now the CNT-R created an anti-statutory 
faction inside CNT-AIT, thus creating a split. The CNT-R ignored many of the statutory 
obligations of the CNT-AIT and caused various organizations to be expelled or to leave.

The XI Congress in Zaragoza declared its hostile intentions to also split the IWA. It's 
idea was to ignore the binding statutes and agreements of said organization and to hold an 
anti-statutory Congress to "relaunch" the international federation. According to this 
plan, the very fact of this agreement would mean that the CNT-R would refuse to recognize 
the majority of Sections of the IWA as part thereof.

Upon publically declaring its intentions to ignore the binding Statutes and to attempt to 
split and re-create the IWA, it became clear that this organization could not in fact 
continue in the IWA or claim the legacy of the CNT-AIT.

In 2016, the IWA declared that CNT had both left the IWA of its own accord (by deciding 
not to abide by its statutes) and had to be expelled (for trying to split it and create a 
parallel organization). At the same time, we recognized that many comrades in Spain, both 
in and outside that organization, still followed the statutes of CNT-AIT and wished to 
remain as the Spanish Section. However, for that to happen, it needed to declare that the 
reformist faction was not in fact the CNT-AIT.

The Extraordinary Congress of the IWA in 2017 declared that the CNT-AIT is the 
continuation of our Spanish Section and indeed this means it is the continuation of our 
historic organization.

Lawsuits

In 2018, lawsuits were filed against several organizations of the CNT-AIT, against an 
anarchist Ateneum and 3 individual people. Each lawsuit seeks 50,001 euros in so-called 
moral damages. The lawsuit mainly rests on supposed slanderous statements against the CNT-R.

Several anonymous people from the CNT-R, who do not have the courage to publically reveal 
their identities, appear in some popular internet forums and have tried to imply that 
these suits are something normal, similar to the lawsuits brought in 1985 against what was 
then the CNT-U (later the CGT), regarding the use of the acronym CNT.

There are numerous reasons why this is not true.

* The CNT-R did not sue the CNT-AIT. It sued several of its unions. Thus this cannot be 
seen as a case against the CNT-AIT.

* The CNT-R did not bring a suit to declare that the CNT-AIT has no right as a whole to 
use the initials CNT. The CNT-R brought a suit against individuals unions, claiming money 
for "moral damages" citing various articles on the internet and they claim monetary 
compensation for damages caused by using the initials CNT.

* The CNT-R does not claim exclusive rights to the initials CNT. The CNT Catalunya, which 
was expelled more than 20 years ago has been freely using those initials for decades but 
is not the subject of any lawsuits. Likewise, numerous organizations throught Spain use 
this name and have not been subject to lawsuits. The lawsuits relate to organizations that 
the CNT-R want to destroy.

Thus these suits are quite different than the suit initiated by Gomez-Casas in 85. The 
earlier suit was against an entire organizational entity for the name and attached rights 
but did not include any punitive elements.

The current suits are not against the CNT-AIT, but against individual unions, an anarchist 
group and even individuals and the bulk of the case hinges on the so-called slander to the 
CNT and its reputation. Instead of simply trying to demand that the initials CNT not be 
used, it is using extreme coercion against individuals. Under Spanish law, if said union 
does not have funds to pay debts or judgements, the Secretaries of these organizations 
will be held personally liable. Failure to pay can result in imprisonment.

However one assesses the suits of the 1980s and their results, the fact is that these 
legal battles were not against individuals or individual unions and thus were not 
attempted vendettas. They did not seek the financial ruin of the other party, they did not 
attempt to violate the right to freely express opinions nor did they involve the possible 
loss of freedom of any people. Finally, the CNT-R has appealed to the state in these 
current cases to act as a Co-Plaintiff.

Worst of all, the suits were not the subject of an agreement made by any national assembly 
of the CNT-R, but were the result of an executive decision, under the pretext of 
"defending the CNT". Not that such suits would be any better if they had been made by the 
general membership.

Defense of the CNT-AIT

The IWA Secretariat considers that the defense of the CNT-AIT is more than just the 
natural defense of our Spanish Section, which results from the practices of solidarity the 
International has always shown when our Sections are being repressed or attacked.

The defense of the CNT-AIT is also a defense of many other issues. Like the defense of 
liberty. It is absolutely not acceptable that punitive measures be taken against 
libertarian people for the "crime" of staying true to their believes and expressing their 
opinions.

Many people and organizations have expressed their opinions or misrepresented the IWA or 
its membership thereof. But the IWA has not sought to use the state to punish such people. 
The comrades of the IWA who have written criticisms for which they are being sued have 
agreed these texts in assemblies and have signed them. This should stand in stark contrast 
to the practices of some who pen long histories anonymously but imply they are positions 
of organizations. Those people do not take responsibility even for their own words.

The defense of the CNT-AIT is also the defense of a libertarian form of organizing in 
Spain, based on solid principles, as opposed to the current drift in the CNT-R, which 
draws it in the direction of verticalism, professionalism and executivism.

Finally, the defense of the CNT-AIT which is based on the anarchist ethic, as opposed to 
only the class ethic, is a defense of the values which the anarchists expoused against the 
Marxist orientation of the first international. A set of values which does not seek to 
reduce the struggle to the material field and includes a stress on anti-statism and freedom.

Current tendencies have been undermining these points in new attempts to combine various 
tendencies, both statist and anti-statist, in more neutral "class" organizations. These 
seek to do this to increase their numbers but while striving to become more numerous, they 
have been succesively giving in on clearer positions.

The CNT-AIT, like the IWA itself, continues to hold up its ideals, despite the recent 
attacks of the CNT-R, which have been shamelessly supported by proponents of neutral 
syndicalism.

The IWA Secretariat sees this situation as a disgrace in which the CNT-R has continously 
tried to strongarm the IWA and its Spanish Section. Instead of simply leaving the IWA or 
organizing a faction within it, it tried (unsuccessfully) to take it over and ended by 
attacking the comrades who showed solidarity with them for years. Instead of leaving the 
CNT-AIT to go about its business, they attempt to financially destroy them. And after 
years of disgracefully harrassing organizations that it considers "too small" or "too 
anarchistic", they look for support from tiny anarchist-specific organizations for their 
parallel project.

In the meanwhile we declare that we will let none of this impede our ongoing work.

The Secretary also would like to thank the numerous libertarian collectives in Spain and 
in other countries which have been supportive to our comrades and refuse to go along with 
the drift.

http://www.iwa-ait.org/content/iwa-general-secretary-lawsuits-brought-cnt-splitters
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