Olten Action Committee

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The Olten Action Committee (OAK) was a management staff of the Swiss workforce in 1918 . It united the heads of the trade unions and the Social Democratic Party under the leadership of Robert Grimm .

founding

The reason for the establishment of the Olten Action Committee was given by the Federal Council's plans in the winter of 1917/18 to introduce general civil service. It would have authorized the government to mobilize large sections of the population to provide aid in the public interest.

The background to this proposal was the poor food supply in the fourth year of the war ; Agricultural yields should be optimized through measures such as soil improvement and melioration work. Sections of the working class, however, who had lost all confidence in the government as a result of the continued abuse of the Federal Council's general power of attorney , saw the bill as nothing more than a straitjacket for the proletariat, "all of Switzerland a joke ." The Zurich Workers' Union therefore called on the Swiss Confederation of Trade Unions and the management of the Social Democratic Party of Switzerland in the party press to demand that the Federal Council withdraw the bill, demobilize and repeal the powers of attorney under threat of a national general strike .

When the troubled Federal Council then issued a troop contingent for Zurich, the leaders of the Social Democrats were alarmed, as this measure seemed to confirm the fears they had harbored. At Robert Grimm's instigation, top representatives of the trade union federation and social democracy met in the Olten Volkshaus on February 4, 1918 for a conference at which an "action committee" formed from representatives of both organizations was appointed to combat the civil service bill.

The seven-member committee was made up of representatives from the Swiss Confederation of Trade Unions (SGB) and the Social Democrats. The leading figure was Robert Grimm .

Development from February to November 1918

From the beginning, the committee under Grimm's leadership was characterized by its conspiratorial character - to the displeasure of the party leadership , which felt that it was being ignored. Grimm knew how to position the preparatory body within a few months as a powerful "executive committee" that was able to coordinate the actions of the party and the trade unions. The success of an arbitrary strike threat raised in April 1918 without consulting the party and the trade union federation, which forced the Federal Council to withdraw a milk price increase, not only promoted the reputation of the action committee among the workers, but also established the mass strike as a weapon of war.

In the summer the discussion about a nationwide general strike flared up again. Following riots in Basel, which resulted in assault and property damage, the Federal Council gave the cantons the opportunity to police public gatherings. The Social Democrats saw it as an attempt to restrict freedom of assembly . The First General Swiss Workers' Congress , which took place on 27./28. July 1918, which took place in Bern, authorized the Olten Action Committee to negotiate with the Federal Council on this issue, to prepare a state general strike and, if necessary, to trigger it. This decided the long internal party tug-of-war over the strike issue.

Up until then, the nationwide mass strike was mainly rhetoric, but now, for the first time, concrete organizational preparations have been made to carry it out. Only the unexpected relenting of the Federal Council to the demands of the workers prevented a large, temporary general strike in the summer. Despite this concession by the state government, it was decided to continue planning the emergency and to remain in combat readiness.

For the first time in the history of Switzerland, a kind of social partnership emerged : a constructive cooperation between the government and the OAK to solve the most pressing problems facing the workforce. The OAK succeeded in negotiating social and economic issues with the state authority on an equal footing. Not everyone liked this development; Resistance to "going to court" arose especially in the radical wing of the working class; It was accompanied by massive agitation against the committee and its president in some of the workers' press, especially the Zurich “ People's Law ” edited by Ernst Nobs . The strike-ready base was not yet aware of the progress and was disappointed that things were not finally moving forward. This unrest in Zurich led to conflicts between the OAK and the more radical Zurich Workers' Union, which pushed for a general strike after the military occupation of Zurich on November 7th.

Relationship of the OAK to the Bolshevik Revolution

For a long time it was assumed that the Olten Action Committee was infiltrated and financed by the Soviet mission. There was talk of the "Olten Soviet", and there were even charges of treason . This representation contradicts the fact that with Robert Grimm a leader stood at his head who was opposed to the Leninist Zimmerwald left . We also know today that the OAK never planned an overthrow, even if it was occasionally thought out loud in the party press. For example, in October 1918, on the first anniversary of the Russian Revolution, the socialist papers published a “call for a revolutionary celebration” penned by Fritz Plattens , in which the following hotly controversial passage appeared: “The approaching revolution is already reddening the sky over Central Europe. The redeeming fire will seize the whole rotten, blood-soaked building of the capitalist world. " Not a few saw in this a sign of advanced revolutionary planning; this may explain the manifest fears of a revolutionary overthrow that accompanied the national strike.

The OAK in the state strike

Telegram dated November 10, 1918 calling for a strike by the staff of the federal companies
On November 13, the OAK called for an extension of the state strike, see right column, in: Bulletin of the "Free Councilor". Leaflet from Graubünden

There can be no question of the state strike in Moscow being orchestrated, as was long believed in bourgeois circles. Such external interventions were not even necessary: ​​After the privations of the four years of war, it did not take much to turn the social unrest in the cities into a massive wave of protests. The decision of the Federal Council to station troops as a precautionary measure in view of the upcoming celebrations for the anniversary of the October Revolution in Zurich was enough to let the long-pent-up conflict explode. The decision of the Zurich Workers' Union to continue the protest strike against the troop contingent on Saturday, November 9th the following Monday, forced the Action Committee to call a general strike if it wanted to assert its claim to leadership. As a result of the initiative of the Zurich workers, as a St. Gallen councilor put it, "one was in the fatal position of a general staff whose troops attacked without orders" (Gautschi, p. 278). (For details on the national strike see there.)

The demands made by the OAK on the occasion of the state strike in November 1918 in its so-called nine-point program were:

  • immediate election of the National Council according to the proportional system ,
  • active and passive women's right to vote ,
  • Creation of old-age and disability insurance,
  • Introduction of a general duty to work,
  • 48-hour week,
  • Reorganization of the Swiss army in the sense of a people's army,
  • Expansion of the food supply,
  • State monopolies for import and export and
  • Repayment of all national debts by the haves.

Results and consequences of the national strike

At first glance, the national strike was a debacle. To the great disappointment of the workforce, the hoped-for results did not materialize. In the general strike process the strike took his law degree. The strike leaders Grimm, Schneider and Platten were each sentenced to six months and Nobs to four weeks in prison; In addition, a large number of secondary lawsuits were initiated across the country, in particular against military men, railway workers and party and trade union officials. Anyone who simply stopped working was not punished.

The Olten Action Committee was discredited by the defeat and sank into insignificance, which could not prevent its partial replacement and renaming to the "Central Action Committee" at the Second General Swiss Workers' Congress (1919). In the following time it was mainly occupied with paying off the mountain of debt of over 120,000 francs. It was never formally dissolved, it simply never came together.

As a direct effect of the national strike, class antagonisms in Switzerland intensified. Right wing circles had formed paramilitary vigilante groups in various places during the fighting to fend off the impending revolution. In the following they organized themselves in the right-wing patriotic association .

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