Portugal must be located. A wave of strikes The strike movement in the factories become generalized only after the mossive demonstrations of May 1. To be sure, they fir into the framewark of the upsurge of workers struggles during 1973 and the beginning of 1974 (there were 200 strikes in January 1974), an upsurge that was linked to the explosion of inflation that began in the middle of 1973. Nevertheless, the limits of this strike movement have appeared both in terms of their objectives and in terms of their dispersion and forms of struggle. On April 25 (the day of the coup), there was anly one factory on strike, the Mague metallurgical company (2,000 workers). The demands of the workers were immediately granted. Work started ogain on April 26. The junta clearly showed its position: the strike wos sharply attacked and the officers indicated that this "example" should not be followed. Nevertheless, after the May 1 mobilizations revealed the relationship of forces between the bourgeoisie and the toiling
5
PORTUGAL
B 50-5 Striking dock workers in Lisbon. masses, a wave of strikes broke out in all economic sectors with a strength that the organizers of the coup never expected. To varying degrees, the strikes fused with the struggle against the fascist apparatus, including its representatives and its traditions. Because of this, the strikes took on a new dimension, whatever illusions may have been present (and still are) among very broad sectors of the working masses. Thus, on April 30 Rodio Renascença was paralyzed by a nineteen-hour strike after the owners refused to broodcast interviews with political exiles. On May 9 the workers af the printing company that publishes Portugal O Seculo, one of the biggest newspapers, went on strike for five hours because the owners hod prevented the workers from using the front page to print the entire text of their communiqué. The workens of the nowspaper A Capital walked out in solidarity with their comrades from O Seculo. The movement extended into the construction industry, where immigrant workers -- most of them from Cape Verde -- fought side by side with Portuguese workers in a very militant struggle. On May 15, the workers of various construction companies went on strike (Habitat, Micorel, Compov a Francisco dos Santos, Lda.) and organized flying squads to protect their struggle. On May 13 immigrant workers (400 from Cape Verde) and Portuguese workers (1, 200) in the Ponasqueire iron mines launched a movement that lasted until May 20, when all their demands were met (guaranteed minimum wage of 6,000 escudos a month, extra month's pay every year, free medical assistance, one month vacation). The workers commission that led the strike was composed of four Portuguese and four Cape Verde workers. The chemical industry (Laboratoire Pfizer, Bayer, Cibe-Geigy Portuguesa Lda, Rabapharm-Suiça), the automobile industry and the industries related to it (Renault-Lisbon, on strike May 23; Toyota- Transmotor, where a struggle broke out on May 15; Firestone), the food industry, the banks and insurance companies, were all hit by workers mobilizations. The overwhelming majority of these movements had a semispontaneous character. The level of consciousness was limited; but the demands raised, although they were fairly strictly confined to the economic level, involved important goals and expressed the workers' conviction that they could win their demands because of the general relationship of forces. The demands that were raised in nearly all these mobilizations were: minimum monthly wage of 6,000 escudos, forty-hour workweek, thirteen and fourteen months' pay a year, one month vacation, guaranteed wages in case of illness or acci6
.. a wave of strikes broke out in all the economic sectors with a strength that the organizers of the coup never expected. dent. Demands directed against the capitalist organization of labor were rare, but those concerning security of employment (rehiring of fired workers, no layoffs) became more and more numerous as the mobilizations went on. This is obviously important, for the fight against unemployment may well be one of the main axes of the mobilizations in autumn. The process of conscious unification of the movement was very limited, being restricted to the textile industry, where the MES (Movimento do Esquerdo Socialista -- Movement of the Socialist Left) has an important trade-union influence. On May 12, some 6,000 warkers of the wool industry (Lanificios da Covilha, Tortozendo, Unhais da Sena) initiated a struggle demanding a 1,000 escudo increase for all. On the some day, strikes broke out in the wool industry in Porto and Costanheira de Pera. Thus, by May 14, more than 20,000 workers in the textile industry were engaged in struggle. In many factories, democratic forms of organization of the strikes emerged. Workers commissions were elected in order to work out a platform of demands and organize the fight. This was the cose, for example, in the Lisnave shipyards (where 8,400 workers went on strike on May 13) and in the Messa metal factory (on strike since May 16), in which a workers commission composed of nine members organized the occupation of the factory and the formation of picket squads. These workers commissions were somewhere between strike committees and factory committees. They united the workers vanguard in the leadership of the strike and also organized general assemblies of workers to make essential decisions. At Messa and Timex these workers commissions rejected the intervention of the Union Federation (controlled by the CP). which tried to interfere in the strike to take over its leadership and destroy the democratic forms of organization that had developed in the struggle. So the Portuguese workers struggles are taking on one of the dominant features of the workers struggles throughout Europe since 1968 -- and this in spite of (and partly because of the several decades of oppression by the corporatist regime. The wave of mobilizations has receded since May 30-31. But it would be completely wrong to interpret this decline in struggles either as a defeat or as evidence of the CP's or the Union Federation's ability to control the situation. The Portuguese workers, whose traditions of struggle and organization are weak and whose democratic illusions run high, returned to work after what they considered victories. As far as wages are concerned, although the CP supported the minimum wage of 3,300 escudos a month that had been "granted"
by the provisional government (before April 25 the CP was demanding 6,000 escudos), the increases won in struggle were generally on the order of 1,000 to 1,500 escudos and the minimum wages most often exceeded by several hundred escudos the national minimum "offered" by the provisional government. As far as the workweek is concerned, victories were less numerous. But vacations were won. And the decline of the struggles is not so strange considering that in a few days thousands of Portuguese workers will be able to go on paid vacations for the first time. The return to work must be considered in this context, and consequently, the crucial question remains what kind of reaction the toiling masses will mount to a worsening of the economic situation and to a coun feroffensive by the employers. New forms of struggle... and an old policy At the time that a return to work is spreading, some strikes have arisen whose goals and organization indicate the deeper process of radicalization that is affecting advanced sectors of the working closs. The strikes at Timex and Messa presage what could develop more widely during a new rise of struggles, It must first of all be understood that such strikes immediately confront the whole anti-strike campaign the CP has been waging, a campaign that has been taken up by the junta. The continuation of these strikes therefore involves a process of politicization -- breaking with the line of the CP and opposing the maneuvers of the Union Federation, which is seeking to get a tight grip on these struggles in order to be able to strangle them. This confrontation and this breaking with the CP line involves a strengthening both of the forms of self-organization and of the support campaigns for the struggles. On May 27, after having waged a strike from May 9 to May 15 and after having put the forty-hour workweek into effect themselves, the Timex workers occupied the factory. The workers commission that is leading the strike organized strike pickets, gained control over the company's stocks, prevented any watches from being shipped out, and planned on occupying the company offices and on establishing a "war chest" to make sure that the workers would be paid for the fime they were on strike. The struggle at Lip in France had developed on influence that spread as for as Lisbon! And the Timex workers in Besançon and Glasgow will in turn integrate into their own struggles the experiences of their Portuguese comrades. In addition, the working men and women of Timex, like those of Messa, published a newspaper in order to publicize their struggle, a newspaper in which they more and more consciously expressed their opposition to the strategy of the CP and the Únion Federation. Finally, they organized demonstrations in conjunction with the Timex Support Committee, in which the militants of the LCI (Liga Comunista Internacionalista -- Internationalist Communist League, Portuguese sympathizing organization of the Fourth International) played a decisive role. These few experiences that are developing today must be broadly popularized in order to prepare for the future struggles that may break out in Seplember, after the vocations. The elements at work in these strikes (the demands like integration of bonuses into base wages, the initiatives tending toward workers control, the democratic organization of the struggle and the factory occupations, the de facto opposition to the policy of the CP) have allowed the revolutionary Marxists to develop agitation and propoganda that is winning a significant hearing among the young workers who, after having successfully led strikes and having fought for democratic management of the struggle, find themselves facing a Communist party that is actually opposing their struggle.
In fact, the CP has only intensified its anti-strike campaign and it attacks on the far left. The Executive Commission of the Communist party Central Committee has declared: "We face a conspiracy of reactionary forces that have not yet been dislodged from their positions by the April 25 movement and who, with the conscious or unconscious aid of groups of adventurers who claim to be leftists, are seeking to provoke a situation of economic chaos and destroy the democratic gains that have already been won. By playing on the poverty of the workers, such elements are revealing themselves as singularly generous in devising the demands they raise in order to provoke the ruin and bankruptcy of the small and middle-sized companies and press for a rise in wages that is incompatible with the possibilities of numerous sectors. " On June 11, during a meeting in Baixa do Banheira, a city where the CP has a strong base, Dios Laurenço, the director of the CP newspaper Avante, declared: "The for left, whether consciously or unconsciously, is ecting in favor of reaction." TO Seculo, June 12.) And he strongly insisted on the fact that "the Communists are in the government in order to carry out the program of the armed forces" and that the main threat lay in the development of strikes that were desired by reaction and the "ultraleftists" who would take advantage "of an inexperienced, politically very young working class that could be plunged into an adventure"! Thus, the CP is fighting in the front ranks in the battle to strangle struggles like those ot Timex, Messa, and Mabor (a fire factory in Porto), struggles that could play the role of leavening for future mobilizations and challenge the project of constructing a sort of Portuguese CGT, which is what the CP is trying to do in uniting forty-nine corporatist tradeunions in the Union Federation. This policy has led the CP even to renounce defending the most immediate interests of the workers, the demands around which tens of thousands of workers have been mobilized (some of these demands being ones that the CP itself supported before April 25) and to present as resounding victories things like the agreement reached by one of the union leoders who, after sixteen hours of negotiations with the employers organization, "wrenched out" a minimum wage of 4,500 escudos and a forty-fiverhour workweek in the name of the Civil Construction Union in the Baixo do Banheira region. Even in relation to the most immediate problems it appears that the CP is totally disarming the workers in face of the policy of the employers, who can only be expected to try to maintain the "wage advantages" they hold over their European competitors in the Common Market and who will try to win back what they have been forced to yield under the "pressure of events" -- not to mention the restructuring process that they are going to undertake to absorb the increase in unit production costs. It is not likely -- and there are already various indications of this - that the CP will be able to continue this policy and still maintain its present influence over the working masses. The demonstration to support the policy of the Ministry of Labor, at the head of which marched the "Communist" Pacheco Gonpalves, was a failure. On May 30, the day of the march, no more than 5,000 or 6,000 demonstrotors expressed their support of the policy of "national union" and of the "antistrike struggle." The national anthem was sung in this demonstration, and portraits of Spinola were carried. Finally, the Union of Communist Students has just swelled the ranks of the workers favoring "social peace." Obviously, the partial failure of the CP's policy depands in large part on the ability of the revolutionary vanguard to develop the broadest movement around goals the workers aspire to and to stimulate and popularize the experiences of struggles whose anticapitalist content is more and more mork-
7
ed. This also necessitates educational propaganda on revolutionary strategy as an altemative to the reformists' policy. Finally, revolutionaries must be present in the process of roorganization of the trade unions in order to build the initial elements of a clear opposition to the policy of the Union Spinola details his colonial and repressive policy Another main axis of the work of revolutionaries is anticoIonialist and antimilitarist work. This is all the more important in that Spinola has just announced -- in choice language -- that Independence for the colonies will not come soon. In his June 11 speech -- which was similar in both form and content to the "dogmatic" speeches of the Salazerist regime -Spinola defined for the first time the colonial policy of the junta, since the "provisional government" is nothing but a screen for the real power of the military. Spinola said: 'In the modern world, when real political independence exists, it is the product of genuine self-determination, ond there can be self-determination only in a free atmosphere when democratic institutions are functioning perfectly. Now, we must conclude that such institutions do not exist in the overseas territories and, consequently, that their inhabitants do not possess effective forms of expression and participation and that what immediate independence really means today would be nothing other than a negation of universally accepted democratic ideas, which are the ideas that inspire the Armed Forces Movement. The right of self-determination of peoples, with all its consequences, must not be confounded with the imposition of choices in whose determination these peoples have not participated. " (Diario de Noticias, June 12, 1974.)
VIVA AS ARMP SP and CP leaders Soares and Cunhal: We support General Spinola. A nice piece of prose! The central option of the Portuguese bourgeoisie is thus confirmed. Soares, the Social Democrat, is supposed to try to obtain a cease-fire that would allow spirits in the army to calm down and to open up a long process of negotiations with the idea of maintaining maximum advantages for the Portuguese bourgeoisie in the two richest colonies (Mozambique and Angrla), where important groups
8
(mainly Champolimaud) have enormous interests, The options Spinola has proposed under the name of "decolonization" range from the federation of "close cooperation" to the "community." In this context it is important and more vital than ever for the junta to strike af those who are carrying on systematic anticolonialist and antimilitarist activity and who are aggravating the process of disintegration of the army, the bourgeoisie's last stronghold. There is therefore a symmetry between Spínolo's declarations on "decolonization" and the arrest of Soldanho Sanches, leader of the Maoist organization MRPP (Movement for the Reconstruction of the Party of the Proletariat), and the police repression that was used for the first time during the demonstration at the military hospital demanding the release of Peralia (a Cuban officer arrested by Portuguese troops in Guineo-Bissau), and the veiled warnings Spinola has addressed to the CP, a Communist party that nevertheless keeps quiet about the colonial question at all its meetings. International solidarity with the struggles of the portuguese workers Our comrades of the LC are fighting in the front ranks of a battle that is being waged on two fronts: the development of anticolonial and antimilitarist work and the response to the first attempts af repressing the far left. They are leoding the Committees for the Immediate and Unconditional Independence of the Colonies (CICs). These committees are rank-and-file bodies fighting: * for the immediate and unconditional independence of the colonies and supporting the struggles of the liberation movements, the PAIG, the MPLA, and FRELIMO, * against all the neocolonialist maneuvers like "self-determination, " "referendum, " and "federation, " * for the destruction of all forms of racism and chauvinism still present among broad sectors of the toiling masses, which ore handles by which the bourgeoisie can dominate and divide the workers, * for developing the anticolonial struggle as an integral part of the struggle for revolution in Portugal, by affirming the identity of interests between the struggle of the peoples of the colonies and the struggle of the Portuguese workers. In response to the arrest of Soldanho Sanches our comrades of the LCI, along with the CBS, the PRP, and the LUAR (Socialist Base Commissions, Revolutionary Proletarian party, League of Revolutionary Unity), organized a central demonstration for Wednesday, June 12, to demand the immediate release of Sanches, the elimination of the fascist penal code and the fascist laws, for the freedom of assembly and expression, for the freedom to demonstrate in the streets, factories, and schools, and for the immediate and unconditional independence of the colonies. This was done despite the fact that the MRPP itself, which is heavily marked by sectarianism, obstinately refused to organize a demonstration. The far left's ability to respond to events and the audience it is able to win will be decisive in the development of the political situation in Portugal during the coming months. The responsibilities of the revolutionaries are immense. And international solidarity must measure up to the tasks that confront our Portuguese comrades. June 12, 1974
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