The latest issue of Our Common Struggle, journal of che Portuguese Workers Co-ordinating Committee, has articles on Republica, textile workers' struggles, the political crisis in Portugal, NATO and the Azores, Spain, local workers' struggles, and news of the Portuguese Solidarity Campaign. Available from Red Books, 97 Caledonian Road, London N.1. Price 13p (including postage). transition period being intended to provide time to construct a reliable pro-capitalist government and weld the three movements' guernila armies into a unified bourgeois army.
The Portuguese Government signed the agreement because it seemed to offer the best chance of restoring political stability to the crisis-wracked country. The African masses were demanding national independence and engaging in ever-more militant mass struggles; strikes were breaking out in one industry after another; peasants were seizing lands belonging to foreign-owned plantations; and thousands of workers had armed themselves in self-defence after facing vigilante attacks by right-wing settlers. The Armed Forces Movement calculated that the best way of demobilising the masses would be to bring the nationalist moveHowever, despite the statements of the MPLA leaders, the base of support of the MPLA is prepared to act beyond their declarations.
RADICALISATION
The Alvor agreement failed to forge a strong neo-colonial regime. The radicalisation continued apace. Though the dockworkers were placed under military control in accord with the 'Mobilisation Law', they went back on strike, winning big wage increases. On 9 April the Popular Neighbourhood Commissions in Luanda organised a huge demonstration against the law. The Transitional Government was also completely incapable of disarming the workers.
red weekly 24 july 1975 chile/desmond trotter. .9