FA' alliance' (in which the PCP would act as rief representative of the mass of Portuguese orking people). For one thing, the policies of le Socialist Party and the Popular Democrats med to solve Portugal's problems by making a eal with imperialism: through imperialist conomic aid, encouraging foreign investment, ad integrating Portugal more closely with the pitalist Common Market.
As Socialist Party leader Mario Soares ankly admitted, this would mean offering uarantees' to foreign capital: that would quire serving up the heads of the most miliint sections of the Portuguese working class imperialism and tying Portugal firmly back to the imperialist political system. If the ommunist Party were to adopt such a course, its previous experience had shown, it would e threatened with a major loss of political fluence among the most class-conscious BUT...
More peacetu. our ine messace is me same. Angolan refugees march through Lisbon shouting anti-Commui nist slogans, and the Socialist Party is at the head!
workers in the key industrial regions.
At the same time the PCP was becoming increasingly aware that the legacies of a half-century of fascist rule and the continued domination of reactionary forces in important parts of the country guaranteed the victory of pro-capitalist spokesmen in the forthcoming elections. Under such circumstances the elections might well be followed by the squeezing of the PCP right out of the Government and the setting up of a coalition between the Socialist Party and the openly capitalist parties.
By basing itself on the alliance with the AFM the CP hoped to get round these difficulties. The differences between the different currents in the AFM gave it more room for manoeuvre, and allowed it to take a left turn', avoiding a political collision course with the demands and actions of the more militant workers. At the same time it hoped that by establishing itself as the "favourite' of the AFM, some of the latter's prestige would rub off and boost its chances in the elections.
In order to carry this tactic through it had to consolidate its position in the mass movement and begin a drive, often sectarian and manipulative, to ensure that PCP members held key offices in the union leaderships, local councils, and the state machine. Having opposed only a few months before the purging of reactionaries as a 'secondary problem, they now began to advocate such measures where One group of comrades" who will not be supporting the London demonstration in solidarity with the Portuguese working class on 20 September will be Harold Wilson and his cronies in the leadership of the Labour Party.
In mid-July Ron Hayward, the Labour Party General Secretary, returned from a three-day visit to Portugal - which he must have spent buried in the offices of the so-called Socialst Party-to declare: "It will be a tremendous tragedy if, after ou years or dictatorsmip, une Did or the people for true democracy is thwarted".
NATO After the years during which the Labour leaders solidly supported fascist Portugal's memoership of NATO, such a concern for democracy might seem a welcome change. But Hayward doesn't working class is busy creating its own version of true democracy -in the workers commission in the lactones hoods, and in the Popular Assemblies which also involve rank and file members of the armed forces. Of course, this DAILY EXPRESS
cont. from p. 7 I necky a august 1910 assemblies and, most important of all, a Portuguese masses. But that is a fight the