A touching little gathering took place in Downing Street last week. Hosted by Harold Wilson, social democratic leaders from all over Western Europe - Francois Mitterrand of France, Willy Brandt of West Germany, Olaf Palme of Sweden, and others — gathered to discuss the situation in Portugal. Solidarity was the theme. But it was not solidarity with the Portuguese workers.
The same "leaders' who stayed silent during the years of the Salazar/Caetano dictatorship and welcomed Portugal into NATO, were there to discuss how to crush the Portuquese Revolution in the embrace of the capitalist The economic sabotage of the multinational companies has already taken a terrible toll. Now these worthy gentlemen seek to turn the screw once more. By making Common Market economic aid dependent on the establishment of an acceptable capitalist democracy' in Portugal, they aim to destroy the living workers' democracy and the embryos of workers' power that have begun to flower in Portugal in the past seventeen months. the workers looking too closely into the workings of the capitalist system itself.
Nor was the social democratic leaders rhetoric exhausted in these phrases. There were others equally fine sounding about the need for a 'free flow of information' -although it is not thought that Wilson and company had Lee Kuan Yew, Prime Minister of Singapore, in mind. This fellow member of the "Socialist' International has the nasty habit of throwing critical journalists in jail at four in the morning and keeping them there indefinitely.
So what was this gathering all about? The game was given away at the subsequent press conference by 'honest' Willy Brandt, the chairman of this 'Committee of Friendship with Democracy and Socialism in Portugal'. He told assembled journalists that the position of Portugal was decisive for Western Europe because of its relationship to NATO. Quite what 'democracy and socialism' have to do with this counter-revolutionary military alliance even he didn't try to explain.
But if Wilson and his colleagues don't see the need to explain this relationship, the Portuguese working class certainly does. For 25 years NATO bolstered the Salazar and Caetano dictatorships and encouraged Portuguese colonialism to continue its wars of oppression in Africa. Similarly NATO engineered the colonels' coup in Greece in 1967 when even 'pluralist democracy could not stop the workers getting restive. is all too clearly seen behind the anti-communist movement in the Azores - which just happens to be the key military staging post between the US and the Middle East. Portugal is in the news - often very inaccurately - because the people of Portugal are creating a socialist society. In this task they need the sup port of the entire British Labour movenrent and not the obstruction of those who during the long years of fascism were apologists for 'Britain's oldest ally.
For this reason we urge the widest support for a mass demonstration to be held in London on Saturday, 20 September, organised by the Portuguese Workers' Co-ordinating Committee. The main slogans And today NATO's hand of the demonstration will be those used by this committee in its solidarity campaign in recent months: No economic boycott: Big business, NATO, CIA - hands off Portugal; Portugal must not become another Chile: Support the solidarity campaign with the Portuguese working class.
The demonstration will be held in Hyde Park near Speakers" Corner, preceded by a march starting at 2,30pm. Trade union, trades council and similar banners will be welcomed. Preparatory meetings are being planned in many places, and speakers are available for these from the Portuguese Workers Coordinating Committee (18 Fleet Road, London NW3) The entire mobilisation can not be achieved on goodwi alone; we urge readers and their organisations to rush donations to the conmittee now, and prepare their part icipation.
Ken Fleet Ken Coates Joan Maynard MP Audrey Wise MP Dennis Skinner MP