'The fundamental thing today is our unity. Tue revolutionary left inside the army is much more nomgeneous than it is in civil society. Our ideas are simple - we advocate popular power and national independence. We must win the people by taking up their day-to-day problems, giving them the opportunity so that they too can learn through experience a politics Isn't this indiscipline, asked the Le Monde interviewer. "Not at all', replied Gomes. 'It is real discipline, freely consented to by the soldiers who have lined up alongside the workers and peasants." Subversion, then? 'Yes", agreed the captain, 'a little'.
real freedom of information. e decision. Only one newspaper broke workers of ranks. A Luta, a new daily yees at a published by the former pers and owner of Republica, Raul ided openly Rego, announced that while is to organ- it had disagreements with the to discuss law it would nevertheless imend them plement it. s for public- No wonder the pro-capitalist Socialist Party leaders are still so insistent that RepDreSS 3IS0 rune cam- ublica be returned to the ary police clutches of Dr Rego. And no EC LOUDS wonder the Portuguese workAngola. ing class are so determined to emendous hold on to this valuable instruthe right to ment of struggle. RED WEEKLY: We have heard increasingly about the development of popular power in Portugal - how does this form of workers' democracy actually work out in practice? ALVARO MIRANDA: The development of popular power is very uneven throughout the country, and takes two distinct forms.
First there are the workers committees, which are very strong in all factories in industrial areas and are co-ordinated on an ad hoc basis in Lisbon and Portc. In Lisbon the coordination centres around the workers committees of the Lisnave and Setenave shipyards, the national steel works, Sorefame - these are the major industrial units - together with the TAP airline workers and the post office workers. Also involved are the workers at Republica and Radio Renascenca, which have become the symbols of independent working Class oreans.
The other form of popular power are the neighbourhood committees, which are of two The first are connected with the local government administration, and try ate in a legalistic manner. The others call themselves the revolutionary neighbourhood committees, and started from the occupation of empty buildings. mittees are co-ordinated by an all-Lisbon secretariat of two representatives from each district, and they also exchange delegates with the Setubal neighbourhood committees. Work is now in hand for a national secretariat, but their basic strength is in Lisbon and to a lesser extent in Porto.
The popular assemblies are less developed, and their character varies from place to place. There is a popular assembly covering the whole of Setubal, representing workers mittees, neighbourhood committees and the Armed Forces Movement. have been formed, the most active of which is the popular assembly of Pontinha. already running a number of social services - clinics, nurseries, old peoples homes, transport. As far as I know some exist in Porto, but in other areas they are just beginning to The general conception of the popular assemblies is that they will co-ordinate locally the activities of all the other rank-and-file organisations - neighbourhood committees and local army units.
Q. To what extent is the military involved - and how?
A. The army participation is not necessarily blies. years!
rank-and-file involvement.
to operThe revolutionary com In Lisbon a few This is start their campaign.
part of the agricultural proletariat? land, with technical help 'Institute of Agrarian Reform'.
Red Weekly interviews ALVARO MIRANDA of the Portuguese Workers Co-ordina ting Committee, who has recently returned from a visit to Portugal Actually the root of the present crisis was a decision of the MFA general assembly in July to move decisively towards the taking of power by the working masses, based on organs of popular power such as the popular assemThis was set out in a document known as the 'Document Guide of the MFA published at the end of the July assembly. Some of the officers accepted this document but saw it as a plan to be implemented over a very long period. Captain Vasco Lourenco, one of the Melo Antunes group, spoke about a period of thirty The document guide was in any case ambiguous on several points. It retained for the MFA overall control in the process, and did not explicitly state that any participation in Led on credit.
The workers, however, immediately seized on tne positive side of the document, started spontaneously forming nuclei of popular power, and held a number of demonstrations for their immediate establishment. It was this development - which threatened to produce a political alternative to the bourgeois democratic strategy of the SP and Popular Democrats (PPD) - rather than the official excuse of the Republica affair which led the SP leadership to leave the Government and Q.In the southern rural areashave there been similar examples of direct action on the A. There has been an important wave of land occupations carried out by the southern agricultural workers. These in the main have been supported by the agricultural workers' unions, which have been encouraging the formation of cooperatives on the occupied such as tractors, fertilisers, and agronomists provided by the It is estimated by the IAR that between a third and a half of the reform planned by the Government under the law which expropriates estates over 500 hectares has been carried out already by spontaneous occupations in the Beja and Evora districts of Alentejo.
Q. Little information seems to be getting diary bombs. through here about the direct effects of the in Portugal, did you hear of any concrete examples of deliberate sabotage?
A. It is obviously extremely difficult to document in detail the sabotage, because in most respects it is carried out by subtle means, like the cancellation of orders for Portuguese goods or services. But the Lisnave workers have been able to prove that the Swedish parent company was diverting ships due for repair away from Lisnave There is also a complete shut-down on credit by British banks to companies who wish to buy Portuguese goods. All the multinationals are demanding cash payment for sup plies of goods and components to their Portuguese subsidiaries which were previously obtainThere is also, of course, the recent announcement by ITT cutting off all finance for their Portuguese subsidiaries - which altogether employ nearly 10,000 workers. This has already resulted in 3UU redundancies occurring in MK Electrics (a British subsidiary) in London due to the expected lack of business with Portugal. This week Boardman International, a Stockport-based firm, announced the closure of their Portuguese subsidiary due to trouble with the militant workers committee. In the financial year ending April 1974, Boardman's profits from that subsidiary were f¼ million.
Anybody who has tried to go on a tourist trip to Portugal this year by booking through normal travel agents will in most cases have been told that all hotels in Portugal are full. In fact they are mostly empty!
The PWCC is at the moment compiling a complete dossier on the boycott which we hope to publish soon.
O. Similarly, did you discover much about what was actually happening during the recent 'reactionary offensive, or see much activity from the right wing?
A. Yes, the right wing activity in the north is open and clearly visible. It is being fermented by organised groups of right wingers - small in in number - associated with the ELP (Portuguese Liberation Army), the Centre Democrats (CDS), and the PPD. They have taken advantage of the genuine grievances of the backward peasantry under the cover of the anti-communist mobilisations carried out firstly by the Socialist Party and later by the Catholic hierarchy.
In any of these mass gatherings, organised groups of 50-80 right-wingers would whip up mass hysteria and lead the crowds to attack the headquarters of the Communist Party and other left-wing parties. The same group of people moves from town to town, so that attacks are never carried out simultaneously in neighbouring places.
In the last week that we were in Portugal (the third week of August) there was a wave of sabotage actions, which included setting fire to large areas of the countryside. We ourselves saw the countryside on fire for miles and miles, and just north of Leiria the local people told us that the fire had been started by an unmarked mono-plane dropping incenWe later heard from official sources that the plane had flown over from
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above parties.' Indiscipline
lack down S law