approach). We are printing this document for information purposes.
Through the [25 April] elections and up to the latest events. we have seen the unfolding since 11 March of a reactionary bourgeois offensive aimed at bringing the [revolutionary] process in the country under control and wiping out the gains made by the working class and the toiling masses.
Ine tollowing nave been te rundamental Tear ures of this offensive, which has had, and increasingly will have, the active support of imperialism, ener airect or inrouen economic ana mary blackmail: the imposition of bourgeois elections The following Manifesto was presented at a press conference called by the Front for Revolutionary Unity in Lisbon on 10 September. The groups represented were: the Portuguese Democratic Movement (MDP-erstwhile petty-bourgeois ally of the CP, winning just over 4 per cent of the vote in the April elections); the Movement of the Socialist Left (MES-a centrist group); the Socialist People's Front (FSP-a group which left the Socialist Party in December 1974 after the right-wing leadership had won a majority at the SP Congress); the Internationalist Conmunist League (LCI-Portuguese sympathising group of the Fourth International); the Revolutionary Party of the Proletariat (PRP-as the Revolutionary Brigades carried out armed actions against the Caetano regime, now has links with the International Socialists); the League for Revolutionary Unity and Action (LUAR-also carried out armed actions against the dictatorship, now tends towards a populist ulation around the military units under the reactionary Central and Northern Regional Commands. - The opening up of room for intervention by the terrorist forces of the ELP [Portuguese Liberation One aunchina or an extensive campaion or taise propaganda through the reactionary press, the local strongmen, the church hierarchy, and so forth, designed to creat confusion and disquiet among the toiling masses.
The support of the workers for the general lines cannot be bostooned At the 10 September press conference (I to r): Elizabeth Vicente (NDP), Francisco Vale (LCI), Pedro Goulart (PRP), Afonso Barros (MES), Fernando Marques (LUAR), and Rui Carneiro (FSP). ectuals. It points out the road for a massive offen sive to defeat the Social Democracy and to crush The Front for Revolutionary Unity points out the road for the toiling mases, the road for struggle against capitalism tor peopies power, tor social ism, and for national independence from imperialThe Front for Revolutionary Unity points out ine way tor tne toners ortne cities and the countryside as well as the soldiers and sailors, to strengthen their autonomous organisations of people's power (workers' committees tenants committees, village assem blies, soldiers' assemblies, sailors' assemblies, ADUs)
The Front for Revolutionary Unity points out to all the exploited and oppressed the need from here on to unite une rorce or armis ww tre organisce will of the working people by promoting the growth of local, district, and regional assemblies everywhere, with a view toward calling a national people's assemThe Front for Revolutionary Unity points out the following as immediate objectives for the struggie or the toning masses • Organising self-defence, in particular through the organs of people's power, against the armed allacks or casuals reaction • Struggle to purge all the fascist and Social Dem ocratic outschists from tne armea torces • Struggle for full freedom of the soldiers and sailors to meet and organise. This is the only way the ADUs will be genuinely democratic and revolu • Struggle to force exemplary punishment of the Tascists and counter-revorutionists or dil stripes, o the local strongmen and reactionary clergy, who are responsible for the wave of anti-Communist violence that has been rising in many areas of the country. • struggle tor the tormation or revolutionarv trib unals that can exercise the class justice of the exploited and oppressed against the counter-revolu• struggle against tne power or tnose capitals! conglomerates that still exist, for nationalising the big industrial and agricultural enterprises, as well as foreign banks and insurance campanies, without compensation and under workers control, on the road to collectivisation of the means of production • Struggle for generalising workers control over production and for the organised control of the working people over the entire economy • struggle to deepen and extend the agrarian retorn so as to satisfy in a revolutionary way the needs and aspirations of the rural workers and small and middle peasants organised in their organs of people's power - talis. me villace councis • Struggle against lay-offs and for full employment • Struggle against the scarcities suffered by the working people in the cities and in the countryside scarcities that profit parasitic middlemen. struggle tor national independence vis a-vis Im perialism, national independence based on an alliance with the anti-imperialist countries and the militant solidarity of the workers of the entire world. This requires Portugal's immediate departure from NATO and the end of the Iberian Pact [with Spain]. • Struggle for a revolutionary alliance'of the Portuguese toilers with the Angolan people, represented bv their only liberation movement, the MPLA. • Demanding the dissolution of the Constituent Assemo v and exposina its bourceois charcter • Struggle to form a Government of Revolutionary
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MANIFESTO OF THE FRONT FOR REVOLUTIONARY UNITY