[Militant No. 245, 28th February 1975, p. 4-5]
In the issue before last we carried a full analysis of the arguments in relation to the proposals for ‘Trade Union Unity’ in Portugal in which we argued in favour of unity, but on the basis of complete democracy and freedom of debate within the workers’ organisations and independence of unions from the capitalist state. Since then we have received this first hand account of the dispute, and the events surrounding it.
The last three weeks have exposed visible cracks in the Provisional government, between the Armed Forces Movement (AFM) (also within it) and the Socialist Party, Popular Democratic Party, and “non-party” civilians in the government.
The fact that the SP threatened to withdraw from the government and that there were ominous rumours of the elections being postponed and the army taking over, showed that the differences raised fundamental questions about relations between the government, the army leadership and the workers’ organisations.
The main bone of contention has been the new trade union law, around which other important differences have crystallised.
Under Salazar and Caetano, wages and conditions were regulated by government-supervised agreements between the Sindicatos (similar to the “official vertical unions” in Spain) and the Gremios (employers’ federations). Strikes and lockouts were illegal. Disputes were “settled” by government-dominated industrial tribunals whose decisions were compulsory. Wages and conditions were, of course, notoriously bad, essentially conditions of Portugal’s limited industrial growth.
After the 25th April last year the old corporate trade union structure was swept aside. Following the initiative of the AFM, the magnificent movement of the workers set up workers’ commissions in the factories and immediately enforced big rises and improvements. From that time the commissions have exercised a strong supervisory role over managements. The sindicatos were purged of all the fascist elements.
It was at this time that the Intersindical, which was started in 1970, illegally, under clandestine conditions, came to the fore as the main trade union federation. Because the Communist Party militants had had clandestine organisation in the factories, whereas the Socialist Party hardly had any, the Intersindical was, and is, dominated by the CP.
The new draft trade union law, approved by the AFM leadership and later passed by a majority of the Provisional Government, almost entirely represented the CP leadership’s conception of how the Intersindical and the trade unions should be organised. The draft law gave compulsory legal status to a single Trade union Federation, the Intersindical, to which it would be compulsory for all trade unions to affiliate.
Intersindical
It also made a single industrial union for each industry compulsory, again favouring the CP which at present controls the majority of established unions in the different sectors. Details of the law concerning the internal organisation of Intersindical and the TU’s helped consolidate the position of those leaders who were able to take the key positions immediately after the 25th April.
These proposed measures provoked a storm of opposition from the other parties. Mario Soares, and other SP leaders denounced it, and for several days (rather unconvincingly) threatened to withdraw from the Government.
Unfortunately, faced with this blatant, undemocratic attempt by the CP to secure their organisational hold over the TU movement, the main concern of the SP leadership was not the health of the workers’ organisations, but the fact that the new law might give the CP an unfair advantage in the coming elections.
That this was the main issue was confirmed in their eyes by leaked news of secret opinion polls which put the potential CP support at only 7% of the electorate. But whatever the motives of the CP leadership, the failure of the SP leaders to put forward a principled alternative produced enormous confusion, not least within the ranks of the Socialist Party itself.
None of the parties raised what must b the first and most fundamental demand from a Socialist point of view: the complete independence of the trade unions from the state.
Trade unions are the basic organisations of the class. To become fighting organisations, capable of playing a key role in the transformation of society, the organised workers must have complete autonomy as far as the internal life of the unions is concerned.
Even under a democratic workers’ state, the unions would have the right to organise in defence of the workers’ day to day interests. But Portugal is not a workers’ state, as the present situation shows. Although it has been purged of fascist elements there is still a state, now under the control of the radicalised officer corps, and whatever the intentions of the AFM the big capitalists still control the economy.
The presence on the Tagus this week of the NATO fleet, with a huge US aircraft carrier, fighters lined up on its decks, casting a shadow across the shipyards and the Lisbon quays, is visible evidence that the Portuguese workers are not living under a regime to which they can safely entrust their future.
Laws
Even in the context of rescinding reactionary laws, and demanding new laws which would give the trade unions levers in the struggle, the demands of the SP leaders have been confused and mistaken.
The new TU law was advanced under the slogan “Unicidade” (Unity) and the idea of a single federation, correct in itself, and of industrial unions in each industry. Undoubtedly this appeals to the strong class instincts of the workers. The enormous demonstration in January in support of the Intersindical, and the much poorer response to the SP’s appeal for a demonstration against the new law indicated this. Many trade unionists, who are unhappy about the law and opposed to the CP’s methods, are equally sceptical about the SP’s grounds for opposing them.
There is nothing wrong with the demand for industrial unions linked to a single federation. But it is a cynical travesty of basic principles when it is proposed that they should be imposed on the workers’ organisations by the state, and in such a way as to safeguard the bureaucratic positions of the present leaders and functionaries.
Instead of merely counterposing one set of legal rules to another, the leaders of the SP should have unequivocally supported the principles of industrial unions and a united federation, but at the same time boldly advanced demands that would really ensure complete democracy of the unions: for the election of all officials and the right of recall by the membership, and the limitation of officials’ salaries to the average in the industries concerned.
In the event, after a lot of heated argument, criticism and recrimination between the different members of the government (which could be read between the lines in the press), a rather confused compromise emerged. In the first place, the Council of Twenty, the parallel “cabinet” of the AFM, approved the draft law by 11-7, thus ensuring it a majority in the cabinet itself, where the AFM ministers were bound by group discipline.
In the voting on detailed amendments, however, some of the AFM minsters voted against the CP ministers, and many of the “teeth” the SP and PDP objected to were extracted. The main changes, it seems (the law has not yet been published), were: that the law would be reviewed after one year; that all voting in the unions would be by ballot and not by show of hands; and that affiliation to Intersindical would be voluntary and decided by the whole of the membership of a union and not just by the leadership.
These changes may, of course, limit the hold of the CP over the unions, but in themselves are far from guaranteeing democracy. Secret ballots, for instance, have always been the demand of the right-wing in the unions. It is far more democratic for voting to be based on participation and discussion at the work-place or branch.
The militants of the Socialist Party, which is far more democratic internally than the CP and which was committed by its Congress to socialist policies, must fight for the leadership to take up a Socialist position on the trade union issue and themselves campaign for TU democracy and a socialist programme within the ranks of the unions. Socialists have nothing at all to fear from the fullest democracy, which is the only guarantee that correct ideas will prevail.
The battle over the trade union law has really been shadow-boxing, indicating future conflicts in muted form. Most of the argument has taken place over the heads of the workers. The working class is acknowledged by all the leaders to be the essential basis of the revolution, but at the moment they are treated as an audience, albeit a very critical audience, rather than the main actors.
The lack of perspective of the leaders of the two mass parties, their reliance on manoeuvres rather than mobilising and raising the consciousness of the workers, and their refusal to take a position clearly independent of the Armed Forces Movement, were all revealed by the events which led up to 31st January.
Demonstration
The Socialist Party called a demonstration in the Rossio, a main square in the centre of Lisbon under the slogan, “The struggle continues, carry out the programme of the AFM”. The main object as far as the leadership was concerned was to exert pressure on the AFM in relation to the TU law and commitment to a definite date for elections. It was called on 31st January to commemorate the anniversary of a rising against the monarchy in Porto in 1891. But more important was the fact that the AFM “Assembly of 200” was due to meet that evening.
Following the SP announcement, the CP announced a demonstration for the same night, which although under a very similar slogan, “People = AFM”, was in fact a counter-demonstration.
The slogan POVO = AFM was meant to imply that they were the real supporters of the ASM while the SP demonstration was really directed against the AFM. The CP demonstration was supported by the Popular Socialist Front (a small group which split from the SP, in January) and the Left Socialist Movement (a slightly larger group of syndicalist orientation).
The CP demonstration was to be some way from the city centre. But the MRPP, a small, noisy and much-publicised Maoist group, called a counter-demonstration at Rossio, under the slogan of opposition to the SP “social-fascists.”
Posters
There followed a poster campaign, unusual in its intensity even for Lisbon which is like a bill-poster’s paradise most of the time anyway. Many of the CP posters were plastered over the SP posters, and the SP strongly protested about attacks on its members as they were posting.
There was much speculation about what would happen. In fact, the AFM, using the excuse of a possible clash between the two demonstrations and scares about the MRPP, which had been involved in clashes the previous weekend in Porto on the occasion of the CDS (conservative party) conference, banned all the demonstrations. It is more than likely that the CP called a counter-demonstration fully anticipating that the AFM would then ban the demos: thus it was nothing more than a manoeuvre to block the SP demonstration.
On the evening of 31st January the Rossio was occupied by armoured vehicles and several hundred paratroopers and commandos. As both the SP and CP had announced that they accepted the ban and had called off their demos, this great display of armed might was directed solely against the ragged, mostly student forces, of the MRPP, who chanted and waved red flags at the soldiers – who took it all in very good humour.
But it was a bitterly ironic situation. POVO = AFM! And yet what would undoubtedly have been two massive demonstrations, called ostensibly to manifest solidarity with the AFM, had been forbidden by the AFM!
There was never any real danger of a clash between the two main demonstrations, which would have been completely against the inclination of most workers. And what danger could there be to a well-organised mass demonstration of the SP from a small group of Maoists?
The events, or rather non-events, of 31 January showed that the actual power in the country is in the hands of the AFM. The situation is one of disguised military dictatorship, where power is held by a radicalised officer corps committed to progressive measures, and where the working class has been able to increase its power enormously, but where nevertheless there is military rule.
Army
Yet neither the CP nor the SP leaders have raised the question of full democracy in the army, with the election of officers and democratic controls by soldiers’ councils in collaboration with the workers’ organisations. That alone would give reality to the slogan POVO = AFM!
Both leaders proclaim complete confidence in the AFM, yet these recent developments showed up very real differences both within the AFM and between the parties.
The AFM are not able to carry through their ‘progressive’ aims on the basis of capitalism. Yet the proposed economic measures, just announced, do not intend, fundamentally to tamper with the power of capitalism. The divisions within the AFM reflect the pressures of class forces. Events over the past six months demonstrate that the capitalists are not defeated and, given time, will strike back when they are more confident, posing a threat to the gains made by the workers since last April.
Instead of explaining these differences and the consequent dangers in an open way so they can be debated and decided in the workers’ movement, the workers are summoned to demonstrations in support of behind-the-scenes manoeuvres about which they are only partially informed.
Positions
One can only conclude that the SP and CP leaders are mainly concerned with jockeying for advantageous positions for the coming elections. Both parties ostensibly stand for a Socialist Society: yet the leaders are preoccupied with the details of setting up the formal structure of parliamentary democracy.
But the workers and peasants have little interest in these formalities: for them, democracy is not an end in itself, but represents a means for solving the pressing economic problems of daily life and the freedom to struggle for a socialist society. Marx and Engels repeated many times: the emancipation of the workers can only be achieved by the workers themselves. The Portuguese revolution is in danger of reaching an impasse due to the leadership of the mass parties.
By Lynn Walsh
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