Defend Portuguese

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Cialist Party's campaign for "democracy" during last week represented virtually every element of reaction which still dares to show its face at this stage in the development of the Revolution.

Since the overthrow of fascism in April 1974 the revolutionary offensive of the working class has driven out many of those who were openly associated with the Salazar and Caetano dictatorship.

Reaction therefore must rally its forces behind tendencies of the labour movement.

While Socialist Party leader Soares called large rallies for "democratic rights" in Oporto and Lisbon, anti-communist hooligans carried out beatings and lynchings of Communist Party members, breaking down and burning their offices in the North.

The church hierarchy gave its active blessing to priests as they led a massive witch-hunt against the Communist Party in the Northern towns and villages.

The witch-hunt was aimed not only against the CP, but at all those advanced workers who have been in the lead of the struggle to clear out the fascists and establish the workers committees which rebuffed Spinola's attempted coup of March 11th.

Hand in hand with the violence in Portugal went the hysterical support of every spokesman of bourgeois "public opinion time. in Western Europe.

Adding his voice to the "silent majority" was British Labour Party General Secretary, Ron Hayward, who returned from Lisbon at the weekend in full support of Soares' reactionary campaign.

The Stalinists of the Commu nist Party and their allies in the Armed Forces Movement have prepared a rod for their own backs in this situation by breaking strikes, disbanding workers committees and actively opposin any initiative by the mass of the working class. They have acted to contain the only force that can defend the Portuguese revolution.

In this situation the Socialist Party majority in the "constituer assembly" a body elected as one with out powers from the beginning - have come to serve as the front for the whole spectrum of reaction.

It is only the development of the independent power of the working class, through the occupation committees and through joint committees of workers and rank and file soldiers that can defend the revolution at this The Armed Forces Movement will not for much longer be able to perform their delicate balancing act between the opposed social forces. The release of some of the imprisoned Maoists at the weekend shows however that some of the AFM are being forced to make concessions to the left.

But it is only by the political defeat of the AFM and their Stalinist allies that the gains so far made by the Portuguese working class can be defended and carried forward.

This must be the task of the democratically elected committee of the mass movement, united on a Socialist programme. Only such a body - not the moribund "constituent assembly" - can protect the democratic rights of the Portuguese working class

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CASTRO WITH REACTI ONARIES Burnham, whose speciality is the rigging of Guyana's elections, is not averse to intimidating opposition by beating them up and wrecking their offices. This happened to a Maoist group in the last elections. Since that point

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The forces which gatherer behind the Portuguese Soc