Portugal: Regime Cracks Down on Working Class

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the right-wing government not rather than máke any move on the basis of a principled fight which would strengthen the for socialism but as part of the unity or indepèndence of the jockeying for position of rival working class.

What both of them avoid is dence can only be consistently anything which would bring fought for and developed by the them together in parliament or building of a revolutionary anywhere else against bourgeois Trotskyist party to replace the They have both preferred to usurped the gains of the revolu. support or connive at the tion of 1974 and 1975.

The right wing non-elected government in Portugal unleashed a new wave of anti-working class policies last week.

• The government, led by Mota Pinto-a former official under the Salazar dictatorship sacked 18 of the leaders of the ten-day old telephone workers' strike.

Huge pressure had been put on the workers to return to work, including a propaganda campaign in the media accusing them of responsibility (by disrupting communications) for deaths, injuries and disruption caused by last week's floods. :

But the workers held firm and so the government implemented its sacking threat.

Draft into army

It now proposes. to. sack hundreds more if the strike does not end, and to draft the rest of the strikers into the armed forces-an anti-strike measure much beloved of dictators Salazar and Franco.

Though the main union federation, the CGTP-Intersyndical, is supporting the strike, its Stalinist leadership have held back moves to spread the strike to other sectors in response to the sackings.

There is no doubt, however, that the government's provocative. actions will greatly strengthen the growing political hostility to it in the working class.

And that hostility was further strengthened last week by the announcement by Finance Minister Nunes of the new International Monetary Fund inspired budget.

This is a series of government spending cuts and consumer tax increases which will severely hit employment and: working class living standards.

This is added to the wage contro policies which the government is trying to enforce in the telephone workers strike.

• Promise Inflation in the last (officially) been 24%.

The telephone workers' claim is for a mere 19% against the official limit of 18%.

Nunes is trying to sell the 18% figure with the promise that inflation will fall to 18% in the next year. But the new tax increases already make that "promise" look very false indeed.

The budget is now due to be debated in the parliament and so the political survival of the government is once more at stake.

Mota Pinto was originally confirmed in office by a positive vote of the two parliamentary bourgeois parties-the Social Democrats and Christian Democrats.!

A 'No' vote from the CP was given all the more decisively because of the Stalinists' knowledge that the Socialist Party would abstain and so allow the government to take office.

The SP leadership under Mario Soares has no objections to the policies of the government, which are to undo as much as possible the gains made "by workers and peasants in the aftermath of the 1974 revolution. Started policies, It was Soares' own government which started all the policies which Salazar's successars are now putting into action.

Soares was dropped by the bourgeoisie because it believed he was not moving fast enough -not through absence of will but because his party was still too subject to pressure from the working class for the liking of the Portuguese bourgeoisie.

And those pressures are now even greater as the socialist leadership approaches a general election (which must take place in the autumn of 1980 and may: happen before with rapidly declining chances of maintaining the vote which in 1976 made it the largest party in parliament.

The CP's opportunist opposition to the government is gaining it a good deal of the support which Soares is losing.

In addition the SP since 1974 has posed as the champion of parliamentary democracy against right wing and left wing totalitarianism.

It is becoming every day harder for the Socialists to retain this image without taking some stand against the present unelected government.

Especially when last week new moves were made which may result. in the re-establishment of an independent secret political police officially designed to control "the illegal activities of foreigners int Portuanswerable? To whom should workers now turn with their demands?

The answer is clear. The new regime is unelected, answerable to no-one, and not subject to recall.

Under such conditions more and more workers. will recognise the necessity to fight for a constituent assembly to be democratically elected by universal franchise, in which all political parties will appeal for support for their policies, and in which delegates are recallable at any time.

Such an assembly must be called upon to establish a legai framework within which democratic rights are guaranteed, and do not rest on the whims of Khomeini's "Revolutionary But insofar as such a body attempts itself to operate within the framework imposed by the need to preserve capitalism in Iran it will prove itself unable to satisfy the most elementary needs of the masses.

These needs can only be fulfilled through the overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of a planned socialist This is why, side by side with the struggle for a constituThis move towards a more authoritarian political structure, following the recent. fascist attacks on workers, is a new pointer to the extreme dangers facing the Portuguese working class.

Mobilisation

The dahger can only be overcome by the independent mobilisation of the working class to reject wage control and spending cuts, to demand the reinstatement of the sacked telephone workers, to impose a government of workers' parties to implement policies which answer the material and political needs of the working class and other oppressed classes.

The chief obstacle to such policies remain the opportunism and class collaboration of the Stalinist and reformist leaders.

They periodically "oppose" ent assembly, Iranian workers need above all to consolidate and extend the organs of their own independent power-the factory committees and strike committees that emerged spontaneously during the struggles against the Shah.

In each locality the workers' organisations must send elected delegates to local soviets, which can, coordinate and direct the struggle for both economic and political demands.

Already the Iranian workers have shown their capacity for independent struggle; high points have included the way in which central bank workers published details of the currency exported by top government and royal family figures, and of course the emergence of ad-hoc workers militias.

Occupation

Now it is crucial that these elements of workers' power are developed towards occupation of major industries and the opening of the books of the big monopolies to force . their nationalisation, without compensation under workers' management; towards action to force the nationalisation of the banks and finance houses under Portuguese soldiers break bureaucracies.

government and parties.

erosion of, the gains of 1974 Crisis has returned to only a brief period of relative calm. workers' management to seize the assets of the capitalists and offer cheap credit to the poor peasants; and towards the drawing up of a workers' plan for a programme of public works to provide jobs for the unemployed and much needed social services.

Bring down The struggle for each of these demands will show the necessity to bring down the Bazargan government and establish a workers' and peasants' govenment in Iran.

To carry through this fight a revolutionary Marxist party is needed; a party that understands the need for the working class to play the leading role in the next crucial stage of revolutionary struggle which alone can open the door to socialism in Iran and the resolution of the problems of both workers and peasants in the context of a planned, socialist economy.

*Down with the dictatorship of Bazargan. For a constituent assembly!

*Build workers' militia and soviets in every area!

*Expropriate the capitalist monopolies!

*For a workers and dn factory occupation in 1976 That unity and, indepentreachery of leaders who have A new climax was reached on Friday in the struggle against 21,000 redundancies proposed by the French government in the steel industry.

A general strike gripped the industry in the two main steal producing areas of Lorraine and Nord-Pas du Calais.

The steelworkers were joined by iron miners, carworkers, teachers, other trade unionists and even shopkeepers protesting against such a devastating economic blow to the regions.

The strikes were backed up by other methods with occupations of government buildings, road blocks and various protest gestures.

Longwy, near the Belgian border, was the centre of the highest militancy and the town was completely cut off by barricades of the roads and an occupation of the railway station.

Here sympathy action was also taken across the border by Belgian workers whose economic life is bound up with the French steel industry.

Belgian steel workers themselves face similar attacks in the name of "rationalising" the industry, from the Brussels Friday's actions demonstrate the massive strength of the workers' movement under these attacks.

The state may wall be forced to pull back at this moment but to win their fight, the stool. workers will noad to go bayond opposition and probast to part forward their own independem Occupations will have to be developed around the demand of open the capitalist books in the fight for work sharing ón. full pay and for the full nationalisation of the steel industry under workers management.

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