Red faces at Stalinist rally

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The rally held by the Communist Party in London to celebrate the anniversary of the Portuguese revolution turned into a bitter rout of CP. General Secretary Gordon McLennan.

The Portuguese Stalinist leader Alvaro Cunhal was lauded by the almost entirely CP audience as representing the true' communist line-while McLennan was shouted down when he tried to defend the British CP's line of opposing the invasion of Afghanistan!

Cunhal centred his contribution on the same lines as the Portuguese military President Eanes in his recent presidential address.

The survival and consolidation of Portuguese democracy is now at stake, he declared, with the moves of the right wing around their presidential candidate General Antonio Soares Carneiro.

Cunhal said the CP is all for democratic government and for parliamentary elections.

The real thing is to reduce the right wing party to. a minimum and increase the number of CP MPs.

He opposed Portuguese entry into the EEC on the grounds that it would ruin 'our' Eanes takes essentially the same line in warning the right wing generals about not destroying the gains made in April.

Cunhal of course did not deal with the role of the CP which has-since April 1974 held back the devclopments of the revolutionary struggle and fought all the time to contine it within the bounds of so-called "democracy" to the extent of organising demonstrations in defence of the Provisional Government .. of General Goncalves.

The political divisions with his hosts in the London mecting came over the question of Afganistan, Cunhal of course tried politely to paper over the cracks -sayıng that differences are quite acceptable.

Attacked The audience, however, no mood for compromise.

They attacked McLennan for refusing to attend the Paris conference called by. 'non-Euro' partiés to discuss Afghanistan.

Yet the divisions are far more apparent than real.

Cunhal's politics both in Portugal and internationally reflect a firm adherence to the foreign policy requirements of the Kremlin bureaucracy.

Moscow's strategy of "peaceful coexistence" with capitalism in Europe was perfectly implemented by Cunhal's efforts to stem the tide of revolution in And its bureaucratic/military moves to defend the borders of the Somet Union through the invasion of Afghanistan finds an equally obedient response from Cunhal and other "pro-Moscow" CP leaders.

McLennan and the British CP leadership, however, along with their Italian and Spanish co-thinkers, have taken the line of "peaceful cocxistence" with capitalism one step further-in consolidating a much closer relationship with their "own" national bourgeoisie.

Split loyalties

This leaves them equally determined to head off and betray the independent struggles of the working class.

But it does mean that in instances where their "own" capitalist class, emerges iv conflict with the Kremlin bureaucracy, the CP leaders' loyalties (and even parties) are severely split.

In the case of Afghanistan therefore, the French "Eurocommunist" CP has swung in support of the Soviet invasion despite a major anti-communist witch-hunt, while the Italian and British CPs have lined up with their own. capitalists in denouncing the invasion.

Neither pro-Moscow nor Eurocommunist parties offer any independent lead to the working class internationally: such a lead, can only come through the • struggle for Trotskyist parties which set out consistently to defend the independent interests of the working class in the revolutionary struggle for power.