[This week the social and political forces in…]

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This week the social and political forces in Portugal remain balanced on a knife edge. As right-wing violence mounts and new developments in the strength of the workers are shown, the Armed Forces Movement and its appointed government fulminate in ever greater impotence in support of "order" and "discipline"

During last week the instances of direct right-wing violence grew. On October 15th it was reported that a member of the pro-Stalinist MDP was badly injured at Vila de Fafe in the North, and on 25th October a Stalinist printshop in Oporto was destroyed.

Such attacks as these are a clear preparation for a bid to restore a government of the extreme right - a bid which will be resisted by a strong and united working class, along with substantial sections of the army rank and file.

There is evidence that this movement is growing too. The soldiers who were sitting-in in their barracks in Oporto were only persuaded to end their action on 15th October by the personal intervention of army chief of staft Carlos Fabiao.

Latest reports indicate, however, that they are by no means satisfied that their grievances have been dealt with.

Soldiers in Lisbon, along with left-wing workers, further emphasised their determination to hold on to all the gains of the revolution by seizing once again the formerly church-controlled radio station Renescenca in . Lisbon on 22nd October.

The dispute about who should control this station poses the class questions more sharply perhaps than any other.

Not are these the tions of the strength and determination of the working class The event given most prominence in the British press last week was of course the occupation of the 1,200 acre estate owned by British farmer Patrick Wardie.

With the usual tender concern of all reformists for the immutable rights to private property, Labour Foreign Office Minister of State Roy Hattersley told a gang of Tory questioners on 21st October that the defence of the estate would be robust' The occupation of a foreign-owned estate by farm workers was Fabiao to some extent a new departure, but it was simply one incident in the continual efforts of Portuguese farm workers to make sure that in future the industry is run in their interests.

More forceful expression of the same feeling came from a group of women workers from the Swedishowned Centidel plant in Lisbon. When the employer threatened to move out and make them all redundant, they demanded to see the Swedish ambassador, and when he did not give a satisfactory answer, they broke one of his ribs. * The build-up of these tensions became clear over the last weekend (25-26th October) when a full state of alert for armed forces was declared.

The efforts get an arms

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