[When Portuguese Prime Minister Mario Soares walked the…]

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When Portuguese Prime Minister Mario Soares walked the tight-rope of EEC capitals fortnight ago, tens of thousands of striking fishermen and textile workers called for him to jump.

Soares's first European highwire act (the second is scheduled for 6th March) was only a limited success.

In order to persuade the heads Portuguese workers the common inarket of Portugal's eligibility for the capitalist club of Europe, he must not only hold his own working class in check, but destroy what is left of the gains of the Portuguese revolution - nationalisation and trade union rights.

That is not easy. But Soares and his Socialist Party government, aided by the bourgeois Centre Democrats and Social Democrats (and in a more roundabout way by Cunhal's Communist Party), are sell-out to American imperialism.

Early last month it was announ ced that foreign currency reserves were about to run out.

Against the background of a "tighten-your-belts' New Year's speech by right-wing military President Ramalho Eanes, the US offered a loan of 300 • million dollars to prop them up. That won part of a 1,500 millior dollar rescue" programme organised by the American government and to be funnelled through the International Monetary Fund.

Although not the strings attached to this bit of capitalist 'generosity' have been made public, the austerity budget passed with the help (by abstention) of the Communist Party was clearly a precondition.

SUBSIDIES

So was the announcement on 9th January of subsidies for private industry. And so was the conces sion of closer ties with NATO.

Buropean_Commander General Alexander Haig is now closely supervising the setting up of a Portuguese NATO brigade, tramed by the Americans and supplied with equipment from the US and West Germany.

The extra arms are necessary, according to Haig, because of Portugal's "special situation'.

For millions of Portuguese workers, perhaps the most 'special' aspect of the current situation is a rate of inflation of 30%, with petrol costing £1.80 a gallon.

Given anexternal debt of 1000 million dollars and an estimated need for food imports alone of 200 million dollars in 1977, the 15% devaluation of the escudo just declared is going to make that inflation a great deal worse.

such circumstances the government's attempts at wage control along the lines of the British "social contract' , will surely be put to rout.

STRIKES

The February strike wave gives some idea of what the working class has in store for Soares and his capitalist friends.

When Secretary of State Caello tried to remove from the seamen's union the right to control the By 16th February, when the strike ended with partial' satisfaction of the demands, their ranks had swelled to 25,000.

During the same period there were major disputes in the textile industry and on the railways.

A strike of civil servants in protest over a 15% pay limit was deciared illegal by the government and converted into a 'day of information, mobilisation and unity, consisting mainly of workplace meetings.

Soares has responded to press criticism by announcing restrictive legislation for the media, ostensibly against the right, but sure to be used sooner or later to gag the workers' movement.

In the labour movement the Socialist Party has tried to sow divisions among workers by drawing trade unions around a sort of alternative TUC called the "Open Letter' Group, in opposition to the CP-controlled Intersyndical.

They have had only a little success, mostly among white collar workers in the North, even though the bureaucratised nature of Intersyndical has given them a good opening. ( A national congress of trade unions held on 27-30 January inaugurated Intersyndical's successor, the General Confederation of Portuguese Workers - National Intersyndical (CGTP-IN).

MINOR CHANGES

The CGTP-IN remains firmly under the thumb of the CP, athough a left-centrist opposition within the Congress was able to force through minor changes to its statutes.

The "programme of action' of the organising committee of the CGTP-IN prociaims:

"The trade union movement will mobilise all workers to provide the productive forces necessary to resolve the serious economic, financial and social problems of the country."

The CGTP-IN leadership must be forced to break from this line, and to organise strike action against wage control, anti-union laws, the EEC negotiations and Us intervention through NATO. Otherwise the spectre of fascism, aided by US imperialism, will walk again.

The possibility IS owing that the Gandhi dicta orship will not survive the Indian general elections in which voting takes place on March 16th.

Both inside and outside her Congress Party the campaign has been a disaster for dictator Indira Gandhi and her son and heir apparent Sanjay.

A number of other prominent Congress politicians have deserted the Congress and gone over to either the Janata Party (an unprincipled alliance of "socialists', Hindu nationalists and others or to the "Congress for Democracy' formed by former Agricuture Minister Ram.

Those who have remained in Congress have forced Indira Gandhi to drop her reliance on her Sanjay's Youth Congress.

The Youth Congress which was hoping for 200-300 of the parliamentary nominations was in the end given less than ten, though they include Sanjay Gandhi.

The only comfort, and it must be small enough, which Gandhi can derive from the last two weeks is the slavish return to her fold of the Communist Party of - India which, flirting for a few days with the possibility of opposition, has made its usual electoral alliance with Congress.

This time, however, Congress and the CPI will be facing a similar electoral alliance of the opposition - the Janata Party, Ram's Congress for Democracy, 'left-wing' Communist Party (Marxist) and other regional parties.

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