Sp Boycotts Cabinet

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of oug not the the the demonstration were thorhly right-wing: they included only 'freedom of the press' but demand for secret ballots in trade unions.

But many of those who marched on the demonstration were in opposition - from a left standpoint - to the hand-in-glove collaboration of the Stalinists with the officers, in a government which has never been elected and which is in no way responsible to the working class. There was also anger at the Communist Party's attempt to procure for itself - by the suppression of Maoist groups as well as the closing of 'Republica' - a monopoly of political expression over the other tendencies in the workers' movement, and at the way in which the Stalinist apparatus is becoming a ladder for careerism in the State. As one speaker put it The Popular Democratic Movement (a Communist Party front organisation) has become a real employment agency'. This was why the Communist Party attacked the demonstration for rallying "reactionary and counterrevolutionary forces, including leftist, pseudo-revolutionary groups"

The role of the Communist Party in Portugal has brought splits and confusion among the main Stalinist leaderships in Western Europe. While the French CP daily ¡'Humanite' ', accused the Portuguest Socialist Party - and by implication, its supporters ir the French social democracy - of 'playing with fire' 'Unita', paper of the Italian CP, described the shutting of 'Republica' as "an act of political intolerance"