Late on Saturday night in Alcobaca, a small market town 60 miles north of Lisbon, an event which threatens to become the harbinger of the future of northern Portugal took place. In response to the burning down of their local headquarters on 21 July, the Portuguese Communist Party attempted to hold a come-back rally addressed by their leader, Alvaro Cunhal.
As the meeting got underway in the local stadium, reactionary mobs-some waving Socialist flags massed outside. Between 11pm and 3am the mob unleashed a hail of stones and then bullets against the stadium. Eventually troops were called in to evacuate the Communists from the stadium and disperse the mob another round of right-wing violence completed.
A demagogic campaign launched by the Socialist Party leaders to defend 'democracy has had the most reactionary consequences. In exploiting what were often genuine grievances of their own rank and file against the bureaucratic manoeuvrings of the Communist Party in the trade unions, local government and the national political arena, they have provided the cover for the reactionaries to crawl out from the corners into which they were driven after the fall of the Catano dictatorship. The wave of violence which these forces nave unleashed is a threat to the democratic rights of the entire workers' movement in It is not even the traitorous Socialist Party leadership but the most reactionary forces in Portugal which will reap the "benefits' of this violence. In the north of Portugal it was the Archbishop of Braga-an ardent supporter of former Portuguese dictators Salazar and Caetano-who whipped up the mob which burned the offices of the local 'Communist devils'.
In an area of grinding poverty and illiteracy60 per cent of the people can neither read nor write the Catholic Church holds the peasantry in the grip of terror and superstition. Because the central government nas not written off their debts to the landlords and neither has the Communist Party put forward a radical MATOZINHOS Oporto: Leira AIRPORT BRAGA • • GUIMARAES DURO RIVER VISEU AVEIRO GUARDA COIMBRA Abrantes R • A lentéjo EVORA SETUBAL ....
Bragança ILBUF continue to grow. agrarian reform programme for fear of upsetting elements of the Armed Forces Movementthe peasants attribute their present complete impoverishment to the revolution.
But it is the world economic crisis, and the measures to protect Common Market producers, which has wiped out the market for their grapes and wines. The imposition of Common Market tariffs on certain textile imports from Portugal will similarly impoverish the workers in the towns in the north where textiles are a major product.
It was the petty traders of the coastal region and the small farmers of the north-hand in hand with the Catholic Charch-who were the social base of Portuguese fascism. Both Salazar's Portuguese National Association and the Portuguese Legion flourished there. In new guises and with different names these forces now theaten to re-emerge.
However, there is nothing inevitable about this process. In fact the Portuguese Communist Party the major victim of the wave of reactionary violence has been the major contributor to its own nemesis.
In this dossier we explain how the PCP which emerged as the biggest workers' party after the overthrow of the dictatorship-now finds itself beleaguered and increasingly isolated Its calls for the democratic and national revolution' and its determined opposition to joining the fight for socialism have flown in the face of the immediate needs of the masses Now it is reaping the reactionary whirlwind that stalinist policies of class collaboration sow.
For the Portuguese revolutionary left the message is sounding loud and clear. Unless it can take these lessons into the very heart of the vanguard and link them with the socialist aspirations and organisational creativity of the masses, the dark shadow of reaction now looming over the Portuguese revolution will
For the past few weeks a wave of reactionary violence has been sweeping across Portugal. Touched off by the anti-communist campaign of the Portuguese Socialist Party and their capitalist allies the Popular Democrats, it has been boosted by the red weekly