Our purpose in reprinting the article from Trotsky was not to make an equation between the circumstances in which Trotsky wrote and the situation in Portugal, but to demonstrate that the question of freedom of the press' was not some abstract principle divorced from concrete situations.
What was posed in the Republica struggle was not (as the Socialist Party leadership would have it) the right of the SP to an instrument of party propaganda. They already have such an instrument in their weekly paper, Portugal Socialista (and there are two Lisbon dailies which reflect their view point. UNFOUNDED Comrade Foster's claim that Republica was a 'de facto organ of the SP' is unfounded. That was certainly not the character of Republica prior to 25 April 1974. Nor did the Republica editors ever see fit to describe their paper that way until after Mario Soares had turned the dispute into a major political football.
The fact of the matter is that a pro-SP clique took over the editorial partly through a series of bureaucratic manoeuvres, and sought to capitalise on the lica had acquired through its association with the anti-fascist opposition to boost the cause of the SP.
TRADITION The majority of Republica workers, however, did not think that the tradition of the paper which had been produced with their labour was reducible to the party line of the SP. They felt that this tradition was best preserved through a paper which identified itself with the cause of the working class as a whole and sought to provide it with the sort of information and forum for debate necessary to solve its political tasks.
The fight for the unity and independence of the Portuguese working class was and is absolutely central in the present situation. requires the rejection of all forms of bureaucratic and sectarian measures. But it also requires an uncompromising struggle against the sectarian SP leadership. In our view it was that struggle which the Republica
A COMIC not very red weekly