The anti-working class offensive launched by the Azevedo Guvernment in Portugal is gathering strength. After the attempt to seize the worker-controlled radio stations, the arming of the police, the attempt to disband a left-wing regiment and the recalling of reactionary troops from Angola, the Government has now decided to re-enlist and re-arm ex-members of of the extreme right wing as part of its projected 'intervention' force (AMI). Meanwhile the capitalist Popular Democrats (PPD) and the reformist Socialist Party of Soares are mobilising their supporters in a series of reactionary demonstrations.
The response of the Portuguese rank-and-file soldiers to the these attacks has been huge.
Q The SUV made its first public appearance during a press conference in Oporto, which issued the call for the 10 September demonstration. Can you tell us how the SUV originated?
The first steps in this movement go back Ato mid-July, when the political-military crisis broke out in full force. Some soldiers, sergeants, and militia officers began to get together to exchange information about the growing counter-revolutionary activity of the officers among various units in the North.
Essentially, these officers were trying to purge the soldiers and militia officers who had distinguished themselves in struggle. When this offensive broke out, it became clear that the soldiers were not organised to oppose it.
The first initiative was to draw up a complete list of all the instances of repression in order to work out how to respond.
Brigadier General Corvacho became the target of the right. He was the commander of the northern military region. The right accused him of being a Communist. In fact, he had supported the organs of popular power more consistently than most of the leftist officers in the MFA (Armed Forces Movement).
For example, he had protected the Oporto Municipal Council, which is composed of representalives or me workers commissions, neighbourhood commissions, trade union representatives, and delegates from the regimental ADUs (Assemblies of Unit Delegates). In addition, Corvacho had set up a vigilance apparatus within the army that was linked to the workers commissions and neighbourhood commissions; its task was to struggle against the fascist conmandos of the ELP and MDLP, which are rather active in the North. [The ELP, Portuguese Liberation Army, and MDLP, Democratic Movement for the Liberation of Portugal, led by Spinola, are right-wing para-military outfits.] The left-wing regiments undoubtICES Thus by taking aim at Corvacho, the reactionaries were actually taking aim at the autonomous popular organs and the struggles of the soldiers. They understood that the presence of Corvacho made this task more difficult.
The co-ordinating body that we set up enabled us to gather information; we thus became totally convinced that reaction had set up a real parallel command centre, which included secret meetings of career officers. We found out that in the course of one of these meetings (in which almost all the officers of the region had participated) it had been decided to remove Corvacho from the military region, this had been decided by a majority of around 80 per cent.
The career officers presented this decision as coming from all the units of the North. To show their opposition to Corvacho and put pressure on the general staff, they decided to confine seven northern units to barracks while Corvacho was in Lisbon to attend a meeting of the Revolutionary Council.
We immediately reacted against their claim to be speaking in the name of the military region when 95 per cent of the forces of the region (soldiers, militia officers, and sergeants) had not been consulted in any way - and for good reason! Also, we were aware that the order consigning troops to barracks could have led to confrontations for which the soldiers would have borne the costs. Because of all this, we had to organise on a higher level.
It was around this theme that the first SUV leaflet appeared. We emphasised the fact that one of the objectives of reaction was to establish discipline in the army by concentrating its offensive in the North, which it considered as a solid base.
You have to remember that along with the purge measures a general reactionary wave was also developing; it was getting edly have a majority in Lisbon, while the revolutionary "Sold iers United Will Win' (SUV) has also scored important gains in the the North (where 2,000 soldiers in uniform headed a demonstration.in Oporto on 6 October) and Centre (where 2,000 marched in Cuimbra on 9 October).
The great danger, however, lies in the counter-revolutionary role being played by the Communist Party - which is attempting to use the soldiers' demonstrations merely to strengthen its position in the Government and 'its' section of of the Armed Forces Movement - and the inability of most of the organisations of the revolutionary left to take up a pro gramme capable of mobilising the workers alongside the sold"popular power' too.
sell their products character.
tion in Oporto.
SIOTIS social support from various layers of the petty bourgeoisie, the small-holding peasantry among others. These fascist attacks were hitting the CP, the revolutionary organisations, the trade unions, and the organs of In Braga, for instance, conditions. the fascists attacked the people's market, which is where the self-managed factories In other words, reaction was developing a real strategy on a regional scale.. The reactionaries were totally determined to reintro duce iron discipline in the barracks in order to be able more easily to use the soldiers against the workers and even against their How did the soldiers react during this \was far from positive. For example, the soldiers of the RIB (Infantry Regiment of Braga) - whom the fascists were inciting by telling them that the communists wanted to confiscate the peasants' lands - marched behind the fascist ringleaders, sacked the headquarters of the CP, and even attacked some CP militants. I want to stress that on the one hand the recruitment of troops for this was done on a regional basis (that is, most of the soldiers are sons of the peasants in the region), and that on the other hand the training of the soldiers, including that of the militia of officers, was then strongly reactionary in Nevertheless, many of these soldiers participated in the 10 September SUV demonstraHow do you explain tnis cnange? 1 can understand how the most radicalised and politicised soldiers immediately took up the struggle against reaction, but how do you explain the rapid radicalisation of these soldiers who were strongly influenced by reaction? • DARISE Fur the Revolutionary United Front, it is above all necessary to break with such infantile slogans as Death to Social Dem ocracy, and 'Dissolve the Constituent Assembly' - which serve merely to repel workers from the revolutionaries - and begin the serious work of co-ordinating and centralising the werkers' commissions and establishing as central demands the election of officers and the formation of soldiers commisIn order to show how this work is going forward, and the confusions which still exist, we print the following interview with a militant of the SUV, which was carried out in Oporto on 23 Septmber before the latest developments.
• The radicalisation took place on the bas Hof the soldiers' need to respond.to th oppression resulting from militarist discipline and from a hierarchical system inherited from fascism, as well as the miserable living The SUV became established as a mass organisation because of its ability to express these aspirations in terms of concrete demands and to link them to the struggle against reaction Up to the beginning of 1975 it was the workers' conmissions and neighbourhood commissions that held the initiative in strug gles. In a certain sense, the soldiers were lagging behind. In large part that was due to the misleading prestige of the MFA. This was expressed, among other ways, in the myth that 'all of us, MFA officers and soldiers, are revolutionaries and have to respect discipline for that is our strength." This prestige was an obstacle to the movement of the soldiers for their demands.
But the soldiers began to get tired of this revolutionary' phraseology, which was preventing them from developing their own instruments for advancing demands and expressing themselves within the army, and from putting forward their own positions on the main political questions of the day.
Thus, demands came up around pay increases and free transport. For many soldiers a single trip to see their family was enough to wipe out their pay almost completely. Also demands were raised about the quality of the food, and the differences between the food eaten by the soldiers, noncoms, and officers.
On the basis of such demands, the struggle and the methods of combat of the workers were able to penatrate the army, taking advantage of the generalised crisis of authority The officers then began talking about 'agitation' in the army.
This type of radicalisation set the stage for challenging the MFA - and that was essential.
red weekly 16 october 1975 Q stration in the barracks? barracks!' O HICers.
What were the consequences of the demonAt the CICA in Oporto [the regiment A that has now been disbanded], where we had been unable to respond to the purge measures only a few weeks before and where the officers were very reactionary, there was a really beautiful demonstration in support of the Chilean workers on 11 September.
At 1.45 in the afternoon 300 soldiers and draftees went to get some arms from the ars enal, and assembled in the courtyard of the barracks with these arms, without authorisation. They formed up in ranks, held a minutels silence in honour of the Chilean workers, and then they shouted: Long live the Chilean workers! The commander then ran up, accompanied by his officers. One of them shouted to the soldiers: "You are now going to go on manoeuvres' Then, all together, the soldiers took up one of the slogans of the demonstration: Reactionaries out of the In the general headquarters of Oporto there were three separate mess halls - one for soldiers, one for noncoms, and one for Three days after the demonstration, some soldiers calmly walked in and sat down to eat in the officers mess. The next day all the soldiers occupied the officers' mess. Since all the participants in the Oporto demonstration. Lists are already circulating in the barracks - lists of potential ringleaders"
In the face of the development of the SUV, and especially the creation of an SUV in Lisbon the Council of the Revolution immediately put the question of the SUV and the crisis in the army on the agenda. The Council of the Revolution has already indicated what its line of attack will be: the SUV divides the army and serves reaction. We know, for example, that the intelligence branch of the general staff in the North has just made investigation of SUV members its top priority. Investigation of members of the ELP and of their links with the right-wing Centre Democrats (CDS) has been dropped to second priority.
At the general headquarters in Oporto the SUV has already begun to respond to the accusation that it is divisive. We have demanded that a general assembly be held around the essential point: Why are they hunting down the SUV? The answer is given in the SUV leaflet that is now being distributed: *They are hunting down the SUV because it is a "partisan" organisation. Nevertheless, the officers can endlessly express themselves; they can organise, as has been shown in the North. If no accusation is made against them, it is simply because they are members of the
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MA RINHEIROS A LADO DO POVO EM
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