Faced with the counter-revolutionary role of the SP leadership, the military plotting of the MFA, and the bureaucratic manipulations of the CP, the weight of the response to the attacks of Azevedo has fallen on the revolutionary left.
As we analyse elsewhere on these pages, the response of the revolutionaries on many questions has been extremely inadequate -and in many cases simply wrong. The Manifesto of the Front for Revolutionary Unity (see page 8) is both extremely confused and contains some very dangerous and wrong demands - notablv its call for the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly, and its virtual equation of social democracy with fascism. It is necessary for revolutionaries to keep up a relentless criticism of the confusions and dangers presented by some of the ideas of the extreme left in Portugal.
Nevertheless, despite these weaknesses, it is the forces of the revolutionary left which have taken the initiative in fighting the attacks of the Azevedo Government - and to the degree that anyone else has been forced into opposition, it has been under their impact. It is in their hands that the fate of the Portuguese revolution lies today. of workers democracy to those of formal bourformation. This question was of the most burning importance, and such a campaign would have permitted both reaching the rank-and-file workers of the CP and SP and diffusFirst of all, it would have been easy to ex- Gomes. pose the real nature of the campaign about free expression the SP waged around RepubIberonica, where the workers expelled the employer a month ago, has offered its services to the Radio Renascenca workers in establishing a broadcasting station of their own.
In spite of these missed opportunities and in spite of the absence of initiatives that could have inflicted an exemplary defeat on the Govern ment, the response of the soldiers did halt the offensive of Pinheiro de Azevedo and Costa NO ANSWER