Thousands
In October 1920 tens of thousands• of unemployed workers converged on Whitehall to support Lansbury and other Labour mavors trom the London boroughs who were seeing the prime minister about the increasing unemployment. Without the slightest provocation the demonstration was set on by a mob of baton-waving police. The savagery o. his attack added strength to those who Faced with overcrowding, unable to deal with the aggressive spirit of their hew arrivals, the authorities tried everything that they could to get them to leave. By 27 July the Wandsworth Guardians were defeated. They agreed to restore the former benefits. All over Britain similar struggles were taking place - and in most cases they too forced the local authorities to restore But apart from a few exceptions - like the Labour-controlled Poplar Council - the official movement remained aloof. Their adherence to a parliamentary approach, their commitment to working within the capitalist system for reforms, ensured that they would be hostile to actions that challenged capitalism's right to rule and sought to use the independent strength of the working class to change the situation. Yet time after time the unemployed had to challenge the law and the police to secure even the most elementary justice.
he erunon or mass strugge De CS l over the country in support of its demands. Raids on factories and Guardians' offices and struggles against low wages on relief jobs as well as solidarity strike actions with workers in dispute mushroom ed. Evictions were bitterly and often successfully countered by mass actions.
Cap-in-hand
The cap-in-hand unemployed committees had been swept away. A national movement was emerging It had an anti-capitalist programme. Its tactics were bold and imaginative Its resonance inside the mass movement was getting stronger. It had still not made sufficient impact on the organised labour movement to challenge effectively the paralysing grip of the right-wing leaders, but it had brought together the powerful forces that could go op to do that.
By the beginning of 1922 the un employed were up off their knees. The fight back had started in eain
the revolution 25 November - like 25 April 1974, 28 September 1974, and 11 March 1975 - marks a new stage in the development of the Portuguese revolutien.
After the victory of the construction workers, more than 100,000 people demonstrated on 16 November. In spite of the efforts of the Communist Party to avoid frontal attacks on the Sixth Government as such, the most commonly chanted slogans were directed squarely against Prime Minister Pinheiro de Azevedo. In addition, the bakers threatened to use the same methods as the construction workers if the Ministry of Labour persisted in opposing their demands.
In the army the 'revolt' of the Tancos paratroopers occupies a position of prime importance. After blowing up the Radio Renascenca transmitter, the Tancos paratrooper regiment itself exploded. The paratroopers elected a new commander and 'placed themselves at the service of the revolution' with all the confused haste characteristic of a completely new radicalisation. The Government then went on strike', on the grounds that the "armed forces can no longer assure the Government the authority necessary to govern' POLARISATION In this context a polarisation developed around the nomination of Vasco Lourenco (a member of the Council of the Revolution and one of the leaders of the 'group of nine' of Melo Antunes) to the post of commander of the Lisbon Military Region. In effect, this nomination meant that Otelo de Carvalho, who had been strongly supported by the CP in recent weeks, was to be deprived of command of the military region of the capital.
In a deformed and dangerous way, the dynamic of politico-social confrontation tended to be reduced to the battle around the commander of the Lisbon Miltary Region. Such a battle resulted in a military confrontation not effectively linked to the mass movement or even to the independent movement of soldiers. At the beginning of September in Oporto, the SUV (Soldiers United Will Win) had approached a similar problem the removal of General Corvacho from the Northern Military Region - from an entirely different angle that permitted a stimulation of the organisation of the soldiers themselves.
But to understand the meaning of the events of 25-26 November more exactly, it is useful to recall the fundamental characteristic of the present period - that the extremely profound crisis of the state apparatus (especially the army has not been matched by the development and centralisation of embryonic organs of dual power. Such a situation cannot persist for long. It has to be resolved either through a more or less partial restabilisation of the state apparatus, or through a growig over towards a situanon or aual power - whatever the intermediary steps.
ILLUSIONS
In addition, the deep crisis of the state apparatus - which allowed a workers' upsurge to go on without meeting any major obstacles - gave rise to illusions in the bourgeoisie's capacity for political initiative and, even more important, in the operational possibilities of the military hierarchy. But although the crisis of the state apparatus did not allow the bourgeoisie to confront the mass move= ment head on (without risking civil war), it certainly did not prevent the success of a militarv counter-oftensive against an adventurist operation of the type launched on 25-26 November.
In examining the initiative taken by the Tancos paratroopers on the morning of 25 November, it is difficult to separate provocation, "mad adventure', and the application of a plan. At about eleven o'clock in the morning they occupied the base at Tancos, the bases of Montijo, and the installations of the first air force region at Monsanto, and took control of access to the Monte Real base.
But the links among these initiatives - the measures taken by various units to occupy radio and television stations, and the appearance on television of Durand Clemente, one of the heads of the former Fifth Division - indicate that the elements of a 'military plan' reminiscent of putschism were being applied on 25 November even if the Tancos paratroopers carried out this plan in a precipitous and disorganised manner.
This sort of adventurism does not simply drop from the sky. For two or three months now, various centrist organisations, essentially the MES (Left Socialist Movement) and the PRP (Revolutionary Party of the Proletariat) as well as some radicalised sectors of the army, have been developing an adventurist conception that has taken the form of a putschist orientation, under the pretext of anticipating "a reactionary coup'.
ALARMIST
A manifesto distributed on 21 November entitled "Manifesto of the Revolutionary Officers to the Soldiers, Sailors, Working Class, and Toiling People', and signed by Tome (the major of the Lisbon Military Police), Durand Clemente and Matos Gomez, stressed the imminence of a reactionary offensive: "We are now seeing a desperate reactionary escalation; the parties and officers of the Sixth Government are joining in attempts to crush the powerful popular offensive.' What is reflected here is the position of centrist organisations which confuse the desire of various sectors of the military hierarchy to carry out a reactionary and even the preparation of the coup - with the establishment of the general conditions for doing so with any serious chance of success.
This manifesto appeared on the front page of the 21 November issue of the weekly newspaper of the PRP. On 10 November, this same PRP held a press conference during which Isabel do Carmo declared: "For us, at this moment, there is no solution except armed insurrection. As all history shows, the bourgeoisie unleashes a civil war every time it wants to defend its interests. Fortunately, the forces of the right possess no army in Portugal. To get one, they must resort to mercenaries based in Spain or to the armies of the United States or NATO ' (4 Capital, 10 November).
UNDER-ESTIMATION This ultra-left and adventurist orientation Look snape arouna several pomts.
1. A considerable under-estimation of the capacity for military initiative by the sectors conrolca by une mintarıst merarcny - combined, paradoxically, with a multitude of assertions about the imminence of the establishment of an authoritarian regime that will assume fascist forms, that will rapidly resort to blood bath and terror in order that "peace and discipline" may reign" (Revolucao, PRP weekly, 17 November). This latter assertion rests essentially on a simplistic conception of the relationship between the economic crisis and the establishment of 'an authoritarian regime that will assume fascist forms.
2. A radical misunderstanding of the level Red Weekly 11 December 1975 Tears of defeat - outside the gates of the Tancos parachute regiment's headquarters of consciousness of broad sectors of the masses - of the grip of democratic illusions among significant layers of the working class, because of the lack of an experience of dual power that would enable the legitimacy of bourgeois institutions to be shifted to the organs of workers power and an under-estimation of the negative effects of the division of the working class and of the uneven development of struggles among various branches and regions. All this leads to the most impressionistic judgements about the conjunctural situation.
For example, the MES declared: "The military, political, and economic conditions exist for the development of a popular offensive. From the military point of view, the right Cont. Page 6
...a state of siege November.
Red Weekly 11 tical School of Military Administration), the Lisbon military police, and the RALIS (Lisbon light artillery regiment) was totally disorganised in offering any military response to all this. The soldiers of the units involved in this operation not only possessed no central command; above all, they were not prepared to launch into a confrontation that would open the way to civil war.
The hesitations in the ranks of these soldiers increased from hour to hour. In face of determined troops who appeared as defending 'legality" against 'rebellion', these vacillations inevitably increased, especially when the 'dynamisation commission' (linked to the former Fifth Division) gave the order to cease fighting at four o'clock in the morning of 26
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in a of siege