PORTUGAL - WILL IT BE ANOTHER CHILE?
Harold Wilson has boasted that the British Labour Government will not give any aid to a dictator ship. ified the Chilean workers and peasants be misplaced. erring to Portugal, where he has lined up behind SP leader Mario 'Soares in promoting an imperial ist blockade against the country.
In the case of Chile, matters are different. Chile is undoubtably a dictatorship. If Mr Wilson was naving trouble on this matter Gen eral Pinochet has helped him out. . This was The General has explained that no elections will be held in Chile eiter in nis litet me or in that or his successor!
discovered distaste for dictatorships has not stopped him propos ing to allow the two submarines and one destroyer being worked on in Britain for Chile to be sent To Ine unta the right-wing forces who organised the reactionary lorry owners' strike. These measures were, in the words of the CIA, aimed at 'de-stabilising the country — in other words. at creating the conditions in which a right-wing offensive doubt the Church and the right wing parties have been the grateful recipients of CIA handouts. And worse still the ruling class of Western Europe has turned to the social democratic leaders - foremost amongst them Harold Wilson.to organise and promote an economic and political blockThere are also other resemblances between the two countries. For example, in Chile the ruling class embarked on a strategy of sabotage of production. Factories were closed, stocks were hoarded, capital was rapidly sent out of the ECONOMIC SABOTAGE Now in Portugal exactly the same things are being done. The US-based multinational ITT has followed up its infamous role in preparing the ground for the Chilean coup by announcing that it is cutting off all finance from its subsidiaries in Portugal. The ITT bosses apparently don't like the way in which their absolute control has been challenged by the workers committees.
Nor are they alone in this. A key role in Portuguese industry is played by British-based multinationals, and they too are playing an active part in economic sabotage. The Lisbon bus garage, for instance, is being forced to cannibalise old buses and even forge and cast its own spares because it can't get them from its British suppliers - British Leyland, Gardner's, Lucas and CAV. Yet these same firms are threatening British workers with the dole because there isn't As for ICI, it is apparently demanding cash in advance for all Portuguese orders, according to the workers' commission at its Portuouese subsidiary TINCO. This practice is junta simply refuses to pay its debts, nas he ordered an end to all trade with the military junta This must really have grat- and expelled their representatives wno use une embassy as a bast from which to spy on Chilean But any such gratitude would It is clear that those who seek wir wilson was ret to give solidarity to the struggle of Chile's workers and peasants will need to look a good deal further than Mr Wilson's high 'moral' values. indeed. it will only De through a mass campaign of inde pendent action that Wilson will be compelleg to take any step that might be remotely against the interests of imperialism.
The Chile Solidarity Campaign is calling a Trade Union Conference on 25 October which is an importHowever, Mr Wilson's recently ant opportunity to plan just such actions.ine converence is soon sored by AUEW TASS, ACT, and NUPE among others. the conference should be in a pos ition to propose serious steps for ward in the solidarity campaign.
Nor, despite the fact that the Foremost amongst these must when the coup came. ising workers' self-defence. assembly, can emerge to fill the vacuum.
be the attempt to develop a work ing class blockade of the Chilean regime. Boycotts of Chilean goods nave taken place in Aust ralia, Holland, Sweden, USA and In Britain there have been numerous boycott actions ranging Trom isse at te LiverDool docK to the blacking of Chilean wine in Bristol. The Chilean CUT has urged that selective bovcotts of Chilean trade should be imposed where possible.
The conference will have to discuss how to implement these sorts of measures if it is to be a really meaningful step forward for the solidarity campaign, and if it is going to be able to bring home to Wilson and the Labour Government that their cringing collaboration witn me unta will not be tolerated.
Evidently Credentials for the Conference which will be held in London, can be obtained from: Chile Solidarity Campaign, 129 Seven Sisters Road, London N.7 unheard of in normal trading within a combine.
Perhaps most serious of the similarities is that the leaderships of the working class - the Popular Unity in Chile, and the CP and SP in Portugal - have all in their different ways sought to contain the struggle of the working class within the framework of the capitalist system.
In Chile this created a situation in which no effective steps could be taken against the internal and external sabotage that was paralysing the country. To be sure workers in many areas began to break in practice with their leaderships. They formed independent organs of workers power - the Cordones Industriales - that began to take on the control of the factories and the self-defence of the working class. The tragedy is that these bodies, which could have united the whole of the working class against the capitalist offensive, were formed too late and were still too weak In Portugal, however, such bodies have already been formed and even at this stage they have developed much further than they had in Chile. The Workers and Soldiers Committees are the only bodies which because they rely solely on the united strength of the working class, organised demoeratically and independently of the capitalist state, can meet the economic sabotage through workers control, and block the reactionary manoeuvres of the capitalists by organBut time is short. In Chile the political vacuum created by the inability of the Popular Unity to solve any of the urgent problems facing the working class was the ideal breeding ground for the forces behind the capitalist offensive. Today in Portugal there is a similar crisis of political perspectives — a crisis that will only be resolved in favour of the Portuguese working class if a generalised system of organs of workers' power, surmounted by a national popular If the Portuguese working class can learn this lesson from the Chilean experience, then they will not only ensure the success of their own revolution but they will also have done much to wipe the slate clean of the bloody defeat in Chile.
red weekly 11 september 1975
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Today the same game is being played in Portugal. NATO and US troops hover in readiness to enter Portugal. No