strategies will be tested for their usefulness in advancing the power and sell-organisation of the workers movement. We will see jo Portugal which groups in the workers movement have learnt the lessons of the Chilean defeat, and which Already such questions are being posed by the actions of the workers themselves. Should they go ahead ousting ur management-or should they 'exercise restraint', as the Communist Party advises?
Should they concentrate on developing their own organisations, or should they put theit trust in a provisional povertient with the SEE ME AGENCY ATTEND to win the support of a section of the army fot the workers" struggleor should they rely on its future Theie questions have a relevance far heyond the borders of Portugal. The workers of the world wil not be slow to draw the lessons for their one soubaos to sue d pace. test of diffcrent strategies. And certainly the revolutionaries wil not be the ones to stink from such Just as it was the African wars which finally led to the downfall of the old regime, so too they may well decide the fate of the new one.
Certainly it is the one question on which widely differing views have been publicly expressed by the junta's supporters.
RAW MATERIALS
The importance of the colonies dares from the recent past, however. Only ander the Salazar regime was their potential as suppliers of cheap rew materials for Portugal's ailing manufacturing industry recognised.
Their cconomies were then delib erately disported in line with this aced, subsistence agriculture being Mozambique became a major producer of cotton, Angola of coffee abd cotton, and Guine-Bissau of groupdThe advantages for Portugal • were obvious. To take bat one example-In 1955, when the price of a kilo of cotton on the world market was 27.12 cacudos, Portugul was paying only 14.0% per kilo!
But the last ten ycars have changed all that. Armed resistance was switt to develop in all three colonies following the 1961 uprising in Angola. The guerrillas have now succeeded in wresting two-thirds of Guine Bissau, mote that a third of Mazarabique, and a quarter of Angula froe Portuguesc hands,
ORTUGAL •MADERA CAPL....
ANGOLA SOUTH ST SOUTH AFRICA MEES 2000 [MOZAMBIQUE continued their meeting until 4 in the afternoon.
Elected workers' representatives then went to present the workers" list of demands to the management. The meeting resumed agrin at 6 pm to receive a report-back from their representatives.
Immediately after the coup. workers in the Portuguese national airline (TAP) demanded the sacking. of two top managers who had been Involved in repressive actions which had resulted in the death of two workers last year. After a brief strike, the junta agreed to the workers' COSTELT D The most impressive display of the workers' power has come from the hank workers. Returning to work after the coup, they found that the management had shut the banks down. Concerned that a plot was underway to shift money out of the country they forced their way into the banks, uncovering evidence that confirmed their suspicions.
They then clected workers' committees and reopened the banks under workers' control A Imit was placed on the size of withdrawals, and only the workers' committee could authorise payments in accounts were frozen wilh the exception of funds needed to pay wages.
ment of the banks to accept this arrangement, and they now recog to force the replacement of newspaper editors and administrators tees in all the papers, and radio and television stations, to prevent any the pro-democratic stance of the als of the Ministry of Information, and called on the Government to beration movement.
place in the student movement, against the dictatorship. All the University Faculties in Lisbon are now being run by elected six-man committees, with equal representsexcess of this amount, All company tive workers The union has forced the manng:
nise the right of the workers committees to carry out these functions Journalists bave boon taking action window dressing.
connected with the old regime. The journalists union has set up commitattempts at censorship and to ensure They have also demanded the immediate dismissal of all the top officiopen negotiations with the colonial Similar developments have taken which has a long history of struggle tlon from students, lower-level teaching start, and university administraWORKERS' POWER This rise of the mass movement 15 a warning that General Spinola and his canitalist backers will have great difficulty creating a liberal democracy in which the expioilalion of the workers can coobnue t before, despite the democratic"
Already one of Spinola's main backers the big industrial and banking monopaly Champalimaud is set on a collision course with workers in the steed Industry, which it controls A general strike of steel workers could take place any day over Champalimand's refusal to meet the workers' demands.
Spincia's only hope is that he can buy support for his policies from the main left-wing parties by offering them positions in tbe The Connunist Party has already made it clear that it is willing to piay such a part. At tbe same tube as insisting ob a place in the Government, it has called on workers not to engage in factory takeovers. Communist Party mistants are already reported to be urging "moderation" in the mass factory meetings But no matter what manoeuvres the Generals and their reformist and Stalinist collaborators may engage in, It wEl be difficult to tem tbe tide of the mass upsurge.
The basis for a totally new form is already emerging from the mass facrory meetings, the workers" councils, and the university com Most of the Portuguese arolyinclading the officers-are conscripts. The level and intensity of debate inside the armed forces, especially the navy, is very nigh. There is aiteady discussion of allowing political and socal associators to be organisce inside the armed farces.
A powerful mass movement offering radical solutions to the country's problems would have an excellent chance of winning support within the ranks of the armed forces Nothing could then stand in the way of such a movement making Porcugal the first country in Western Europe to break out of the capitalist system. Portugal could thus become the foundation stone of the United States of Socialist Burope,