Europe

"Capitalism is dead in Portugal" wrote the Times in 1975. And yet today it lives. How was it able to survive? What lessons can we learn from the Portuguese Revolution of 1974?

25 April marks 45 years of the "Carnation Revolution" in Portugal in 1974-75, which brought down a hated dictatorship and threatened the foundations of the capitalist system. In the end however, the movement was brought back onto the safe channels of bourgeois democracy. This article, written by Phil Mitchinson in 2002, explains what happened and urges us to learn the lessons from this great event.

On October 3, anything up to 100,000 workers demonstrated through the streets of Paris against the Raffarin government. The main focus of the demands put forward on the demonstration was opposition to the privatisation of EDF-GDF planned by the Raffarin government, the defence of the 35 hour week, defence of pensions, together with demands for higher wages and job security.

At this year's annual Labour Party conference it was quite clear that Blair is no longer looking as confident as only a few months ago. He has had to swallow defeat in his own party, on a key issue: the participation of private capital in the providing of public services And he also came close to defeat on his plans to wage war on Iraq! We are witnessing the first steps in what will prove to be a major turn-around inside the Labour Party over the next period.

Edmund Stoiber, a leading reactionary Christian Democratic leader was defeated in the German elections last Sunday, though by a narrow margin. There was a sigh of relief on the part of many SPD activists, trade unionists and youth up and down the country. The threat of a Stoiber victory mobilised the SPD and green vote, but against the background of a severe economic crisis, all sorts of conflicts will open up, and major disappointment and anger on the part of workers and youth will be on the order of the day.

Stop attacks against democratic rights

The outlawing of Batasuna has meant a qualitative step in the curtailing of democratic rights and fundamental freedoms. As was shown in the streets of Bilbao on Saturday, September 15, the freedom of expression, demonstration, organisation and the right to strike, which are conquests of the working class and the youth, are under serious attack.

This is a report of the demonstration in Salzburg against the World Economic Forum from Der Funke. The international "anti-globalisation movement" has reached an entirely new stage after the mass protests against the G8 in Genoa and after the second World Social Forum in Porto Alegre. This attempt to structure the movement into so-called Social Forums has been accompanied by the increasing political influence of openly reformist forces.

Jeremy Dear, general secretary of the NUJ, was one of several left union leaders to be newly elected to the TUC General Council. Socialist Appealspoke to him at the recent TUC Conference.

Strikes in Britain are at their highest level for thirteen years and the trend is upwards. The recent council workers' strike involving over one million people was the largest strike by women workers ever seen in this country. Fire fighters have voted unanimously at their recall conference to ballot for strike action over a 40% rise in pay! If this takes place, it will be the first national strike in 25 years. Rail and tube workers, who have their own disputes, have threatened to refuse to work on grounds of safety if there is no fire cover. The general public, according to a recent Guardian/ICM poll, appear to sympathise with them. The days of workplace "servitude" seem finally...

The planned national industrial action by the firefighters is the first for 25 years. It coincides with an increasing radicalisation in the union movement, which is a culmination of years of bitterness and resentment built up by the attacks on the wages and conditions of workers in general, and in the public sector in particular. The FBU is playing a leading role in the struggle for better wages in the public sector.

Today marks the end of the Trade Union Congress in Blackpool. It was a Congress that reflected the mood not seen since the hey-days of the miners' strike of 1984-85. Since that time, we have had a decade and a half of "new realism" and policies of (class) "collaboration" or "partnership", epitomised by the likes of Sir Ken Jackson, ex-general secretary of the AEEU. Now a wind of change has hit the trade union movement.

On Monday, August 26 an extraordinary session of the Spanish Parliament was called with the aim of promoting the outlawing of Batasuna. This decision was taken with 295 votes in favour from the Popular Party, the Socialist Party [PSOE], Coalición Canaria and Partido Andalucista. There were 10 votes against from the Basque Nationalist Party [PNV], Catalan Republican Left [ERC], Eusko Alkartasuna [EA] and Iniciativa per Catalunya and 29 abstentions from United Left [IU], Galician Nationalist Block [BNG], the [Catalan bourgeois nationalist] CiU and Chunta Aragonesista.