Portuguese workers under the revolution: the demonstration of the Lisnave workers the 12th September 1974

Abstract

This article belongs to a larger study (that has already originated the publication of other articles in Análise Social, cf. n.^os 51 and 52) about the social conflict unchained, after the revolution of April 25, 1974, at Lisnave, the largest workers' concentration inside the main Portuguese «industrial belt», the Lisbon one. That study encompasses, beyond other aspects, an analysis of the action practices and the workers' organizing forms. The present text is a part of that analysis and concerns the period between June and September 1974, having for its main issue the important demonstration of Lisnave workers on the 12^th September 1974. Sueceedingly one examines the following points: the relations inside the workers' collective at the demonstration outbreack (who took the initiative? who decided? conflicts inside the militant group; the appearance of party cells; the divergences between the workers of the two Lisnave shipyards; the innovating action of militants); social and professional groups and categories as to the demonstration; relations with the adversary: from pressure to the act of force; the demonstration and its meaning (classist and conclusive character of the street demonstration; meaning of the demonstration and militant speech). Concluding, the author remarks that, with the exception of the Portuguese Communist Party militants, for whom the demonstration was a «political mistake», all the others defined it either as a force display as to the Government and the military forces or as an identity expression of the working group or even as something that made possible to reveal the workers heir own force. On the other side, the demonstration was the pretext for militants denouncing the «authoritarian and repressive practice» of employers, stating the irreductible opposition between the classes, attacking the class nature of political power and not only its «inertia» or its «anti-working policy». That is: the militant speech tried to show and make clear what the demonstration had already revealed in some way.