There can be no doubt that this service rendered to the AFM - allowing it to masquerade benina a civilian tront -has been crucial in allowing the AFM win ineir antı -working Covering up, in this way, tor the military is however ful By taking responsibility and even passing them off as 'progressivel if not 'revolutionary, the reformists like soares or Cunhal have not only confused the workers' movement but have opened the door increasing y to ine 'right who have begun to trade off popular discontThe mass demonstration of over ten thousand small farmers in Brago, on calling for 'fair prices is a case in point. it Is by refusing to champion the demands of the moverent and its allles. such as that pushes the latAction Life, a church-sponsored pressure group in Austria, claims to have collected 800, 000 signatures on a pelltion calling on the government to make abortion, once dudin a crime Abortions duri-g the first three months of pregra-s:
became legal in Austria lasi : ea"
with the change in a fifty-year-cic law.
According to the Austrian Justice Minister, up to 70,000 illegal abortIons : were performed annua until 1975. One Vienna clinic sa c Inal no woman nad died in 2.400 abortions performed there since vanuary 1915 compared with the nationwide mortality rate of 25% before the new law was passed.
nad concenirated attention on the irisr 'question'. Step Forward Such a process did not, of course, take place overnight. tons scasne NUM only decided to 'break' from the Liberals as late as 1908. Nevertheless. it was out of this deepening awareness of a common class interest that had to be defended that in 1899, the Labour Representation Committee was formed The LRC, sponsored by a loose federation ot trade unions and socialist currset itself, it is true, very limited objectives.
It wasn't even sure whether its aim was to set up a party, let alone a party based on clear socialist principles. Its aims, as originally defined, were as limited and fuzzy as they are today when it was decided it should ".., ensure that working Class opinion snoula de represented ir the House of Commons by men sympathetic with the aims and demands ot the labour movement and whose candidatures are Promoteu by one or olner of ine organised movements".
Behind these unclear and hesitating words, however, lay a radical change in consciousness by important layers of the labour movement which 'marxists! such as Robin Blackburn contemptuously dismissed when comparing the Labour Party with the Democratic Party in the A radical change because, in the decision to promote candidates Isvmo athetic with the aims and demands of the labour movement' lay an awareness these layers of the need to create for themselves a palitical voice This fact should not be under-estimated by those (particularly outside the labour movement) wno see oniy its negative teatures represented in the figures of Wilson or Prentice.
Ine Labour Part) symbolised, in its creation, an importan: step forward in the awareness of millions of workers, an awareness of themselves as a class with distinct interests as a