stematic and disastrous confusion ed lumping together of fascism and cial democracy. We can demonstrate is in some detail. hast, howcet, we must stress that is point is not merely semantic but , crucial importance for the practical tivity of revolutionaries. Certainly cal aemocrats are capable or quite traordinary violence - in 1918-19 e leadership of the German SPD ganised the killing of tens of thousds of German workers. But the social mocrats canned our us volence to fend the bourgeois democratic state ainst a workers revolution, and withthe state they preserved the organisains of the working class: the same SPD dership which killed Luxemburg and ebknecht presided over a threefold crcase in ine membersnip of ine Gerin unions.
In comparison with this level of olence, Hitler actually killed less opie in me urst penod or nis power but the difference was that Hitler rence called a another 200. The working class ovement in britain nas a greater resensibility than most in building a camlign in solidarity with the revolutionary ruggle of the Portuguese workers and cadills.
One person we can be certain will it be at this conference is Harold Wiln. He and the other leaders of social nocracy internationally have been ung all they can to nelp Mario Soares It the challenge to capitalist rule in irtugal. These so-called leaders of the orkers' movement have been 'assisting" Portuguese working class by impos, import quotas and tariffs on Portuese textiles, which can only make 17 per cent rate of unemployment ere even worse.
The Solidarity Campaign conference open to all bodies of the trade union vement, Constituency Labour Parties, dent unions, national political organtions, etc. It must become a massive piay or our determination to continue campaign against the multinationals d the treacherous role of the Wilsonares-Brandt coalition, because a defeat the Portuguese working class would a defeat for the working class all over rope. For further details contact the ndarity Campaign with the Portuguese orking Class, 12 Little Newport Street, ndon, W.C.2. ALAN JONES continues his reply to the International Socialists on the politics of the PRP the fascist smashed the very bourgeois democratic state form and organisations of the working class on which the SPD had based itself.
To deal with these different types of reachon very amcient responses arc required by revolutionaries. If we are confronted with a move to a fascist coup, a coup aimed to crush the organisation of the masses, then certain things follow. Firstly. armed resistance must be pre pared without fail. Mere general strikes etc will not achieve anvthing against a fascist coup, and at all costs the proletariat must not be defeated without a struggle as Trotsky said, a dozen defeated bloody proletarian insurrections would not be such a terrible blow to the masses as a surrender to fascism without struggle. Resistance Secondly, however, because the offensive of the fascists is against the masses and their organisations, the masses will rapidly be able to understand the necessity for resistance -while the vanguard can of course commit lacuical curers or ura-lerasm. mae essential dynamic is to push the vanguard and masses together and in any case, as already noted, the danger of premature acts is a thousand times less man the danger or passivity.
Faced with social democratic repression, which aims not to smash the masses but to crush the vanguard, entirely different tasks flow. The danger is precisely or solauon trom une masses. the repression is against the vanguard and not the masses, there is no constant pressure for the masses themselves to feel threatened and therefore support the vanguard. Under such circumstances tne classic tactic or tne bourgeoisie 1s to carry out a provocation which separates the vanguard decisively from the masses, and therefore allows it to be crusheu separately. Provocations The task of that vanguard is evidently •to avoid walking into provocations and isolated adventures, and to implant itself more firmly in the masses and on this basis lead the strug gle against the social democrats. Unfortunately, nowever, te ar took схасшу the opposite course. It completely confused the question of repression aimed against the vanguard by the social democrats, which was a very real threat, and that of a fascist reaction - with the existing relation of forces in Portugal was absolutely not a threat. In consequence the PRP headed full tilt tor an aaventure The disastrously wrong line of the PRP began to take its concrete form in August with sections of the Manifesto of the Revolutionary United Front (FUR) - which the PRP, unlike other groups in the FUR, never criticised. This Manesto analysea me existence or "social democratic putschists" in the army - which might not have been too bad if it had been clearly understood as a reference to elements aiming to use violence to crush the vanguard. How ever, instead of distinguishing between these elements, who clearly dominate the Antunes group, the SP and the Azeredo Government, the PRP confused them with the fascists - referring in the Manifesto, for example, to the entire right, both fascists and social democrats'.
From then on the PRP consistently contused une social democrats attempts to destroy the vanguard with the fascists' attempts to destroy the mass organisauons. ment of an authoritarian regime that will assume fascist forms and that will rapidly resort to blood bath and terror because - which crats."
It forecast the developlence of the Social Democrats' (PRP article in Jornal de Noticias, 25 SeptThis ridiculous bravado was coupled with a clear line on how to deal with the situation. As Isabel Do Carmo put it in a press conference on 10 November: "For us. at this moment. there is no solution except armed insurrection." ns une was made excecomery con crete. In the article in Jornal de Noncis already cited, the rke nailed the diversion of weapons to the workers not as a means of developing self-defence but because: "The opposition group, specifically Captain Clemente, salu mat it was necessary to seck new forms of struggle to keep the country from being dominated by social demoEscalation From this point onwards the PRP systematically featured the material of the Clemente group without in any way differentiating itself politically from their central line •anis culminated on 21 November with the printing on une iront page or kevoticao or the Manifesto of Clemente and other officers, which stated: We are now seeing ernment are joining in attempts to crush the powerful popular offensive. It advanced as the solution the PRP's slogan or a regime or revoltonary unity. Four days later it was Clemente who was lacco on the v screens by the Government when he appeared to announce the insurrection.
Did the PRP organisationally initiate what took place on 25 November? We accept their word, comrade Harman's word, and the obvious evidence that they didn't. But is that the really significant thing on which we múst CURAF will accomplish its mission by providing guidelines for the soldiers anu workers. coorumanne mac actor of the patriotic forces at a national level. we could ask comrade harmar what he thinks of the need for unity of the patriotic forces, but we feel that even he won't go so far as to sup port that. Unfortunately, however, this is merely a culminating point, the flip side of its ultra-leftism, of the line of the PRP.
In our next issue we will deal with ine orner aspect or ine rar s insurree tionist line - its analysis of the CP and of the relation of forces in Portugal.
-oreign Minister Melo Antunes-now heads 'left' grouping which wants a con tinued role tor une mitary in covern ment. The CP is turning all its efforts to building an alliance with him.
Demonstration by PPD rightists
6 Angola The Angola operation", wrote Anthony Lewis in the 16 December International Herald Trihune, "is already one of the largest covert actions ever mounted by the United States outside Indochina'.
The United States has already funnelled millions of dollars worth of military hardware to the National Front for the Liberation of Angola (FNLA) and the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA). Meanwhile the US Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, has been making a series of increasingly bellicose speeches attacking the Soviet Union for its assistance to the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA).
On 23 December Kissinger warned that "an extremely dangerous situation" was developing. 'We will without question resist military expansion', he said. "Unless the Soviet Union shows restraint in its foreign policy actions, our relations are bound to become more tense! These threats are designed to draw attention away from South Atrica's invasion of Angola and to act as a cover and justification for escalated US involvement.
FAR GREATER
The extent of US intervention may well be far greater than that so far admitted in Washington. Many observers believe that so far only the 'tip of the iceberg has been revealed. What is known is that on 24 October the Ford administration unveiled an 81 millRed Weekly 1 January 1976 why U.S. digs Alrica. with the West"
The Kremlin's aid programme is designed to win diplomatic favours from the neocolonial regimes. To this end, arms have been sent to such reactionary dictators as Idi Amin of Uganda and Indira Gandhi of India. Aid to the MPLA is no different in purpose. It is intended to win the Kremlin influence in a strategic part of Africa, to manoeuvre within the context of detente.
It is this attempt of the Soviet Union to pick up what US Under-Secretary of State Joseph Sisco has called "bargaining chips' that Kissinger and Ford want to stop.
Kissinger is also worried that a defeat for the FLA would help undermine the movement's chief long-term backer, President Mobutu of Zaire. The Zaire regime, hit by a massive drop in the price of copper - on which it depends for over 70 percent of its exports - and reportedly threatened last June by a coup attempt, is in serious trouble. The regime, which has received 430 million dollars of US aid in the past 12 years (more than any other African country, is perhaps the US's staunchest ally on the continent.
HAUNTED
Officials in both Washington and Pretoria also fear that an MPLA victory could upset Vorster's drive for 'detente' and 'dialogue' with the neo-colonial African regimes - in particular, by allowing SWAPO to use Angolan territory to reach Namibia. Certainly this is the greatest fear haunting the Afrikaans paper Die Burger. 'Our involvement',