Mepublica workers played key role in workers mobilisations-now Government has moved to close the paper down sions.
defend them. a real problem in the struggle to defend and extend the workers' and neighbourhood commisThe latter, in particular, are in many cases beginning to break down now that the only soldiers around are more likely to attack them than The question of self-defence — the establishment of vigilance committees, picket squads, ete - is only one of the aspects of 'popular power" which will have to be clarified if the workers' movement is to take the offensive once more. The Communist Party, for instance, sees these organs as mere v pressure groups for its own manoeuvres inside the Government and State apparatus; while the weeks preceding 25 November showed that many revolutionary groups had con ceptions which were confused at best and downright dangerous at worst.
DISCUSSION
Such a debate is already beginning to take place. In a statement on 12 December formally announcing its departure from the Revolutionary United Front (FUR), the Internationalist Communist However all this is relatively unimportant, and we dealt with it at such length in our last issue only because it is here that comrade Harman starts the ction of who starts them - fires the first snot or seizes the Tirst air 0350 - BUT OT the class forces and political line invol ved. The Lisbon events, like all important turning points, reveal with sharp clarity the real relations and alignments of forces between the classes. They provide a litmus test, therefore, of the various ponticar imes in me stuagon aune eues tion to which we addressed ourselves In our upen Lenter to is on rortugal and to which we return here, is not whether the rre organisatoney n itiated events, but whether its political line was such that even if the events of 25 November hadn't happened the disaster would merely have had another starting point.