By Dara O’Cogaidhin
A review of The Carnation Revolution: The Day Portugal’s Dictatorship Fell by Alex Fernandes, Oneworld, 2024, 400 pages, £22.
FIFTY YEARS ago, Portugal underwent a profound revolutionary upheaval after the a military coup against the country’s fascist dictatorship. With its Armed Forces Movement (MFA) and workers’ councils, Portugal appeared on the verge of a socialist revolution.
Fernandes’ book focuses on its central protagonists, the young army officers, providing a vivid account of the overthrow of the fascist dictatorship, the collapse of the Portuguese Empire, and the brief flowering of dual power.
From 1932 to 1968, the dictator Salazar ruled over Portugal’s fascist regime, the Estado Novo (‘New State’), built on the pillars of ‘God, Homeland, Family’. Its colonial wars proved an enormous human and financial drain on Portuguese society, consuming up to 40 per cent of its budget. Dissatisfaction in army led to many officers internalising leftist ideologies and, in some cases, sympathising with the anti-colonial resistance. Back in Portugal, meanwhile, resistance to the regime was also growing as a nascent workers’ movement began to organise.
The MFA emerged in the early 1970s as a movement of junior officers opposed to the colonial wars, measures to fast-track officer promotion, and the yoke of dictatorship. Fernandes provides vivid descriptions of their conspiratorial meetings and subsequent leadership of the revolution, immersing readers in the struggles and triumphs of the army officers.
In the end, it took one day to overthrow 50 years of dictatorship.
Fernandes describes ‘the signs of a new landscape for the working class’ that emerged in the first days after the coup. The vacuum left by the repressive state encouraged workers to drive the bosses out of the factories and the landowners off the land.
Fernandes highlights the examples of workers at a metallurgical plant in Alverca, calling for a monthly minimum of 6,000 escudos, having their demands met by ‘a management terrified of their workforce’. The majority of strikes in 1974–75 were organised by workers’ commissions led by elected leaders subject to recall at any moment. Homeless people seized empty properties in the Lisbon neighbourhood of Boavista, prompting the creation of residents’ commissions around the country.
When the interim president demanded greater powers, the MFA refused, bringing down the first provisional government. A new Prime Minister, Brigadier Vasco Gonçalves—linked to the Portuguese Communist Party— was appointed. A section of the MFA leadership around Otelo Saraiva de Carvalho were moving leftwards, favouring a ‘society without classes, obtained through the collectivisation of the means of production’ but based on the Cuban model of top-down ‘workers’ revolutionary councils’. There was deep suspicion of Stalinism, particularly in a country that had just emerged from totalitarianism, Mário Soares and the Socialist Party exploited these misgivings.
On 29 August, having lost his majority, Gonçalves was replaced by Admiral José Azevedo. The MFA was increasingly polarised; a ‘Group of Nine’, supported by the PS, emerged as leaders of the MFA, while more left-wing soldiers amalgamated into Soldiers United Will Win.
In November, 30,000 construction workers demanding higher wages and the nationalisation of all building sites surrounded the assembly. Left-wing soldiers refused to intervene and Azevedo was forced to accept the workers’ demands, but the Sixth Provisional Government moved to dismiss Otelo and purge Communist ministers.
Right-wing groups set up barricades on 24 November to isolate ‘Red Lisbon’, and the next day a state of emergency was called. The trade union federation— dominated by the Communists— failed to resist. On 25 November, power had been restored to the Sixth Provisional Government and the revolution was over.
After the defeat of the revolution, the country experienced a ‘slow descent into privatisations, inequality and austerity’. In more recent years, both the PCP and the Left Bloc (BE) supported a pro-business, minority PS government in 2015. The PCP and BE’s abandonment of the class struggle created the space for the farright Chega party to present itself as an ‘anti-systemic’ protest party. Its slogan—‘God, Homeland, Family, and Work’—is lifted directly from Salazar.
A new right-wing Democratic Alliance (AD) government now intends to further liberalise the economy, impose harsh austerity measures, and to commemorate 25 November—the defeat of the Carnation Revolution. Fernandes’ excellent book demonstrates why historical memory is of enormous importance: the experience of victory can be repeated, while the lessons of defeat can be learnt. The lessons of 25 April demonstrate that it is necessary to build a revolutionary socialist party for the working class based on a programme of class independence.
