We are here today, in Marinha Grande, land of great and noble traditions of the labour and trade union movement and its struggle, to evoke and honour the unparalleled figure of Álvaro Cunhal on the day of yet another anniversary of his birth and, and his valuable legacy, to highlight the importance of the intervention and struggle of the workers in the process of progressive transformation of a society that continues to be marked by capitalist exploitation and unacceptable social injustices.
It is under the motto "More strength to the workers – achieve rights, transform dreams into life" a topical issue in the days we live and so defining in the experiences and struggles of the people of this land that we will look at the past and future of this fight through the contribution of the experienced political leader with an impressive intervention in contemporary life that was Álvaro Cunhal.
Of this intrepid leader of the PCP who, like his Party, nurtured a great respect for the struggle and path of the workers and people of this laborious land that comes from the depths of the time of our late industrial revolution and expressed it when he said that “Marinha Grande is a name written in gold in the history of the Portuguese labour movement” to value and recognise its decades-long heroic struggle, which faced unprecedented sacrifices and lives in the struggle for freedom and democracy, for a better life for all and against exploitation.
This continued attention devoted to the workers and their struggle was, without a doubt, one of the most important dimensions of his political and ideological intervention, as a result of the political choice he made, which resulted in a lifelong commitment to the cause of the struggle for the emancipation of the working class, the workers and their problems.
A commitment assumed very early on by someone who felt it was part of a wider struggle that his Party was involved in for the improvement of workers' living conditions and for the materialisation of a new society freed from exploitation.
Álvaro Cunhal, as leader of the PCP, sought answers with an attentive and rigorous study of the living and working conditions of the working classes, their problems and aspirations, their struggle and the struggle of their organisations, namely the study of the trade union movement in our Country, for whose development, and during various stages of its evolution, he made invaluable contributions.
From the outset, the particular contribution given by Álvaro Cunhal in the 1940s to the deepening and implementation of the PCP’s guidelines and the intervention of Portuguese communists who, since the late twenties of the last century and with Bento Gonçalves, had been working to foster a truly of class-oriented and masse trade union movement, which here in Marinha Grande, would be materialised with the unification of class-oriented trade union associations of bottle makers, glass workers, crystal workers and cutters, in a single national organisation of the glass industry - the National Union of Glass Industry Workers , constituted in 1931 and which, soon after, fascism would shut down, triggering the insurrectionary movement of January 18, 1934.
It was by following a path that assigned an essential and decisive role to the masses, that Álvaro Cunhal will make a contribution of great originality that took into account and gave a creative response to the specificity of the Portuguese situation, both in the chosen path of intervention of the labour movement in terms of trade unions, and in terms of solutions to ensure the unity of the working class, which would influence and determine the unique characteristics of the Portuguese unitary trade union movement.
A change in orientation that resulted in the abandonment of the development of underground unions – the first response to the situation created with fascistic unions and which soon proved to be ineffective – to a decisive intervention aimed at taking the unions from within, with unity slates, of single unions and mandatory unionisation of the fascist regime – the so-called National Unions.
Being where the masses are and working with them, and acting with them in defence of their interests, was the watchword that had to be implemented at the time and that assumed a new dimension and demand in the context of the wider struggle of the anti-fascist resistance, giving expression to the materialisation of the strategy of the united front of the working class, a determining component of the anti-fascist united front that was now also being raised with the development of the Unity Committees, the other organisational aspect of the working class and which will also play a very important role in the development of the struggle of the working class and workers.
A new and decided orientation that required great courage and determination, in a context of great repression and great dangers, but also of natural misunderstandings that had to be overcome, in an ideological debate, in which Álvaro Cunhal was particularly engaged.
This is patent in the report he presented to the III Congress of the PCP, which will decisively bring about the great turning point in the trade union work of the communists. Unmasking the fascist leaderships and working to elect leaderships that the workers can trust, on slates not only of communists, but in unity with other workers of other orientations, and developing, based on the conquered positions, claiming struggles in companies and workplaces, two major lines of work that became a constant in the activity of the communists during the fascist regime.
A report that already put forward the perspective, also revealing great correctness, of the use, after the overthrow of fascism, of the material base and of the existing means in the national unions, not advocating their dissolution, but use them by holding free elections.
It was this correct and original orientation, together with the direct initiative of the Party itself in the companies and in the fields, through the support and dynamization of the unity committees - predecessors of the current Workers' Committees - that made it possible to carry out great mass struggles, even in a context of absence of freedom and great repression.
We were in the first half of the 1940s, also giving way to the PCP’s reorganisation process, here also with the invaluable contribution of Álvaro Cunhal. A process that will transform the PCP into a great national Party, of the working class, of workers and leader of the anti-fascist resistance struggle.
The success of this orientation was soon seen in the forties, in the great strikes of July-August of 1943 and in the important movements small and large claiming struggles for wages in that period, which Marinha Grande also witnessed, taking steps in the achievement of rights and paving the way to transform reality. Many others followed in the factories, in the fields, in the mines, in the ports not only in these, but in the following years, for wages, for the 8-hour conquest in the fields, with important victories.
Mass struggles that Álvaro Cunhal referred to as essential to hasten the overthrow of fascism.
It was this orientation and the struggles that took place that enabled the working class to become the vanguard of the anti-fascist struggle, very evident in the great 1962 May Day actions and that led to the creation of conditions, both material, of cadres or mass participation, for the emergence of Intersindical, in 1970, and for the role it played in the great mass movements and strikes in the period that preceded the April Revolution, and the important role it played in the revolutionary process.
At the doors of the 25th. of April, the breadth of the workers' struggles reached very high levels of participation and combativeness. Hundreds of thousands of workers in those years that preceded the April Revolution were fighting in the most diverse forms and participating in numerous, combative and broad strikes, confirming the correctness of the orientation outlined by the PCP, at the same time that it refuted in practice the sectarian conceptions of petty-bourgeois radicalism which, with its pseudo-revolutionary parlance, considered the struggle for economic demands, for immediate objectives, “wrong” and “useless”.
Large movements and large collective mass actions, including the struggles of the glass workers of those years, like the great and victorious strike of March 1974, but also the struggle of other sectors, like the combative and outstanding struggle of the workers of Tome Féteira file manufacturing company at that time.
Álvaro Cunhal then stated: “in mass struggles, the masses gain experience, habits of combat and sacrifice, they are educated revolutionarily, they are increasingly willing to take energetic and decisive actions. Mass struggles undermine fascism's support bases, break its stability, weaken its hold.”
Álvaro Cunhal not only showed their importance in the mobilisation and political education of the masses and their value in the development of the revolutionary process, but also for being essential “for the defence of the vital interests of the workers, to face exploitation, to prevent the degradation of living conditions and be able to improve them.”
It was the persistence in the implementation of this orientation that enabled the labour and trade union movement, and in a prominent way to Intersindical, quickly recognised as the great trade union central of Portuguese workers, to make a decisive contribution to the popular uprising that followed the military uprising and to be a driving force of the Revolution, to ensure important improvements in the living conditions of the workers and to fight for the materialisation and recognition of the great achievements of the Revolution – workers’ control, nationalisations and agrarian reform, taking a large and indeed a very large step in the transformation of reality, in terms of fundamental rights , such as the right to strike, to trade union organisation in companies, to demonstrate, among others, and with them in their living and working conditions.
A correct orientation that armed the workers with strong instruments of organisation and struggle, cemented their unity that gave them the indispensable strength to conquer rights and transform their lives and society itself.
Yes, the strength of the workers is in their unity and organisation and big capital knows that this is so. That is why the battle for workers' unity, within the framework of a correct orientation, independent from the interests of capital, always has been confronted with the committed action of those who bet on the intensification of exploitation and the eternalisation of the system that serves it - the capitalist system.
This system that only knows the path of refinement of its exploitative, oppressive, aggressive and predatory nature.
This system that produces injustices and inequalities that invests huge resources, including means of ideological intoxication, aiming at the division of workers, to ensure its own survival.
This has been the case when everything is done to pit workers in the private sector against those in the public sector, the young against the old, the precarious against those who have won the right to a stable job, pointed out as privileged, men against women, and investing enormous fortunes to divide their class organisations.
In fact, divisive action has a long history in Portugal, taking the most varied forms and mobilising powerful resources.
Big monopoly capital has always found in the political forces that promoted the process of recovering its lost domination with the April Revolution, its most compliant allies - the governments of the PS, PSD and CDS, today joined by IL and Chega.
From the dawn of the April Revolution until today, in a perfect symbiosis, we have seen them wielding all their tools and resources on several fronts, including the use of the State apparatus in the production of legislation that made fragile and weakened not only the individual working relationship in favour of capital, but also collective action and the action of organisations that truly represent workers.
From the "open letters", to the ostentatious and resounding Manifestos that sometimes announced the extinction of the working class, sometimes the end of the class struggle, to the many attempts to submit the action of workers' organisations in the so-called "social concertation" braces, as today they continue to try, with this farcical Agreement, recently signed between the government, large employers' confederations and UGT and the same could be said in relation to the Agreement signed for Public Administration.
An agreement that entails an option of sharp degradation of the workers' purchasing power, starting with the insufficiency of the National Minimum Wage. An Agreement with commitments in terms of wages that are a deceit in the current framework of maintaining the grievous rules of the Labour Code that block collective bargaining.
An Agreement that, in contrast, provides for and guarantees a massive transfer of public resources to big capital, multinationals and economic groups, namely through the granting of new and massive tax benefits and substantial support.
It would suffice to take stock of the decisions of successive governments and the positions taken by the PS in recent years, always accompanied by the reactionary and retrograde forces of the PSD, CDS, IL and Chega in terms of rights and wages, to prove the class nature of their decisions in favour of big capital, with a view to intensifying the exploitation of workers.
Witness how they overlook the serious problem of the cost of living, which is deteriorating wages and pensions that are losing purchasing power at an increasing pace and dimension, and how they reject and vote against the PCP's proposals to restore the purchasing power of workers and control the prices of unbridled speculation by monopoly economic groups.
How they throw the weight of difficulties on active workers or in retirement, while they do not move a finger to condition and prevent the abuses of multinationals and economic groups. It is true, comrades, the year 2021 was a binge year for profits, they reached the highest figure ever in Portugal. The year 2022 will be the same!
This same option in favour of big capital is found in the PS proposal for the 2023 State Budget, now under discussion. It is a draft for a State Budget in which its options reveal a huge disregard for workers' problems. It does not guarantee the answer to the most immediate economic and social problems, it heightens inequalities and injustices. It does not respond to the problem of investment and public services, namely the NHS and the Public School.
A Budget in contrast to the advantages, privileges and tax benefits granted to economic groups.
In view of the present situation, it is important to stress the struggle of workers and of the anti-monopoly classes and strata in defence of their living conditions.
This struggle, which has been decisive in defending many of the achievements of the April Revolution that remain in our reality today, is decisive to transform the dream of a better life into reality.
Also in this field, Álvaro Cunhal always made important contributions that are projected as important lessons for our intervention and for the intervention of workers today. The importance of all struggles. Even small struggles, partial struggles to solve the vital problems of the workers and the masses, and not just the big struggles for economic and political goals.
It is in the current of small and large mass struggles that the way can be found to also overcome the present difficulties that workers face in terms of wages, rights, employment and precarious work, work schedules, the intensification of the exploitation of labour, worsened by maintaining the grievous rules of labour legislation, which have been imposed, as Álvaro Cunhal stated “the economic situation and Portuguese political life are not only decided at the highest levels. In political and economic life, the workers directly intervene, the popular masses directly intervene. (…) The last word in the life of nations always ends up being dictated by the popular masses.”
It is the comprehension of this role of the masses that cannot be discarded and that Álvaro Cunhal has always drawn attention to.
Here we reaffirm the legacy of Álvaro Cunhal. Here we reaffirm the commitment of the Portuguese Communist Party to the class interests of the workers, here we reaffirm the call to their organisation, unity and struggle.
As has been proven, this is the way to defend and conquer rights, this is the way to develop the Country.
In the times in which we live, we salute the struggles of the most diverse sectors and call for participation in the ongoing struggles, in particular the Public Administration workers' strike on November 18, for the concentration near the Assembly of the Republic on November 25, the day of the final vote on the State Budget, and the week of struggle in companies and services to be held between December 10 and 17, called by the CGTP-IN.
On this day of the hundred and ninth anniversary of the birth of Álvaro Cunhal, whose example of life, struggle and work continue to be a source of optimism and confidence and an incentive for those who fight and believe in the creative and liberating force of men and peoples, we once again reaffirm that it is possible to ensure a development project at the service of the workers, the people and the Country.
It is by honouring his memory that we once again reaffirm our unwavering determination to continue to pursue that millenary dream for the materialisation of which Álvaro Cunhal gave his entire life as a revolutionary fighter - the dream of building a society free from the exploitation of man by the other men.
