Comrades,

When we decided to hold this National Party Meeting on the strengthening of the Party’s intervention and organisation among the workers, when we started our preparatory debate and when we open today this important Party initiative, we were and indeed are well aware of the great demands and complexity arising from the national and international political and social situation, but we were and are equally conscious that the Meeting, with its different phases, means a step forward in implementing a strategic guideline, adopted by the 16th Congress and embraced by the Central Committee.

What other Party would go forward with such a demanding initiative – only temporarily interrupted by the well deserved summer holiday and the preparation, construction and holding of the “Avante” Festival – with its 669 initiatives, meetings, elections and debates?

Perhaps we even went beyond our own strength, but the preparation of this Meeting had a different dimension because we were capable of debating our organisation, not just for the sake of debating it, but debating our party organisation in close connection with the workers concrete issues and causes, in close articulation with the battle for information, with our Party newspaper, the “Avante” doing its irreplaceable job of informing and mobilising the working masses – in which the special sale of 50,000 prints, a remarkable success which we should assess in greater depth – the holding of a national campaign in which our voice and alert reached hundreds of thousand workers, against the attack launched on the National Health Service, Social Security and labour rights, but also showing the validity of the complimentary and inter-active nature of our political action with the masses and our institutional intervention, notably in the European Parliament and in the Portuguese Parliament (“Republic’s Assembly”).

This is why we see this Meeting not as a starting or arrival point but rather a landmark in the assessment, implementation and step forward, which we quite rightly decided upon.

Comrades,

One initial reference: This necessity of studying the reality and deepening our knowledge always with the aim of strengthening the PCP’s intervention and organisation in the enterprises and workplaces, clearly has to do with the Party that we have, with the Party that we are; it is vital to its worker militant and organic basis; it is a requirement and foundation of its nature, identity, project and programme. But it doesn’t mean leaving aside or even less abandoning the Party’s action and intervention among other social classes and groups, since they are equally hit by the right-wing policy and big capital’s offensive.

What this National Meeting is about is asserting that the Party’s intervention and organisation among the working class and among workers in general play a key and irreplaceable role in the PCP’s political and ideological strength.

Comrades,

This Meeting is held under the transversal reality of a major offensive launched by capital, both nationally and internationally, with its consequences in the workers rights and social gains, but also in their awareness, unity, organisation and struggle.

We need to know where we stand, not just to ascertain our views, but to be able to act and intervene; it is equally important to assess both the threats and difficulties posed by a new correlation of forces which favours capital and the possibilities and potential deriving from the accentuation of class struggle and from the working class and workers essential role and response.

No doubt that the PSD/CDS-PP government started brutally, trying to liquidate some of the Portuguese workers historic gains, but their attack cannot be separated nor does it differ from the general common pattern of the wider capitalist offensive in different countries, always linked to and directed by international bodies and institutions, by governments they command, paying lip service to the big world economic and financial concerns. The development of contemporaneous capitalism, under the process of capitalist globalisation follows the logics and has the essential aim of creating an homogeneous world labour market where labour relations are absolutely and totally desregulated, where exploitation is intensified, where big capital may regain all parts of their lost dominance, as a result of the historic gains of several workers generations.

We consider the workers autonomous class struggle as being determinant. But this autonomous struggle does not collide, in fact it attracts and stimulates, the struggle of other social classes, thus confirming the dialectical connection between the workers struggle level and capacity and the social fronts, but also the revolutionary forces’ political, ideological and organisation capacity.

In these hard times, loaded with dangers and threats against the workers rights and social gains, when we see the sharpening of struggle conditions, particularly of organised struggles, when we see the continuing attempts to destroy and de-characterise the nature and autonomy of the workers class organisations and because the national struggle lays the foundations to broaden the wider international struggle – what the workers really need is not less but more Party, what they really need is their political party, the Portuguese Communist Party.

Comrades,

This Meeting will assess the major lines and aims of the undergoing offensive. It is situated and characterised by: The new law on hospital management that will make hospitals be run like enterprises thus repeating the process which led to the de-nationalisation of the State Entrepreneurial Sector with its subsequent privatisation, thus bringing in private companies into the health services but also privatising the health workers labour contracts; with the new Social Security law through which the right wing, paying lip service to the big insurance companies, will try to destroy the solidarity, public and universal nature of the Social Security system and replace it by private care schemes and charities; with the attack directed against the Public Administration workers salaries, pensions and public nature of their labour contracts; and particularly with the nature, dimension and aims included in the ill-fated “pacote laboral” (new set of draft labour laws), through which they are trying to liquidate the labour legislation, increase the employers exploitation and discretionary power as well as trying to manacle and make capitulate the workers organisations.

In view of the cruelness and aims of this overwhelming offensive that makes ridiculous the thesis declaring the end of class struggle and capital’s democratisation, a key question needs to be answered:

How do we fight against this offensive?

By taking the lead in the battle for increasing awareness, the Party cannot forget the battle for mobilisation. Because of its nature and project and because of the strength and intervention capacity received from its link with the workers. We cannot delegate on any other organisation or social movement, the role played by the Party in informing to mobilise and in mobilising for growing awareness and action.

Leaving out, at this stage, conclusions that our Meeting will certainly adopt, you will all certainly agree that, here and now, we convey to the trade union movement, to the workers councils movement and to the Portuguese workers in general the irreplaceable and dedicated belief and confidence of the PCP as well as its readiness and political and militant action to put a halt and defeat the threats deriving from the government’s project and aims.

We are very confident in the workers struggle. This confidence is founded in the remarkable struggle carried out by the Public Administration workers, held on October 16th, only comparable to a similar action they had organised in 1976.

We are confident in the success of the action convened by the CGTP-IN (National Trade Union Centre) for the forthcoming 30th of October, which may not be the last or larger action but rather one more expression of the workers powerful and growing mobilisation to bar the way and prevent the implementation of the “pacote laboral”.

Comrades,

The Meeting, having this dynamic sense, should not be limited to defining a strategy of resistance.

It is important to reaffirm three ideas:

The first one is that it is not inevitable for the workers to live on low salaries, with their rights being attacked, without secure contract links, with deteriorated working conditions, being indebted as a way of purchasing much needed goods and services, and needing to do overtime work in order to pay for these expenses, when we know how capital’s big profits never stop growing.

In accordance with the Party’s Programme and project, we reaffirm the need to develop the PCP’s action, intervention, initiative and proposal, to be able to defend:

· The right to work, salaries, job security and stability;
· Public, universal and solidarity social security;
· Shorter working hours without loss of rights or pay;
· Dignified work and jobs;
· Implementation of rights in the enterprises and workplaces, fighting discrimination and repression;
· Working conditions, health, hygiene and safety at work, exposing and fighting working accidents and listing out new vocational diseases;
· Materialisation of equal rights for the new worker generations, namely in their access to jobs, salaries, as well as in paternity and maternity;
· Class solidarity among all the workers, notably the understanding of sharing common interests with the immigrants, solidarity among generations and among workers and other weaker social groups;
· The struggle against wealth concentration and its growing uneven distribution.

The second idea is that with unity, organisation and action it is possible to defend our rights and gains and move towards higher living standards.

The third idea is that the implementation of the path the PCP proposes to the workers, to protect their interests and rights and achieve progress and development, depends first and foremost on themselves, on their willpower, their unity, their organisation and their struggle. The PCP cannot substitute itself to that force which is decisive for transformation. But obviously, the strengthening of the PCP cells in the enterprises and workplaces, with the unique quality and role deriving from their identity, the increase of their organic strength, political and electoral influence as well as of their institutional representation, are essential conditions for the workers to become stronger and to elect for the institutions those who defend their interests under any circumstances. It is an essential pre-condition for a political change that may respond to their needs, to the needs of the Portuguese people and Portugal.

Comrades,

In a context in which very complex and speedy mutations and changes take place in the social reality – even when we do not detect them due to the fact that we were not able to assess everything and draw all the necessary conclusions from an unfinished process (actually confirmed by the aims and nature of the undergoing political, economic, social and legislative offensive) – it is essential to deepen the knowledge of the conditions in which we act, first of all to improve the efficiency of our Party action, secondly to launch the political and ideological combat against the prejudice, false conclusions and theories of capital’s servers who never give up trying to disarm, politically and ideologically, the workers and the communists.

Comrades,

The changes and mutations that took place over the last few decades, especially significant in some particular periods, were not intermittent acts but were actually part of a permanent, profound and prolonged process. The Meeting’s document extensively mentions the distribution and position of the economic sectors and of wage earners, their evolution and tendencies.

If we analyse those references in articulation with objective and subjective factors that are extensively dealt with all across Chapter III, we may conclude that our political and organisational intervention among the workers faces new and added difficulties.

But does difficulty mean impossibility?

Any apparently easy solution always risks being a false solution. Difficulties and reality require the development and broadening of the masses struggle, and assert struggle as the decisive element which, confronted with experience and the confrontation with capitalist exploitation, may contribute to developing class-consciousness and bring to a stronger light the timely validity of the Party’s role and nature.

Because we are not just one more Party. The historic reasons that led to its foundation, intervention and struggle are still valid. Its nature and identity, with distinctive traces in relation to other parties, have consequences in all aspects of its intervention and organisation. A Party that cannot be seen or evoked, as a political organisation to whom some resort only in difficult moments or times, but a Party of the workers, always defending their interests and rights in all of its activity, a Party whose foundations and reason to exist have to do with its activity in awareness-raising, unity, organisation and struggle, a Party that wants to live amidst the workers who have in the Party their genuine form of political organisation.

The resistance times we are living in, place before the Portuguese working class and workers at large, the need for a Party which is independent from capital, capable of assuring a type of political intervention which isn’t limited to fighting the capitalist system’s unfair wealth distribution but that is also determined to overcome capitalist exploitation.

Strengthening the Party’s intervention and organisation where the main target audience of our action and project can be found, is at the moment one of our most difficult and demanding tasks, but is also the strategic arena where to increase our political, social and electoral influence, resisting to difficulties and renewing our strength. Capital is equally aware of this. They know that our Party’s intervention and organisation in the enterprises and workplaces may highlight strategic coincidences between the big employers and the right-wing government, but that it may also favour the education of cadres, strengthen the workers organisations, awaken awareness, release energies for action and struggles, help the struggle for a different policy. This is why this Meeting mentions that the core issue is the workers organisation in the enterprises and workplaces. Not simply to have an organisation or being there, but to be able to intervene. That is the place where conflicts and confrontation occur, that is the place where one suffers and feels the consequences of political decisions, that is the place where concrete problems and demands are raised, the place where our ideological work may help transform social into political awareness. If we go there we may know. But if we are there we may feel, know and intervene.

As a result of capital’s deep and prolonged offensive, the destruction and re-structuring of the productive fabric and the liquidation of large companies where there used to be strong political and class-consciousness, with the emergence of other companies with new workers generations, already trained and formed along the capitalist bible, many of our Party cells stopped their activity and in some cases their role and initiative were transferred to the trade unions and works councils, especially in those where the Party members participation is determinant and predominant.

It is important to underline that although the orientation for the communists to elect and promote the unitary organisations, notably the trade union movement is a correct one, and being a fact that in many enterprises those organisations are the unique link with the workers, we need to reassert that the activity and intervention of Party members who are elected for those unitary bodies cannot replace the Party organisation in the enterprises and workplaces. Those comrades elected for unitary bodies should therefore also contribute to strengthening the Party’s own organisation.

There is no contradiction in the fact that communist militants defend, observe and promote the unitary bodies autonomy and democratic functioning, while simultaneously fulfilling their responsibilities in their Party.

In a context of enormous ideological pressure in which the promoters and servers of capitalism call on the trade union leaders to show distance from their Party, what they really want isn’t certainly a stronger and more intervening trade union movement or a more influent CGTP. What they really want is to weaken them and to weaken the PCP and in the last resort weaken the workers organisation and struggle capacity, when in total freedom and consciousness, they know they are electing communists for their unitary structures.

We highly appreciate the generous and combative action of thousands of communists who, while assuming and implementing the PCP’s trade union guidelines, simultaneously contribute to enhance the prestige and strength of the vast CGTP-IN collective.

Comrades,

If we draw a balance we can easily see how diverse and multiple were the initiatives, events and decisions of the Party on the strengthening of the Party’s intervention and organisation among the workers, all of them synthesised in the 16th Party Congress deliberations, more precisely by enshrining in the Political Resolution the purpose of “launching widespread actions to alter the reduced number of Party organisations in the enterprises and workplaces as well as strengthening the Party’s organisation and intervention among the working class and workers at large”.

In an important resolution adopted in April 2001, the Central Committee declared that the 16th Congress defined as a national priority and target, the existence of Party organised work in the enterprises and workplaces employing over 1,000 workers or with strategic importance, as well as working towards increasing the Party’s electoral and regional implantation.

Measures were adopted, with uneven results, to implement the adopted guidelines, but in any case the overall balance will surely reflect one idea:

There is still a long way to go in the process of strengthening the Party’s intervention in the enterprises and workplaces.

Nonetheless, one relevant aspect of the balance was the integrated concept, linking the organisation’s strengthening to increased political initiative and action of the masses. The very preparation of this Meeting, the contents of debates and meetings were in themselves, a step forward favouring this concept.

By making the Party cadres more directly responsible in the priority enterprises and workplaces, the party’s involvement in this fundamental party work guideline and its means of propaganda saw positive developments, but they should still deserve our continued attention.

It is therefore as a follow-up to the adopted guidelines and as part of the Party’s general strengthening effort named “Yes, a stronger PCP is possible!” that we propose 9 major guidelines and measures to strengthen our action and organisation in the workplaces:

1. Defining our target audience and how we address them.

2. Defining the enterprises, workplaces and industrial areas, requiring the special measures to be adopted.

3. Defining with whom, how and with which support, this task may be performed on an exclusive basis.

4. That the whole Party collective carefully pursues this objective, starting with its municipal and borough organisations.

5. That the recruitment of new militants is considered to be a prime importance task.

6. That Party militants and Party friends are contacted in a diverse and creative manner.

7. That the Party organisation, inseparable from intervention, is seen as a fundamental question.

8. That further national action should be undertaken.

9. That the Party Central bodies monitor all these efforts.

Comrades,

We said earlier that this Meeting was not a starting or arrival point. From now on, there will be no magic wand to help solve all of our difficulties and obstacles. This meeting is not a factory making a unique model serving our intervention and organisation necessities.

But with your reflection, contribution and living experiences, this meeting will be a strong and dynamic testimony of our Party collective, anchored in the strong belief that, increasing the struggle against capitalist exploitation and for a new society, is still an objective on which we will persist, with great trust in the militants and Party organisations’ commitment and participation, always with the workers. On their behalf we will make our motto come true “Yes, a stronger PCP is possible!” so that we may intervene more, organise better and struggle with greater success.

Long live the National Meeting!

Long live the PCP.