E41: The Portuguese revolution, part 1

Working Class History

Society & Culture, Education, History

5.0 • 813 Ratings

🗓️ 31 August 2020

⏱️ 53 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

First of a double podcast episode about the Portuguese revolution of 1974-5, also known as the Carnation Revolution, which overthrew the Portuguese empire and the right-wing Estado Novo regime. We speak with two participants in the revolution, Jorge Valadas and Phil Mailer, as well as historian Raquel Varela about the events.
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More information, photos, sources, acknowledgements and transcripts are available on the webpage for this episode here: https://workingclasshistory.com/podcast/e41-42-the-portuguese-revolution/
Portuguese revolution books and merch, including books by Phil Mailer and Raquel Varela available here: https://shop.workingclasshistory.com/collections/portuguese-revolution
Listen to part 2 early: https://www.patreon.com/posts/40401104
Portuguese Revolution bonus episode: https://www.patreon.com/posts/40401296
Theme music: https://soundcloud.com/davidrovics/they-couldnt-stand-by
Edited by Jesse French

Transcript

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0:00.0	On the 25th April 1974, under pressure from anti-colonial forces in Angola, Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau,
0:07.0	a military coup in Lisbon overthrew the right-wing dictatorship of the Estardo Novo on new state.
0:12.0	Then, workers in cities and the countryside began to take control of factories and land in a social revolution.
0:18.0	This is working class history.
0:55.8	Hi and welcome back to the working class History podcast. Firstly, just a quick note that our podcast is funded entirely by you, our listeners. You too can support us and access exclusive content, like you can listen to both parts of this episode now, as well as a bonus episode at patreon.com slash working class history. Link in the show notes. Today we're going to be talking about the Portuguese revolution in 1974 to 5, also known as
1:02.1	the Carnation Revolution. As in the case of the Spanish Revolution, which we discussed in episodes
1:07.1	39 to 40, the fact that Portugal, in Western Europe and a popular destination for tourists,
1:12.6	was a fascistic dictatorship until less than 50 years ago, is not something which is talked about very much.
1:19.6	And as with Spain, we hope that the probable reasons for this will become clear over the course of these episodes.
1:25.6	Just to briefly give a bit of background. Portugal was a monarchy
1:29.1	until it was overthrown in 1910 and the first republic declared, which was highly unstable. In turn,
1:35.5	the republic was overthrown by a military coup in 1926 and the new regime made Antonio de Olivera Salazar,
1:42.3	the finance minister, prime minister, in 1922.
1:46.0	Salazar put together a new constitution which declared Portugal to be a unitary corporatist republic.
1:52.0	This was the Estado Novo, or new state.
1:56.0	Corporatism is the ideology that society should be organized by corporations, which integrate both employers and employees into the state machinery, and so eliminate class struggle.
2:07.6	Corporatism was perhaps most famously implemented in Italy by a fascist dictator Benito Mussolini.
2:13.6	Independent workers' organisation is completely anathema to corporatism, so all types of
2:19.2	independent unions and workers' direct action, like strikes, were banned.
2:24.7	When the Spanish Civil War broke out in 1936, Salazar backed General Francisco Franco's
2:29.5	nationalist forces, and in World War II, Portugal was officially neutral, but in reality it was quietly
2:35.1	allied with Britain. And despite it being a brutal dictatorship, Portugal was one of the co-founders
	...

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