Some notes on the Portuguese revolution
June 24th, 2009(…)” Ideology is a weird business, it literally takes hold of you; you end up like a zombie who believes all sorts of things. I remember walking around Swiss Cottage in 1974 when I bumped into a Portuguese friend called Eduardo Guedes who was a film-maker. I even took part in one of his films shot around 1970 in the Arts Lab in Euston, (in London). It was called We hope to paint it blue (meaning the moon) Eduardo did the film with his partner Helga Zahn, who was a modern painter. But in 1974, in summer, Eduardo Guedes was going back to take part in the revolution . I wasn’t so keen. I could not see anything deep coming out of it, apart from a change of government, which is exactly what took place after a period of a few months. The Salazar/Caetano regimes had been fascist regimes complete with a nasty secret police called pide. And these authoritarian shits relied on the Catholic church to back them up. The Portuguese authorities were also awful colonialists in Angola, Mozambique, Goa and maybe other places. They treated indigenous people like dirt. Eventually enough was enough, people rebelled.
Unfortunately in Angola, Mozambique the liberation was not liberating. It resulted in civil war. We were in the middle of the cold war and that would have a direct effect on proceedings.
As for Portugal, General Spinola and the army got the ball rolling against Caetano’s dreadful regime. The revolution of carnations was in full swing. Then the manoeuevring started; the left parties, the so-called communist party and the socialist party plus a myriad of pinko-leftist groupuscules all undermined what was going on by their divisions.
Portugal was in a real mess. According to a Portuguese friend at the time called Zé, the American fleet which was anchored in the bay of Lisbon was paying all Portuguese MPs in dollars, all through the so-called revolution. In that way they would be kept on board. The best book in English on this Portuguese question was written by Phil Meyler who hails from Dublin and who had been a member of the ill-fated group called King Mob Echo. He is probably one of its most intelligent and independent members. His book :Portugal: the impossible revolution sums it up. At least the revolution got rid of fascism. The book was published by SOLIDARITY, Chris Pallis’s outfit and offshoot of Socialisme ou Barbarie. But Pallis left out a few chapters which he thought were not necessary. I always encouraged Phil to publish what was missing. Even to this day he can send it to us , we will be glad to publish it either in a forthcoming Principia Dialectica or as a separate pamphlet as part of our boomerang series.
To censor documents is always a bad move. Because what seems superfluous to one person might not be to others. And its omission might weaken the document . Mybe Pallis should have stuck to brain surgery - at least he knew something about it. Then I heard that Helga Zahn had died, and then I saw that Eduardo Guedes had done a film called Roscinante with John Hurt. But I haven’t heard anything from Eduardo for years, but one day in Westbourne Grove I bumped into John Hurt. He asked me what I was doing, I told him: “the usual, criticizing”. He shrugged his little Malcolm’s fight against the eunuchs shoulders and walked away. Strangely enough I had seen that play with him at the Unity theatre, before I even knew him. As for the encounter with him in Westbourne Grove it must have been in the late seventies.
Patrick Cheval, a member of the SI and before that of the Enrages group in Paris whom I knew also went to Portugal. He saw it as a bit of adventure. Then some Portuguese radicals complained to Debord that Cheval was not doing enough for the revolution. Debord sent them a Letter to the Portuguese in which he said that he had complete confidence in Patrick; he had seen him in theory and practice in May 1968. And if he wasn’t doing anything much it was because he had no one around him of note . It created a stir.
One day people found Cheval in the office of the PM, HE HAD FALLEN ASLEEP drunk as a lord, that was a bit of groucho-marxism! And the only way to wake up Patrick was to pour a glass of wine next to this ear - the sound of nectar worked wonders.
There were lots of good actions during the revolution of carnations in Portugal; latifundias (big farms) were occupied by the farmworkers. The owners had fled sometimes under a hail of stones. These creeps had badly treated the farmworkers for years, making work for a few coins.
Eventually the revolution was recaptured by Soares the so-called socialist. Debord was not tender towards the Portuguese. He would send us a card from that country saying:” we’ll see you soon, but not here”.
A few years later he wrote that Portuguese language was a pseudo-language. That is unfair. Portuguese is a language in its own right, distinct from Spanish. It is melodious, when someone sings a fado like Amalia Rodrigues used to do, it is quite moving and poetical. To this day alot of people in Portugal haven’t forgotten these dreadful lines. And maybe also in Brazil!. The decline of Guy Debord was dramatic, maybe he should have written nothing after LA SOCIETE DU SPECTACLE. His last 5 books were a waste of time and paper.The thing is he did not have to worry, his name was enough to get a book published. They would have published PANEGYRIQUE 3 even it was made of blank pages. As Malcolm Lowrie (a favourite author of Guy) once said:” Success is not always a good thing for an author”. He loses the cutting edge, and in Debord’s case it was exactly that . Decline and fall. The usual scenario. So many writers, film-makers have ended up badly . It is the same with politicians. The only good thing that that arch-reactionary character called Enoch Powell said:” that all political careers end up badly”. He should know - his did with his infamous river of blood speech in Birmingham. But then look at Thatcher, Bliar and so many others. And still many line up to take their place for treatment. Like moths they are driven to the flame of power and fame.”
