The recent ruling by the Portuguese Constitutional Court that four of the austerity measures in the government’s 2013 budget are unconstitutional is a major blow to the Portuguese ruling class. However, without the organisation of working people in defence of their rights, this ruling could mark a wave of devastating new attacks on ordinary Portuguese people. While we can celebrate the working class victory in the courts, we must realise that if the workers are to ultimately win the legal battle they, not the capitalist class, must be the ones making the laws.

One and a half million people took to the streets in 40 different cities in Portugal on March 2 in protest against austerity cuts and against the troika. This was one of the country's largest ever demonstrations on the same level as the one on September 15 and the huge mobilisations during the revolution in the 1970s.

Faced with unprecedented protests, the Portuguese government has been forced to withdraw the announced increase in workers' social security contributions. This is a victory for the movement of the Portuguese workers and people, but only a very temporary one.

The biggest demonstration in Portugal's history or, according to other estimates, the largest since one million people gathered in the streets of Lisbon on May 1st 1974 during the revolution. A huge human tide of hundreds of thousands of people, a million in total, came out on the streets of 40 cities and towns all over the country and overseas territories on Saturday, September 15. This was the response of the Portuguese people to the latest austerity package announced by the right wing government of Passos Coelho on September 7.

February 11 saw 300,000 people march in the Portuguese capital Lisbon against the reform of the labour law and the austerity measures proposed by the government as part of the bailout agreed with the troika. The CGTP trade union, which organised the demonstration under the slogan of “no to exploitation, inequality and impoverishment”, described it as the largest in 30 years.

A powerful general strike and massive demonstrations on November 24 was the answer of Portuguese workers to the austerity budget proposed by the right-wing governmnent of Pedro Passos Coelho. The troika approved the measures taken as part of the bail out package but demanded more cuts as the economy is forecasted to fall by 3% next year.

As Portugal’s right-wing government announced the harshest austerity cuts in the country’s history, economic forecasts were revised down and the main trade union confederations CGTP and UGT announced the calling of a general strike.

On November 24, the working class paralysed Portugal in a general strike against the latest austerity plan of the Socialist Party government.

A reader from Portugal wrote to us asking our opinion on the vote of the BE members of parliament in favour of the European Union bailout loan for Greece. In our opinion this position is scandalous.

"Capitalism is dead in Portugal" wrote the Times in 1975. And yet today it lives. How was it able to survive? What lessons can we learn from the Portuguese Revolution of 1974?

25 April marks 45 years of the "Carnation Revolution" in Portugal in 1974-75, which brought down a hated dictatorship and threatened the foundations of the capitalist system. In the end however, the movement was brought back onto the safe channels of bourgeois democracy. This article, written by Phil Mitchinson in 2002, explains what happened and urges us to learn the lessons from this great event.