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72June 2015
Q. First, can you tell me how Bloco de
Esquerda [the Left Bloc] came about?
Several events happened at the end of the
s that played into our foundation. The
anti-globalisation movement, centred
around Seattle in , was important.
There was a growing conclusion that we
need to find new ways to work together and
build projects. Some of these were forums,
others were political parties. That was the
international moment we were in.
Then there was the Indonesia-East-Timor
war and occupation. The Portuguese popu-
lation had its own anti-war movement and
sided with Timor against Indonesia. This
managed to bring different sections of the
Left together to discuss war and
campaigning.
Finally the failure of the abortion refer-
endum in was also an influence.
There was a referendum to overturn laws
banning abortion in Portugal but no broad
campaign by progressive or left-wing
forces; instead every little group ran their
own one. Some of these ran against each
other or had clashing strategies. The Yes
vote lost, so abortion was illegal in Portu-
gal until . This was the last straw for
many on the Left.
Q. So how did Bloco form out of these
conditions?
The definition of Bloco, in its first statute, is
a party-movement. It is a broad party that
engages with other movements without
substituting for or controlling them. It is
built up by this grass-roots strength and
given a voice in institutions, with a political
programme that unites those two domains.
Therefore it manages to build strategy
together with people who come from very
different perspectives, activist histories
and traditions.
We grew steadily from , when the
party formed, until . From Por-
tugal had a liberal government under the
Socialist Party [Portugal’s Labour Party]
which had been applying austerity meas-
ures for some time before the crisis hit.
They used the crisis as an excuse to escalate
this. In we had elections and a broad
social mobilisation against austerity. The
Socialist Party still won these elections but
they didn’t achieve a majority and formed a
minority government. Bloco de Esquerda
had %, the Portuguese Communist
Party had %, so the radical Left was on
almost %.
Q. What was the result of this growth in
support for anti-austerity alternatives?
It didn’t mean anything in terms of the pro-
gramme of the Socialist Party government.
In fact, from onwards they began to
impose what they called the “four pacts”,
which were packages of austerity measures.
The first one cut public spending, the
second cut social security, and so on. In
parallel they introduced continual meas-
ures liberalising the labour market.
This produced social mobilisations. We
had important Euro May Day demonstra-
tions in . Euro May Day parades are
structures we inherited from Milan – col-
ourful, anti-union, involving precarious/
zero-hours workers, quite creative and
young, talking differently about labour.
Some parts have very Negrian theories,
others go with Guy Standing’s idea of the
precariat.
Our version of this, in contrast to those
in Italy, didn’t adopt an anti-union dis-
course about precarious work but rather
tried to ‘add struggles to the struggle’ and
forge links with the unions, joining them
on the May Day march.
We developed a theoretical framework
called “precarity in life”, which was a new
form of labour discourse. We weren’t just
talking about conditions at the point of
production – contracts, wages and so on.
We talked about the way labour instability
affects different spheres of life, and affects
you differently if you are a woman, a
Village’s
Ronan
Burtenshaw
interviews Bloco de
Esquerda’s
Catarina Príncipe
In 2011 Portugal
was at the forefront
of Europe’s anti-
austerity movement.
Yet, four years
later, as elections
approach in the
Autumn, there is
no chance of a Left
government to
ally with Greece’s
Syriza or the recent
municipal victories
in Spain. What went
wrong? And can
Portugal return to
the frontlines?
Syriza, Podemos, Right2Water…
But Portugal’s radical Left is in trouble
INTERNATIONAL Portugal
Portuguese
The rise of the
Radical Left
didn’t mean
anything in
terms of the
programme
of the
Socialist Party
government. In
fact, from 2009
onwards they
began to impose
what they
called the “four
pacts”, which
were packages
of austerity
measures
“
parallels
June 2015 73
migrant, or LGBT. We were exploring the
relation between exploitation and oppres-
sion, developing the particularities of
these, but framing it in a new and accessi-
ble way. This allowed us to bring together
the feminist, anti-racist and LGBT move-
ments with the anti-precarity movement to
form the Euro May Day.
Euro May Day fed into the first really big
demonstration occurring on March th
called Geração à Rasca, Generation
with No Future. It was started by a call on
Facebook by four people, all of whom had
some previous involvement in politics but
had not been particularly active. It grew
exponentially. This was the time of the
Arab Spring with all the discussions about
the role of new media in facilitating pro-
tests so the Portuguese media took this up
as our own little experience of it. The
organisers were on television almost every
day.
Soon they realised that they could not
organise this phenomenon themselves so
they put a call out to social movements and
those involved in Euro May Day to help
them out. In the end the demonstration had
, people in various places, in a
country of around ten million.
Q. Was it mostly young people?
We were expecting that it would be but in
the end it was intergenerational. This
proved our thesis in the anti-precarity
movement that the issue couldn’t be dealt
with in generational terms. There is a par-
ticularity to how young people experience
insecurity but almost half of the Portu-
guese working population is precarious
right now so you can’t talk about it as
generational.
The movement was very broad so it was
quite apolitical. At the time it was correct
to do this but it had limitations. There were
no demands, which was necessary because
it would not have brought out many people
if it was too concrete, but the right-wing
also used this space. Two months after the
big demonstration they won the snap
elections.
This was then followed by the arrival of
the Troika and the signing of its memoran-
dum by the two right-wing parties who
were in coalition [the PSD and People’s
Party] and the Socialist Party, who had lost
the election.
So this movement opened a political
space that, in the end, we on the Left were
not able to take advantage of.
Q. How did a movement against insecu-
rity and the lack of a future open up
space for the signing of a memorandum
whose purpose was the worsening of
these situations?
First, because of the concrete political con-
ditions. You have a biparliamentarian
system. So if the Socialist Party loses the
right tends to win, and vice versa. This is
the situation across most parts of Europe
and disproportionately advantages estab-
lished parties.
There was also a discourse of inevitabil-
ity. It was really hard in the first two years
to counter the narrative that we lived
beyond our means, we have been spending
too much, our state is inefficient, there will
have to be sacrifices and so on. These ideas
did not just show up but had been present in
society for many years. It was easy to grab
them and turn them into a powerful ideo-
logical tool in the implementation of
austerity. In Greece it was the same.
The parties who were outside this narra-
tive and challenged it in the elections of
, Bloco and the Communist Party, the
only parties that refused to sign the memo-
randum with the Troika, had difficulties.
The Communist Party less because they
have existed for a hundred years and have a
very deep base but Bloco significantly
because we only exist for fifteen or sixteen,
and have a much more unstable member-
ship. We dropped to five percent in the
elections.
Q. Why wasn’t Bloco de Esquerda able to
respond better to these conditions?
I think it was a problem of strategy. You
need to define your priorities, primary and
secondary. Like most broad Left parties in
Europe, Bloco appears to occupy the space
between liberalised social democracy and
the orthodox Communist parties. This is
the political space of the radical Left,
shared with the civil society movements,
bringing up a range of topics rather than
just labour issues.
We attempted to excavate the social base
of liberalised social democracy, to attract
people who are members of the Socialist
Party in Portugal who are left-wing and
socialist. These people have been there for
so many years that they remain associated
after the liberal shift. There was no alterna-
tive for them, the Communist Party was not
a possibility and there was nothing else.
Broad Left reformist parties in Europe
tend to try to fill this space. In politics there
aren’t empty spaces for long, someone
comes to fill them, so Bloco attempted to
move into the popular bases of the Socialist
Party.
In a way, it is a correct strategy. I think
you do need to attract these people. But
although the radical Left can succeed in
exposing the rightward turn of social
democracy it is hard to excavate their
social base of support. In fact I think the
more successful strategy is to let them do it
themselves, like what happened with Pasok
in Greece, where these parties discredit
their own politics, and then we can be there
to provide an alternative. This can also be
said to be happening to the PSOE in Spain
and the Irish Labour Party.
This can be a secondary strategy but our
primary strategy should be to engage the
forty percent of the population that are
outside of politics and have been for many
years. People who don’t vote. A
lot of them are young, a lot of
them are precarious, and they
are disillusioned with the politi-
cal system.
We tried to do both but it was
not clear which came first. So,
after , we had an institu-
tional shift where we started to
have more problems relating to
the social movements, talking
about their subjects, organising
our politics outside of parlia-
ment. For the people who are
INTERNATIONAL Portugal
Catarina Príncipe is an
activist with Bloco de
Esquerda and die Linke
in Germany and also
contributing editor at
Jacobin magazine, where
she has been covering
the newly-elected Syriza
government.
parallels
74June 2015
outside of the political system, we became a party just
like the others. And for the people who are inside the
political system, we became not enough like the others.
We created this dilemma where we lost support from
both spheres of society that we were trying to win, at
the same time. That is the strategic problem.
But we also see a crucial weakness at a local electoral
level, where Bloco consistently fared badly because it
isn’t rooted. We need to grow roots and bring new
experiences to the workers’ and the social movements:
re-energising the rank and file, organising the unem-
ployed and building networks of solidarity. Ultimately
it comes down to being able to turn a feeling of general-
ised discontent into organised action and collective
experiences.
Q. Can you tell me how this situation developed
after 2011?
Just before the memorandum situation the Socialist
Party had a minority government and wanted to
present a fourth austerity package. We knew that the
right-wing was going to vote against it. For years
between and they had huge internal con-
flicts, changing leaders regularly. The moment they
stabilised with a structured leadership they would try
to bring down the government.
If we voted against the austerity package the govern-
ment would not be able to present a budget and it would
fall. But we could not vote for an austerity package.
Some people, therefore, say that the Left, Bloco and
the Communist Party, created the conditions for the
right-wing to take power. But they were going to have a
moment like this anyway, with a minority government,
sooner or later. Still, it had an effect on our vote.
So did Bloco’s refusal to meet with the Troika before
the election. The media narrative was that we weren’t
“responsible enough”, that we should have gone and
stated our position. We replied that we do not negotiate
with undemocratic institutions. The inevitability dis-
course that was strong at the time did not receive this
position well.
There was also another confusion for many people.
We supported the same presidential candidate as the
Socialist Party, Manuel Alegre, a member of the left-
wing of that party. He was a historical figure, a leader
of the revolution who had been exiled, a poet and
cultural figure too. The presidency is mainly ceremo-
nial but not exclusively, it can disband a government
and has power over the armed forces, so this mattered.
Even if his politics were not so bad the people did not
understand this. We were fighting the Socialist Party in
the parliament about austerity every day, but it was OK
to nominate the same candidate for president? It
seemed contradictory.
Q. But once the right-wing government was elected,
there were huge mobilisations, the last one being in
March 2013, when one-and-a-half million people
were on the streets. It was the biggest social move-
ment since the 1974 Portuguese Revolution. Why
did it fail?
I sometimes provocatively say to people I’ve been
INTERNATIONAL Portugal
The strategy is to let
the right discredit
themselves, like what
happened with Pasok in
Greece, and then we can
be there to provide an
alternative. This can also
be said to be happening
to the PSOE in Spain and
the Irish Labour Party
“
Breakdown of political parties in Portugal’s parliament
Social-Democratic Party
People’s Party
Government
230
Socialist Party
Communist Party
Opposition
Bloco de Esquerda
Ecologist Party
June 2015 75
working with for years that the Portuguese social
movement does not exist, we have the Portuguese
social moment. Every movement comes from moments
but what distinguishes a movement from a moment is
that you build new structures that keep on continuous
work, that are able slowly to grow into something.
They can be smashed too but the point is the develop-
ment, there is not simply explosions and then nothing.
That is what happened with the anti-austerity
moments in Portugal in recent years. There were big
mobilisations but they did not create new organisa-
tions, new forms of organising, new experiences of
politics, rooted in continuous daily activity.
Also, the effects of austerity on political activism
need to be recognised. The migration wave out of Por-
tugal is huge, bigger even than during the dictatorship.
A lot of important activists in the movements left.
For those that remained the realities of austerity in
their personal lives were very difficult. You don’t have
the same time or energy for the cause when you are
hopeless.
For Bloco specifically we did not manage to succeed
with these mobilisations because there was a bad rela-
tionship between the party and the movements.
Some of our activists who were active in the move-
ments started to have a more controlling position
where they participated, which broke trust and agree-
ments that had been around for a few years.
Q. The general election is coming up in Portugal in
September or October. How will you do?
We will do badly. Maybe we will do a little better than
in , depending in some ways on the Syriza effect
in Europe because after their election victory we grew a
little bit in the polls. Regardless, it won’t be a strong
result. We have not managed to assert ourselves in
recent years. We have changed public strategy and
demands several times, not been clear and damaged
our relation with social movements.
In a moment of social and economic crisis a Left
party that wants to grow needs to focus on two things.
One is the understanding of the party as an instrument
for social networking and restructuring of social rela-
tions, an arena of social solidarity. It must enhance
self-organised experiences, trying to work with them,
understanding why they exist, and trying to convince
people that problems like unemployment, housing,
hunger cannot be solved individually but must be
solved collectively.
The party also has to have strong, clear, independent
political proposals for the elections and institutional
questions. It must rule out being junior partner with
the Socialist Party, or administering austerity.
These are our tasks in overcoming the present diffi-
culties. Effective strategy will not be achieved before
September. But we either start now or we will
disappear. •
We created this dilemma
where we lost support
from both spheres of
society that we were
trying to win, at the same
time. That is the strategic
problem
“
