TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/caps/70s/70europe

Text File | 1992-09-25 | 13KB | 272 lines

                ≥ε▄                                                          Europe: 1970s


  [In the 1970s democracy in Europe took a giant step forward.
Greece, which had been under the sway of a repressive military
dictatorship since 1967, was restored to democracy in 1974. In
Portugal in the same year, however, it was the military that led
the revolution against a fascist dictatorship.]


(May 6, 1974)

  All told, it took only 14 hours to smash the dictatorship
established by Salazar 45 years ago and set the 8 million people
of Portugal on what the army promised would be a new, democratic
course. But it was not a quest for freedom that had motivated
the rebels as much as the desire to stop the bloody and costly
guerrilla war in the African colonies. The war consumed more
than 40% of the nation's $1.3 billion annual budget, claimed the
lives of some 250 Portuguese troops every year, and caused
profound frustration in the army, which felt that it was trapped
in an unwinnable battle. Disenchantment with the Caetano
government's colonial policy climaxed in February when General
Antonio de Spinola added his prestigious name to those of the
dissenters with his book against the war. Young officers
enthusiastically echoed Spinola's criticisms and even attempted
an ineffectual coup that was smashed within hours. They were
better prepared this time.

  Lisbon reacted like a liberated city. People joked with the
soldiers guarding the main streets and squares, and long stemmed
red carnations, a symbol of support for the army, appeared
everywhere. Cheers and hurrahs greeted every mention of
Spinola's name. Appointed to the seven-man ruling junta group
that he clearly dominated, Spinola went on television with his
colleagues to promise free elections "as soon as possible," a
phrase later defined as some time within the next year. They
also pledged to abolish the hated secret police in Portugal
itself and grant full civil liberties. Censorship was lifted,
and the Lisbon newspaper Republica placed a red box on its front
page to announce the first uncensored edition anyone could
recall.


  [Portugal fell into the grip of leftist officers, and for a
while it was touch and go whether democracy would triumph.]

(May 5, 1975)

  One year to the day after the "revolution of flowers" that
ended a half-century of oppressive dictatorship, the Portuguese
people went to the polls last week to vote for a new constituent
assembly. It was the country's first free election in three
generations, and for an electorate so long disenfranchised, the
voters spoke with a remarkably clear voice. Parties representing
moderate positions in Portugal's left-hued political spectrum
received nearly 70% of the ballots; the Communists, their allies
and a slew of tiny radical parties received less than 20% of the
vote.

  In ordinary circumstances, such an outcome would serve to
ally fears that the ruling Armed Forces Movement (M.F.A.) was
easing Portugal toward Communism. But these are not ordinary
times in Lisbon, and the M.F.A. had made sure in advance that
last week's voting would be little more than an opinion poll and
an exercise in "political education" for a populace that they
do not consider ready for full democracy. Real power will remain
with the 28-member Revolutionary Council, composed of President
Franciso da Costa Gomes, Premier Goncalves and other officers
whose exact political makeup is not known, but who lean heavily
to the left.


(December 8, 1975)

  For months, left and center in Portugal had been warily eying
one another, waiting for some kind of decisive showdown. Last
week the long-awaited confrontation took place, when far-leftist
air-force units--primarily paratroopers--attempted to take
control by seizing military bases. In a remarkable show of
strength and will, the moderates quickly struck back. With the
support of loyalist troops--notably Colonel Jaime Neves' 900
commandos ("the animals," as the rest of the military calls
them)--Premier Jose Pinheiro de Azevedo's regime routed the
radicals, and moderate forces gained command. "The far left is
finished," said one top military official. Added an elated
diplomat in Lisbon: "I am going to send off a cable now saying
that the good guys won."


  [Democracy's finest hour in the 1970s came in Spain, which
had stifled under the fascist Franco regime ever since the
defeat of the Republic in 1939. After Franco's death in 1975,
an enlightened monarchy presided over a return to exuberant,
responsible political life.]

(June 27, 1977)

  It was Spain's first free election in 41 years, and the
results were a cautious endorsement of the astute young
politician who was appointed by King Juan Carlos eleven months
ago to guide the transition to democracy. Rejecting parties on
both the far left and far right, the voters swept Premier Adolfo
Suarez Gonzalez, 44, and his Democratic Center Union (U.C.D.),
a center-right coalition of 15 parties, to within seven seats
of an absolute majority in the lower house of the new Cortes.

  No one under 64 in Spain had ever voted before in an election.
Yet the people, somewhat to their own surprise, went to the
polls as if they had been doing it all their lives. "It is so
normal," said one young woman activist of the socialist Workers
Party, "that it makes you think we have been living in a
democracy for the last 40 years."


  [Spain's democracy included the Communist Party under
Santiago Carillo, a new breed of Marxists who vowed to accept
the discipline of the ballot box and declared their independence
from Moscow. The Eurocommunists, as they were called,were
greeted with alarm by the U.S., which feared the undermining of
NATO.

  Even the French Communists, who were previously known as
Moscow's most sycophantic apologists in Western Europe, had a
fling with Eurocommunism.]

(February 16, 1977)

  In the "Red Belt" Paris suburb of St. Ouen, 1,600 French
Communists filed into an oyster-shaped sports arena for their
22nd Party Congress. A sign inside the hall proclaimed: A
DEMOCRATIC ROAD TO SOCIALISM--A SOCIALISM FOR FRANCE. Party
Leader Georges Marchais amplified that soothing slogan in a
five-hour opening address that amounted to a cautious
declaration of independence from Moscow.

  Marchais did pay some of the traditional tributes to Soviet
Communism, lauding its social accomplishments and democratic
structures, even pledging to fight "anti-Sovietism." But he
also underscored French Communism's new autonomy by attacking
"repressive measures" taken by the Soviet Union against
dissidents in extraordinarily blunt language. Said he: "We
cannot agree to the Communist ideal being stained by unjust and
unjustifiable acts. Such acts are in no way a necessary
consequence of socialism."

  Disavowing the central Marxist doctrine of a dictatorship of
the proletariat as out of date, Marchais argued instead that his
party's call was to unite the working class with the salaried
middle class, and scorned collectivism as a "barracks Communism
that casts everyone and everything in the same mold." The French
party, he insisted, does not want "uniformity that stifles, but
diversity that enriches." Marchais's unorthodox party policy
statement was particularly notable in light of the French
party's half-century record of slavishly backing Moscow.


(March 27, 1978)

  Not since 1968, when millions of students and workers erupted
in a violent spasm of protest that brought France to a virtual
standstill, had the fifth Republic wavered so precariously on
a political pinpoint. Challenging the center-right government
of President Valery Giscard d'Estaing was the combined appeal
of an alliance of Socialists and Communists. All the nation's
polling organizations had predicted that the leftists would come
out on top in the first of two Sunday rounds of parliamentary
elections.

  But in the first round and again in last weekend's runoff,
the voters of France trooped to the polls to give Giscard's
government an unexpected endorsement. The leftist upset was a
stunning personal defeat for Socialist Leader Francois
Mitterrand, and arrested the steady rise of the Socialist Party.
Most important, it prevented France's highly disciplined,
authoritarian Communist Party from gaining a stranglehold on the
government.


  [It was in Italy that the Eurocommunists enjoyed their
greatest success. But there, as elsewhere, the movement's appeal
was short-lived.]

(January 5, 1976)

  Long considered the most moderate Communist party in Western
Europe, the P.C.I. is acting as if it were already part of the
government. As a result of their stunning triumphs in regional
elections last summer, leftist administrations now control every
major Italian city except Rome and Palermo. At the national
level, although theoretically the largest opposition party, the
Communists tacitly support the Christian Democratic government
of Premier Aldo Moro. In fact, Moro's weak coalition Cabinet
faces a bedeviling paradox: the Socialists, who are supposed to
support the government, are increasingly at odds with it, while
the opposition Communists help to keep the coalition on its
feet. With only a touch of exaggeration, one Communist official
boasts: "At this point, I would say we are the government's only
support."


(March 20, 1978)

  In the Green Room of Rome's Chigi Palace, the leaders of five
of the most prestigious parties in Italian politics last week
added a significant red tint to Europe's most troubled
government. It was not the "historic compromise" that would
bring Communists to power in Italy, but it was the next, most
important step. After 52 days of do-nothing disagreement,
Christian Democratic Premier-designate Giulio Andreotti and
Communist Party Chief Enrico Berlinguer accepted a "governing
agreement that puts Communists directly in the majority for the
first time since 1947, when they were expelled from the postwar
Cabinet of Alcide de Gasperi.

  Under the agreement, which the smaller Socialist, Social
Democratic and Republican parties also ratified, the Communists
will henceforth have a direct role in government--not with
Cabinet portfolios, but as full, acknowledged partners in
Andreotti's parliamentary majority. As Berlinguer put it
jubilantly, Italy's big (1.7 million members) Communist Party
has reached "the threshold of national leadership
responsibility."


(June 18, 1979)

  As Party Boss Enrico Berlinguer stepped dejectedly out onto
the balcony, there was only a desultory round of applause. His
message could not have been less triumphant: Berlinguer
acknowledged what he called an "appreciable variation with
respect to our exceptional advances of 1976." When someone
dutifully unfurled the red hammer-and-sickle flag from the
balcony, a disgusted voice piped up loudly from the crowd:
"Leave it at half-mast!"

  "Appreciable variation" soon became the established
party-line euphemism for what was actually a stunning political
defeat: the loss of more than a million votes in Italy's
national election last week. The setback was a dramatic reversal
of the P.C.I.'s successive gains in the regional vote of 1975
and the general election of 1976, which had provoked anxiety in
every Western capital about the specter of Eurocommunism coming
to power in the NATO alliance. The defeat also raised the
prospect of an intraparty challenge to Berlinguer's leadership,
since it appeared to be a repudiation of his gradualist
"historic compromise" strategy of joining the government in a
national alliance with the centrist parties. Said Flaminio
Piccoli, president of the Christian Democrats: "The Communist
Party has lost its referendum on entering the government."


  [In Great Britain, there was a political breakthrough of
another sort.]

(May 14, 1979)

  Savor the moment. For the first time in history, two women
were the principals in the traditional "kissing hands upon
appointment"--a ceremony in which the leader of the winning
party is summoned to Buckingham Palace, there to be designated
Prime Minister of Britain by the monarch and asked to form a
government. The monarch, of course, was Queen Elizabeth II. The
Prime Minister was Margaret Hilda Thatcher, 53, a grocer's
daughter from the English Midlands, who last week led her
Conservation Party to a decisive victory over James Callaghan's
Labor Party. The Tories won a solid majority of 43 sets in the
635-member House of Commons, and Thatcher thereby became not
only the first woman to head a British government but the first
to lead a major Western nation.