Editorial data

When the first news of the intent of A Batalha’s Administrative Commission to create a new organ of doctrinarian diffusion surfaced in November 1923, the anarcho-syndicalist organization was diluted in a series of dilemmas and setbacks that weakened its dominating position in the worker movement since being founded, in late 1919.

The political context was not favourable and hindered the work of the Confederação Geral do Trabalho (CGT) and its daily newspaper, with 1923 standing out as the year of repression of rallies against the Ruhr occupation, strikes in response to increases in bread prices, and arbitrary arrests of peasants and workers (CGT’s secretary-general, José da Silva Santos Arranha, was arrested three times). Internally, circumstances were also less than ideal. Between 1921 and the III National Workers Congress, in October 1922, CGT faced numerous militant desertions to the communist sphere, besides actively participating in the discussion surrounding its entry into the International Workers’ Association of Berlin or the Red International of Labour Unions (RILU).

After the expansion witnessed during the first three years since CGT’s founding, this loss was also reflected on its main daily print organ: starting in 1923, there were increasingly insurmountable difficulties to support A Batalha’s alleged 18000 daily print run, which led the paper’s Administrative Commission to double its price from 10 to 20 centavos. This, however, was not the periodical’s only problem. Its ideological orientation wasn’t sufficiently clear and propaganda work was found to be defective, leading to the Confederal Council’s demand, in November, that A Batalha adopted a revolutionary syndicalist orientation, in accordance with deliberations that came out the previous year’s workers congress in Covilhã.

It was this context that saw the appearance of Suplemento literário e ilustrado de A Batalha, on 3rd December 1923, published on Monday to ensure the Sunday rest of A Batalha’s typographers and staff, the intended to become the ‘worker’s intellectual companion’ and to raise propaganda of the Idea. Printing was carried out in a graphic workshop on Rua da Atalaia, and the selling price was set at 50 centavos, with the possibility of subscribing the magazine separately from the newspaper – Mondays were also dedicated to preparing these postal deliveries, which included schools, unions, and cultural or recreational associations. Its eight pages were devoted to theoretical reflections on anarchism and libertarian culture. In addition, two other pages were dedicated to the permanent sections ‘O que todos devem saber’, with sundry information for the working class, and ‘Chico, Zeca & C.ª’, directed at the workers’ children. If A Batalha was reserved for the combat of workers and current news, Suplemento completed its work through the ‘intellectual, moral, and artistic’ elevation of readers. It enjoyed, however, some autonomy with regard to the newspaper and received its own financing, even if remaining under the formal direction of A Batalha’s main editor, who accumulated both posts.

When the first issue of the Suplemento was published, that task was taken on by typographer Carlos José de Sousa, after resisting the previous month’s crisis and seeing his resignation request denied by the Confederal Council. Despite experience working on two working class newspapers (A Batalha and, previously, Avante), Sousa was in a delicate position for having actively participated in ‘extra-official’ meetings with militants of the Portuguese Communist Party (PCP); these encounters had been denounced by the Confederal Committee itself. The unrest in CGT’s leadership and its internal reorganization suggest the direction of the new periodical was truly in the hands of the A Batalha staff. For this reason, it seems the Suplemento was directed by chief of staff António Pinto Quartim, the publication’s most experienced journalist.

The magazine changed its title for issue nr. 14, 3rd March 1924, to Suplemento Semanal Ilustrado de A Batalha. Further changes soon followed, with the resignation of Carlos José de Sousa in July, who found his position weakened by the CGT’s leadership lack of trust and the inability to respond to the implementation of censorship and the constant arrests of A Batalha staff, starting in May, the same month its typographers went on strike due to delayed and incomplete salary payments. The change only took place in October, when the Confederal Council decided to follow Sousa’s recommendation and appoint the CGT’s secretary-general for all directive tasks of its press organs. Starting with issue nr. 46, 13th October, shoemaker Manuel da Silva Campos directed the Suplemento. The post of ‘redactor principal’ was replaced with that of director, which is less of a formality than might be expected: as Campos admitted in one of the newspaper’s editorials, on 7th October, he would be less active in editorial work than his predecessor, owing to his responsibilities on the confederal body, which meant greater independence from Quartim’s team. As a consequence, the rift of positions between the Confederação Geral do Trabalho and A Batalha and the Suplemento widened in the following months.

The internal convulsions of the country allowed a clarification of Suplemento’s ideological position on different matters. However, the Confederal Council deemed its propaganda effort insufficient, and A Batalha’s editorial staff work was criticized, particularly for its ample discussion of the União dos Interesses Sociais and the benefit of the doubt given to José Domingues dos Santos’ government. The distance between A Batalha and both the Confederal Committee and the Confederal Council grew even further after the 18th of April, when the Council rejected Silva Campos’ position of pushing the CGT to a united left front. In July, he resigned as A Batalha’s director, after its administrator, Artur Aleixo de Oliveira, declared that the Suplemento had not met the propaganda needs for which it had been created. He was replaced that same month by ex-secretary-general Santos Arranha, who now coordinated all of CGT’s press.

From issue nr. 86, 20th July 1925, Arranha’s name was featured in Suplemento’s headlines. The new director held the post full-time. His election served the purpose of imposing an intransigent ideological line and restricting the Quartim-led staff’s autonomy, eliminating the dissent that had sprung up in the last two years, as well executing a ‘defensive action, frank and open, against manoeuvres intended to divide the proletariat’ led by RILU and PCP influenced A Internacional newspaper. The internal CGT conflict between the anarchist majority and the communist minority had intensified and Arranha was chosen to solve it.

The following months saw other setbacks that debilitated CGT, A Batalha, Suplemento, and the newly founded Renovação. Repression increased, and in October the Calçada do Combro 38-A 2nd floor offices were raided by police forces. Even though the fascist danger and the ‘forças vivas’ dictatorship were scrutinized in the publication, from February 1926 the headlines started covering the financial scandal of the Angola e Metrópole Bank. These reports by Mário Domingues probably contributed to an increase in A Batalha’s sales, even if they did not replicate the previous year’s 6000 copies print runs. But the Confederal Council was unhappy with this coverage of current events, since it preferred that the CGT press focused instead on active propaganda for the Idea and proletarian revolution.

A Batalha’s orientation was once again questioned by the CGT leadership when articles under the title ‘Union problems’ were published in May 1926; Arranha was criticized for attempting to intrude on matters of union organization, exceeding his competences as press director. In August, a former director of the newspaper, Manuel Joaquim de Sousa, was interviewed for Diário de Lisboa, and mentioned the ‘growing intrigue’ brewing inside the staff offices and ‘A Batalha’s increasing slip-ups’, that contributed to destabilize the confederal organization’s internal life. With the 28th of May coup, the split between Santos Arranha and Manuel Joaquim de Sousa became even more evident, leading to the former’s resignation, after receiving the responsibility of defining CGT’s position toward the revolt as watchful and neutral, when the Confederal Committee had already ordered the announcement of a general revolutionary strike in A Batalha published on the 29th.

The União Anarquista Portuguesa, the Juventudes Sindicalistas, and the newspaper O Anarquista, directed by Francisco Quintal and supported by some sympathetic militants (Emídio Santana, Adriano Botelho, and Germinal de Sousa, son of the ex-secretary-general), stood by Sousa. In April, the periodical launched a violent attack on CGT’s press orientation, asking if Suplemento was nothing more than a sideshow, after the publication of an article by César Porto on Soviet education. In July, criticism was extended to the remainder of the staff, supportive of Arranha in the conflict with CGT, regarding the salaries received by A Batalha’s ‘professional journalists’, who deflected the publication from its revolutionary direction. Ten days later, Ferreira de Castro, Jaime Brasil, Pinto Quartim, and Eduardo Frias responded to this ‘vile insult’ by abandoning the Suplemento and the other periodicals. Only Castro would return, later in September, when Arranha was no longer directing, after being replaced by Joaquim de Sousa starting with issue nr. 144.

A new Confederal Council was chosen only in November; until then, A Batalha and its weekly magazine came under the temporary management of the editorial staff, with the assumption that the interim director possessed limited powers. Unlike Quartim, who it seems never returned to the Calçada do Combro offices after the polemic with O Anarquista, Mário Domingues, Alfredo Marques, Cristiano Lima, and David de Carvalho stayed on. The ‘boys’ became the new coordinators for both the newspaper and the Suplemento. Their first change was in the magazine’s title, that starting with issue nr. 145 became Suplemento Literário Ilustrado de A Batalha.

During the military dictatorship period, CGT continued to focus on solving internal conflicts. To make matters worse, A Batalha was going through a dire financial crisis, despite the impressive 18000$00 raised in November, after a solidarity campaign. Suplemento’s situation, on the other hand, was significantly different, with a recorded profit of 6789$86 at the time its publication ceased.

The period of reorganization of the Confederal Council and the reorientation of A Batalha’s editorial line made confederal life impossible. The newspaper and the magazine’s final months confirmed this: the interim directors changed again when Joaquim de Sousa was replaced by Alberto Dias – at the time, secretary at the Federações – in December. He played this role for just five Suplemento issues (159 to 163), then also being replaced by railroad worker Mário Castelhano. With the new director’s arrival, Carlos Maria Coelho abandoned his post as editor, after 163 issues on the job. Silvino Noronha was chosen to accompany Castelhano in the last three issues. The new team appointed by the CGT did not last very long, since the Suplemento ceased publication after issue nr. 166, 31st January 1927.

Repression of the February 1927 revolt brought police forces to the offices shared by the CGT and A Batalha’s staff. Workers, typographers, and staff were arrested and the newspaper administratively banned. Despite Castelhano’s intentions, the Suplemento was never again published, unlike the newspaper that came out again in April. The latter’s lifespan, however, would not be very long, especially after the police raid on the Marim-Olhão palace of 2nd November; the typographical workshop and the Federação da Construção Civil and editorial section offices were all destroyed, while all propaganda and editorial material belonging to the company were apprehended. There was no option left for A Batalha other than surviving clandestinely, through the efforts and resilience of devoted militants.

António Baião