as illegal. of mobilising the masses, ina support the actions of the selves, Popular Unity called o break the strike. Trade union ed the factories telling the aly on 'legality'; to leave it to ment to overcome the crisis.
the period of Popular cat the armed forces of the Died intact. Allende conhis faith in the constituof the army. No attempt ermine the armed forces; made to win rank-and-file side of the government. nilitary retained their links States. on revealed the whole lar Unity. In the name of they had captured the of the government. But ate, and its apparatus of (intact. ined the final guarantor f the right wing and the tolerated the Allende while; but when it looked For Allende and his government this was the last chance. The defeated coup put the right wing on the spot. The workers were infuriated. They wanted guns. During the day many workers had occupied their factories and they wanted to keep them. It was the decisive moment.
But Allende and Popular Unity acted in precisely the opposite way. Instead of taking the opportunity to strike hard at the right wing, the government decided that the only way out was to make further concessions.
Allende invited a wide range of rightwing figures to join his cabinet, in particular the Christian Democrats. When they demanded that the military also be brought in, Allende agreed on 10 August.
By these hasty and desperate concessions, Allende only signalled his weakness to the right. The military became convinced that they could overthrow him without too much of a struggle. On 11 September the blow was struck. darkness of military dictatorship repression.
While there are many lessons for British socialists in the Chile experience, it would sabotage the economy.
perialism.
blem of Allende and Popular of the working class, but in -tionalism.
Chile went into the and were going to fight it.' the bosses and the middle class to begin to realists.
With much more extensive nationalisations it would have been possible, with a state monopoly of foreign trade, to guard the economy against the sabotage of imBut these economic policies were just part of the much more fundamental proUnity: At each decisive turn, they put their faith not in mass mobilisation and the self-organisation constitu- for experience.
ple in the streets of Santiago. A very moving sight.
workers, and so on. I realised that they also felt the way I did.
'They also knew this was one of the last times that they would be allowed to go on the street. They were conscious of what was coming and Quotes from 'Chile's Days of Terror' (Pathfinder Press)
To attempt to advance towards socialism without the preconditions of mass mobilisation existing, and without preparing for an inevitable confrontation with the repressive forces of the state, is not just unrealistic. It is an exercise in monstrous irresponsibility and adventurism.
For this stupidity more than thirty thousand Chilean workers died. In saluting their memory on the seventh anniversary of the coup, we have to prepare the conditions avoiding a repeat of the Chilean
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'1 remember going on the 4 September march, celebrating the third anniversary of Allende's election. There were more than one million peo.
"I brought my little son with me because I knew in a sense that it was going to be the last march, that something was soon going to happen. We were marching down the street, talking to the people on the march - the
they were prepared to defend the government. There was no mincing words; they were expecting a fascist-type situation to develop and they