Interest Groups

Abstract

State traditions do matter in relation to industrial relations (Crouch, 1993). The Portuguese state in the twentieth century was not able to integrate the working masses. On the contrary, the state was quite inimical to the working class. In the First Republic the small number of workers and the large, rather lethargic rural population made it possible for the state not to attempt to integrate the working class into the political system. By contrast, it was hostile to working-class organisations such as the anarcho-syndicalist movement and the Communist Party (Oliveira, 1974; Schwartzman, 1989, pp. 181–4).