Portugal's 1945 election: the MUD and Salazar's ‘free England’ vote

On Monday 8 October 1945, a group of opposition republicans met at the Centro Escolar Republicano Almirante Reis, a republican club in Lisbon's Rua do Benformoso. Like other republican centres, it had a back door onto another street, Rua do Terreirinho, so that members could slip away if the police came. This time there was no need. Their leader, the lawyer Mário de Lima Alves, had asked the government for permission to hold the meeting and got it without delay.4 sources4 sources

Two days earlier, Salazar's government had dissolved the National Assembly and called an election for 18 November, a year ahead of schedule. The people in the hall, among them Barbosa de Magalhães, soon a member of the new movement's central commission, had to decide whether the opposition could take part. No opposition candidate had stood in any of the three elections for the Assembly so far, in 1934, 1938 and 1942.4 sources4 sources

The meeting approved a report setting out the conditions under which opposition lists would stand. Among them were permission to form political parties, a new electoral roll and a postponement of the vote. The organisers sent the report around the country, and messages of support poured in. Out of that meeting came the Movimento de Unidade Democrática, the Movement of Democratic Unity, known as the MUD.2 sources2 sources

António de Oliveira Salazar had headed the Portuguese government since July 1932, when President Óscar Carmona appointed him. Under the Constitution of 1933 he built a civilian dictatorship, the Estado Novo or New State, which rejected parliamentary democracy and the idea of popular sovereignty.1 source1 source

Portugal had stayed neutral in the Second World War. When Germany surrendered on 8 May 1945, crowds celebrated the Allied victory in the streets of Lisbon and other cities, and the National Assembly met in a special session to welcome the end of the war. Salazar gave a speech titled “At the End of the War”.1 source1 source

The victory was a problem for him. The fascist and Nazi regimes had fallen, and opposition figures began at once to seek support from the Allied governments to end his rule and restore democratic freedoms. Many in Portugal believed the victorious powers would not tolerate the regime for long. In fact, the political scientist José Adelino Maltez notes, the Western Allies doubted the non-communist opposition and preferred to keep Salazar.4 sources4 sources

Salazar moved first. In September the electoral rules were rewritten: instead of a single national list, deputies would be elected in constituencies based on the administrative districts, and the Assembly would grow from 90 to 120 seats. On 6 October the Assembly was dissolved, and the election that was due in 1946 was set for 18 November 1945.2 sources2 sources

The next day, in a room of the Assembly's library, Salazar explained himself. The dissolution and the new vote were to be seen “in the light of our internal conveniences”, though “without forgetting the indications of the international moment”. They had nothing to do, he said, “closely or remotely”, with the electoral contest into which Europe had “so busily thrown itself”.1 source1 source

Other gestures followed. A decree of 18 October gave a partial amnesty to prisoners held for crimes against the security of the state. The government eased censorship and police pressure and allowed some freedom of assembly, association and the press. One limit was explicit: Salazar banned any link with the Communist Party in a movement that put up candidates.2 sources2 sources

Few Portuguese could vote. Men who could read and write qualified; illiterate men had to pay at least 100 escudos in certain taxes. Women had had the vote since 1931 only with secondary or higher education. Registered voters made up no more than 12 per cent of the population. A decree of 31 December 1945, after the vote, listed the school courses that qualified a woman to vote.2 sources2 sources

The MUD grew faster than Salazar had expected. It brought together republicans, monarchists, Catholics, socialists and, a little later, communists. In Lisbon the Diário de Lisboa and República, and in Porto the Jornal de Notícias and O Primeiro de Janeiro, printed news of its meetings, the names of new supporters and its statements. Its rallies drew thousands of people, and opponents met in the big cities of Angola and Mozambique too.2 sources2 sources

A central commission led the movement. Its members included Barbosa de Magalhães, Bento de Jesus Caraça, Mário de Lima Alves, Manuel Mendes, Adão e Silva, Alves Redol and Pedro Pitta. A women's commission followed, with Maria Lamas and Maria Isabel Aboim Inglês.1 source1 source

Supporters signed lists backing the resolutions of 8 October, collected by the MUD's district committees. On 24 October the MUD told a press conference it had 2,149 lists with 50,145 signatures. The surviving dossiers hold more: 2,605 numbered sheets and 57,131 signatures.2 sources2 sources

The answer came within days. On 16 October the government turned down the opposition's requests, including the postponement. The next day President Carmona told a MUD delegation that the government would not delay the vote by six months. The MUD appealed to the Supreme Administrative Court, which rejected the appeal on 9 November; from then on, opposition meetings were no longer authorised.3 sources3 sources

Meanwhile the state prepared. Parish councils were elected on 21 October without the MUD, after the Minister of the Interior had replaced all the civil governors. On 22 October Decree-Law 35 046 replaced the old political police with the Polícia Internacional e de Defesa do Estado, the PIDE. On 26 October Salazar took personal charge of the União Nacional's campaign.3 sources3 sources

Then the government went after the lists. The day after the press conference, the Ministry of the Interior opened an inquiry into how the signatures had been collected. On 1 November it ordered the lists to be seized, alleging irregularities. In Lisbon they were handed to the commission of inquiry; in Porto the MUD refused to hand them over.3 sources3 sources

Mário Matos e Lemos, who compiled a dictionary of the opposition's candidates, writes that after the refusal of 16 October the opposition resolved not to go to the polls, though the formal call to abstain came only in November. A few people filed candidacies anyway. Lists had to name a candidate for every seat in a constituency, so lone candidates were turned away. The most outspoken candidacies came from Africa, inspired by the MUD.2 sources2 sources

At a rally on 10 November the MUD urged voters to abstain, citing the lack of guarantees such as control of the electoral rolls. The next day it formally called for abstention, saying the conditions for even a minimally fair vote did not exist. RTP's history explainer adds that the opposition pulled out at the last minute to avoid the arrest of many of its members.3 sources3 sources

On Wednesday 14 November, four days before the vote, the Diário de Notícias ran an interview with Salazar across its front page. Below the headline, in a block of capital letters, came his verdict on the campaign. RTP's history explainer says O Século carried the interview too.2 sources2 sources

Sunday 18 November was a day of heavy rain. With no opposition list left in the race, the União Nacional elected all 120 of its candidates. In Horta, in the Azores, 1,525 voters still chose a candidate who had withdrawn. In Portalegre, three men who had appeared on the opposition list were elected on the União Nacional's list instead. The chairman of the União Nacional's electoral committee had asked the Minister of the Interior for permission to add them as early as 13 October.3 sources3 sources

The lists ended up with the police. After the inquiry, the dossiers went to the PIDE, which recorded the details of every signatory and opened thousands of individual files. Every completed sheet was stamped and numbered. The sheets still carry the stamp “Fichas Feitas”, cards done, with officials' initials and underlining under people and professions the police found especially interesting.2 sources2 sources

RTP's explainer puts it bluntly: through the election, Salazar identified his opponents at home, and the PIDE pursued them once it was over and the foreign press had gone. Persecution of the MUD began in 1946, with arrests and dismissals; Bento de Jesus Caraça lost his university chair. After the movement was banned, RTP adds, many teachers lost their jobs.2 sources2 sources

The historian Irene Flunser Pimentel writes that the PIDE's main target from 1945 to the late 1960s was the Communist Party. When front organisations such as the MUD appeared, the police tried to show they were offshoots of the party, or at least to find out who the communists inside them were. A reorganisation in 1947 gave the PIDE an establishment of 541 directing and investigating staff and 150 clerks.1 source1 source

Not every signatory stayed in opposition. Adriano Moreira, who signed a MUD list in 1945, later became a minister of the Estado Novo. The inquiry itself was largely forgotten: when Mário Matos e Lemos launched a book about it in 2019, the Biblioteca Nacional described the subject as practically forgotten, even by historians, and almost ignored even in memoirs.2 sources2 sources

The movement did not disappear at once. In August 1946 its young supporters formed the MUD Juvenil, which outlived the parent movement by many years. A new central commission formed in June 1946 included Mário Soares.2 sources2 sources

An order dated April 1947 declared the MUD illegal, accusing it of working with the Communist Party. The movement was notified through the PIDE and answered defiantly on 1 March 1948: “Nothing is lost!” Its imprisoned members included Manuel Tito de Morais, held in the Aljube.3 sources3 sources

Banned, the MUD still launched General Norton de Matos as the opposition candidate for President in April 1948. He withdrew on the eve of the vote in February 1949, and the opposition split into rival groups. In the legislative election of November 1949 the communist-inspired Movimento Nacional Democrático, which called itself the continuation of the democratic movements of 1945 to 1949, put up no candidates at all.2 sources2 sources

The pattern of 1945 lasted for decades. Every four years the opposition could speak for a few weeks. In 1953 and 1969 its lists went all the way to the vote; in 1961, 1965 and 1973 they withdrew before it, as in 1945. The broadest attempt came in 1969, under Marcelo Caetano, when 182 opposition candidates stood and the União Nacional still took every seat.2 sources2 sources

For a few weeks in 1945 the MUD brought the scattered opponents of the Estado Novo together in public, from monarchists to communists. Mário Matos e Lemos lists the attempts at a common front that came before and after it, from 1931 to 1969, and concludes that a united opposition never really existed.1 source1 source

The lists are the other legacy. Tens of thousands of people signed what they took for a lawful petition, and the state turned it into a police register. The seven dossiers, with their police stamps, are now in the archive of the Fundação Mário Soares e Maria Barroso, and their catalogue is online at Casa Comum.3 sources3 sources