Hunter Residents Defeat Overdevelopment

By Duroyan Fertl

The NSW Environmental Defender’s Office (EDO) and community democracy activists celebrated a second victory in a month on October 19, when the State Government withdrew its approval for the Huntlee New Town Project in the Lower Hunter.

The development, near Branxton in the Lower Hunter, was to build 7,200 houses, and was the subject of a controversial 7,000 hectare land-swap with developers Huntlee Holdings, similar to the failed development at nearby Catherine Hill Bay and Gwandalan.

Last month, the Land and Environment court kyboshed those two developments, declaring the approval “biased”, and described the actions of then-Planning Minister Frank Sartor as amounting to a “land bribe”.

The Minister had signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the developers well before applications had been lodged for development approval in exchange for conservation land being handed over to the government.

EDO solicitor Melissa Jolley, who represented residents opposed to the Branxton project – organised as Sweetwater Action Group – described the land-swaps in both cases as “virtually identical”.

As in Gwandaland, an MOU was signed between the Minister and the Branxton developers, swapping development approval for land of environmental significance. On October 19, however, the Planning Minister, Kristina Keneally, withdrew both the approval and the rezoning for the land, before the court had a chance to overturn approval.

The Minister also admitted that granting the approval – made under the controversial and undemocratic Part 3A of the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act, which bypasses local councils – was unlawful.

The decision has virtually put an end to direct ministerial approval of any other major developments in the Lower Hunter, but it doesn’t put an end to the government’s plans to house more than 160,000 more people in the region over the next two decades under the Lower Hunter Regional Strategy.

In fact, the $1.8 billion Branxton development, as well as numerous others at Catherine Hill Bay and close by, could still go ahead despite recent events, as they will be referred by the Minister to an independent committee, handpicked by the government.

The development approvals throughout the Hunter also carries the stench of political corruption. Both Hardie Holdings – which part-owns Huntlee – and Catherine Hill Bay developers Rose Group donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to the NSW ALP in the lead up to the 2007 election, and shady Labor identity Graham Richardson has been retained as a lobbyist for Hardie.

Greens Councillor for Cessnock, James Ryan, has called for a new Lower Hunter Regional Strategy to be drafted, free from MOUs “infected” with developer donations.

Shame, Labor, Shame!

By Peter Boyle

A wave of deep moral revulsion swept through anyone in this country with social conscience when Labor PM Kevin Rudd uttered that ugly sentence: “This government makes no apology for a hard-line approach to people smuggling and border security.”

We are back to Tampa. An “Indonesian solution” is being prepared to replace the “Pacific solution”, as a Labor government leads both major parties in competitive mining of still deep-seated racism and xenophobia. Shame, Labor Shame.

These politician are total hypocrites. They parade as champions of human rights as the guardians of civilised values but when a small boatload of poor and persecuted refugees approach Australian waters that posture thrown out of the window.

These people are fleeing war and devastation that Western governments and corporations have supported or even caused. And they are driven, by the hundreds of millions, across many borders. In a single day more refugees cross into the territory of some of the world's poorest countries than all those desperate people who have ever hazarded a small boat journey into Australia. Imagine the outrage of these “civilised” Australian politicians if the nations bordering the world's war zones were to turn refugees away at gunpoint. But that's what the Australian navy is being forced to do by a Labor government.

So much hope, by so many people, was placed in the Rudd Labor government that it would turn its back on the ugly politics of the Howard era. Any moral credit earned by the much-celebrated apology to the Stolen Generation of Aborigines has well and truly been canceled with Rudd's recent “no apology”.

Green Left Weekly voices the outrage of those who really stand for justice and truth. This voice sorely needs to be as loud and clear as possible at times like this. Green Left Weekly is building the movements that will one day allow us to break the two parties of the right monopoly in this country. But we can only do this with your help, including your financial help.

$8678 came in to the Green Left Weekly Fighting fund since the last issue, bringing the total raised so far this year to $187,490 which is 75% of our $250,000 target for this year. We need to raise just over $60,000 over the remaining months to get there. If you can help us get there please do.

A big thank you to all the supporters who have sent in donations (regular or occasional). You are responsible for 54% of the total raised so far this year. The rest was raised through fund-raising events organised by our supporters. Please keep supporting those events. Chances are there is one taking place near you in the next two weeks

Spring offensive to be launched against Rees’ government privatisation plans

Spring offensive to be launched against Rees’ government privatisation plans

Power to the People Media Statement

October 13, 2009

“The fight against the privatisation of New South Wales’ public assets and services is entering a new phase”, Colin Drane, the convener of the Sydney-based anti-privatisation coalition Power to the People, said today.

Drane was announcing a four-pronged spring offensive against the New South Wales government’s “fire-sale of community assets and services”:

1. An awareness campaign about the anti-union private prisons operation GEO (recently awarded the management of Parklea Prison). Drane called GEO “the James Hardie of prison corporations”;

2. An October 31 public meeting to mobilise community opinion against privatisation. “The meeting will boost support for struggles against privatisation, like the Maritime Union of Australia’s battle to keep Sydney Ferries in public hands.”

3. A November 14 rally outside the NSW Labor conference, in support of the rank-and-file ALP delegate and union opposition to privatisation.

4. An open letter to all members of parliament demanding that they clearly and openly state their position on the privatisation of public assets. The results will be made known in every NSW electorate.

Drane said: “The NSW government may think that it is finally winning the battle for the sell-off of the State’s assets because they got a deal with the Coalition over NSW Lotteries and have handed Parklea management over to GEO.

“They are sadly mistaken. The vast majority of the community still opposes handing over its services to private profiteers; the ALP rank-and-file membership oppose it as much as when they voted down the Iemma-Costa electricity sell-off; and significant sections of the NSW union movement and many Labor MPs remain opposed.”

“Drane, a community activist and assistant secretary of his local ALP branch, concluded: “Some in Sussex Street may have decided the ALP cannot afford another internal struggle over privatisation only 16 months from the next state election, but ALP members and unionists are in tune with community feeling. For them, stopping the vandalisation of public assets is the most important issue.

“The NSW Government should not forget they must face the electorate in March 2011. Power to the People – Sydney will do all it can to build community support against privatisation and raise public awareness about the need for better public services”

For further information: Colin Drane 0419 698 396

Community victory at Catherine Hill Bay

Via Socialist Alliance's NSW site:

Duroyan Fertl

Local activists scored a resounding victory against over-development on August 31, when the NSW Land and Environment Court overturned consent for a proposal to build 600 houses in the small coastal village of Catherine Hill Bay, near Newcastle, and another 187 houses at nearby Gwandalan.


While Justice Lloyd didn’t mention the $143,500 donation made by the developer Rosecorp to the ALP before the last state election, in his ruling he described the consent process as "biased", and a "land bribe in exchange for rezoning and associated development".

Last September, then planning minister Frank Sartor signed a binding deed with the developer that "committed" him to look favourably on the development, before the proposal had even been submitted for approval under the controversial Part 3A of the Planning Act.

The decision is likely to set a precedent preventing approvals that involve land swaps, where developers receive government development approvals in exchange for handing over private land for conservation purposes.

The case – run by Kirsty Ruddock for the NSW Environmental Defender's Office – could also have implications for a similar project at Branxton in the Hunter Valley, which locals are taking to the Land and Environment Court in October.

The battle against the development is not over, however. Planning Minister Kristina Keneally has promised that Rosecorp could still resubmit their plan for assessment by the Independent Planning Assessment Commission.

Duroyan Fertl is a Socialist Alliance activist in Sydney.

Find out more about the campaign here.

SOS - No privatisation of Sydney ferries!

Privatisation spoils a nice day on Sydney harbour

By Peter Boyle

Sydney, August 21 - It was a nice day to be out on Sydney harbour. But we were at Circular Quay not to go on a relaxing ferry ride but to protest against the planned privatisation of Sydney ferries by the NSW Labor government. The Maritime Union of Australia had organised the rally but it drew support from a range of other unions, including the Nurses Federation, whose members are in the frontline of a hospital system in severe crisis after years of cutbacks by neo-liberal Labor governments.

O'Bray Smith, a midwife representing the Nurses Federation, told the protestors that she had been taught at school that in the late nineteenth century the trade unions had formed a party to represent the interest of the working class. But today, she and other trade unionists are fighting a privatisation- mad NSW Labor government.

"I've spoken to many rank-and-file members of the Labor party and they can't believe what is going on. And many are not going to vote Labor in the next elections as a result."

This echoed the angry sentiment at another anti-privatisation rally in Sydney organised by trade unions less than a month ago, that one being against the Rees Labor government's attempts to privatise jails. And before that it was the privatisation of the power industry that workers had to mobilise against...

Pictures here

Join the protests at the ALP 2009 national conference Jul 30-Aug 1

Below are details of some of the protests against the Rudd Labor government's right-wing policies that will be held at the ALP national conference this week (Thursday July 30 - Saturday August 1). The Socialist Alliance would like to encourage everyone to attend. You can read about why these protests are taking place here.

There will be a Socialist Alliance working bee to make props, placards and banners in Sydney 5.30pm-7pm Tuesday July 28 @ the Resistance Centre, 23 Abercrombie St, Chippendale. If you can come and help us at any of these protests and/or help at the working bee please call Brianna 0439 694 505 or Peter 9690 1977/0401 760 577

Thursday: Tasmanians Against the Pulp Mill
9am @ Convention Centre, Darling Habour

Thursday: Stop the NT Intervention
Join a public lobby of the ALP conference. Hands off Tangentyere - no blackmail! - no take-over of Alice Springs Aboriginal town camps - housing and services NOW for all communities. 12noon Thursday July 30 @ Convention Centre, Darling Harbour. Organised by the Stop the Intervention Collective Sydney.

Thursday: Troops out of Afghanistan
Join the Stop the War Coalition from 12 noon on Thursday 30 July at the Darling Harbour Convention Centre, to call on the ALP to bring the troops home and end the war on the people of Afghanistan. For more information ph Pip Hinman 0412 139 968, Marlene Obeid 0401 758 871, Anne Picot 0404 090 710
http://www.StopWarCoalition.org

Thursday: Gaza Defence Committee is calling on supporters of Palestine to help leaflet the ALP conference
At noon GDC will be leafleting outside the convention centrewith a leaflet calling for support for the campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel.
A further action will take place at 5pm at an event being organised by Paul Howes, secretary of the Australian Workers' Union and a promoter of an international group, TULIP, which is opposed to isolating apartheid Israel. This event is at the Maritime Museum, 2 Murray St, Darling Harbour.
For more information about the Howes' event see <http://labor.net.au/news/1246922178_20301.html>
For more information about TULIP, see <http://www.tuliponline.org/>
For a critical appraisal of TULIP see <http://www.labournet.net/world/0905/tufi1.html>
To find out more about this action ring Raul 0403 037 376 or Diane on 0413 003 148.


Friday: Billionaires for Coal's "celebration" of ALP coal & climate change policy
9am @ the Convention Centre

Friday: Protest for Honduras
Restore democrasy, no more dicatorships! Protest outside the ALP national conference. 5pm Friday July 31 Convention Centre Darling Harbour. Convention Centre Darling Harbour.Organised by the Latin American Forum. Ph John for more info 0413 310 452.

Friday: Jobs and Rights for Working Australians - Rip up all Howard's anti-union laws!
12.45pm – 2pm Friday 31 July. Parkside Auditorium, Sydney Convention and Exhibition Centre Darling Harbour. Meeting for all trade unionists & ALP conference delegates. For more information contact Pirjo Laine: plaine@actu.asn.au ph 03 9664 7333

Saturday: National Day of Action for Same-Sex Marriage. This year we alongside our Melbourne brothers and sisters, we will stage the nation's largest 'illegal' same-sex wedding! Chances are your relationships won't be formally recognised on the day, and you'll still be considered a second-class citizen long after you've consumated your marriage... so, what the hell... grab your partner, shine your ring, and invite your friends - we're getting hitched! Start 12pm @ Town Hall march to ALP conference @ the Sydney Convention Centre.
Organised by Community Action Against Homophobia www.caah.org.au.

Progressive fringe events at ALP conference:

Burma's future and Australia's role in it
Date: Saturday, August 1, 2009
Time: 12:30pm - 2:00pm
South Steyne Floating Restaurant and Function Centre
Cockle Bay, Darling Harbour
Sydney, Australia
Phone: 0416289235
Email: admin@aucampaignforburma.org: Australia's Role in a Time of Crisis

THE PERFECT STORM: Australia's role in a time of crisis
The Centre for Policy Development and Oxfam Event at the ALP Fringe Porgram
Friday July 31, 6pm, The Sussex Room, Crowne Plaza, 150 Day St, Darling Harbour.

Speakers include: Sharan Burrow (ACTU and ITUC President), Andrew Hewett (Executive Director, Oxfam Australia), Ian Dunlop (CPD Fellow and previous head of the Australian Institute of Company Directors), Reverend Tafue Lusama (Chairman, Tuvalu Climate Action Network), Ben McNeil (Climate Change Research Centre, UNSW)
RSVP to marian.spencer@cpd.org.au or call 02 9514 2034.

A call to protest at the ALP National Conference

Via the Socialist Alliance

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The Rudd Labor government has betrayed the expectations of millions who voted for progressive change in the last federal elections in Australia.

Workers and unionists are now working under a "Fair Work Act" that restricts basic rights and violates International Labor Organisation conventions. In the words of Dean Mighell, secretary of the Southern States' branch of the Electrical Trades Union: "'Mr Rudd and Ms Gillard were elected on the back of working people and the Your Rights at Work campaign. Now they are in parliament, they have blatantly disregarded their promises to Aussie workers." For more see http://www.etu.asn.au/newsandevents/news/fair-work-for-whom The incrementalism of Rudd's Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme is, in the words of Greens' senator Christine Milne, "worse than useless in the face of the climate crisis. Just as you can't be a little bit pregnant, you can't stop climate change by doing 5% of what is necessary. Or even 25%." For more see http://www.carbonequity.info The "intervention" into Northern Territory Indigenous communities is a disaster, provoking the resignation of long-standing NT Indigenous ALP minister Marion Scrymgeour. The latest news is that a group of 30 Indigenous leaders from Ampilatwaja have set up a protest camp three kilometres from their township, about 300km north-east of Alice Springs. According to their spokesperson Richard Downs: "Our people are demoralised, hurt, embarrassed, outcast on their own community. We no longer have any rights to exist as humans in our own country..." For more see http://stoptheintervention.org Then there's environment minister Peter Garrett, approver of uranium mines. He used to say: Just four powerful reasons to join the protests outside the Australian Labor Party's 2009 national conference in Sydney Darling Harbour Convention Centre, July 30 - August 1. Here are some more:

The Industrial Workers of the World in Australia: achievements and limitations

The IWW's newspaper Direct Action campaigned opposed capitalist war in 1914.

[This talk was presented at the Laborism and the radical alternative: Lessons for today conference, held in Melbourne, Australia, on May 30, 2009. It was organised by Socialist Alliance and sponsored by Green Left Weekly, Australia’s leading socialist newspaper.

• To read the full talk, visit LINKS - International Journal of Socialist Renewal.
  

• To read other talks presented at the conference, click HERE.]

* * * * * * *

By Verity Burgmann

The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) was established in Australia first in Sydney in October 1907, two years after the founding of the IWW in the United States in June 1905 in Chicago. Known as the ``Wobblies’’, the IWW was a revolutionary industrial unionist organisation. It preferred this terminology to ``syndicalist’’: while it acknowledged much in common with European revolutionary syndicalism, it proposed a less decentralised industrial organisation. It maintained that: workers should be organised on the basis of the industries in which they worked rather than on the basis of their particular craft or trade skills; ultimately all workers should come together in One Big Union, which would take over control of production, distribution and exchange from the employers; and this process, while revolutionary could be non-violent, because if all workers were already in One Big Union, its power would be so great that the change to a new socialist society could be achieved peaceably.

The IWW had developed due to dissatisfaction with craft unionism, which was seen to pit workers against each other and make it easier for employers to control and exploit all workers. Its emergence was an intelligent response from within the labour movement to the increasing centralisation of capital and industry; it aspired to present a concentration of labour power to meet a concentration of ownership of capital.

However, strictly speaking, only waged workers could join, so there was a serious limitation from the outset: it was a very ``blokey’’ organisation. Female paid workers were very welcome, but working-class homemakers could not officially join. Female industrial militants were applauded—but patronised—in the IWW song ``Rebel Girl’’. ``To the working class she’s a precious pearl. She brings courage, pride and joy, to the fighting Rebel Boy.’’ Far more impressive was the IWW’s principled hostility to racism as an ideology and practice that divided workers at the point of production that must be combated at all cost. Within a labour movement seriously implicated in endorsement of the White Australia Policy, the Australian Wobblies stood out for their persistent opposition to racism.

In 1908 the IWW movement in the USA split: those most contemptuous of political parties packed the convention. Debate centred on the Preamble, which stated:

The working class and the employing class have nothing in common. There can be no peace as long as hunger and want are found among millions of working people and the few, who make up the employing class, have all the good things of life.

Between these two classes a struggle must go on until all the toilers come together on the political as well as on the industrial field, and take and hold that which they produce by their labor through an economic organization of the working class without affiliation with any political party.

The rapid gathering of wealth and the centering of the management of industry into fewer and fewer hands makes trades unions unable to cope with the ever-growing power of the employing class because the trades unions foster a state of things which allows one set of workers to be pitted against another set of workers in the same industry, thereby helping to defeat one another in wage wars. The trade unions aid the employing class to mislead the workers into the belief that the working class have interests in common with their employers.

These sad conditions can be changed and the interests of the working class upheld only by an organization formed in such a way that all its members in any one industry, or in all industries, if necessary, cease work whenever a strike or lockout is on in any department thereof, thus making an injury to one an injury to all.

The ``non-politicals’’ successfully moved a resolution that deleted from the Preamble the sentence commencing ``until all the toilers come together on the political as well as on the industrial field’’ and substituted in its place ``until the workers of the world organise as a class, take possession of the earth and the machinery of production, and abolish the wage system’’. The minority group still supporting political action, associated with the Socialist Labor Party under Daniel De Leon, withdrew and established separate headquarters in Detroit. The larger ``non­-political’’ section remained based in Chicago and became the more successful movement.

This split was replicated in Australia. In May 1911, the Chicago IWW was established, first in Adelaide, but the Sydney branch, or Local as it was called, became the largest and most significant. As in the United States, it was the Chicago non-political IWW that was the more famous in Australia. It became what is generally known as ``the IWW’’, though the political IWW minority remained organised in the IWW Clubs, closely aligned with the Socialist Labor Party of Australia.

There were many links between the American and Australian Wobblies, helped particularly by the movements of workers between these continents, especially maritime workers. Not just seafarers, but many radicals roamed around the world quite freely at this stage. Unlike today, there were few restrictions on movement. There were no passports. It was quite common for agitators and activists to spend several years working and agitating for better pay and conditions for workers in one country then to move on to another country. Sometimes these agitators moved on because their efforts to improve conditions for workers brought them into trouble with local authorities. Often the radical labour movement in the country in which they arrived would know about them before they appeared, because of the newspapers produced by each movement, which reported on the movements in other countries.

One example of someone who moved around the Pacific area was John Benjamin King. King, born in Canada in the 1870s, worked as a miner, a teamster, and a stoker. There were many baseless rumours about King, for example, that during his time in Chicago he had blown up a newspaper office. During1910-1911, he worked as an IWW organiser for Vancouver. After the August 1911 Vancouver strike was broken, he worked his way to New Zealand as a stoker. In Auckland, his economics class had an enrolment of 30 miners and achieved notoriety. It was rumoured they studied the techniques of industrial sabotage. ``The less you work’’, he told one meeting, ``the longer you will live’’. But no member would testify when interviewed by police. However, with questions being asked about him in parliament, King fled to Australia in 1912, where he became a leading figure in the Australian IWW. Because of this, in October 1916, he was given ten years jail for printing and distributing 25,000 pounds worth of forged five pound notes—along with my grandfather’s first cousin, the process engraver who made the plates. The idea was to debase the currency to help bring down capitalism and finance Wobbly propaganda in the meantime. King’s sentence was reduced to two years, because he was less involved than my relative.

King was representative of the many personal links between the radical labour movements in countries on the Pacific rim, which helped the process of transplantation of the IWW from its country of origin. These transplants adapted to local circumstances. The Australian IWW was therefore different in significant ways from the American IWW. It did not slavishly follow all the American trends, debates, and schisms, as American IWW historiography has tended to assume of the IWW Locals that appeared in other countries. In fact, intriguing contrasts emerged between the IWWs on the two sides of the Pacific Ocean, which merit separate attention.

1. Opposition to political action

In the USA and Canada, political action was not so much a practice to be rejected as a matter of principle but an irrelevancy, because those to whom the IWW appealed were largely estranged from the electoral process. The American IWW, while rejecting control by political parties, never expressly condemned political action and many American Wobblies were active members of parties such as the Socialist Party.

It was very different situation here, where there was universal manhood suffrage (including indigenous Australians) from 1856 and payment for politicians from 1871, and then universal adult suffrage by the end of the 1890s in most States and federally from 1902 (excluding indigenous Australians until 1962). All adults, except Aboriginal Australians, could vote in elections in every part of Australia from the beginning of the twentieth century. Australia a white democracy, with Labor parties viable because of this democratic status, many years before the USA with a significantly better-developed economy. Moreover, electoral registration was compulsory in Australia. Not only was it relatively easy for itinerant workers to secure electoral registration; they were fined if they did not.

These democratic features caused the early existence of Labor parties in Australia, and Labor parties that were politically precocious. During the most successful years of the Australian IWW, the Labor Party was in government federally in 1908-09, 1910-1913 and 1914-1917. It was also in government for much of this period in most of the six States. In Australia, therefore, the IWW not just abstractly anti-political as in the United States and Canada but empirically so. It argued from experience that Labor parties did not help workers much.

The behaviour of Labor governments seemed to confirm IWW warnings against political action. Direct Action, the Australian IWW newspaper, had a running commentary on the futility of political action, sell-outs and betrayals by Labor MPs, their huge salaries and perks, and so on. For example, on May 1, 1914, Direct Action announced: ``Workers of Australia, you have raised up unto yourselves gods, in the shape of Labor politicians, and behold events have proved that their feet are but of clay.’’ On June 15, 1915, Direct Action claimed that the actions of the NSW McGowen Labor government, such as strike-breaking, should ``serve as a warning to the working-class, not alone of this country but of the whole world’’.

To read the full talk, visit LINKS - International Journal of Socialist Renewal.

Qld campaign against privatisation takes off

Qld ETU Press Release:
ETU’s “Light on the Hill” campaign against privatisation of State Government assets starts this week

Putting labour values back into Labor

The Electrical Trades Union’s (ETU) Statewide campaign against the privatisation of State Government assets will commence this week.

The Light on the Hill campaign will include workplace meetings, rallies, public meetings in regional cities, radio and newspaper advertising and literature drops.

The advertising starts in north Queensland this Thursday, with the first public events being held in Cairns next Monday, 22 June. The campaign will then work its way down the coast over the next two weeks with a major rally scheduled for Brisbane on Friday July 3.

Today’s ETU announcement coincides with the unveiling of the State Government’s 2009-10 budget, which is expected to include proceeds from the sale of a number of State Government corporations including most of Queensland Rail.

ETU secretary, Peter Simpson, said the campaign is about stopping this fire sale of State Government assets and putting labour values back into the Labor Party.

“ETU members strongly oppose the sale of public assets such as Queensland Rail and the port authorities. We are far from convinced that selling off important public assets is a sensible long-term response to these short-term economic difficulties.

“We also believe that if the State Government gets away with this then things such as electricity and water will be next. That would be an even bigger disaster for the people of Queensland,” Mr Simpson said.

Ongoing Light on the Hill campaign details will be released ahead of each event.

Media inquiries: Peter Simpson 0419 721 041
John Moran 07-3366 9010, 0410 603 278

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See also:
Brisbane Socialist Alliance public meeting: Stop Bligh's Sell-off!
For anyone angered by the Bligh government's plans to privatise Qld public assets.

Speakers:
Peter Simpson --State Secretary Electrical Trades Union
Paul Benedek -- Socialist Alliance
Worklife -- Speaker to be confirmed.
(plus further speakers to be confirmed)

6.30pm Tuesday June 30 @ CEPU Hall, 541 Peel St, QCU Bldg, 16 Peel St, Sth Brisbane South Brisbane

Ph: Paul 0410 629 088 email : brisbane@socialist-alliance.org

ETU Campaign Resources

• Media releases
• Economic Management & Infrastructure Draft Platform
• Flyers and posters
• Workplace Petition

Stop Bligh's sell off! -- Community Rally

UNION & COMMUNITY RALLY
STOP BLIGH'S SELL-OFF!

Rail - Not for sale * Ports - Not for sale * Roads - Not for sale * Forests - not for sale
Sunday June 7, 11am

Brisbane Convention Centre, cnr Merivale & Glenelg Sts, Sth Brisbane

Outside the ALP State Conference where Anna Bligh will be pushing her privatisation agenda.

The Bligh Government wants to sell off our public assets to fill in their budget black hole. Help stop this shameful fire sale of Queensland's rail, ports, roads & forests. Bligh's privatisations would mean worse conditions for Queensland workers & communities. Multi-national mining giants would gain control over entire regional economies, jobs would be axed, services cut for profits, and prices would rise. If the Bligh Government can get away with this mass privatisation.....what will be next?

Queenslanders did NOT vote for privatisation - don't let Bligh sell Queensland

Rally called by Queensland Council of Unions.
To help with the community campaign contact Dom 0431 638 772 or Paul 0410 629 08

Open letter to delegates to the 2009 ACTU Congress

Dear fellow unionists,

As delegates to this ACTU Congress you have piles of policy before you, but one basic decision to make.

Should you back the ACTU leadership’s support for Rudd’s Fair Work Act or oppose it?

The Congress papers say that “the Fair Work Act sees the end of the direct legislative assault on organised labour” and “represents a substantial, albeit imperfect, transition of the 2006 ACTU Congress policy into legislation.”

That’s just spin! Read the Congress’s own Industrial Relations Legislation Factsheet and the truth comes out (see the basic facts about the Fair Work Act over the page, mainly taken from this Factsheet). Workers are still losing.

The draft Congress Industrial Relation Policy says that the new legislation gives the union movement a chance to “grow unions, protect jobs and advance workers’ interests”.

If the economy were booming we could almost believe this, even though it would still be a recipe for a stagnant union movement. But we’re entering the biggest recession in 70 years, with thousands of jobs already lost and one-and-a-half hands tied behind our backs by Rudd’s law.

If more workers have joined unions since 2006, it’s because the Your Rights at Work campaign was seen as defending their interests. To keep growing we must keep campaigning for our rights, which remain crippled by the Fair Work Act.

It’s high time to drop business-as-usual-don’t-embarrass–Kevin-and-Julia-too-much unionism. This compromised approach gave the vast majority of workers lower wage increases during the resources boom than would otherwise have been the case, and meant that profits and CEO packages skyrocketed (check the Congress Wages and Collective Bargaining Factsheet for detail).

Instead of a vague, feel-good resolution about “campaigning” and waiting for Kevin 2010 to remove the bad bits of the Fair Work Bill, this Congress must adopt two basic positions:

1. For a full-scale, cross-union industrial and community campaign against the Australian Building and Construction Commission, one that will continue until it or any replacement scheme is abolished, and building workers have the same rights as all other workers.

2. For a campaign of industrial disobedience to the most crippling provisions of the Fair Work Act, including its ban on pattern-bargaining, restrictions on the right to take industrial action, restrictions on the rights of unions to organise and enter work sites and restrictions on the contents of industrial agreements.

The November 2008 suspension of charges against CFMEU official Noel Washington shows that workers and their unions can win if they organise to act against injustice. It’s the sort of unionism we´ll need just as much under the Rudd government as under Howard.

Let’s build a campaign now against all that is still anti-worker in the Fair Work Act—beginning with the anti-democratic Australian Building and Construction Commission.

Socialist Alliance National Trade Union Committee

Distributed by Tim Gooden, Secretary, Geelong Trades Hall Council (pictured), as a contribution to debate at the 2009 ACTU Congress

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Yes, the Fair Work Act is WorkChoices Lite!

Check out the following powers of the Fair Work Act, detailed in the Congress’s own Industrial Relations Legislation Factsheet.

If Malcolm Turnbull introduced such anti-worker industrial laws - which violate International Labour Organisation standards - wouldn’t the union movement be fighting them?

1. The Fair Work Act cuts back unions’ right to organise

• 24 hours notice of right of workplace entry, restricted access to employee records
• Bans pattern bargaining, allowing very restricted “multi-employer bargaining” only for low paid
• No restriction on employers using pattern bargaining
• Employer right to seek injunctions against unions using pattern bargaining
• Employer right to challenge the conduct of ballots to frustrate protected industrial action
• No positive rights for union delegates
• No positive rights for workers to join unions and participate in their work
• Almost no recognition of the role of delegates in representing workers in bargaining process
• No requirement for employers to facilitate union access to workplaces
  

2. The Fair Work Act prevents workers from improving their living standards

• Limits award content to 10 listed matters
• Fails to enshrine in minimum standards: 11 public holidays per annum, a right for parents of pre-school children to part-time work, rights to information and consultation in the workplace, retrenchment pay for employees of smaller businesses, and any guarantee that workers entitlements will be paid first in the case of company failure
• Restricts matters that can be covered in an agreement, banning enterprise-specific unfair dismissal and right of entry agreements.
• Allows award modernisation that could result in reduced standards in some industries and occupations
• Maintains existing AWAs, including ones that would not meet the government’s own standard for fair agreements
• Allows an employer taking over a company to refuse to employ workers transferring from business being taken over
  

3. The Fair Work Act keeps penal powers, including those established by Work Choices

• Requires secret ballots for protected industrial action
• Preserves the Work Choices requirement that employers deduct strike pay even in circumstances where employees are at work
• Allows the use of scab labour
• Doesn´t give workers the right to conduct meetings to prepare for bargaining
• Increases the penalties Fair Work Australia can apply to “ensure compliance” with its rulings
• Bans industrial action in support of economic and social campaigns (like that against Work Choices)
• Bans industrial action even where an employer proposes radical workplace restructuring
• Keeps the anti-union provisions of the Trades Practices Act
• Leaves a dispute with the boss to be settled in the normal court system unless the boss agrees to have it judged by Fair Work Australia
  

4. The Fair Work Act discriminates against different groups of workers

• Removes “high income” earners from award coverage
• Leaves contract workers with fewer rights than employees, including no rights to union representation or collective bargaining
• Allows a longer qualifying period for employees in small business
• Makes it easier for small business to sack workers
  

5. The Fair Work Act maintains unions in a weakened legal position

• Does not actually define the rights of unions
• Abolishes unions as parties to agreements, which are made between employers and their employees
• Does not require unions to consent to changes to an agreement, even when the union is covered by the agreement.
• Fails to enshrine a right for all employees and unions to be informed about the strategic designs of the employers
• Provides no clarity about where federal or state laws apply, much less enable workers to opt into the federal or state system

Radical history conference: A century of struggle

Laborism and the radical alternative - Lessons for today

Saturday 30 May 9.30am (registration) - 5.00pm AMWU offices, 251 Queensberry St, Carlton

Speakers include:
Verity Burgmann, author of many books on labour movement history
Jamie Doughney, economist, National Tertiary Education Union state president
Dave Kerin, CFMEU mining and energy organiser, Latrobe Valley
Chris Spindler, Australian Manufacturing Workers Union organiser

Socialist Alliance is organising a one-day conference on the struggle to build a radical alternative to the deadening hand of the ALP and the lessons we can draw for today. The seminar will draw on the experiences of the communist and trade union movements in Australia over the last century. This will be an important seminar given the global economic meltdown, the crisis of climate change and the dampening impact that the federal ALP government has had on the trade union movement.

Agenda:
10am:
The formation of the ALP. Was it ever a workers' party?
The record of the ALP. High hopes and big disappointments

11.30am:
The Wobblies. Achievements and limitations
The vehicle of socialism? The NSW Socialisation Units in the 1930s

2pm:
Communism in Australia. Some of the issues
Left alternatives in the trade unions

3.45pm
Fighting under Labor governments today
Looking to the future

Registration from 9.30am: $15/$5 concession.
Organised by Socialist Alliance - Sponsored by Green Left Weekly.
For more information phone 9639-8622.

Lessons from the past: The Great Depression and the Communist Party of Australia

A section of the Wharfie's Mural, the large-scale work of art from the walls of the CPA-led Waterside Workers Federation (WWF) canteen in Sussex Street, Sydney, in the 1950s and '60s.

By Dave Holmes

[This is an excerpt from the new pamphlet, Meltdown! A socialist view of the capitalist crisis, by Resistance Books. Meltdown! features essays by John Bellamy Foster, Phil Hearse, Adam Hanieh, Lee Sustar and others. Purchase a copy from Resistance Books.] Reprinted from Links - International Journal of Socialist Renewal.

The current economic crisis is a fundamental crisis of the world capitalist system. British socialist Phil Hearse calls it the “third slump” in the history of the capitalism (the other two being the Great Depression of the 1930s and the 1974-75 sharp downturn). And the levels of mass distress may yet come to rival the 1930s.

We certainly already have the anti-human irrationality of that period. Some time ago I came across a TV program about Las Vegas and the crisis. Casino business was down, it said. But Las Vegas also has normal suburbs, full of struggling, financially stressed homeowners. Across the city the sheriff’s department was conducting 3500-4000 home evictions each month! And the US has dozens of cities the size of Las Vegas.

But it is not the desperate homeowners who are being bailed out, but the very bankers and speculators whose insatiable greed caused the crisis. In a November 26 article on counterpunch.org Kevin Zeese wrote:

$7.6 trillion.

That is what [financial information agency] Bloomberg reports has been committed on behalf of the American taxpayer to bail out America’s finance system. This includes spending by the Treasury, Federal Reserve and FDIC.

• The amount is equal to half the value of everything produced in the United States last year.
• It is $24,000 for every man, woman and child in America, that is, nearly $100,000 for a family of four.
• It’s nine times what the US has spent so far on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
• It is enough money to pay off more than half the country’s mortgages, but bankruptcies have continued despite the bailout.

We do not even know where all of those funds have gone. The taxpayer is putting up a king’s ransom and not being told who is receiving it. We guarantee the debts of banks and are not being told what collateral is provided or who is receiving the funds. Before receiving the bailout funds, Treasury Secretary Paulson promised transparency. But Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke says that such transparency would be “counterproductive”.

All of this money and yet foreclosures, bankruptcy and unemployment are all up; the stock market, consumer spending and housing prices are down. Pouring tax dollars into banks is not working …

You’d think for $7.7 trillion we’d get health care for all, tax relief or free college education! But Americans got none of that.

And, of course, no matter how hard the crisis hits ordinary people in the West it will be massively worse in the Third World.

What does all this mean for us? We are entering into a new period. Unemployment is likely to rise significantly and there will be further deep cuts to welfare and social spending — all against the backdrop of the looming threat of climate catastrophe. Along with the growing social dislocation we can expect increasing political turmoil. The last time this happened in Australia was in the Great Depression of the 1930s. And while we shouldn’t expect a carbon copy of that period, we can learn a lot from the experience of the Communist Party of Australia (CPA) in those turbulent years.

Much of the factual material in this talk is drawn from the 1983 book The People Stand Up by longtime CPA activist and leader Ralph Gibson.1 While this work is firmly in a Stalinist framework, it nevertheless provides a very interesting picture of the 1930s crisis in Australia and the work of the CPA. Gibson gives a vivid sense of the depth of the suffering of the masses, the rottenness of the ALP leaderships, and the passionate struggle of the communists fighting for something better.

The Great Depression

The Great Depression of the 1930s began with the October 1929 crash of the US sharemarket. This rapidly developed into a crisis of world capitalism — the most severe in its entire history. From the end of 1929 to the end of 1932, industrial output fell 46% in the USA, 47% in Germany, 31% in France and 16.5% in Britain (already in a severe slump). Agricultural production dropped by a third over 1929-33. International trade contracted to one-third of its previous level. Unemployment reached at least 35 million (12 million in the US). In the US, only the mobilisation of World War II really put an end to the decade-long slump.

Workers, means of production, people’s needs — everything was still there but due to capitalist ownership of the economy the whole mechanism had seized up. To keep up prices, milk was poured down coal mines, oranges and coffee were dumped in the ocean, livestock were slaughtered, cotton fields were ploughed under. Mass misery reigned amid plenty. In the Soviet Union, however, Stalinism notwithstanding, the economy was forging ahead under the first Five-Year Plan. The contrast could not have been clearer to millions of people suffering in the capitalist world.

In Australia the impact of the crisis was extremely severe. The economy was heavily dependent on exports of primary products and world prices of these fell by over half. In the 1920s large-scale federal and state government public works had been financed by loans from Britain. With the crash, these stopped but the banks (the “British bondholders”) still demanded payment of the interest. In the years 1930 to 1934, an average of nearly a quarter of the workforce was unemployed, existing on a miserable pittance. Misery, hunger, homelessness and dire distress gripped the country.

ALP helpless in face of crisis

Some basic facts of political history are necessary here.

Australia went to the polls in October 1929. The hated anti-worker Nationalist government of PM Stanley Bruce was defeated (Bruce lost his seat to a trade union official) and the ALP under James Scullin took office (but with the Nationalists still controlling the Senate). However, the euphoria was short-lived. A few days later the Great Depression began …

In the two short years it was in office, the Scullin government showed itself to be completely incapable of protecting the interests of working people. It abandoned its modest election promises and was completely subservient to the bosses.

Worried about getting their pound of flesh, the British banks sent out an emissary, Sir Otto Niemeyer, to lay down the law to the Scullin government. Neimeyer demanded drastic cuts in wages and pensions — Australian living standards were too high, he said. At a Premiers’ Conference held in May-June 1931, the notorious Premiers’ Plan was adopted. It called for slashing all adjustable government expenditure by 20% — including all wages, salaries and pensions.

In NSW the ALP under J.T. (Jack) Lang won office in October 1930. Lang had presided over a modestly reformist state government in the mid-twenties. He put forward his own plan for the crisis. It called for a moratorium on interest payments to the British banks and a renegotiation of terms (actually not without precedent in the times). However, this was rejected at the February 1931 Premiers’ Conference. Despite all the demagogy surrounding Lang, the truth is that he later voted for the infamous Premiers’ Plan.

Lang was expelled from the Federal ALP in May 1931. There were then two ALPs in NSW: Lang Labor (by far the larger) and the rump Federal Labor. Five MHRs and two senators in Canberra were Lang supporters. In April 1932 Lang announced that the NSW government would suspend its interest payments to overseas bondholders. In response to this, in May the governor, Sir Philip Game, sacked Lang and he was defeated in the subsequent elections.

When a group of ALP defectors led by former Tasmanian premier Joseph Lyons withdrew support, the Scullin government was forced to the polls in December 1931. It was defeated by the new Lyons-led United Australia Party, a fusion of the Nationalists and ALP turncoats. Labor would remain out of office in Canberra until the Curtin government in 1941.

CPA and the ‘Third Period’

The CPA was formed in 1920, inspired by the victorious Russian Revolution. It took some time before a united communist party was consolidated. Through the twenties the party struggled to find the correct strategic and tactical orientation toward the ALP. Then, in 1929-31, under the pressure of the Comintern, the old leadership around Jack Kavanagh was forced out and a new Stalinist team installed, led by Lance Sharkey and J.B. Miles. Under this leadership the party adopted the policies associated with Stalin’s ultraleft “Third Period” schema and a much more top-down form of party organisation and control was implemented.

According to the Comintern analysis, adopted at its Sixth Congress in 1928, after the crisis of World War I and the immediate turbulent aftermath, and then the stabilisation of the 1920s, world capitalism was now in its third period. This was one of decisive crisis, in which revolutionary situations were on the immediate agenda just about everywhere and the task of the moment was to organise for the socialist revolution. The problem with the “Third Period” line is that it confused real possibilities of development with the actual situation.

And the tactical prescription which flowed from it was disastrous. The Comintern argued that not only were the pro-capitalist social-democratic leaders holding back the masses and preparing the ground for reaction and fascism — which was absolutely true — but their rank-and-file followers were also “social-fascists”. Left social-democrats — “left social-fascists” in the Stalinist categorisation — were even worse because they could more readily mislead the masses. When the Great Depression came and capitalism did enter a period of tremendous dislocation and political turbulence, the Comintern’s ultra-sectarian “Third Period” line prevented the communist parties from being able to correctly relate to the situation.

For example, in Germany in the later 1920s and early thirties, this sectarian line prevented the potentially formidable labour movement from uniting its forces to check Hitler’s rise to power. Instead, the working class remained divided between social-democracy and communism. As Trotsky tirelessly stressed, whatever their differences it was necessary for the workers’ movement to unite for self-defence against the growing fascist menace. If it did not do this it would suffer a catastrophic defeat. Trotsky also pointed out that a successful campaign against the Hitlerite threat would open the way to a socialist revolution in Germany. The social-democratic leaders certainly didn’t want to fight but the sectarian CP line made it easy for them to avoid the struggle. How different would world history have been had the Marxist-Leninist policy advocated by Trotsky been followed!

In Australia, the Third Period schema meant a crazy sectarianism toward the ALP and its mass base. At a time when the faith in the system of large numbers of workers was being shaken as never before, when they were groping for a way out of their misery, the CPA line made it so much harder for them to cross over to the revolutionary camp.

Of course, the ALP leadership was loyal to the capitalist system, just as they are today. But the most fruitful way to expose them in the eyes of their followers was not just through general propaganda but by constantly trying to achieve unity in action in fighting for the interests of the masses. Only in the struggle will the masses lose their illusions. Criticism is certainly not excluded but it must be relevant to the issues at hand and formulated in relation to the struggle as it unfolds.

In his book Ralph Gibson is critical of the CPA’s tactics toward Langism. Yes, Lang was a capitalist demagogue but he had attracted a mass following precisely because he appeared to offer an alternative to the Premiers’ Plan. The CPA called for a repudiation of the overseas debts. OK. But the actual struggle was developing around Lang’s proposal to suspend interest payments and renegotiate the terms of the loans.

When Game sacked him (probably an unconstitutional act) an enormous meeting was held in Sydney’s Moore Park in June 1932 under the slogan “Lang is right”. The place of revolutionaries was to be part of that movement, demanding that Lang be reinstated — and then actually carry out his plan. But the CPA’s Third Period schema closed off this possibility and this whole promising development passed them by.

Similarly, the CPA played a negative role in regard to the Socialisation Units which arose in the NSW Lang Labor Party in 1930-33. The outlook of the leaders of the units was utopian and they were unclear in their understanding of the nature of the Labor leadership around Lang but here was a movement embracing scores of thousands of workers looking to “socialisation” as the answer to the misery of the depression. The CPA denounced the leaders and supporters of the units (as “left social-facists”). And when a few communists did operate inside the units, they sought to commit the movement to an abstract revolutionary program.

Work among unemployed

Ralph Gibson explains that when he joined the CPA in the early thirties it was largely a party of the unemployed: “Its members were not just talking about poverty. They were among the multitude who were deep in it.”2

When the Great Depression first hit Australia and a great wave of unemployment engulfed the country, there was no unemployment insurance for eight months.

A national Unemployed Workers Movement (UWM) was set up in Sydney in July 1930. CPA members played the key role in setting it up in Sydney and Melbourne. In the big cities there were repeated demonstrations of the unemployed. These actions won the dole and the first payments were made in June 1930. The CPA played the decisive role in leading these struggles.

In mid-1931 the UWM claimed 31,000 members, in 1934 the figure was 68,000 and the organisation continued to grow until 1936. In response to the success of the UWM, the ALP and trades hall councils formed their own unemployed organisations but the CPA-led UWM outstripped them in numbers and militancy. Not surprisingly, the UWM was a major source of recruits for the CPA.

The UWM often spearheaded struggles against evictions. Some of these actions were veritable battles against the police attempting to evict people from their homes and throw them onto the street. The UWM also fought for improved conditions for the unemployed. These struggles were successful in winning higher dole payments and in gaining a rent allowance for the unemployed to stop people being evicted from their homes.

In 1932 the government tried to introduce “work for the dole”. Previously there had been short-term relief work for which wages were paid. But work for the dole made the unemployed work for their pittance. In Melbourne, the Shrine of Remembrance (that icon of bourgeois patriotism and militarism) and the Yarra Boulevard were the two main projects. The unemployed organisations were unable to prevent the introduction of this scheme, but in mid-1933 an heroic eight-week strike of the jobless in Melbourne succeeded in winning a substantial increase in the amounts paid.

Growing influence in trade unions

Alongside the Unemployed Workers Movement, the other key organisation through which the CPA attempted to lead the working class in the first part of the 1930s was the Militant Minority Movement (MMM). It was first established in 1928 with CPA leader Jack Kavanagh as its first secretary.

Ralph Gibson points out that: “The economic crisis, while it stimulated struggle among the unemployed, on the whole dampened it among employed workers.” Strike activity declined as did trade union membership (due to loss of faith in unions along with an inability to pay union dues). “… there was no real strike movement till the ice broke with the Wonthaggi mining strike of 1934”3 (depicted so well in the movie Strikebound).

However, the CPA was able to advance its industrial work, especially in traditionally militant sectors like the miners. This was despite its overall Third Period sectarian line. In his 1969 history of the CPA, Alastair Davidson summarises its gains in the first years of the Great Depression:

In early 1933 the MMM usually captured only low positions in militant unions, gains which were basic successes, but did not become news. In late 1933 and 1934 it started to capture militant unions at the state level. It also spread its activity throughout the entire Australian union movement. In 1933, through good organisation as well as essentially “pork chop” policies, the MMM captured the presidency of the Victorian Federated Engine Drivers and Firemen’s Association as well as several positions on the Victorian Tramways Union executive. It also consolidated its hold on positions in the WWF and was only narrowly defeated in the Amalgamated Engineering Union elections.

In [January] 1934 it captured its first union at the federal level, [when Bill Orr became secretary of] the Miners’ Federation, and throughout 1934 and 1935 it captured positions at the state level. By 1935 it decisively influenced a number of unions in various states: the ARU, the Leather and Tanners’, the Federated Ironworkers’ Association, the Tramways and Engineering unions, and the Miners’ unions.

It also led a militant minority which included about 20% of Australian unionists. It was winning influence in the Victorian, New South Wales, and New South Wales South Coast labor councils once again. Nearly all its successes at this stage were limited to traditionally militant unions, but it was also building its influence in the lower units of unions which were not traditionally militant.4

The Militant Minority Movement is a very interesting phenomenon. One thing we should be clear about is that this was not just a “rank-and-file” movement. Yes, it aimed to organise the ranks of the unions but it also aimed at winning leadership of unions and as it had success in this regard, the concept of the militant minority became somewhat anachronistic. Whole unions were won by militants and followed a militant line.

Free speech

The CPA engaged in numerous free-speech fights through the 1930s, often through the Unemployed Workers Movement. One hard-fought campaign took place in Brunswick in Melbourne in 1933. A state law banning “subversive” gatherings was used by the police — under the command of the reactionary police commissioner, General Thomas Blamey — to break up meetings of radicals and the unemployed. The struggle was at its fiercest in Brunswick. Dozens of members of the UWM were arrested in repeated protests during Friday late-night shopping.

A celebrated incident took place on May 16 at the corner of Sydney Road and Phoenix Street in Brunswick. CPA member and artist Noel Counihan had himself locked inside an old steel mesh lift cage bolted onto the back of a horse-drawn cart which was securely chained to a verandah post. From the safety of his improvised fortress he spoke to a large and growing crowd — one estimate put it at 10,000 — for 15 or so minutes on the situation of the unemployed, the right to free speech, war and the rise of Hitler. The police were beside themselves. Earlier that evening in Brunswick a free-speech activist had been shot in the leg by the cops. With the police smashing at his cage with an improvised battering ram, Counihan eventually came out and was duly arrested.

After three months, the campaign was finally successful. The Nationalist state government backed off and brought in a new, less restrictive law and street meetings were generally allowed to proceed without police harrassment..

Then there was the famous case of Egon Kisch in late 1934-early 1935. Menzies, the attorney-general in the UAP federal government, banned the Czech communist writer from entering Australia to address a congress of the CPA-led Victorian Council Against War and Fascism. When Kisch courageously jumped from his ship in Melbourne — breaking a leg but briefly touching Australian soil — the whole government effort to exclude him backfired. He eventually made a triumphal tour of Australia, speaking to large crowds and gaining enormous publicity for his message.

New Guard threat

In response to the rise of working-class militancy a semi-fascist New Guard formed in NSW, led by ex-army officer Eric Campbell. Its slogan was “King and Country” and its aim was to break up CPA, Socialisation Unit and Lang Labor meetings. At its height, its numbers reached some 50-100,000. The CPA was forced to set up a defence guard to protect its meetings. But in February 1932 the New Guard met its match in the “Battle of Bankstown” when 200 of its thugs in dozens of cars attacked a workers’ meeting and were driven off in complete disarray. After Lang’s dismissal the New Guard went into sharp decline.

Conclusion

According to Alastair Davidson, at the end of 1928 the Communist Party had 249 members. By April 1931 membership was in excess of 1100. In 1934, the figure was almost 3000 and in 1935 probably greater still.5

What can we conclude from this very brief sketch? In the early 1930s, in the context of a global crisis of capitalism and a consequent profound crisis of Australian society, a small revolutionary party built itself into a formidable force in Australian political life. It remained small compared to the ALP but its influence was much greater than its mere numbers would suggest. All this was achieved despite a fundamentally wrong political line (its Third Period ultraleftism).

Many things are different today. But we can be sure that one thing at least will not be different this time around. Its Stalinist framework notwithstanding, the CPA grew because of the commitment, drive, energy and will to struggle of its membership. This time too success will go to those who are prepared to fight and make sacrifices for their cause.

In the period ahead of us the socialist movement will have increasing opportunities. We can learn a lot from the experience of the CPA during the Great Depression, while hopefully avoiding its mistakes.

[Dave Holmes is a member of the Democratic Socialist Perspective, an Marxist organisation affiliated to the Socialist Alliance of Australia.]

Notes

1. Gibson, The People Stand Up (Red Rooster Press: Ascot Vale, 1983).

2. ibid., p. 29.

3. ibid., p. 42.

4. Davidson, The Communist Party of Australia: A Short History (Hoover Institution Press: Stanford, 1969), pp. 59-60.

5. ibid., pp. 53, 69.

Take a stand against prison privatisation!

While the date to make submissions to the NSW Legislative Council inquiry into the proposed sell-off of state prisons has passed, the Stop the Cell-off campaign against the privatisation (administered by none other than John Robertson, once famous for his role in the campaign to stop the privatisation of state electricity, now a sell-out to all and sundry.) continues.

There is a good background article in the current Green Left Weekly, reproduced here.

The actual campaign - run by the Public Service Association and the prisoners' rights group Justice Action - replete with petition (which we have published here earlier) and plenty of background information, can be accessed here.

Evidently NSW Labor is, in fact, as corrupt as we thought they were. It is of almost no surprise to discover that today's Sydney Morning Herald carries this lovely news: Labor MP Paul McLeay - head of the parliamentary Public Accounts Committee - has been receiving donations from none other than the company - GEO Group - running the only currently private prison in NSW - Junee prison.

In fact, he received donations at the same time that the company's contract was under review by the committee McLeay chaired! Hardly surprising, then, that the committee's report found - with some satisfaction - that it was cheaper (sorry, "good value for money") to house prisoners in private jails.

The profit motive is clearly a winner here. After all, who really wants to be treated like a human being when they're in prison, and be given all those crazy, whacky, perks like "edible food", "hope of rehabilitation", and "not being beaten half-to-death by the screws"?

If Queensland prisons are anything to go by, NSW prisons (and prisoners) are in for one hell of a ride, especially if - as is likely - GEO Groups (the second biggest operator of private prisons in the USA, with all the confidence that instils: think prison factories and squalor) gets Parklea and Cessnock jails in the privatisation process.

In the meantime, however, who could do more than trust the lovely NSW government. After all, it's not like their on the take from slimy developers, denying our right to due process in court, invading our homes, or run by an incompetent fool or anything.