Resisting Howard’s offensive and our campaign priorities counter report

By Nick Everett, on behalf of the Leninist Party Faction

[The general line of the following report and summary was rejected, with five full members in favour, 21 against, no abstentions, and one no vote, and three candidate members in favour, 9 against, no abstentions, and two no vote.]

In a report to the June 1998 NC, four years before our “unity offensive” in the Socialist Alliance, comrade Peter Boyle made the following observation of the MUA dispute:

“What threw Howard and Reith were the important cracks in political authority of the conservative central trade union leadership. Significant union ranks broke out from the timid ACTU’s leadership, converting “peaceful assemblies” outside Patrick’s docks into militant mass pickets. Perhaps more surprising to the bosses and their government, and more critically, a section of the trade union leadership in the CFMEU, the ETU and the Victorian Trades Hall Council led this break out, multiplying its scale dramatically… We’ve seen many cases of rank and file breakouts over the last few years but they have remained relatively isolated. But with the support of a section of the union leadership, this break out is qualitatively different” (“The Australian Political Situation and the Coming Federal Election,” The Activist Vol. 8 No 2 p14).

Despite our brief glimpse of what a trade union fight-back might look like if it were to break free of ALP-ACTU control – that is, a campaign of mass action – the report noted “the union leaders’ response is still defensive,” both industrially and politically.

“There is nothing to suggest that even in Melbourne the upsurge around the MUA dispute had created real forces with which we can form a new electoral alliance to the left of Labor…

“There’s no plan by any left union officials to call a conference of workers to form a new party to the left of Labor…

“It seems likely that the main momentum in party terms will be to channel many leftists and militants back into supporting Labor… but if even a handful of these newly worker inspired militants were recruited to our party as serious cadre, this would be an important step forward…

“The working class won’t break from the two-party straight-jacket, from being blackmailed and sold short by lesser evilism until wider layers of the working class have the confidence to envision going for more than what the capitalist parties offer. A lot more victories, confirmations of the power of the working class solidarity, are needed. But in addition, we the conscious revolutionary force have to increase our struggle to win more workers to out politics… we need to pose more sharply the need to break from Laborism and join our party as the only significant and serious party remaining on the left” (The Activist Vol. 8 No 2 p18).

The report concluded that the objective conditions did not exist for us to pursue a broader regroupment, but that the critical step that needed to be taken towards building a mass party was to build the DSP:

“The position that we have put forward for some time in our propaganda… that we are in favour of building a mass independent party of the working class, and the regroupment tactics we tried out in the late 1980s and early 1990s mustn’t confuse us about the basic reality that the critical step that needs to be taken today towards building such a mass party is to build our party, the DSP…”

“The term new ‘mass party of the working class’ suggests a particular variant of regroupment… a possible future scenario where we might want to enter into a new bigger party with significant leftward moving forces but where a condition of such regroupment is that we accept, for a time, a more limited program of immediate and transitional demands… that’s not explicitly revolutionary or Marxist. That’s one possible tactic for building the revolutionary Marxist party that may have to be used sometime in the future. But it is something that is not on the cards today” (The Activist Vol. 8 No 2 p18).

The report concluded:

“Significant as this turning point was, it hasn’t generated the new political forces that would open up the tactic of mass political regroupment to the left of the ALP… Our main opening is a more advantageous ideological terrain especially since the class struggle gave those who believed it was dead a poke in the eye” (The Activist Vol. 8 No 2 p23).

We acknowledged then – only two months after the mass picketing at Webb Dock, Port Botany and Fremantle – that the objective conditions had not yet “generated the new political forces that would open up the tactic of mass political regroupment to the left of the ALP” and that “a new bigger party with significant leftward moving forces” was “not on the cards today”.

The turn to building Socialist Alliance as ‘our party’

Four years later the DSP changed tack. The Socialist Alliance – which began as a manoeuvre with the ISO to establish an electoral alliance and which we recognised at the time might have the potential to become a regroupment project – displaced the DSP as the party we build.

This change of tactic – from building the DSP as our party to building the Socialist Alliance as “a new bigger party with significant leftward moving forces” – was based on a fundamental misjudgment of the objective conditions.

Firstly, and most critically, we misread the rise in active dissent in the period 1998-2003 as the beginning of a new cycle of working-class and anti-capitalist struggle that would provide the basis for a new party that could start to challenge the Labor Party. We argued that this still sporadic layer in dissent constituted a much bigger “audience for socialism”.

Secondly, we thought that our growth throughout this period gave us the weight to force march the Socialist Alliance towards a new party – even in the face of overwhelming resistance from the rest of the sects (and later from the Non-Aligned Caucus when they started to put the breaks on the process).

Thirdly, we argued that we had “won considerably more authority within the social movements for our initiative and leadership” (“Steps towards left unity in Australia,” Links No 23 p10).

But that authority did not, and could not, turn the tide of the retreat of the anti-war movement in 2003 and the wave of demoralisation that followed the Howard government’s 2004 re-election. There was no qualitative change in the objective situation – no turning of the tide of more than two decades of retreat by the working class in the face of the neoliberal offensive.

There are only two conclusions that can be drawn today, comrades.

The first is that we got it fundamentally wrong in 1998. That the objective conditions at that time, the stirrings of active dissent that we observed on the waterfront and in the movements, were a concrete opening to pursue the tactic of “a new bigger party with significant leftward moving forces”.

The second is that we are on the wrong course today. That the objective conditions today – just as in 1998 – do not provide an opening for the tactic of regrouping in a new party with forces breaking from the ALP.

Yet despite acknowledging that “it is too early to proclaim … the end of the last two and a half decades of class retreat in the face of the capitalist neo-liberal offensive” (“The Socialist Alliance and the DSP,” The Activist Vol 15 No 1), the DSP majority continues to argue that the current objective conditions do favour building Socialist Alliance as a “new party project”.

The ‘mass fight-back’ against Work Choices

The majority’s argument at the January Congress, and reaffirmed at the May NC, is premised on a totally false hope and expectation – that the fight against Work Choices would create a bigger pool of class struggle partners that would enable us to revive the Socialist Alliance as a viable regroupment project.

Comrade Bolton’s Congress majority report, while conceding “the fact that the government used its numbers in the Senate to ram through a whole lot of draconian legislation indicates a relative defeat,” argued the campaign against Work Choices “has the potential to combat working class passivity and give people confidence in their own capacity to struggle and to win rather than relying on parliament. It also has the potential to strengthen alliances within the working class and to generate new militant leaders” (“Australian Politics and Campaigns,” The Activist Vol 16 No 5 p17).

Comrades, every campaign has the potential to “give people confidence in their capacity to struggle” and “generate new militant leaders”. But comrade Bolton has failed to make the case that this potential has – or will – translate into sufficient leftward moving forces to transform Socialist Alliance from its current inert state into a successful regroupment project able to lead a significant break from the ALP.

Comrade Bolton made the sweeping claim in her May NC report that “Labor is just not seen as an alternative”. The vast majority of Queenslanders must have missed comrade Bolton’s advice, when they returned the ALP in a landslide victory on September 9.

Comrade Boyle’s summary of the majority’s party building perspectives Congress report stated:

“It is a fact that we have today, in concert with other militant trade unionists, a certain limited power of initiative in the trade union movement. Together we did have an impact on the course of the IR laws struggle last year, a dramatic impact” (The Activist Vol 16 No 5 p39 – emphasis in the original).

Based on this assumption, the DSP – under the banner of SA – sought to harness this “power of initiative” in a petition campaign to pressure the ACTU to organise a national stoppage to coincide with the implementation of the laws in March.

Despite our best efforts, our petition campaign did not bring about a national stoppage to coincide with the implementation of the legislation. Nor was it responsible for the third round of mobilisations on June 28. Nonetheless the DSP majority has persisted with the myth that the campaign against Work Choices continues to grow as union militants keep the pressure up on the ACTU.

“Our campaign against Work Choices is growing. It’s making the Howard government feel nervous,” boldly declared Tim Gooden in a Socialist Alliance leaflet distributed on June 28.

“Socialist Alliance members and our allies in the trade union movement have helped ensure that the overwhelming public opposition to PM John Howard’s anti-worker and union-busting laws has been mobilised in the massive nationwide protests over the last year – protests that undermined many bosses’ confidence to rapidly impose the laws on workers,” states the call for the 2006 Socialist Alliance National Conference.

Comrades, it would be nice if this were true. But the ACTU’s “Rights @ Work” campaign against Work Choices, involving three national days of action every six months, is not growing. The June 28 protests were half the size of those last November. The Victorian Trades Hall delegates meeting, held on September 27, was attended by only 600 delegates (half the size of the meeting on March 29).

And the laws have been rapidly imposed on workers. In the first three months since the introduction of Work Choices there were only 23 industrial disputes, 78 fewer than in the previous quarter (Australian Bureau of Statistics). In the 12 months to July 1, there were 352 disputes, 217 less than in the previous 12 months. Surely, if the bosses’ confidence to use the laws had been undermined by massive nationwide protests, we would not see such a dramatic decline in industrial action.

There have been some wins, as comrade Bolton has noted. In July thirty-six seafarers from the carrier MT Stolt Australia went on strike and defied an Industrial Relations Commission order to save their jobs. In May, sacked workers at Finlay Engineering were reinstated after a concerted campaign of pickets at the factory gate, backed up by community support. University of Ballarat staff have finally won a collective agreement after a hard fought 12-month campaign against AWAs.

And on September 21, 40 AMWU workers claimed victory when their employer, Total Corrosion Control, abandoned its plans to sue the workers for up to $28,600, as well as their union.

But these wins have been the exceptions in a climate where, as comrade Bolton concedes, “the extremely restricted circumstances in which unions can take legal industrial action is largely responsible for the decline in the number of disputes” (Green Left Weekly No 685, p28).

The month long lockout of Radio Rentals technicians in Adelaide and the theft of a week of worker’s pay by Heinemann Electric, in retaliation for an overtime ban, are indications of the bosses’ confidence to rapidly impose the laws on workers. These are defensive battles in which community picket line mobilisations and alliances with a range of forces – inside and outside the union movement and the ALP – will be vital.

The truth is that the “Rights @ Work” campaign, for the replacement of Work Choices with “fairer” IR laws, remains a largely symbolic campaign, under the control of the ACTU, aimed at securing a federal election victory for the ALP in 2007. And the militant trade union current – that was able to make some significant advances in the years 1998-2003, following the historic MUA dispute – is today represented by pockets of union militancy unable to mount an effective challenge to the ACTU’s control of the campaign.

The NE/NC minority’s assessment at the January Congress was that:

“The resistance to Howard’s IR attacks will probably take a different form once the legislation is passed, with struggle more focused on specific workplaces, sectors and unions under attack by the bosses” (The Activist Vol 19, No 1, p 25).

Clearly the evidence demonstrates the correctness of this assessment.

In seeking to justify the now permanent tactic of building the Socialist Alliance as our party, the DSP majority has wildly misjudged the balance of class forces in Australia today. Not only the balance of forces between the militant union current and the ALP-ACTU bureaucracy, but the potential of the IR fight to generate a broader political break from Laborism.

Ongoing neoliberal offensive

The Australian political situation today is characterised by two major offensives. The first is the attack on unions and enterprise bargaining.

The second is the ongoing ideological offensive aimed at winning the working class’s acceptance for the much deeper, and brutal, austerity for the peoples of the Third World, who have and will continue to bear the greatest burden and suffer the greatest misery from neo-liberal globalisation.

The attack on unions and collective bargaining – which has gained momentum since the Coalition took control of the Senate last July – takes place within the framework of the neo-liberal offensive that can be traced back at least two and a half decades.

Work Choices legislation, which took effect on March 27, the Building and Construction Industry Improvement Act, which passed the Senate last October, and the Welfare to Work Act, aimed at forcing welfare recipients into low-wage jobs, are just the latest attacks in this ongoing offensive.

Economic boom

However, although there has been a steady erosion of wages and the social wage since the early 1980s, for significant sections of the Australian working class, the impact has been ameliorated by the prolonged economic boom of the last decade. The Australian capitalist economy has grown at the rate of nearly 4 % per annum over the last decade, fuelled by the insatiable thirst of the rapidly industrialising Chinese economy for raw materials.

But while some sections of the working class have not done too badly, the ideological offensive, aimed at breaking any solidarity – or any sense of solidarity – between the Australian working class and the peoples of the Third World, is unrelenting.

Ruling class ideological campaign

This neoliberal ideological campaign has involved:

However, in one part of the World – in Latin America – the general retreat in the face of this ideological campaign being waged by all of the imperialist powers has been halted and is beginning to be reversed.

Venezuela and Cuba – turning the tide

The revolutions in Venezuela and Cuba, and the election of the Morales government in Bolivia on the back of an indigenous rebellion, represent a counter-offensive against capitalist globalisation. In Venezuela, the rebellion against neoliberalism, beginning with the 1989 Caracazo, has today been transformed into a conscious struggle for socialism. The Venezuelan revolution has made enormous strides in areas of land reform, social missions and cooperatives and has begun to develop, in some areas of the economy, workers co-management after the expropriation of enterprises.

The Venezuelan masses, under the leadership of Hugo Chavez, are beginning to implement concrete measures to take the economy and society in a socialist direction. And in Cuba, having emerged out of the Special Period with the help of Venezuela, the battle of ideas marks a new counter-offensive.

Chavez and Fidel’s authority as leader of a newly emerging anti-imperialist axis has gained a further boost from Chavez’s recent address to the UN and Cuba’s hosting of the Non-Aligned Summit.

On September 22, Downer attacked Chavez’s speech to the UN, telling the Fox network:

“America’s a place where you can speak freely. The irony of all of this is that Venezuela isn’t. So here you’ve got a man who has got dictatorial tendencies ranting to the world, I think in a very unconvincing way…”

Capitalist globalisation and the ‘war on terror’

Downer’s own speech to the UN restated the case for capitalist globalisation and the ‘war on terror’, hypocritcally declaring:

“The task of rebuilding Afghanistan, is demanding great sacrifice by tens of thousands of brave men and women… to create the conditions for stability and good governance so necessary to economic renewal and so crucial if its people are to escape poverty and oppression…

“Our challenge is not just to keep our citizens safe from terrorist attack, it is also to defeat an ideology that allows for no ideas or belief systems other than its own” (http://www.foreignminister.gov.au/speeches/2006/060921_un.html).

Downer called on Iran and Syria to restrain Hezbollah and boasted about the “regional training centre jointly established by Australia and Indonesia [which] is helping South-East Asian law enforcement agencies develop the capabilities they need to destroy terrorist networks”. He disparaged the Kyoto treaty as “blind faith in a single multilateral approach” counterposing it with the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate, a forum dominated by the interests of Australian and US big business.

On the same day as Downer’s address, a homeless East Timorese refugee family was deported to Dili from Darwin.

The seriousness with which the Australian ruling class gives this campaign to instil fear of the “non-western” world, symbolised at the moment by Islam, is demonstrated by their willingness to give an open ended commitment to putting Australian troops on the firing line in Iraq and Afghanistan.

There can be no greater prioritisation or commitment of resources than war – killing people in other countries, robbing them of their freedom, sending their own citizens to kill and be killed and spending hundreds of millions of dollars on the war machine.

However, there remains resistance to this ideological offensive. Despite the retreat of the anti-war movement following the invasion of Iraq, we have seen the movement mobilise again in solidarity with the people of Lebanon in July and August and, in smaller numbers, with the people of Palestine. Two thirds of the population continue to oppose the deployment of troops in Iraq, although this opposition remains largely passive.

The most important priority for the DSP today must be to build resistance to the ruling class’s systematic campaign to win the Australian working class to an acceptance of imperialism. This must be the overarching framework for our perspective of building the anti-war movement and solidarity with the Venezuelan revolution.

In the 1990s we analysed the phenomenon of “globalisation” as the imperialist countries increasing targeting of the economies of the Third World, as their ruling classes looked for new ways to squeeze the peoples and increase the rate of profit. We analysed the “neo-con” phenomena as flowing from the realisation of the imperialist ruling classes (or at least a wing of them) that this squeeze would provoke resistance from the Third World, in a variety of forms, and that therefore the imperialist countries needed to be armed and ready to face this resistance.

The 1998, 2002 and 2005 APISC conferences, the John Pilger and Tariq Ali public meetings, our leadership of the East Timor and Indonesia solidarity campaigns, our September 11 (the World Economic Forum blockade in 2000) and our leadership of the anti-war movement’s mobilisations against the wars on Afghanistan (2001), Iraq (2003) and Lebanon (2006) are evidence of the seriousness with which the DSP has taken the task of international solidarity.

Each of these initiatives and campaign interventions has shown that there remains a significant constituency in Australia that – in the face of a general retreat of the working class – remains repelled by the neo-cons ideology and the direction that society is heading in and is looking for answers as to why it is happening and how this retreat can be halted.

Throughout the 1970s, 80s and 90s, campaigns of international solidarity were the corner stone of our campaigning perspective. But today our anti-war and international solidarity work – principally with the people of Latin America and the Middle East – has become detached from any ongoing systematic critique or opposition to the Australian ruling class ideological offensive.

Overestimating our ‘power of initiative’

The DSP – masquerading as the Socialist Alliance – has adapted to the limited class struggle, platform of the Socialist Alliance. A systematic Marxist critique of the Australian ruling class’s agenda – in our propaganda, in Green Left Weekly and in our public forums – has been traded off against the pursuit of class struggle partners to revive the Socialist Alliance.

The “limited power of initiative” assigned to Socialist Alliance trade unionists and “our allies” is wildly overstated in the majority’s assessment. That is unless you regard the wing of the trade union bureaucracy represented by ALP blue-collar union leaders such as Doug Cameron, John Sutton and Andrew Ferguson as “our allies”.

Mindful of the pressure on their left flank from the ranks of blue collar unionists who look to more militant leaderships in Victoria and WA, this camp within the trade union bureaucracy have backed regular street mobilisations against the laws for well over a year now.

As comrade Max Lane’s “Australian politics and campaigns” counter-report to the January DSP Congress observed:

“The June/July [2005] mobilisations showed them that, at this time, it was possible to organise well-controlled marches and rallies that could be good PR to back up the ACTU advertising and ALP polling. There were no signs that the ACTU would face breakaway actions such as that which occurred at Parliament House 10 years ago in 1996. There was no reluctance by the ACTU to organise November 15, especially as the use of Sky Channel meant that they could dominate the platform in all major centres. Under these conditions, such well-controlled mass rallies and marches will remain an option for occasional use – using them too often will raise expectations too much” (The Activist Vol 16, No 1, p26).

To date the ACTU has largely succeeded in channelling the six monthly mobilisations in an elect-Labor direction. The two exceptions to this general trend have been in Geelong, where our comrade Tim Gooden is the Trades Hall Secretary, and in Perth, where the May Day and June 28 mobilisations were organised by an alliance of blue-collar unions in the face of opposition by the WA Trades and Labor Council.

However, the WA alliance of blue-collar unions, despite the authority of Socialist Alliance comrade Chris Cain as WA MUA Branch Secretary, is not at this time on a trajectory of a political break with Labor. Inside of the WA MUA branch, Cain is engaged in rebuilding this union’s structures, working closely with DSP comrades. Outside the MUA, the WA CFMEU remains strongly loyal to the ALP, as does the AMWU. All three of these unions are weighed down by defensive battles to hold their ground in the face of fierce attacks on their right to organise as the Total Corrosion Control 40 and Leighton 107 cases demonstrate.

The militant trade union current

The 1998 victory of Workers First in the Victorian AMWU, the 2000 election of Craig Johnston to the position of AMWU Victorian State Secretary and the 2002 victory of Chris Cain to the position of MUA WA state secretary were very significant advances in forging a militant trade union current in this country.

Workers First and the MUA rank and file group emerged as genuinely militant leaderships fighting to rebuild their unions as effective instruments for collective struggle.

These two state union leaderships represented the core of a new trade union leadership current, qualitatively different from even the existing left leaderships of unions like the AMWU and CFMEU in other states or nationally. Workers First in particular, which represented more than 30,000 AMWU members in Victoria – or half the union’s membership nationally – was able to make significant gains in the period 1998-2003 in advancing its members’ pay and conditions

Johnston spearheaded ‘Campaign 2000’, which began to replace shop-by-shop enterprise bargaining with industry-wide “pattern bargaining”. This campaign generated considerable enthusiasm amongst the AMWU rank-and-file and emboldened the confidence of other Victorian unions.

From the mid-1990s, the Victorian CFMEU, under the leadership of Martin Kingham and Bill Oliver, also began to pursue a more militant course. It launched an industry wide pattern bargaining campaign in 1997 and a 36-hour week campaign in 2000 (in alliance with the AMWU and ETU). Like the AWMU it was also active in solidarity with other union struggles and non-industrial campaigns: in solidarity with the MUA in 1998 and campaigning for East Timor’s liberation in 1999. After a campaign against the Cole Royal Commission into the building industry in 2002 it went on to lead two more successful enterprise bargaining campaigns in 2003 and 2005.

However, it was the Workers First AMWU leadership and the WA MUA that were most closely identified with the Socialist Alliance and its calls for a political break from Labor and an independent, class struggle course for the union movement.

In 2000, Johnston told Green Left Weekly, “I think we need some unions to remain in the ALP. But we need some unions to break away and lead the charge for a progressive party.” In May 2002, the Workers First leadership suspended the Victorian AMWU’s membership of the ALP and declined to send delegates to the Victorian ALP state conference.

Today the militant trade union current, which did have a “limited power of initiative” in the years 1998-2003, is in not in a position to challenge the ALP for the leadership of the fight against Work Choices. It would be more accurate today to describe this ‘current’ as pockets of militancy; its campaigns necessarily defensive – seeking to hold ground against new attacks from the bosses emboldened by the passing of Howard’s latest wave of anti-union laws.

Johnston was ousted from the position of AWMU State Secretary in 2002 and subsequently gaoled and expelled from the AMWU in 2004. His replacement, Dave Oliver – a loyal Cameron supporter, has nudged the Victorian AMWU away from its militant, industrial course and towards re-engagement with the ALP.

On September 13, Workers First met and decided to accept a ‘peace deal’ offered by the Cameron leadership. This deal will see Workers First back Oliver’s nomination for the position of AMWU National Secretary when Cameron departs to secure ALP preselection for a safe seat. Cameron’s National Left faction will back current Victorian Metals Division Secretary and Workers First activist Steve Dargavel’s nomination for AMWU Victorian State Secretary. However, this deal is also premised on Workers First dissolving into the National Left faction and its state branch leaders joining (or rejoining) the ALP.

The DSP majority’s initial assessment of this decision is that although Workers First’s reorientation to the ALP is a setback the deal is positive because it will return control of the Victorian branch to Workers First and at the same time create more ‘space’ for Socialist Alliance.

However, this assessment fails again to understand the balance of forces between the class struggle militants and the ALP. Workers First will be invisible during an AMWU election campaign, while the ALP will be shoring up Workers First’s base of support for the coming federal election. Socialist Alliance’s profile within the union today – as a counter-force to the ALP – is now more marginal than ever.

In WA, Chris Cain, with his constant agitation for mass action, clear perspectives and fighting persona, has won genuine admiration, not only from the MUA ranks, but also across the board amongst union members.

With the massive resource boom in WA, the MUA has been able to notch up some significant gains for its members. However, the overall approach has been necessarily defensive, seeking to rebuild the union: its structures, the participation and education of its members, its culture of solidarity.

The MUA, unlike the Victorian AMWU, has a small membership – 2,000 members across the state. It has been obliged to pursue tactical alliances with other unions (the CFMEU and AMWU in particular) that have leaderships entrenched in the various opposing factions of the state ALP.

But within the constraints under which it is operating, the Cain leadership has been able to initiate healthy discussions – both amongst its own rank and file nationally – as evidenced by the WA MUA conference.

WA MUA Conference

Around three hundred unionists attended the conference in Fremantle, on July 26-28, including Craig Johnston and Victorian Union Solidarity activist Dave Kerin, both of whom were guest speakers. Many international guests attended, including maritime union officials from New Zealand, the US and Britain, as well as union representatives from the Philippines and East Timor. Its internationalism was reflected in the passing of resolutions that demanded the federal government grant full citizenship rights to guest workers on 457 visas and the withdrawal of occupation troops from Iraq and Lebanon. Solidarity was extended to the Cuban Five, political prisoners being held in US jails, and a call on the US to end its economic blockade of Cuba was made (see Green Left Weekly No 678, p4 for more information).

A key focus of the conference was opposition to the Howard government’s Australian Building and Construction Commission and solidarity with the Leighton 107 (with a collection raising $1500). The conference agreed to establish a Union/Community solidarity campaign along similar lines to Victoria and a community meeting in Mandurah during the conference kicked off this campaign.

WA Assistant Secretary, Keith McCorriston’s call to “join the ALP and raise your concerns” was largely ignored, although a layer of these activists continue to yearn for a “genuine” left in the ALP. The Mandurah union solidarity group reflects some of this sentiment. Ian Bray expressed to comrade Jamieson that the group had already been successful in preventing a “right wing arsehole” from gaining ALP preselection for the federal seat. When quizzed about union solidarity actions, it appears that these to date have taken a back seat.

Union solidarity

The Mandurah group, involving unionists from the MUA, AMWU and AWU as well as church people, community members and a layer of ALP local councillors, is one of many union/community solidarity and “Rights @ Work” committees established around the country.

Most of these committees are firmly under ALP control. However, where DSP branches have sufficient resources, the possibility for an intervention in such committees should be assessed. Union Solidarity (Melbourne), Work Life Alliance (Brisbane) and Western Workers Fighting Back (Port Adelaide) are amongst those where there are opportunities for us to engage in some useful political work.

Union Solidarity, in particular, has proved successful in pulling together hundreds of activists at times on picket lines and have played a positive role in winning disputes. It has exposed the contradictions of reformist leaders within the union hierarchy who, with very few exceptions, hold a variant of the ACTU line of getting Labor in 2007.

Comrade Jamieson is heading up a Fremantle Port MUA sub-committee with responsibility for launching a union solidarity group based in Fremantle.

In Adelaide and Canberra comrades report that they have been approached by union organisers about the prospects of joint work in a union solidarity campaign.

But for the DSP to carry out united front work effectively in this area, the sectarian fantasy of Socialist Alliance as the alternative to Labor must be discarded in favour of resurfacing the DSP as the party we build today. We need to reorient to the task of accumulating Marxist cadre through reviving healthy DSP fractions and DSP branch discussions that can determine our tactics based on a realistic assessment of the balance of forces.

In each case we need to be considering how we intervene in order to pose concrete demands for the repeal of Howard’s legislation, as opposed to the vague demands of the nebulous “community campaigns” that fall in behind the ALP at all costs.

The CPSU’s latest road show, aimed at winning support for the ACTU’s “Alternative Model for Enterprise Bargaining” (see http://www.actu.asn.au/downloads/files/Coll-Barg-summary-final.doc) is a case in point. The ACTU’s model, to be rubber stamped at their national conference next month, seeks to “balance” the abolition of AWAs against the “right” of workers to pursue “individual arrangements” with their employers, maintains a differentiation between “protected” (legal) and unprotected” (illegal) industrial action and favours enterprise level, rather than industry wide, bargaining as the dominant form of collective negotiation.

Our intervention needs to avoid the pitfalls of seeking to lobby the ALP for a better IR policy, instead focusing our demands on the repeal of laws that criminalise industrial activity regardless of which party is elected.

November 30

The DSP majority has argued that mobilising hundreds of thousands in a national stoppage on November 30 remains our key priority. Yet it is increasingly clear that these mobilisations will be platforms for the ALP with Kim Beazly able to address every one of them simultaneously via Sky Channel broadcast.

In WA, Chris Cain is arguing for a protest on December 3 instead. Comrade Jamieson reports that Cain has the unanimous support of the Fremantle Port Committee for this position.

Cain also argued for a Sunday mobilisation prior to June 28. But on that occasion an alliance of the CFMEU, AMWU and ETU was successful in taking the initiative away the right-wing leadership of Unions WA that opposed any protest on June 28.

However, this time Unions WA wants a November 30 mobilisation, falling in behind the ACTU’s plans. Cain’s argument for a Sunday mobilisation – supported also by the WA CFMEU – is that more workers and their families are able to attend a rally on a Sunday, without fear of prosecution.

Is the LPF arguing that Sunday rallies are better than weekday rallies? No, of course not. But Cain’s December 3 initiative does provide an opening to break out of the ACTU’s narrow formula, which aims to maximise Beazley’s profile at a short, passive rally.

The WA MUA leadership is not at this time in a position to take the kinds of initiatives that could force a consistent change in the ACTU’s strategy. However, this initiative does demonstrate that the mantra of a “national stoppage” at every turning point in the campaign against Work Choices is not going to win us a hearing from unionists looking for an alternative to the ACTU’s weak-kneed electoralism.

The LPF is not for “giving up the fight,” comrades. Agitation for a mass action strategy requires more than rhetorical demands for a mass rally or a national stoppage. It requires recognising that we are in a defensive, rebuilding period, following more than two decades of retreat. The DSP’s perspective today must be to concentrate on building our implantation in the trade unions where there is politically healthy democratic rebuilding work going on and by joining in all community-union network building. This perspective provides us with the best possible opportunities for political discussions with the most politically conscious workers and helps lay the foundations for the emergence of a new militant trade union current.

A real union fight-back conference

The LPF proposes that, working with Union Solidarity and the MUA in both WA and Victoria, we seek to initiate a Union Fight-back conference in 2007. Dave Kerin has already indicated to the MUA his interest in such a conference, which could provide a broad forum to discuss initiatives that can begin to challenge the elect-Labor-at-all-costs strategy that dominates the union movement today.

However, such a project cannot succeed if it is premised on the myth that the Socialist Alliance is a new party project – an expression of a political break from Labor, led by trade union militants.

Comrades this report has necessarily concentrated on the campaign against Work Choices and our union work as it is here that the LPF’s campaign priorities differ most from the DSP majority.

However, there are a range of other campaigns DSP members are engaged in which I have not had time to address.

Harnessing a spike in environmental concern

The huge turnouts at screenings of An Inconvenient Truth, not unlike those that turned out for Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11, demonstrate the breadth of concern about climate chaos caused by the capitalist polluters. Like Moore, Al Gore provides no solutions to this problem. At screenings where Green Left has been available it has proved a hot seller.

Howard has sought to exploit insecurity about fossil fuels and global warming to argue the case for a massive expansion of uranium mining, appointing former Telstra chief Ziggy Switkowski, to produce a report backing his position.

Where we have organised Green Left forums around this debate we have gained an excellent response. In Canberra and Hobart anti-nuke committees have been established following such forums.

This phenomenon demonstrates again that there is an audience willing to listen to what we have to say about the causes of, and solutions to, the energy crisis and climate chaos. While largely liberal, and often deeply loyal to the Greens electorally, this constituency is looking for answers and is open to our Marxist propaganda – both in the pages of Green Left and at our public forums. However, it is not an audience that looks to the Socialist Alliance as a viable political alternative to Labor, or the Greens, today.

Now more than ever, comrades, “we the conscious revolutionary force have to increase our struggle to win more workers to our politics… we need to pose more sharply the need to join our party [the DSP] as the only significant and serious party remaining on the left.” And to do that we must abandon the masquerade of building the Socialist Alliance as our party and return to publicly building the DSP as a Marxist cadre party.

Summary

In the report I did not describe the dissolution of Workers First as a sell-out. I noted that the DSP majority’s initial assessment was that “although Workers First’s reorientation to the ALP is a setback the deal is positive because it will return control of the Victorian branch to Workers First and at the same time create more ‘space’ for Socialist Alliance”.

In the discussion it became clear that some comrades view this as a victory. Comrade Kamprad argued that Workers First had not dissolved, but that it had “merged” with the National Left Faction.

But, when the Workers First executive sits down and meets with the National Left executive, this is not a meeting of equal partners. They don’t have the same level of resources and strength. This is what we have to bear in mind here – this may not be the formal dissolution of Workers First into the National Left Faction, although I gather that Workers First did decide to disband, in practice this is what’s happening, and to not recognise this as a setback, but to try and instead go out and convince Workers First rank and file members and AMWU rank and file members generally that this is in fact a victory, an advance, then this becomes a sellout. Because it fails to realise precisely what the balance of forces is, fails to recognise what the task at hand is.

Of course we could acknowledge that this is a defeat. If we recognised that Workers First – as an independent, militant current within the AMWU – is finished today and that today we are starting again with the task of building a new militant faction against the Cameron leadership, with new, practical suggestions, then I wouldn’t be describing it as a sellout. But to paint a defeat as a victory, that’s another question altogether.

Comrade Matthews raised some questions.

Does Combet in his “heart of hearts” want to fill the MCG on November 30?

Yes, of course he does. Comrade Bolton answered that question in her report quite clearly, saying: “No one wants to embarrass Beazley with a small attendance.”

Now what’s going to happen in Victoria on November 30? I think we should look at the comparison with November 15 last year. Last year the metals section of the AMWU did organise a separate demonstration, precisely because they didn’t want to simply mobilise people to hear the Sky Channel broadcast, and organised a separate march to link up for a joint march. This year there won’t be such a separate march, and no march apart from the march back into town, but the whole focus of the mobilisation will be to get bums on seats, to hear Beasley at the MCG. What benefit is that?

Does Combet want to see the re-election of the ALP on the back of a mobilised working class?

No, of course not. Getting bums on seats at the MCG is not the same thing as a “mobilised working class”. But, is comrade Matthews arguing that filling the MCG, and three mobilisations in twelve months, amounts to a “mobilised working class”? The answer to that is obvious.

Are we giving up on a mass alternative to Labor?

Well I think how Comrade Matthews and majority comrades essentially posed this question is, that you can’t counter pose the DSP to the Labor Party. You can’t even counter pose the idea of building a mass workers party. The only thing that you can counter pose is the Socialist Alliance, with its limited class struggle platform, and pretend that that in itself is the alternative to the Labor Party. But it’s a dead end, comrades, and the whole point of my report was to explain why the objective conditions don’t exist, in order to posture usefully in that way. That is a dead end, to counter pose the Socialist Alliance as the alternative to the Labor Party today.

Comrade Matthews tried to use as evidence the Greens result in Beattie’s seat of Brisbane – 20% – as proof of the space to the left of Labor for such an alternative. What does this demonstrate? Electoral space to the left of Labor that is being filled by the Greens. I recall in 1992 we ran DSP comrade Susan Price for the seat of Brisbane, as an open socialist candidate and got 9.2%. Today the Greens get 20% and Sam Watson running under the banner of Socialist Alliance gets less than 2%. And this all in the electoral sphere for our respective parties, it’s not addressing the question of a regroupment project; that’s how we approach the Socialist Alliance today.

Comrade Gooden in his contribution tried to draw an analogy between my report and the speech given by Greg Combet to 600 workers at the VTHC delegates meeting last Wednesday. He said both tell us what we already know and neither offer any serious proposals. He said Combet was able to strike the fear of God into those workers at the prospect of another Howard re-election.

But that precisely demonstrates the gist of my report. Comrades, why is it that Greg Combet sermons today can strike the fear of God into workers when he talks about the grave threat of Howard getting re-elected for another term? Is it not because lesser-evilism has a stronger grip on workers today than it had in 1998 (at the time of the limited upsurge during the MUA dispute). Is it not because the working class today is less confident, less combative than it was then?

It should be even clearer when we compare this with what happened the following year, in 1999, when we saw the crisis around East Timor. We saw the militant union current in Victoria, evolving and strengthening from its involvement in the MUA dispute and consolidating over the next twelve months, able to take action. We did see briefly the mobilisation of significant sections of the working class in defence of the East Timorese people’s right to self-determination. Workers were able to place union bans on Garuda Indonesian Airways cargo and on freight going to Indonesia. We’re not seeing such measures in the fight against Work Choices today.

On the contrary, the statistics on the decline in industrial dispute that I read out demonstrate a retreat, they demonstrate a lack of confidence, a lack of will for workers to go out and fight these laws industrially. And we’re not seeing any evidence presented by comrades that the fightback is being reflected politically in a willingness to move forward and set up a new party that can challenge the ALP. On the contrary, what we’re seeing is workers terrified, quite frankly, terrified each time they’re dragged out to listen to Combet, at the prospects of what might happen if Howard’s re-elected. That can’t embolden workers’ confidence.

And yet it’s precisely the key priority in Comrade Bolton’s report, to mobilise hundreds of thousands of workers on November 30, to sit them in front of Greg Combet, and hear just that, have terror struck into them at the prospect of a Howard government election, and to be given no alternative, no alternative but to vote Labor. Is that really our priority, comrades?

In my report I only had half the time that Comrade Bolton had to present hers, but I did try to point to a different direction for the DSP today. To try and point to what we might do if we were to resurface the DSP today as a public Marxist cadre party, to point to how we could do a whole lot more to draw the lessons between the different struggles that we’re engaged in, that we discussed yesterday, such as Venezuela solidarity, antiwar, and the IR campaign.

In respect to the IR campaign I think I made it very clear that to revive the DSP, to begin to organise consistent DSP fractions, to consider how to get a better implantation in trade unions where we can get a hearing from workers, that this is the best way of advancing our IR work today. It would position us much better for having the discussion with worker militants, and be open about who we are, to be open about our own politics.

Today the objective conditions do not exist to transform the Socialist Alliance into a regroupment with significant leftward moving forces, because there are no such forces for us to regroup with.

There is, however, an audience that is alarmed at where our society is going, an audience looking for answers. We can get a hearing for that audience if we are prepared to abandon building the Socialist Alliance as our party and publicly resurface the DSP.