s Australasian ..

Number 138 September/October 1990 ~o cents ALP Govt: Bush's Dogs of War

Once again, Australian imperialism has proven to expansionist tendencies." Because of the "unique be the most slavish junior partner of the U.S., with aloneness of Australia's position," argues Sheridan, the Hawke government being among the first of "it is overwhelmingly in our interests to promote Bush's allies to enlist in imperialism's grab for oil in genuine multilateralism and to maintain the one the Persian Gulf. Two frigates, the Adelaide and truly significant alliance we have, that with the Australia .. AUSTRALIANI Darwin, and a supply ship, Success, have now arrived United States" (25-26 September). in the region to join the imperialist armada enforcing Hawke was widely ridiculed as "the president's ~ Phil!ppine U*S. TROOPS the blockade of Iraq. The government wanted to poodle" for apparently making the decision after just send two more frigates, but discovered it lacked one phone call from Bush. He was in such a hurry II.. lnd,anOct OUT Of the capacity. he didn't bother with the formality of a Cabinet --Defend th Hawke typically pontificated that "big countries decision. But the haste came from Canberra, not cannot invade small neighbours and get away with Washington, it la ter emerged. According to the Syd­ Soviet Un;, THE P£ RSIA it"-when aU Australia's wars have been fought in ney Morning Herald (1 September), "the Government someone else's country-raved jingoistically against lobbied long and hard in Washington from the very nd Vie tOOl GULF! "appeasers," and worked himself into a lather over early days of the crisis for Australian involvement" the "hostages." In the course of the flap over what and "before the U.S. had made any request, formal role the ships would play, Foreign Minister Gareth or otherwise." The Australian ambassador even had Evans ventured: "just steaming round in circles, to request Bush's phone call. This is just like bristling and operating as a general deterrent in the Vietnam, in 1965, when Menzies pressed the U.S. to abstract." What it's about is anything but abstract­ arrange a "request" from its Saigon puppets for blood, oil and the U.S. alliance. Lackey Australian Australian troops. And just as Menzies couldn't even imperialism has rushed to offer its services to its wait for the "request" to arrive before announcing military protector and "great and powerful friend," he was sending troops, so Hawke's announcement just as it did in two world wars, Korea and Vietnam. preceded the arrival of a letter requesting aid from TheAustralian's Greg Sheridan advised Hawke to be the deposed Emir of Kuwait by a full three days. "completely candid" about this. "This is the first The Cold War Hawke government has supported crisis of the post-Cold War world" in which "regional every U.S. war move from Grenada to Libya to heavyweights might feel freer to indulge historic continued on page 2 Garden Island, Sydney, 13 August. Break Blockade of Iraq! The following article is reprinted from American invasion is setting the stage for The bipartisan U.S. crusade against Meanwhile as Gorbachev prates about Workers Vanguard, fortnightly paper of a new world war. former U.S. ally Saddam Hussein is "collective security," Bush has used the the Spartacist League/U.S. No. 509, 7 The consequences of Bush's war hardly about resisting aggression or fig leaf of UN sanctions as a green light September 1990. moves are incalculable. Perhaps a quarter "making the world safe for democracy." for a massive U.S. military operation less SEPTEMBER 4-What's going on in million U.S. troops are in or heading for Certainly not coming from the people . than 700 miles from the Soviet border. the Middle East right now is a bald the Persian Gulf region right now. Ships who recently slaughtered thousands of A deadly noose is tightening around the attempt by the United States to seize are being taken out of mothballs, and civilians to install a puppet regime in USSR. We call on the Soviet Union to control of the world's oil supplies. tens of thousands of reservists are being Panama. Bush says it's about defending rescind its arms embargo against Iraq. Having lost its economic predominance, called up from civilian life. It's a war "our way of life." What he means is a The trip wires for World War III are Washington is now trying to reassert its mobilization on a scale not seen since the war to make the world safe for the feu­ pulling taut in the volatile Near East. role as imperialist global policeman height of the Vietnam War. Now they're dalism of the oil sheiks and the profiteer­ French president Mitterrand declares, through brute military force. That's what talking of launching an air war in a mat­ ing of Big Oil. "We have entered into the logic of war." George Bush means when he talks about ter of weeks, and Bush is to meet Soviet After proclaiming victory in the Cold The deranged Zionist rulers inJerusalem a "new world order," echoing Adolf leader Gorbachev in a hastily called sum­ War, U.S. imperialism is now seeking to are itching for a pre-emptive strike Hitler in the 1930s. But in fact, the mit in Helsinki next weekend. dictate terms to its imperialist rivals. continued on page 4 Reuters

Vacationing Bush orders war mobilisation from his golf cart. Is this the face of World War III? Imperialist Oil Pirates Out of the Persian Gulf!

Registered by Australia Post-Publication No. NBF0710 imperialist forces out of the Gulf! Down Dogs of War ... with Australian lackey imperialism! (continued from page 1) Hawke Hits the Vietnam Syndrome Panama, as well embarking on an ambitious military build-up to be the Hawke was hoping to reap a "Falk­ imperialist bully-boy of the South Pacific. lands factor" from his Gulf commitment, And while they're raising a hue and cry but instead he ran into the "Vietnam over Iraqi chemical weapons, the Hawke syndrome." The memory of Australia's government has gone out on a limb to part in the dirty losing war in Vietnam is defend the U.S. chemical weapons depot still deeply embedded in the minds of on Johnston atoll. They've threatened to working people. Hawke's farewell to the invade Vanuatu, ran a dirty little "boys" at the Garden Island naval base "counter-insurgency" on Bougainville, in Sydney on 13 August went down like sent troops for UN "peacekeeping" in a lead balloon. Many of the sailors' wives Namibia, and are committed to send and families, interviewed that night on troops to Cambodia for the proposed TV, weren't cheering, and a few were UN occupation force. Evans has been outright opposed. Morale was reportedly the front man for this U.S.-inspired plan low, and "peace" Senator Jo Vallentine for counterrevolution which opens the claimed in parliament that 40 sailors had Australian Foreign Affairs Record way for the despised mass murderer Pol deserted the Adelaide. No wonder, with HMAS Adelaide foreground, part of Hawke government's contribution to Pot to return to power. Nor is this the commanders like the senior naval officer Imperialist Persian Gulf 011 grab. first time Australian troops have been who declared that asbestos was harmless used as imperialist dogs of war in the and even edible! A militant Spartacist media rapidly disappeared, after showing however, such a mood is very brittle­ Near East. After World War I, contingent (see photo, page one) at a massive (in some cases, a majority) op­ and is likely to disintegrate once war Australian troops took part in the brutal protest outside Garden Island the day the position to Hawke's Gulf commitment. breaks out. suppression of the 1919 nationalist ships left was widely covered by the Criticism ranged across the bourgeois Peace Protests: "Little uprising in Egypt by British colonial press, including the West Australian, the parliamentary spectrum, from the Aus­ Australia" Nationalism authorities. And when Hawke came to Sydney Daily Telegraph, the Townsville tralian Democrats, ex-Prime Minister power, he continued the commitment of Bulletin, the London Evening Standard, Gough Whit lam, ALP "lefts" like George The fight against imperialist war Australian troops to the U.S.-led force the French Communist Party daily Crawford and Tom Uren, Arabic news­ abroad is inseparable from working-class in the Sinai, which secured Israel's I'Humanite, the New Zealand Herald and papers and community groups represen­ struggle against the ha ted Hawke govern­ southern border when it invaded the German Suddelltsche Zeitung. ting most of the Arab community, and ment's war on the unions and the poor Lebanon. We say: Australian and all The opinion polls in the capitalist even the National Farmers Federation, at home. However the social-democratic which was worried about Australia's left and the nationalist "peace" move­ Near East tr.ade. Most of this opposition ment see it as an opportunity to revive was limited to criticising Hawke for not the "broad" popular-front anti-war To the Memory of Leon Trotsky waiting for UN approval, and the ALP movement of the Vietnam Moratorium Fifty years ago, on 20 August 1940, Leon "lefts" caved in when the vote was taken days. They have set up single-issue Trotsky was strock down by the blows of an in parliament, pleading only for more coalitions like the Sydney "Bring the "consultation." assassin acting on Stalin's orders. Co-leader Frigates Home Coalition" and the Mel­ with V.I. Lenin of the Russian Revolution, Outside parliament, however, talk bourne "Gulf Action Coalition" ttl or­ intransigent fighter against the Stalinist shows and letters to newspapers ran ganise marches, with social-patriotic, bureaucracy's betrayal of that revolution, heavily against Hawke's commitment, "little Australia" nationalist politics in Trotsky founded the Fourth International in and the uproar intersected Hawke's dom­ command. This nationalist "peace" 1938. His legacy lives on in the inter­ estic unpopularity, with the Accord at movement, far from fighting Australian nationalist political program he fought for, breaking point and widening chasms imperialism's war plans, appeals to the TROTSKY while the heirs of Stalin collapse under the LENIN within the ALP over privatisation. The bourgeoisie in the name of Australia's weight of their own bankruptcy. Today we servile media went to work to mould "sovereignty," its "national interest" and "public opinion," whipping up war hys­ supposed "democratic traditions ..:'J.he¥ fight to reforge the Fourth International, destroyed by liquidationistforces in 1951-53, as the teria over the "hostages" and fomenting loyally beseech the ruling class not to be indispensable prerequisite for the victory of world socialism. Below we reprint remarks by, anti-Arab racism. Aft-e'r a few weeks they dragged by Uncle Sam into war in the American Trotskyist leader James P. Cannon at the memorial meeting in New York on 28 duly produced new opinion polls some of Gulf, but instead to keep the navy at August 1940. which claimed a large majority suppor­ home to look after its "own backyard." Comrade Trotsky's entire conscious life, from the time he entered the workers' ting Hawke. Even if these are accurate, continued on page 5 movement in the provincial Russian town of Nikolaiev at the age of 18, up till the moment of his death in Mexico City 42 years later, was completely dedicated to work and struggle for one central idea. He stood for the emancipation of the workers and all the oppressed people of the world, and the transformation of society from capitalism to socialism by means of a social revolution. In his conception this liberating social revolution requires for success the leadership of a revolutionary political party of the Spartacist League/Australia workers'vanguard .... Regular readers will have noticed that ing a revolutionary party were greater He once wrote: "It is not the party that makes the program (the idea); it is the the Spartacis t League/Aus tralia and New here at the time. We maintained close program that makes the party" .... Trotsky, a disciple of Marx, believed with Marx, that Zealand has become the Spartacist links with supporters in New Zealand "an idea, when it permeates the mass, becomes a material force." Believing that, League/Aus tralia, a decision of our nine­ and broad circulation of Australasian Comrade Trotsky never doubted that his work would live after him. Believing that, he teenth national conference in mid-April. Spartacist, and we had an early perspec­ could proclaim on his death bed his confidence in the future victory of the Fourth Having recently changed the name of our tive of rebuilding a section there. The International which embodies his ideas .... international tendency from international name adopted for the section, SL/ANZ, The betrayers of the revolution knew that the revolution lived in him, the tradition, the Spartacist tendency (iSt) to International reflected this. However, over the years hope. All the resources of a powerful state, set in motion by the hatred and revenge of Communist League (Fourth Inter­ these links diminished, and while the Stalin, were directed to the assassination of a single man, without resources and with nationalist), an act of political house­ name SL/ANZ was kept mainly to reflect only a handful of close followers .... keeping with the Australian section's historical origins, it became increasingly Comrade Trotsky not only struggled for a new social order based on human solidarity name seemed timely. The comrade who anomalous. as a future goal; he lived every day of his life according to its higher and nobler motivated the proposal wrote:" Australia In 1974, the SL/ANZ joined with the standards. They wouldn't let him be a citizen of any country. But, in truth, he was much and New Zealand are not one country SL/U.S. in founding the iSt as a demo­ more than that. He was already, in his mind and in his conduct, a citizen of the nor one state, although there is a some­ cratic-centralist international tendency Communist future of humanity. what close relation between the two .... with the adoption ofthe "Declaration for the Organising of an International -James P. Cannon, "To the Memory of the Old Man" (August 1940) We should not have this anomaly in our name and should stick to the regular Trotskyis t Tendency" (see "International . Leninist line on one state, one party." Communist League Launched," Austral­ This prompted a discussion on our asian Spartacist No. 132, J une/J uly 1989). history which was particularly interest­ Over the past 17 years the SL/ANZ has ing for the newer members attending recruited class-conscious workers and their first conference. The Spartacist students and has established itself as the League/Australia and New Zealand orig­ Trotskyist organisation in this country [$PARTACIST ~ ] inated in New Zealand in 1967, forged and as a proud fighter against rotten out of a faction fight in the New Zealand Australian imperialism at home and in Socialist Labour Movement, a loose the region. The Spartacist League/ For a workers republic of Australia, part of a socialist Aslal Trotskyoid grouping. The founding docu­ Australia will build on this work in our Marxist two-monthly of the Spartacist League of Australia, section of the International ment was the Spartacist League/U.S. struggle for a workers Australia, part of Communist League (Fourth Internationalist). "Declaration of Principles" (reprinted in a socialist Asia. And we are certainly not EDITORIAL BOARD: Greg Blythe (editor), Linda Brooke, Doug Flynn, Andrew Giannakis, Marxist Bulletin No.9). A Spartacist abandoning our commitment to build a Peter McLeod, Sandra Morris, Phillipa Newman group active in the anti-war, student and section of the ICL in New Zealand as CIRCULATION: Kathie Tresca part of a regional revolutionary per­ PRODUCTION: Phillipa Newman women's mov~ments had been established in New Zealand by the early spective. As we wrote in Australasian Printed by trade union labour. Registered at GPO, Sydney for posting as a publication- seventies. Spartacist (No.6, March 1974): "Forward Category B. Subscription $5 for 6 issues: overseas airmail $7 for 6 issues. Address aU correspondence to: Spartacist ANZ Publishing Co. GPO Box 3473. Sydney. NSW. 2001. Opinions The Spartacist League of New Zealand to Bolshevik Parties in Australia and expressed in signed articles or letters do not necessarily express the editorial viewpoint. moved to Australia in early 1973 con­ New Zealand! Forward to the Rebirth of Printed by Spotpress Ply Ltd. 105 Victoria Rd. Marrickville. sidering that the opportunities for build- the Fourth International!".

2 AUS:rRAI:.ASIAN SPARTACIST "Mumia Abu-Jamal must not die!" "Rettet das Leben von Mumia Abu­ Jamal!" "Mumia Abu-Jamal ne doit pas Abolish the Racist U.S. Death Penalty! mourir!" Through June and July around the world-in union halls, universities and urban ghettos-this demand was being shouted. The cause of the 36-year- . old black journalist on death row in Pennsylvania, USA, is the rallying cry for opponents of the barbaric death penalty around the world. A former Black Panther Party spokesman and a respected journalist known as the "voice of the voiceless," Jamal was framed on charges of killing a Philadelphia police­ man in 1981. Last year Pennsylvania State Representative David Richardson summed up his case: "Mumia's trial was a farce .... It was clear, to anyone whose eyes are open to racism, that Mumia had been framed for his political beliefs .... An innocent man has been sen­ tenced to die." The campaign was sponsored by the Partisan Defense Committee in the U.S. and its various fraternal defence org­ anisations initiated by sections of the International Communist League (Fourth Internationalist). Protest meetings and demonstrations were held Partisan Defense Committee rally In New York City, June 28. Mumia Abu-Jamal must not die! in Toronto, London, Paris, Berlin, Ham­ burg, Sydney and in American cities including New York, Oakland, Chicago and Philadelphia itself. Over 26,000 people internationally, including 1,800in Australia, have signed statements de­ Worldwide Campaign to manding Jamal must not die. Unions representing millions more have stood up against this "legal" lynching. Newspapers across America and in Canada, Germany and London covered the campaign; in Save Mumia Abu-Jamal Europe, the French and Italian Com­ munist Party newspapers carried articles whose producers also worked with the American appears to have been denied Coalition Against Apartheid and the for Jamal. PDC to publish a leaflet in Greek. Abor­ natural justice." Teachers at the Sydney Campaign Exposing the Frame-Up of In an ominous demonstration of why iginal studerits at Sydney University or­ TAFETeachersAssociationEducational Tim Anderson enthusiastically joined the Philadelphia's kill-crazy cops are so hated ganised a video-showing, finding Jamal's Services Branchand the Correspondence PDC campaign and addressed the rally. and feared, the Philadelphia Fraternal fight for freedom, justice and life inter­ Branch of the NSW Teachers Federa tion Messages of support and further protests Order of Police held a counter­ sected their own struggle against racism passed motions adding their voices to the to Governor Casey from Victorian Labor demonstration at the same time as the and reaction. The Sydney University protest. The Victorian Branch of the MLC George Crawford, the Pan­ Philadelphia PDC rally and demanded paper Honi Soit carried a two-page Australian Telecommunications Em­ Africanist Congress of Azania (South Jamal's immediate execution. FOP presi­ spread on Jamal, and the SRC passed ployees Association passed a motion Africa), Australasian Office, and the dent Richard Costello labelled death a motion to send a protest letter to demanding tha t Jamal's life be saved. The Freedom Socialist Party and Radical penalty abolitionists fighting to save Philadelphia's Governor Casey. In Mel­ Journalist, national journal of the Aus­ Women were read to the rally. A mes­ Jamal as a "misfit terrorist group" and bourne the Swinburne Institute of Tech­ tralian Journalists Association, carried a sage to the international protests from threatened: "If you don't like it you can no logy journal also carried an article. letter on the case. These unionists join Jamal was also read. His moving note join him. We'll take out the electric As a class-struggle defence org­ American unions including the Inter­ said, in part: "Your international voice chair, we'll make it an electric couch." anisation the PDC looks not to the capi­ national Longshoremens Association of protest becomes a sweet song of hope The Partisan Defence Committee in talist courts but to the power of the [waterside workers], the Metro Toronto for the thousands of us in the United Australia campaigned actively to save working class to save Jamal and smash Labour Council and the CGT, France's States sitting on the brink of death. I am Jamal through June and July leading up the death penalty from South Africa to larges t trade-union federation represen­ honored to join you, and this noble to a protest rally in Sydney on 12 July. the U.S.A. The Fireman and Deckhands ting millions of workers. fight." Community radio including Melbourne's Union of NSW sent a protest letter ab­ The spirited 12 July rally included Among industrialised capitalist 3CR and Sydney's 2RSR-FM publicised horring "the use of the death penalty in speakers from the PDC, a militant from countries only the U.S. and South Africa the campaign via Aboriginal Radio Red­ any circums tances and particularly in this the Teachers Federation and the Spar­ retain the death penalty, a legacy of cen­ fern, and Greek-language Radio Rixi, case where a politically active Black tacist League. Representatives from the continued on page 11

Former Black Panther Framed Up ,... A Fighter Against -.--- ...•-~ Racist Oppression

Mumia Abu-Jamal's life is a chronicle of ror, Jamal was determined to fight for black black protest-from demonstrating against a emancipation. At the age of 14, he was co-foun­ George ("Segregation Forever") Wallace rally der and Minister of Information of the Philadel­ in the white bastion of South Philadelphia at phia chapter of the Black Panthers. "I was the age of 13, to his impassioned journalistic beaten into the Black Panthcr Party," he says. defense of the MOVE organization. In 1967, In the summer of 1969, while still in his teens, Jamal was in the forefront of citywide student Jamal was arrested during one of many cop demonstrations demanding black studies pro­ raids on the Panthers' Philly headquarters, part grams in the high schools, and was expelled for of the FBI COINTELPRO conspiracy. Thc leading protests to change the name of Ben­ following summer he was working in the offices jamin Franklin High School to Malcolm X High of the Black Panther news paper when Philly top School and distributing pamphlets calling for cop Rizzo led his notorious assault on the Pan­ "revolutionary black student power." The pro­ thers, dragging the young black militants out tests culminated with a demonstration outside onto the street, where thcy were lined up School Board headquarters which was attacked against the wall and stripped. Mumia Abu-Jamal In 1969, age 14, Minister of Information for by the cops. . In January 1970, the 16-year-old Jamal was Philadelphia Black Panther Party. As a victim of and witness to racist cop ter- continued on page 11

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 1990 3 Iraq ... ,., (continued from page 1) agains t Baghdad with "non-conventional weapons." And the concentration of American firepower could blow the whole region sky high. The workers of the world have a big stake in defending Iraq against this imperialist onslaught. Break the Yankee blockade! War, as Lenin said, is the mother of revolution. The imperialist invasion will set the Middle East aflame as the Arab masses surge into the streets in angry protests that could topple the kings, sheiks and colonels throughout the re­ gion. And in this country, we have a big opportunity to stick it to this vicious, dangerous ruling class which first and Nelson/AFP Der Spiegel foremost exploits the American working U.S. power behind the thrones of Saudi Arabia's King Fahd (left) and Emir of Kuwait. Iraq strongman Saddam people and minorities. Hussein (right) is target of Bush's imperialist "new order." Bush has jumped into a quagmire with both feet. The Arabian sands could well French in the secret Sykes-Picot agree­ Hussein pointed out, in World War II, in Fourth Reich by taking over East Ger­ be quicksand for U.S. rulers. Remember ment of 1916. Part of Basra province an act of racism utterly without military many and establishing the domination of what happened to Carter's Delta Force until London recognized it as a protec­ justification, the U.S. threw hundreds of the D-mark in East Europe on the road in Iran and the Marines in Beirut. In the torate in 1899, Kuwait was separated off thousands of Japanese Americans, many to economic hegemony throughout name of the American young men and after World War I in order to deny Iraq of them U.S. citizens, into concentration Europe. Japan is forming a new "co­ women who will come back in coffins, in access to the sea, which was War Office camps. prosperity sphere" in East Asia having the name of millions of Arabs facing the policy to "limit its influence in the gulf And then there is the matter of Iraq's already become the U.S.' main creditor. imperialist war machine, we call for sharp and keep it dependent on Britain." poison gas, "the poor man's atom The "dollar zone" is being challenged by class struggle to bring down the bloody­ "We, the British, cobbled Iraq togeth­ bomb." Having for years turned a blind the yen and D-mark. minded American capitalists. er," admitted British diplomat Sir Antho­ eye to Hussein's vicious use of nerve gas Today the American imperialists talk ny Parsons. The boundary with Kuwait and mustard gas against Iranian of protecting the oil "life line." In the A War for Big Oil 18oos, British interest in Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq) was based on defend­ It all started when Iraq's Hussein sent American military (aircraft, ships, ing the "life line" to India. This was also his army into the emirate of Kuwait on troops) have moved In to stay, In the rationale for grabbing Suez, and once August 2 in a grab for the oil fields and bases throughout Arabian peninsula, they had Egypt and the Anglo-Egyptian to fulfill Iraq's historic claim to a port on to grab Mideast oil supplies. Sudan, that paved the way for the Cecil the Gulf. Previously the U.S. had sup­ Rhodes "Cape to Cairo" types. While ported Iraq in the squalid eight-year Britannia ruled the waves and grabbed Iran-Iraq war, supplying satellite intel­ TURKEY the lion's share of Africa, the Germans ligence and tanker .escorts, even over­ dreamed ofa Berlin-to-Baghdad railroad. looking the Iraqis' Exocet missile attack When these two imperial ambitions on the USS Stark. But now suddenly the clashed, the result was World War I. Iraqi strongman was sitting on 20 per­ U.S. rulers want to regain the position cent of the world's oil reserves. Over­ of imperialist top cop by seizing the oil, night Saddam Hussein was transformed which they can then dole out to their into a new "Hitler" by the servile U.S. economically more dynamic rivals. Sig­ media. War propaganda against "insane nificantly, Washington's Japanese and Hussein" escalated violent anti-Arab German "allies" have hung back from racism at home. military commitments in the Persian Gulf Bush vowed the seizure of Kuwait adventure, no doubt hoping to maintain "will not stand," and after strong-arming friendly connections in the Arab world. the feudalistic Saudi monarchy, U.S. As the world's chief bursars, they would troops started pouring into that desert like to have the U.S. act as mercenaries country. Kuwait's considerable assets to guard "their" oil supplies. abroad were frozen, a trade embargo was placed on Iraq, and four U.S. aircraft But if the junk-bond-bloated Yankee carrier battle groups were mobilized to rulers are short on productive capacity enforce a blockade (labeled "inter­ these days, they're trying to make up for diction" to disguise the fact that this is a it with brute military force. In the first blatant act of war). The stated goal was place, the U.S. mobilization is far more to dcfend the house of Saud and restore than necessary to "defend" Saudi Arabia: Sheik Jabbar al Ahmad al Sabah to the the Pentagon has moved in "ground and Kuwaiti throne. helicopter forces expressly geared to Bush & Co. just cut the ground out offensive operations," just the mix that computer wargame analysis indicates for from under naive liberals and pacifists .. OIiFields who thought they would collect a "peace an air/land attack on Iraq, notes the au­ dividend" in the "post-Cold War" world. ~ thoritative Aviation Week (27 August). Instead of cuts in the "defense" budget, ~ AI( Base But a war with Iraq's battle-hardened supplemental appropriations are being ~ ArrnyBase army of nearly a million men with over rushed through and virtually every mili­ 5,000 tanks will not be a walkover like tary boondoggle that was under the bud­ Panama or Grenada. No war has ever New York Times Map been won through a blockade, as was get ax has been resuscitated. The entire tried against the Southern Confederacy massive mobilization is being accom­ contested by Saddam Hussein was dictat­ and thousands of Kurds inside Iraq, now and Germany. And as Hussein himself plished without even a pro forma Con­ ed in 1922 by British high commissioner Washington objects. Forget that the U.S. pointed out, no war has ever been won gressional debate, much less lip service Sir Percy Cox. And indeed, the British has a vast chemical warfare arsenal, and through air power. So they're gearing up to the War Powers Act as the Democrats drew the frontiers and designated rulers that Bush has fought Congress to con­ for "the big one." Right now they're in snap to attention whenever Bush waves throughout the region, installing loyal tinue production of "binary" nerve gas. a phase of "phony war," letting UN sec­ the flag. tribal leaders as monarchs as T.E. Law­ American warShips in the region surely retary general Perez de Cuellar show To jus tify the American invasion, Sta te rence did with.lbn Saud. And the French carry atomic weapons, and we are mor­ that shuttle diplomacy is worthless. It will Department ignoramus Margaret Tut­ carved up their Syrian mandate territory ally certain the Pentagon is already take another few weeks' for the U.S. to weiler harps on "Iraqi aggression." Yeah, to create the artificial state of Lebanon updating operational plans to nuke get the full complement of forces in like when Saddam Hussein went into as a pro-Western Christian-dominated Baghdad. place. And then inexorable pressure will Grenada? Iraq's takeover of Kuwait is no enclave in the Levant. The last 40 years mount to "use it or lose it." historical aberration: all states are built of bloodletting in the Middle East go "New World Order" on acts of aggression. What about Wil­ back to this cynical imperialist carve-up. The current "crisis" was not entirely liam the Conqueror? And Iraq's Hussein When Hitler took power in 1933 pro­ unplanned: the Army Corps of Engineers had more justification than most when Another Washington battle cry is Sad­ claiming a "New Order," he proclaimed has spent $17 billion over the years for he pointed out in an August 10 speech dam Hussein's refusal to let Westerners it would last a thousand years. In taking military infrastructure in Saudi Arabia, that "the colonialists, to ensure their leave Iraq, turning them into hostages. up the same rhetoric, Bush is desperately including "hardened airfields where petroleum interests .,. set up those dis­ Why, he even sent some to Iraqi military trying to revive the "American Century" fueling, maintenance and ordnance load­ figured petroleum states." bases and dams which would be obvious which, as we have put it, was buried in 'ing are done well underground" and The statelet of Kuwait was an imperi­ targets of U.S. air strikes. What savagery! the jungles of Vietnam. Hitler's "New runways were specifically designed for alist legacy created by drawing artificial War is indeed a savage business in which Order" lasted 12 years; Bush's could large U.S. transport planes (Navy Times, "Lines in the Sand," as Glenn Frankel enemy aliens are often subjected to re­ blow up in his face in a matter of weeks. 27 August). And "Operation Desert wrote in the Washington Post (31 Au­ pression. And the citizens of any country This is no longer 1945, when America Shield" could be implemented so quickly gust). The former Ottoman Empire was participating in the blockade of Iraq was undisputed master of the capitalist because the Joint Chiefs of Staff simply carved up between the English and certainly qualify. as enemy aliens. As world. German i~pe~ialism is forming a continued on page 10

4 AUSTRALASIAN SPARTACIST Dogs of War ... (continued from page 2)

They further bemoan Hawke's "hypo­ On Baghdad, and Bagmen crisy" in not standing up militarily to the Indonesians over East Timor, or to the Rabuka military coup in Fiji. The closer The Socialist t,.abour League (SLL) 15.lu Wi ill IiIJ. they are to home, the more hawkish they masquerade as Trotskyists, and over the become. One chant at the Garden Island Gulf crisis they make some orthodox­ THE IRAQ REVOLUTION demo was "Fight for Australia, not for sounding calls: "Hands off Iraq! Defeat AND STALINISM America!" Australian Imperialism!" Their paper, ...... ,..... But Hawke is "fighting for Australia," Workers News (24 August), attacks Sad­ the only way the ruling class knows how. dam Hussein's Ba'ath regime for its Denouncing the "knee-jerk anti-Ameri­ "brutal attacks on the Kurdish people canism" of the left, Australian columnist and their legitimate right to national self­ P.P. McGuinness baldly stated, "it was determination while savagely repressing not merely a case of Aus tralia res ponding the Communist Party of Iraq and the to America's bidding ... given the kind of trade unions." A statement more breath­ desperate economic situation in which takingly cynical and deceitful would be we find ourselves, it is not a bad thing to hard to find. For years, in the late 1970s tighten the ties that bind us to the and early '80s, the SLL were the paid United States" (18-19 August). The press agents of various Arab despots, nationalist "left" may dream of an "inde­ including Hussein, and in 1979 they sup­ pendent" foreign policy, and some take ported the Iraqi regime's execution of21 it to the reactionary conclusion of advo­ Communists in the army, saying "the cating "armed neutrality," but the ruling Arab Ba'ath Socialist Party of Iraq has class know that they can only exist as a played a hundred fold more progressive white imperialist outpost on the rim of role in the Middle East than Stalinism" Asia as a lackey of a more powerful , (Workers News, 16 March 1979). white imperialism. Australia's in­ The 24 August Workers News attempts volvement in the Persian Gulf goes well to brazen it out, in an article titled "Alex beyond a couple of frigates. Bases like Mitchell-mouthpiece of Australian North-West Cape, put on alert during imperialism." Mitchell was a leader of the Beams' Workers News and North's Bulletin-mouthpieces for Arab despots. the 1973 Arab-Israel war, have been SLL's fake international, the Inter­ crucial to U.S. global war plans, and you national Committee (lC), when it was the time when he was Healy's bagman in fingering Iraqi Communists in Britain to car bet that the spy bases at Pine Gap ruled by British Workers Revolutionary Iraq. A 16 December 1985 report by an the Iraqi embassy. and Nurrungar are busy right now. U.S. Party (WRP) leader Gerry Healy. He was IC Control Commission documented how The Workers News article blames Bases out of Australia! Smash the U.S.­ editor of Healy's paper, News Line. over £ 1 million was received by the WRP Healy's WRP exclusively for these blood Australia alliance! Today Mitchell works for Fairfax's Syd­ from, as well as Libya and Iraq, the gov­ crimes and totally hides their own role The Brezhnevite Stalinists of the Soc­ ney Sun-Herald, and is running articles ernment of Kuwait! In return the WRP and that of the current IC lider maximo, ialist Party of Australia (SPA) supported about Saddam Hussein such as "My provided services such as spying on U.S. Workers League leader David UN sanctions against iraq as a supposed' meeting with the Arab dicta tor" based on prominent British Jews for Libya and continued on page 11 alternative to war. They got what they asked for pretty quickly, when the "peace loving" UN voted to sanction the use of . force by the imperialists to enforce the war, and thus possibly World War III: Break with Labor-Party of Racism, Vietnam war seamen and waterside blockade. This recalls the Korean War, "we actively want Iraq to break the blo- Depression and War!" As the party of workers in particular banned supply in which millions died and Korea was ~ ckade, attack Israel and arouse the Arab White Australia racism, the ALP has ships and took other action against the devastated by imperialist armies under masses against imperialism and their own been the bourgeoisie's preferred govern­ war. While these actions were sub­ the UN flag. The SPA grumbled about rulers" (Socialist, August 1990). This ment in times of war. From World War ordinated to the official anti-war move­ the "policy of appeasement of imperi­ phoney anti-imperialism aside, the ISO I "to the last man and the last-shilling," ment, they contained a component of alism which seems to be the line pre­ just wants to be part of the popular to World War II under Hawke's hero, solidarity with the Vietnamese Revol­ sently being followed by the Soviet front. The Socialist ran a big and bOld_ John Curtin. During the Vietnam war, ution. Today such actions would run up leadership." But as demonstrated by their headline: "Bush is the real butcher. U.S. ALP leader Calwell briefly campaigned against the Accord straitjacket of the faith in the neutrality of the UN, the OUT OF THE GULF!" in glaring con­ for withdrawal of troops in the 1966 bureaucracy. But just as defeat of the SPA have no political alternative to the trast to the tiny note: "Bring back Aust election, then his successor Whitlam ruling class in Vietnam opened up the Stalinist pipedream of "peaceful coexis­ ships," which fits comfortably with the dropped any pretence of opposition to class struggle, and in the O'Shea mass tence" with aggressive imperialism that cheap chauvinist "yank-baiting" of the the war and only took it up again in 1969 strike in 1969 in particular the working has brought the Soviet Union to its Laborites that amnesties Australian im­ after the U.S. ruling class had decided to class was able to loosen the Arbitration present pass. perialism. And an article by an ISO mem­ get out because the war was lost. Whit­ shackles, so today Hawke's leap, at ber in the Sydney university student lam's 1967 turnaround revealed the true Bush's side, into the Near East quagmire ISO: Phoney Anti-Imperialists paper Honi Soit (21 August) makes no nature of the ALP to thousands of rad­ could afford the opportunity to bust the mention of "Victory to Iraq" but instead ical youth, impelling them to the left. Accord and unleash some hard class The International Socialist Org­ complains "Why were no Australian Through the likes of Jim Cairns, the struggle to roll back the attacks of the anisation (ISO) is posing as the "radical" forces sent to help the 'small neighbours' ALP ensured that the 1970-71 Mora­ Hawke years. The political cement of the wing ofthe social-patriotic popular front. Grenada and Panama" and that Hawke torium marches were dominated by Accord has always been Laborism and The ISO thinks the USSR is "state capi­ "undermined effective sanctions and bourgeois-defeatist politics. Anumber of nationalism. A revolutionary workers talist," a rationale for refusingto defend action against Rabuka's military take­ Hawke'S ministers, including war minister party must be built in struggle against the historic gains of the 1917 Revolution, over" in Fiji. Robert Ray, were anti-war protesters the treacherous and reactionary ALP a position which has landed it in the We shouldn't forget the eternal Labor­ back then, but the path from yesterday's tops through splitting the working class camp of imperialism from Afghanistan ites of the Militant. When it comes to pacifist to today's warmonger is a tra­ away from them. Such a party would to Poland to Cambodia. A meeting of Iraq, they'll settle for nothing less than ditional one well-trodden by Laborites. fight for socialist revolution to end Aus­ the Sydney "Bring the Frigates Home red revolution: "The best way for the What is necessary are political strikes tralian jackal imperialism once and for Coalition" on 23 August turned into Iraqi workers to defeat a U.S. attack is to and demonstrations by the working class all. For a workers republic of Australia, an acrimonious squabble between the overthrow Hussein and launch a revol­ to spike Hawke's war moves. During the part of a socialist Asia!. likes of Denis Freney of the CP NNew utionary war making a class .appeal to all Left Party, who wanted to pander to the Arab, Palestinian and Jewish workers as government by denouncing Iraq and well as Western troops. A 'holy war' for appealing to the UN, and the ISO, socialism" (September 1990) and so on. which had been waving placards saying Wisely avoiding the danger of over­ Spartacist ~ Forums "Just like Vietnam. Victory to Iraq." This exerting themselves, in Australia they're led .to the farcical spectacle of the con­ taking round a petition to the ALP Nat­ tending proponents of the "broadest ional Executive. But don't think these Break the Blockade of Iraq! unity" se(tling down to tear each other stalwart "Marxists" have forgotten the to shreds. final goal: "a socialist Labor government The Vietnamese workers and peasants ... which would not be opposed" to help­ were able to achieve a stunning victory ing out the Arab proletarian revolution. over U.S. and Australian imperialism The Iraqi working class can hardly wait. because they waged a social revolution. In contrast, militant Spartacist contin­ An important role was played by Soviet gents have called for mobilising the arms. But the ISO is utterly hostile to working class against its own main Tuesday, October 9 Saturday, October 13 Thursday, October 18 the Vietnamese deformed workers state. enemy, Australian imperialism, in the 7:30 p.m. 2:00 p.m. 1:00 p.m. One of their supporters in the Mel­ protest marches in Sydney on 1 Septem­ AMWU Council Room YWCA Brennan Room bourne tramways union recently signed ber, in Melbourne on 18 and 27 August, 136-140 Chalmers St 489 Elizabeth St Holme Building a reactionary petition calling for capi­ and at a Spartacist-initiated rally at Syd­ Surry Hills City Sydney University talist counterrevolution in Vietnam (see ney University against Evans, who was page nine). In stark contrast are their big speaking on foreign policy. One Spar­ SYDNEY MELBOURNE SYDNEY illusions in the Arab bourgeois national­ tacist chant took up one of the left's For more information: For more information: For more information: ist Hussein. They call upon Hussein to fondest myths, that the ALP is trad­ (02) 281-2181 (03) 654-4315 (02) 281-2181 launch another reactionary Arab-Israel itionally anti-war: "Bust the Accord!

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 1990 5 India, Pakistan Talk War Brutal Crackdown in Kashmir

The following article is adapted from Workers Hammer No. 115 (July 1990), published by the Spartacist League/ Britain. Shortly after it was written, on 6 August, Pakistan's president, Ghulam Ishaq Khan, sacked Benazir Bhutto's government along with all the provincial governments, replacing them with "caretaker" governments consisting overwhelmingly of supporters of former military strongman General Zia ul-Haq. Now the Pakistan Army is back in the driver's seat. and the India-Pakistan clashes over the Kashmir border have continued, including artillery duels.

"Kashmir *is at* war* *with * India" reports India Today (30 April). And the mass­ ive resistance of the overwhelmingly Muslim population of the Kashmir valley threatens to trigger a new war between Pakistan and India. Disputes over Kash­ mir-which is strategically placed on India's borders with Pakistan, China and Pramod Pushkarna Afghanistan, with the USSR nearby­ Pakistan, India war tensions heightened. Indian army patrOlling Kashmir have already twice been the direct cause (right). Residents of Indian-occupied Kashmirl border region display of wars between the two states of the identity cards (above). subcontinent (in 1948 and 1965). In late no credit May the troop buildups, border skir­ Indian magazine describes the situation: · Kashmir valley, and of the Pakistani army aware that the Kashmiris might well mishes, threa ts and hys teria between two "The whole valley has been handed over to · from the areas of Kashmir they occupy. reject union with India, quickly reneged. weak and unstable governments nearly the para-military forces. Jammu and Kash­ Defence of the oppressed and of the Sheikh Abdullah and other leaders ofthe mir police are looked upon with distrust. In National Conference were jailed by their exploded into full-scale fighting. The fact every Kashmiri Muslim is prima facie right of national self-determination is Economist termed it "the makings of a considered a pro-Pakistani traitor. The · not conditionaluponthecharacterofthe old ally Pandit Nehru, himself from a bloody, old fashioned war" but both' alienation of the people is total and the leadership; we defend the exercise of the Kashmiri Hindu family. Virtually every countries hover on the threshold of a masses have lost all faith in political right of self-determination, as long as the election has been rigged. The central nuclear warfare capacity. Kashmir epit­ leaders." Kashmiri struggle is not decisively sub­ government has relied on engineering -Economic and Political Weekly omises the seething complex of national (5-12 May) . ordinated to the intervention of the Paki­ changes in governments and spreading patronage among various politicians. At and communal conflicts throughout the \ Life in Kashmir has become one cur­ stani ruling class (as was the Bangladeshi struggle to the Indian ruling class in 1971 the same time the National Conference region, from the Kurdish areas of Turkey few after another. The economy is in degenerated into a corru pt and nepotis tic through Soviet Central Asia to the Mus­ tatters, and the summer tourist season, with the Indian army's invasion). But outfit. The April 1987 elections were lim minority areas of China, as well as in upon which about two-thirds of the short of a perspective of proletarian stolen by a combination of the National the Indian subcontinent. population depends, is doomed. One revolution throughout the whole subcon­ Conference and Gandhi's Congress (I) The new Indian government of V. P. government minister, GeorgeFernandes, tinent the prospects for Kashmiri libera­ headed by Farooq Abdullah. This govern­ Singh had barely been installed on 2 admits the "total collapse of civil auth­ tion are far from rosy. This is especially ment was especially corrupt and ineffec­ December 1989 when Dr. Rubiya Sayeed, ority" (Far Eastern Economic Review, 17 so given its location and historical role in tive. While the government looted the daughter of Home Minister Mufti May). On May 21 the security forces relations between India and Pakistan. treasury and built golf courses for the Mohamed Sayeed, was kidnapped. The fired on the funeral procession of a rich, the urban poor still have no sewage government traded her for five impris­ "moderate" religious leader, killing hun­ "Divide and Rule" systems. A new wave of protests began oned Kashmiri separatists, but not be­ dreds. The tens of thousands at the fu­ Kashmir is a chapter in the sordid in April 1988 with demonstrations over fore search operations had triggered neral blamed governor Jagmohan for the history of British imperialism in India. electricity price increases. unprecedented protests. And when assassina tion and chanted: "Wha t did the The province is 80 per cent Muslim; it During the partition of India, while security forces opened fire on dem­ Maulana call for? Holy war, holy war." was first linked to the area across the neighbouring Punjab and North West onstrators in the main Kashmiri town of With mounting stories of rapes and southern range of Pir Panjal when the Srinagar on January 20, the unrest death squad killings, and faCing inter­ Province were gripped with murderous Jammu Dogra king "bought" Kashmir exploded in a popular uprising. The cen­ national and domestic criticism, the V. P. pogroms (which produced mass forced fmm the British in 1846. The kingdom tral government declared presidential Singh government replaced Jagmohan population transfers of literally millions refused to join the Sikh-Afghan alliance rule and sent in the paramilitary police with G.C. "Gerry" Saksena, the former of people), Kashmir remained remark­ against the British, and during the 1857 and a tough governor, Jagmohan. With head of India's spy agency, RAW (Re­ ably calm. During the Pakistani attempts "Mutiny" it sent troops to help the Brit­ the local police demoralised and disaf­ search and Analysis Wing). Marxists to wrest Kashmir from India in 1948 and ish at the siege of Delhi. Its founding fected, the paramilitary and army forces demand the immedia te withdrawal of the 1965 there was little mass support. Now ruler, Gulab Singh, aptly called himself now number more than 150,000. One Indian army and security forces from the the Kashmiri Muslims are totally alien­ "zar kharid" ("slave bought with gold"). ated from India. And the movement has :c The kingdom, with its all-powerful developed an Islamic fundamentalist ~ British Resident, remained a horribly character. Muslim women are compelled ~ impoverished area. During the Indian to adopt the practices of purdah (seclus­ ~ independence struggle the secular bour­ ion) while Hindu women have been *' geois nationalists of the National Confer­ instructed to wear the bindi mark on the [ ence led a struggle against the Dogra forehead to identify themselves; cinemas, CQ autocracy and, in alliance with the bour­ video libraries and beauty salons were geois Indian Congress, for accession to shut down, and liquor sales banned. The India. Jinnah's Muslim League tried to mosques preach jihad (holy war) and woo the Kashmiri Muslims; when this demand the men wear beards and tra­ failed he sent irregulars in to seize ditional Kashmiri garb. Kashmir for Pakistan. Unfortunately for Among the plethora of groups one of Jinn~h, these backward, tribalist mer­ the largest is the Jammu and Kashmir cenaries were so busy looting and raping Libera tion Front (JKLF) which demands that they failed to push on to Srinagar's independence and seeks to dis tance itself airport, allowing the Indian army to from some of the more communal as­ counterattack successfully. The emergent pects of the struggle. Rivalling it is the armies of India and Pakistan, still under Jamaat-e-Islami, which calls for an Is­ British generals, fought it out until a lamic order and theocratic structure. It cease-fire on 1 January 1949. This left is linked closely to the organisation of Kashmir divided between India and . the same name in Pakistan and calls for Pakistan. accession to Pakistan. Another group, The Kashmiris were promised a plebi­ the "Allah Tigers," claims allegiance to scite to decide whether they would join Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's Hizbe-Islami, Nationalists in New Delhi torch the Pakistani flag, a wave of war fervour India or Pakistan or become indepen-· the fascistic drug-running extreme of whipped up by contending capitalist regimes of Pakistan and India. de~t. But the Indian bourgeoisie, acutely Afghan reaction long favored by the CIA.

6 AUSTRALASIAN SPARTACIST Even iftheywere to somehow succeed in prospect of genocidal pogroms against seal the border with Pakistan in order to removing the Indian overlordship of the Miles the Tamil minority in the South. stop the flow of subyersives and arms." region, an internecine war would be o 300 More broadly, from the Kurds in Tur­ Likewise both Communist parties oppose posed between those favoring joining key, through Soviet Central Asia, to the the right of self-determination for the Pakis tan and the increasingly strong pro­ Muslims of Chinese Sinkiang, there is a Sikhs in the Punjab. independence forces. wave of ethnic unrest. U.S. imperialism Communalis tIna tional/religious divi­ Since last year perhaps as much as half has exerted strong pressure on its Pak­ sions not only obstruct working-class of the non-Muslim population (Hindus' istani client state to avoid giving an ex­ unity in general but in this region of the and Sikhs) have fled the Kashmir valley. cuse "for an Indian pre-emptive war" world are particularly targeted against Fearful of threats by some Kashmiri (Far Eastern Economic Review, 21 June). the working class, since it is often made Muslim groups to drive out all Indians Billions of dollars have been channelled up of local minorities. The Hindi­ and barraged with anti-Muslim propa­ through Pakistan to aid the reactio,nary speaking workers of Calcutta, the Bihari ganda by Hindu communalist groups, the war in Afghanistan, with the Pakistani and Gurkha tea plantation workers of Kashmir high-caste Hindu Pandit com­ army coinmitting troops to the Jalalabad Darjeeling, the immigrant workers of munity is fleeing. Typical of the whole of siege, but the imperialists fear a Pakis­ Bombay's industry and especially graphi­ India, where caste and minority divisions tani war with India could lead to the cally the Indian Tamils of Lanka's hill aid capitalist rule, the Pandits have oc­ disintegration of their key ally in the country plantations are evidence of this. cupied a disproportionate share of gov­ region. _ Bri~ish imperialism's cynical "divide and ernment and professional posts. Now the The Stalinist bureaucracies of China rule" schemes and the grafting of capi­ precipitate flight of this layer is'crippling would pose the question ofindependence and the Soviet Union fear the wave of talist oppression onto pre-existing social social services, as hospitals for example for the Baluchis, Pathans and Sindhis nationalist and Islamic fundamentalist structures have left the impoverished find their staffs dramatically depleted. who all bridle at Punjabi domination. unrest that has spread among their cen­ subcontinent a mosaic of national and The issue of Kashmir has always been tral Asian minorities and along their caste antagonisms. Trip Wire for borders. The Chinese Stalinists aided the If the "secular," "all-India" pretensions Indo-Pakistani War used by the fragile bourgeoisie of Pakis­ tan to divert attention from problems reactionary CIA cutthroats against the of India's rulers are a fiction behind The bourgeois rulers of both Pakistan within their artificial state. The govern­ Soviet Army supporting the PDPA which the brutal oppression of national and India see.the Kashmir issue as inte­ ment of Benazir Bhutto, under pressure regime in Kabul. Meanwhile, Gor­ and religious minorities and depressed gral to their existence. As recently as from right-wing and religious forces like bachev's policies of perestroika have castes is perpetuated to serve the inter­ 1987 full-scale war almost broke out, arid the Jamaat-e-Islami and the Inter Ser­ encouraged reactionary nationalist move­ ests of the capitalist ruling class, still the fighting has continued atop the Siachen vices Intelligence, has Qeen stymied in ments within the USSR and throughout despairing program of the minority nat­ Glacier. Pages and pages in the press of Afghanistan, particularly at the heroic the entire region. The Soviet interven­ ionalists offers no way forward. To rip both countries are devoted to possible defence of Jalalabad. Now they have tion in Afghanistan had posed the pos­ these areas away from the control of the military scenarios. Even more ominous rushed headlong to embrace this new sibility of a social transformation that overbearing "centre" in Delhi, even if it are the veiled threats of both sides with opportunity. would lift the people of Afghanistan out can be accomplished by massive and regard to nuclear warfare. V. P. Singh of feudal and capitalist immiseration, as necessarily bloody popular resistance, told the Indian parliament that Indian Benazir Bhutto Plays the well as dealing a blow to the most reac- would produce only new versions of the scientists could and would counter any Kashmir Card moves by Pakistan to introduce nuclear Bhutto herself has not dragged her weapons (Far Eastern Economic Review, heels in whipping up chauvinism and war 26 April). hysteria over Kashmir, outflanking her Singh says that "Fundamentalism is most strident opponents and earning not necessarily directed only at certain kudos from the army for her stance on parts of India; it is a threat to the fabric Kashmir. She is after all the daughter of of India itself" (Far Eastern Economic her father, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, a wealthy Review, 17 May). Kashmir is the only landlord from the Sind (around KaraChi) Muslim-majority state of India. Its lo­ and a demagogic populist who as much cation is strategic and next to it is the as anyone was responsible for the bloody Punjab, a hotbed of Sikh unrest for an Pakistani attempt to suppress the up­ independent Khalistan. After promising rising in Bangladesh. Bhutto quotes her elections, and repealing the draconian father in vowing a thousand-year war 59th amendment to the constitution, over Kashmir. This imperialist-touted New Delhi again imposed a state of "democrat" presides over: Pakistan's emergency, in the face of the central pivotal role in imperialism's reactionary government's inability to contain the terrorist war in Afghanistan. armed activity of the pro-Khalistan groups. Moreover India has the second­ But Kashmir has not proved sufficient largest Muslim population in the world for Bhutto to divert the discontents of (after Indonesia), larger than Pakistan her "own" people. Sind, the main base of and larger than that of the entire Arab Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party (PPP), .world. is awash with intercommunal gang war­ fare. The near-anarchic conditions are a The brutal suppression in Kashmir is direct result of the counterrevolutionary intended to signal that separation is not involvement in Afghanistan, with a flood an option. Indian bourgeois nationalists of guns and drugs into the main cities of are always touting India's secular charac­ Sind intersecting bitter intercommunal ter. But Indian nationalism has always strife. One inhabitant of Karachi, Pak­ contained a strong element of Hindu and istan's major port and commercial centre, Popperfoto Hindi chauvinism, reflecting the predom­ said, "You could call it Beirut. Or maybe Lahore railway station: refugees fleeing during 1947-48 partition, inance of Hindus and the strong percent­ Colombia" (India Today, 15 June). One engineered by Brlt.lsh Imperlalfsm. Millions died In communalist riots. age of Hindi-speaking people in the force is the Mohajir Oaumi Mahaz (Nat­ population. The late, uneven and ional Mohajir Movement, MOM), based tionary forces in the region. Leftist and tragedy of partition, forging ethnically arrested development ofthe Indian bour­ on the Mohajir community-Muslims national minority militants from Iran and "pure" areas through mass flight pro­ geoisie in the context of myriad national, who fled India at the time of partition. Pakistan sought refuge in Kabul. Now voked by naked terror by the new local language and religious divisions poses . The MOM was originally encouraged by Gorbachev's sellout withdrawal has en­ majorities. Only those for whom the the disintegration of this prison house of General Zia as a counterweight to the couraged imperialism and reaction while members of other communities are not peoples. And today the bourgeois PPP. Other private armies exist among strengthening the hold of the most reac­ human beings can look forward to a politicians hardly bother to mask their the Pathans who control road transport tionary elements within the national . repetition of the enduring image of parti­ corruption, nepotism and venality. and drugs, and among the landlords in struggles such as that in Kashmir. tion: as the train pulls into the station, Their pretensions to "secularism" are the countryside. The provincial PPP gov­ those waiting on the platform begin to transparent. The Congress (I) of Rajiv ernment draws support from the Sindhi From Kurdistan to Eelam: shriek and faint as they see hanging out Gandhi has long played the communalist community. There is even an "All Sindh Workers Must Rule the windows the dead bodies of their game. In the Punjab it encouraged pro­ Bandits Association." Hundreds have It is only the perspective of proletarian relatives, hacked and bludgeoned to Khalistan fanatics like Sant Jarnail Singh been killed in these clashes, while the! revolution that can bring liberation to death for the crime of being from the Bhindranwale in an attempt to under­ Bhutto government and the army quarrel the oppressed nationalities of the Indian "wrong" community. mine the more moderate Akali Dal. And about exactly who to crack down on. subcontinent. This will not corne from Only a Bolshevik vanguard party can the government of the new "Mr. Clean" , Kashmir, the Sind and the Punjab are the Stalinist Communist parties of the break the genocidal pattern bequeathed V. P. Singh relies on the support of the not isolated examples. In India itself nat­ Indian subcontinent. During the 1965 by imperialism, by establishing the ascen­ sinister Hindu communalist Bharatiya ional and communal unrest continues Indo-Pakistan war the respective parties dancy of the class question, uniting all Janata Party (BJP). The BJP calls for among the Gurkhas and Assamese, to of India and Pakistan shamelessly sup­ the\working class and oppressed in the pre-emptive strikes against Pakistani-held mention only two examples. In Burma ported their respective bourgeoisies. In struggle for workers revolution. Only an "Azad Kashmir" and for opening the val­ and Nepal the recent period has seen India both the CPI and CPI(M) support internationalist perspective, uniting ley to all Indians. This party is now a mass protest against despotic regimes. In V. P. Singh's current coalition govern­ social struggle in the subcontinent with major force in the Hindi belt across Sri Lanka the withdrawal of the brutal ment. People's Democracy (10 June) the fight for workers revolution in the north central India, having gone from 2 Indian army occupation restores the advises: . advanced capitalist countries, can open to 84 seats at the last general elections. island to the situation which triggered the door to real social liberation for the For Pakistan, the issue of Kashmir the Indian intervention in the first place: "The CPI(M) Central Committee urges the impoverished Indian and Pakistani represents its pretensions to constitute bloody fighting in the North between the National Front Government to urgently masses. For soviet workers republics address itself to the task of restoring peace "one nation" of all Muslims. The Pakis­ "Tamil Tigers" and the Sinhalese­ in the Valley by taking firm administrative from Baluchistan and Kashmir to Eelam tani ruling class cannot accept the option chauvinist Sri Lankan army and police, measures .... The CPI(M) calls upon the and Lanka, as part of a socialist federa­ Of. an ind_ependc~nt Kas_hm~r-which . with hundred~k~lled, and the loo~ing National Front Government t~ immediately tion of South Asia! _

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 1990 7 The financial co lla pse in Victoria high - £ Vic. Inc .... lights this. In the last year it has been big i (continued from page 12) business crashes making the headlines- It Hookers, Bond Corp., Elders IXL, the « media high-fliers like Skase. Less well Socialist Left are vicious enforcers of known is the Small Business Association capitalist rule. forecast that by the end of 1990 as many In light of all this special mention as one in eight of all small businesses will should be made of the Socialist Labour go under as the banks tighten the screws League (SLL). The SLL have cam­ on credit. MeaI1while the building sector, paigned forever and a day, on virtually always a good economic indicator, is every issue from the tramways struggle grinding to a halt, contributing to mas­ earlier this year to Bougainville, with the sive job losses. Belatedly a lot of bour­ crowning demand that the "Labor lefts geois spokesmen are now admitting what expel the Hawke/Keating right wing and anyone could see, that the Hawke years form a workers government." Now the of greed have cost the country dearly. By Socialist Left have "seized the reins of one estimate the recent spate of spec­ government" and socialism has not tacular corporate collapses has cost drawn one day closer. The absurdity of shareholders $8 billion. Gone is all the the SLL clamouring that Kirner carry ballyhoo about Keating's "glorious" out "socialist policies" only stands out financial deregulation also. As one Syd- more clearly as the Socialist Left have ney Morning Herald (28 July) review assumed the premiership with an even explained: more reactionary program than before. "It wasn't just the crash of '87. Part of the Melbourne, 9 August: Victorian public sector workers rally In protest. Their demands are designed to "expose answer lies with banks that COUldn't give against Labor government's job-slashing plans. the lefts," says the SLL, but the only money away easily enough, entrepreneurs thing exposed is the crass Labor-Ioyalism who couldn't spend it quickly enough and regulators who couldn't keep up with either. corporate investors. The bosses squand­ blame the unions and sacked site dele­ of these sinister charlatans. Part of it was only illusionary, mere paper ered it but the ordinary taxpayers are gates. In Melbourne, workers at the money to inflate dodgy accounts." being forced to pay for it-after weeks Leightons' 417 St Kilda Road site have Australian Capitalism Sinks The federal and state Labor govern­ of mass demonstrations by Pyramid's been picketing daily for months, after the Into Recession ments were willing partners. WA Inc. and small depositors the Victorian govern­ Leightons' bosses attempted to contract Victoria Inc. came to typify the other ment agreed to provide $380 million so out all the workers to subcontractors Earlier this year the Australian Finan­ side of Keating's much-vaunted financial they would get a miserable 25 percent of with subsequent loss of pay and con­ cial Review (17 May) announced in "deregulation" -government partnership their savings. They may count themselves ditions. Eighty carpenters and labourers threatening tones: "Recession now the and financial largesse to every shonky lucky-Keating and the Reserve Bank have been sacked and the government main course." The "soft economic lan­ "entrepreneur" who came along, hoping advised Cain to give them nothing., has gone all out to smash the workers ding" that more optimistic pundits were to kick-start corporate investment. The resistance. This has involved cops, predicting is fast giving way to doom and bottom line is the government bails out Hawke's Accord Coming Apart including the Special Operations' Anti­ gloom. Indeed for ruling class mouth­ the banks and speculators and in the end Terrorist Squad, attacking the workers' pieces like the Financial ·Review the the working people cop the burden. In the federal election earlier this year picket line, massive damages writs on Hawke/Keating "policy-induced" reces­ Keating's claims to the contrary, the big­ we of the Spartacist League (SL) said union officials and members of up to sion, aimed at puncturing the private spending "boom" led to precious little "No Vote to Labor," and counterposed $50,000 per day, raids on picketers' credit explosion and asset price boom of productive investment. Instead vas t sums a program of ,hard class struggle to the homes and the jailing of BLF official, the '80s, is about the right medicine. of money have been squandered in s pec­ reactionary Labor government. Topping John Cummins, for refusing to comply News that unemployment has now ulative paper shuffling and takeover bids its post-election agenda has been racist with a Supreme Court Order barring him topped 600,000-its highest level in which have further blown ou t the foreign attacks on immigrants, stepped-up union from going near the picket line. On 9 more than two years-is greeted with debt. This is a product at bottom, not of busting and imperialist war. In the space September the picket caravan was fire­ malicious and ill-disguised glee. In Vic­ wrong policies nor evil men (not that of a few short months, the sharp domes­ bombed with one worker luckily escaping toria, which has the biggest con­ these are in short supply), but of the tic downturn alongside an uncertain serious injury. centration of manufacturing industry of irrationality of the decaying capitalist world capitalist economic climate have The militant Leightons' pickets are all the states, the recession is biting system itself. It's far more profitable to magnified the government's problems. bearing the brunt of a vindictive anti­ deepest and fastest. The rate of unem­ go up to your ears in debt to take over Moreover Hawke's unpopular involve­ working class campaign by the bosses and ployment there shot up by 1.9 percent in a company, strip it of its assets and de­ ment in imperialism's Persian Gulf oil government backed up by the Victorian the last two months. And these "official" stroy jobs, than it is to invest in new grab and the vicious attacks on pen­ THC. Moreover they've had to contend statistics massively ul!derstate the real factories and new jobs which create new sioners in the latest Budget reveal that with the criminal backs tabbing of the Raffa leadership of the Victorian BWIU, Melbourne Sun the Labor government is walking a fine line between the requirements ofa desp­ which has kept their struggle isolated. erate ruling class and the threat of mas­ The Leightons' workers must not be left sive working class resistance. to fight alone. The way to win is some From the union-busting plans to priva­ hard class struggle to close Leightons' tise sections of Telecom, Qantas and down tight with mass picket lines and Australian Airlines, to the one-week extend strike action throughout the buil­ shutdown of car plants with thousands of ding industry. And it needs to happen jobs threatened, and with manufacturing now! Drop the charges against John production down a staggering 4.2 per­ Cummins and all unionists! Victory to cent over the last year, workers across the Leightons' picketers! the country are confronted with the In NSW the Greiner Liberal govern­ prospect of mass unemployment. The ment has announced the establishment Laborite bureaucracy is having trouble of a Royal Commission into corruption selling even further givebacks and job in the building industry-a blatant anti­ losses to its ranks. Of late ACTU tops union move. This is a bitter pill for the like Kelty have been blustering about BWIU tops to swallow. They have been going outside Arbitration. But he's not the most loyal cops of the Accord and fooling anyone. Even the smug Sydney anti-working class givebacks, even to the Morning Herald economics editor Ross point of cheering on the government's Lelghtons' picket caravan torched by anti-union scum, 9 September. Gittins (3 September) saw through Kel­ use ofRAAF planes to smash the pilots' Pickets face dally cop attacks and criminal THe backstabblng. ty's posture, describing it as a means to: strike last year. The BWIU's role in the smashing of the BLF is coming home to " ... deflate the unrealisticexpectationsofthe story, since youth unemployment is con­ wealth. And if it goes bust never mind, ACTU constituency and ... convince a few haunt them-the prelude to the destruc­ cealed by the Hawke government's elimi­ only the poor go to jail for not paying . left-wingers that the Accordwasn'tquitethe tion of the BLF was a similar anti-union nation of the dole for under-eighteens. their debts. rip-off they imagine." Royal Commission into "corruption." And working women, especially migrant When the $3 billion Farrow Group of The smashing of the BLF in 1986 was Their cooperation in the witchhunt of women who are amongst the first to be building societies (which included the watershed of the Hawke years, con­ the BLF has paved the way for these laid off, generally don't register as unem­ Pyramid) collapsed in Victoria it ruined solidating the ALP-ACTU Accord strait­ latest attacks. Meanwhile the Gallagher ployed when they're sacked. some 200,000 of its depositors, amongst jacket. For a while the building industry BLF leadership, desperate to regain Australian capitalism, with its heavily them students, pensioners and workers, flourished, and a flood of speculation in recognition from Arbitration, signed a protected and uncompetitive manufac­ savaging regional centres like Geelong property by fast buck operators burnt by deal with a body-hire agency called turing industry and reliance on agricul­ where Pyramid was used as the local the 1987 stockmarket crash kicked the Troubleshooters which agreed to tural and mineral exports, is highly sus­ bank. In the '70s building societies like construction "boom" along. With the individual contracts and undermined ex­ ceptible to the vicissitudes of the world Pyramid carved out a niche for themsel­ pliant pro-Accord McDonald leadership isting Award and safety conditions. The market. Already a massive 23 percent of ves by providing residential housing of the Building Workers Industrial Union deal fell through but not before it ex- export income is required merely to ser­ loans, but come the '80s they sought to (BWIU) presiding over drops in safety vice the interest payments on the foreign cash in on Keating's deregulation and and job conditions, the Labor tops were debt! Forty percent of the value of the branched out into high-risk commercial counting their blessings. Now the bubble Contact the . Tokyo stock market has been wiped out loans in chase of the fast buck. Farrow's has burst with speculators and this year, over a third of that during the directors lived high on the exorbitant developers squeezed by continuing high Spartacist League Gulf crisis, and now Japanese capital has , management fees of up to $1 million interest rates and falling asset prices. . GPO Box 3473, Sydney, 2001 begun massive liquidations of U.S. Trea­ each they paid themselves annually. In Sydney, workers were locked out of Phone: (02) 281 2181 sury bonds, threatening a recession in Needless to say, the first to be paid out the massive World Square building site GPO Box 2339, Melbourne, 3001 the U.S. Australian capitalism is in deep (in full) from Pyramid's remaining assets when management found their funds had Phone: (03) 6544315 trouble. are the rapacious fast-buck men and run dry, but not before they had tried to

8 AUSTRALASIAN SPARTACIST Tramways Militants Say: "Defend Vietnam!"

The following letter was submitted to the heroic revolutionary workers and expUlsion from Australia. Meanwhile political line of the Vietnamese Melbourne tramways union (ATMOEA) peasants of Vietnam. This was an his­ the torturers and war criminals who counterrevolutionaries who in 1985 journal in late August and has been toric victory for workers and the op­ took the side of U.S. imperialism used violence against the workers circulated amongst union members by pressed peoples of the world. against the revolution in Vietnam movement here, physically attacking the tramways militants and supporters ofthe The Vietnamese people got a taste of are called "freedom-fighters" and meetings of unions and working-class Spartacist League. capitalist "democracy" and "freedom" "democrats. " political groups who were celebrating during the 1960s and 70s as the U.S. In circulating this petition the the historic 1975 victory over and Australian governments waged ATMOEA leadership is simply fol­ imperialism. Dear brothers and sisters, their dirty war in order to roll back lowing the lead of the ALP Hawke The revolutionary Vietnamese We write to protest the scandalous Communism and keep Vietnam in col­ government with its "Evans Plan" for workers and peasants took a great step petition which is being circulated onial chains. The U.S. dropped more counterrevolution in Indo-China. And forward when they expropriated the among our ranks and endorsed by the bombs on Vietnam and Cambodia than it was through loyalty to the ALP that land and factories from the capitalists ATMOEA leadership who call on the were dropped throughout World War they sold out the fight for connies' jobs and landlords. Socialised property forms members to sign it. Under the guise of II. Over two million innocent Viet­ trying to avoid confrontation with the are hard-won gains that must be de­ calls for "democracy," the petition says: namese died in that war. Since 1975 the Cain government. The Labor govern- . fended in order for the working class to "Australia must be firm in its dealings Australian government and its allies ments have consistently attacked unions advance to a new and better society with Communist Vietnam." Such calls have maintained an economic blockade -SEQEB, the BLF, the meatworkers, that can offer a decent future for all for "democracy" and "freedom" are the against Vietnam, trying to starve her the pilots and the trammies. Now they people. The working class here must hypocritical slogans of counter­ into submission. U.S. and Australian try to divide the working class along defend the Vietnamese revolution revolution and restoration of capitalist imperialism support the Cambodian race lines through the "immigration against imperialism. Workers here must exploitation. It is interesting that such contra alliance, aiding and abetting Pol debate." The ATMOEA leadership's say: U.S. and Australian imperialism, a call comes at a time when the Aus­ Pot's vicious war against the Cam­ support for this reactionary petition is hands off Vietnam and Cambodia. The tralian government is sending warships bodian people who were liberated from an insult to all those workers who took ATMOEA leadership is siding with the against Iraq as part of a Western im­ those genocidal killers by Vietnam at a class-struggle side in the Vietnam class enemy in pushing this petition. perialist grab for oil. U.S. imperialism tremendous cost to her own people. war, like the maritime unions who ex­ We call on our union brothers and and its allies are again attempting to Now the refugees who have fled the pressed their solidarity with their Indo­ sisters to reject this reactionary line and police the world just like in Korea, civil war stirred up by Australia and the Chinese class brothers and sisters by stand with the beleaguered working Vietnam, Cuba, Nicaragua, Grenada, U.S. in Cambodia are treated with con­ carrying out strikes and bans against people of Vietnam and Cambodia by Libya, Panama. In 1975 U.S. and Aus­ tempt by Hawke's government, locked the Australian war effort. The refusing to sign this petition and tralian imperialism were defea ted by the up in concentration camps awaiting ATMOEA leadership is endorsing the passing motions of condemnation.

posed the wretched policies of Gallagher unions, forged through picket lines that historically been the party of the "public had the potential to galvanise mass and Co. to building workers across the no one dares cross, can decisively halt sector," a key component of its cor­ . working class resistance that could have country. For their part the BWIU tops the attacks on workers jobs; Linked to a poratist vision in which the working class spiked the savage attacks now being have announced their willingness to program to fight for jobs for all and shares in the prosperity of capitalist undertaken by the federal and state . cooperate with Greiner's Royal Commis­ massive wage rises-30 hours work for White Australia. So resistance to Beaz­ governments. But from the very start the sion if it makes "a genuine effort to ex­ 40 hours pay-and for full citizenship for ley's plan to merge Telecom and OTC Di Gregorio tramways union leadership, pose and weed out corrupt practices." To foreign workers, such decisive class ac­ and introduce telecommunications "com­ alongside Victorian THC secretary John this end they are suggesting the Commis­ tion would spark the desperately re~ petition" by selling off AUSSAT draws Halfpenny, worked overtime to keep the sion investigate the BLF. But the rem­ quired struggle to turn the tide on the heavily on national chauvinism­ struggle within the limitations of Ar­ nants of the BLF are not the bosses main. government and bosses' offensive. What's "defend an Australian industry that buys bitration, eventually accepting the gov­ target. needed is a revolutionary leadership of Australian. " ernment's draconian plans. Only Spar­ the unions, which can be built by fighting As hundreds of thousands of govern­ tacist League supporters in the industry Class Struggle Fightback for such a class struggle program against ment workers can attest, the notion that fought to extend the struggle to all Desperately Needed! the do-nothing, sell-out Laborite tops. the state is somehow a better employer Melbourne public transport and build under capitalism is a cruel lie. Often it's militant mass picket lines. The lessons of A unified class-wide fightback, smash­ ALP Privatisation Moves Mean the state-owned enterprises which are that struggle must ring clear today. The ing the shackles of Arbitration and the Union-Busting! first to cut workers jobs or attack Kirner government is on the rocks, the Accord, will find the greatest obstacle to working class conditions, as the thin end question is more how it will go than be the sell-out Laborite bureaucracy. For years now, Hawke and Keating of a wedge of much wider government when. While the state Liberals talk of When up to 30,000 building workers have been pushing to implement the attacks. Take Telecom. The Cooper blocking supply, the working class must took over the streets of Sydney in July to bosses' and Treasury plans to sell off leadership of the Victorian branch of use its power effectively and decisively to protest the attacks on their unions there government-owned indus tries like the Australian Telecommunications beat back the bosses' attacks whatever was not a word about struggle from their Telecom, the Commonwealth Bank, Employees Association (ATEA) has met party is in office. Crucial to that task is leadership. Even the prospect of action Qantas and Australian Airlines, but the government plan with mealy­ a Class-struggle revolutionary party at the World Square site against the weren't able to impose them on the ALP. mouthed appeals to the Labor platform . forged through splitting the ALP's sacking of union delega tes was dismissed Now they've put privatisation back on on nationalisation. Yet for years under working class base from the bourgeois as "playing into the bosses' hands." In­ the agenda. ALP Federal Secretary Bob Accord deals the ATEA and other tops (of all stripes) and pledged to en­ stead building workers were delivered a Hogg hopes to push some of it through Telecom union leaders hips have given ding capitalist rule once and all .• dose of vicious racist protectionism di­ at a special National ALP conference in , away one hard-won union gain after rected against "Asian bosses" by "left" late September. Keating put the lefts another in preparation for the "restruc­ Federated Engine Drivers and Firemans over a barrel with the bankruptcy of the turing" currently threatened. Nor are Marxist Working-Class Association (FEDFA) delegate, Joe SBV, forcing the Socialist Left to accede workers jobs going to be defended by the Biweekly ot the Spartaclst Owens. These traitors cast Malaysian, to the partial privatisation of the Com­ ATEA's pathetic calls on Telecom mana­ League/US Japanese and other Asian workers as the monwealth Bank to fund its acquisition gement to "come to its senses. " Beazley's "enemy" while the profit-gouging Aust­ of the SBV. , aim is to drastically run down Telecom ralian bosses are supposed to be the Up to now resistance has been strong services and wipe out union conditions W'RltEIIS... - ".fJIJAIIIJ...... " ...... victims. The whole thing is shot through within the ALP, for whom (centrally the under the guise of "restructuring" as well -_., _._ with poison, and aims to cement the Big "lefts") the state-owned enterprises are as raise money to service the foreign Lie that there can be a partnership of a sacred cow, the embodiment of the debt. To decisively challenge and defeat capital and labour, the sort of partner­ utopian, reformist dream of "creeping the government's anti-working class, ship the union-busting and job-slashing socialism." Far from having anything to austerity privatisation moves requires Accord has been premised on. It is the do with socialism, public ownership of independent class action to defend jobs direct antithesis of defence of even the enterprises like Telecom, some airlines and real wages and fight for a qualitative most minimal gains, let alone the much and a few banks arose from the need of increase in services. Critical to that is needed international class solidarity from a weak bourgeoisie for a big government understanding that the enemy is the Japan and Malaysia to Australia. role in the task of capitalist "nation­ government and bosses. And in counter­ Only industry-wide action of builders, building," in particular the provision of position to those dyed-in-the-wool plumbers, painters' and all building an economic infrastructure. Labor has . Laborites who still kid themselves that Labor's "socialist objective" means some­ thing, (and conveniently forget its history of White Australia racism), the working SUB DRIVE RE$ULTS - 1990 class requires a revolutionary program for the expropriation of the banks, Once again our annual subscription Quotas: Achieved: factories and mines by a workers drive, held in July and August, was government. successful. We welcome new readers Sydney 600 608 Earlier this year Victorian tram and and greet our regular subscribers, bus workers waged a bitter month-long many of whom also took out subs to Melbourne 400 406 struggle to defend their jobs against the 24 Issues - $15 our international publications. At large 0 8 Cain government's attacks. That struggle Congratulations to Comrade Bret S. occur.red only months before the federal Mail/make cheques payable to: who won the sub drive with 89 points. Total Points: 1,000 1,022 election and posed a threat to the gov­ Spartacist/ANZ Publishing Co., GPO Box 3473, Sydney, NSW 2001. ernment's union-busting "reforms." It

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 1990 9 Iraq ... (continued from page 4) Letter to the Kremlin presented Bush with a modified version of "Plan 90-1002" for a massive air- and Rescind Arms Embargo of Iraq sealift of U.S. forces to the Gulf. It's clear that U.S. forces are being 9 August 1990 submission pose a danger not only to profits sweated out of oil workers moved into the Persian Gulf to stay. that volatile region but to the Soviet from the Persian Gulf to the North Sea Embassy of the Union of Heretofore, the Saudis have been reluc­ Union to the Gulf of Mexico: our interest is Soviet Socialist Republics, itself. The deployment of Amer­ ican might in the region has tightened that this wealth go to the working tant to grant the Pentagon base rights. Washington, D.C. and Paris But in the last weeks, American combat the encirclement of the Soviet Union people of the world. We say: U.S. Out aircraft have been stationed in all the USSR Mission to the United Nations by the utterly hostile forces of of the Persian Gulf! We Trotskyists, Gulf states of theArabian peninsula. De­ imperialism. who stand in defense of the Soviet fense Secretary Cheney makes no bones Dear Ambassadors: In pursuit of narrow diplomatic con­ workers state against world imperial­ about it: the U.S. military commitment The American imperialists have cerns, the Soviet government previous­ ism, demand that the Soviet Union is "long term," and "we do not know how seized upon a local disturbance in the ly signed a 'll'eaty of Friendship with rescind its arms embargo of Iraq and long we will have to stay." With this in­ Persian Gulf to vastly extend United Saddam Hussein, the butcher of thou­ send their former allies in Baghdad the vasion the U.S. has taken a big step States military might. In the face of sands of worker militants, Communist weapons they need to deter Washing­ toward a strategic objective: a military this escalating imperialist provocation, Party members, and members of the ton's oil grab. stranglehold on the Middle East. But now the International Communist League Kurdish minority. Yet now when Iraq The Soviet government fought to they may have to pay the price in blood. (Fourth Internationalist) demands that is genuinely threatened by imperialism the end, successfully, to keep the oil While the Democrats march in lock­ the Soviet government rescind immedi­ the Soviet government has supported fields of Baku out of the hands of the step with Bush, however, elements in the ately its arms embargo against Iraq. United Nations sanctions against Iraq imperialists. We should make vigorous Republican right wing (such as Patrick The U.S. provocation is a tripwire for and seems willing to "cooperate" with efforts in the current situation. Buchanan) have doubts about the U.S.' world war, posing a grave danger to all the White House warmongers. This is military capacity to bring this off. These humanity. a betrayal of the interests of the Soviet Fraternally, "Fortress America" types want to con­ With unbridled hypocrisy and in the state and the Soviet and world working Helene Brosius centrate on dismantling the ex-Soviet name of "freedom," the U.S. is seeking people. International Secretary bloc. Attacking Bush, Buchanan asks: "If to assure its stranglehold over world The ICL(FI) believes the workers we walked out of tiny Lebanon after 250 supplies of oil. The establishment of of the world are opposed to a squalid cc: General of the Army B. V. Snetkov dead, are Americans ready to bear the American military bases in Saudi Ara­ war between the reactionary sheiks Commander in Chief, burden of pacifying Iraq and Iran, with bia for the first time and a naval em­ and colonels over the oil fields. We Group of Soviet Forces in Germany 70 million people." bargo aimed at starving Iraq into have, however, great interest in the Zossen-WOnsdorf To keep their profits flowing, they're prepared to spill the blood of millions of impoverished Arabs and thousands of where they have been acting as mercen­ After the Ba'athists took over again in in the White House, State Department black and working-class American youth ary mujahedin (holy warriors), these 1968, they jailed and killed thousands of and Pentagon act like they're goingfo in uniform. The Vietnam War brought Islamic fanatics are notorious for raping CPers, particularly among Kurdish oil get it all on the Cheap. But it's not an down two American presidents. Bush & . every "infidel" woman they come ac.ross. workers in the region of Kirkuk. accident that most doomsday novels start Co. will soon enough find out that the Those are the U.S.' glorious "allies" in This did not stop the Kremlin Stalin­ with a war crisis in the Mideast. And Vietnam syndrome is still alive. . Bush's war for "freedom" and "our way ists from aiding Saddam,just as they gave among the prime players, who have been Mideast Cauldron of life." Iraq's Saddam Hussein, on the support to both Shah Pahlavi and then keeping their heads down so far in the other hand, has won popular .support Ayatollah Khomeini even as the Iranian Persian Gulf crisis, are the. Israelis. If during the Vietnam War, protesters throughout the area, justifying his take­ rulers jailed Iranian Tudeh members. For In fact, the 'Zionist rulers are about sang "One, two, three, what are we fight­ over of Kuwait as an effort to take back years, Moscow has been supplying advis­ the only ones who have to gain from a ing for?" that question will be repeated the oil wealth from the lavish-living ers and military hardware to Baghdad as shooting war. It has not gone unnoticed more loudly today when this war can't be sheiks. He is also now seen by the Pales­ part of its efforts to cultivate "Third in Jerusalem that if the U.S. has perma­ justified as part of the crusade against tinians as a champion of their cause World" nationalists. Now under Gorba­ nent bases in the Near East, Washington Communism. Who wants to die so that against the Zionists who have deprived chev's "new thinking," which evidently will not be dependent upon Israel as its the Kuwaiti Emir can live a life of lUxury them of a homeland. Hussein is simulta­ consists of giving in to every imperialist regional gendarmes. If the Israelis think in a state where only 70,000 men out of neously trying to take on the mantle of demand, and then throwing in some the flow of dollars may dry up they could a population of over 2 million have the Nasser as the unifier of the Arab nation more, the Soviet Union has denounced just decide to blow the region away. right to vote for a "parliament" which is against feudalism and imperialism, while Saddam Hussein's takeover of Kuwait, Israel had been gearing up its population dissolved as soon as it meets? Or for the putting himself forward as the new scion endorsed UN trade sanctions, cut off· for a war even before the latest crisis. feudal house of Saud which lords it over of Muhammad in calling for a jihad to arms Shipments and eventually voted for Shamir & Co. are itching for a "pre­ its one-family state where women are de­ defend the Islamic holy sites from the the resolution okaying the U.S. war emptive" strike against Iraq-a repeat nied the right to drive, much less vote, Western infidels and their lackeys. blockade of Iraq. of their 1981 bombing raid on Baghdad's and even princesses are beheaded for Of course, with his roots in the Ba'ath Recently it appears that the thick bu­ unfinished nuclear plant, but this time adultery. Saudi Arabia is the largest re­ "Socialist" party, Saddam Hussein was reaucratic skulls in the Kremlin are on an apocalyptic scale with nuclear/ maining state where chattel slavery still supposedly secular. In reality, he is the awakening to the danger posed by U.S. chemical weapons to destroy Iraq at one. exists. kind of thug and murderer who would imperialism's grab for hegemony in the blow and "solve" the "Palestinian Already there have been incidents of normally qualify as a U.S. ally. He might Gulf, barely 700 miles from Soviet bor­ problem." "culture shock" as U.S. troops come up be compared to bloody Pakistani dictator ders. "There are no guarantees that the "Israeli political and military leaders against the social straitjacket of Saudi Muhammad Zia ul-Haq, who helped United States will leave Saudi Arabia are saying that time is not on the side of medievalism. In one case, Saudi soldiers funnel CIA aid to Afghan counterrevolu­ after the crisis is over," moaned Deputy the United States in the Persian Gulf went crazy when a woman member of an tionary bands (in return for a big rake­ Foreign Minister Aleksandr Belonogov, crisis, and that it should act now," re­ F-15 ground crew took her shirt off to off). Hussein actually was a U.S. ally for while the chief of staff of the Warsaw ports the New York Times (21 August). work in her T-shirt in the 120 degree years. When the Ba'ath party came to Pact, General of the Army Vladimir But with an arsenal of some 200 nuclear heat. And take note that the Saudi dyn­ power briefly in 1963, it may have been Lobov, complained that the U.S. pres­ warheads, as well as chemical weapons asty was catapulted into power with the aided by the CIA, which reportedly sup­ ence had dramatically altered the and delivery sys terns, Israel might well try aid of the Wahabi sect. In Afghanistan, plied lists of Communists to be killed. strategic balance (New York Times, 31 it on its own. But while the Zionist August). Just as Stalin couldn't believe rulers with their Masada complex gird , Hitler had violated his "non-aggression" for Armageddon, they could touch off . pact by invading the USSR in 1941, his revolutionary upsurges throughout the ISPARTACJSTI~ heirs today can't understand why the Arab East. And this might even break NUIIN" .3·.. "NOLl'H IDtTlON SUMMER= '''' imperialists don't play by the rules. the extreme chauvinist stranglehold over Spartacist The fate of humanity could be at the Hebrew-speaking workers. English Edition stake. Vietnam and Korea were limited Meanwhile, the U.S. economy, which No. 43-44 wars because of the threat of Russian was already in a recession, is being power. This is what kept the U.S. from tipped into depression by the rise in oil Summer 1989 invading Cuba. Now the Soviet Union is prices and the financial chaos of the war (56 pages) out of it, so the Americans don't recog­ threat. While Bush's Big Oil buddies nize any limits. The International Com­ were laughing all the way to the bank as $2.00 munist League (Fourth Internationalist) the price of East Texas crude virtually has denounced this betrayal and in a doubled to $32 a barrel, other business­ Theoretical journal of the letter sent to several Soviet embassies men are not so sanguine. "The guns of International Communist demanded "that the Soviet government August suddenly have darkened the eCd­ League (comes with rescind immediately its arms embargo nomic skies," noted the Wall Street Jour­ subscriptions to against Iraq" (see box this page). nal (14 August). As stocks plunge and higher oil prices produce inflation, cor­ Australasian Spartacist in the USSRI For Class Struggle and Workers Vanguard). SEE PAGE 5 porations see their profits evaporating, !1F.~Ii!ll.iiIII.·Il:.r),ljf •._i";fHtJ:M1 Against the Warmakers with the sJlvings and loan industry al­ - WI. I'" Sowlel Thermldor1 I Kor,.. ___••• a _1 Make cheques payable/mail to: The media have made much of George ready in crisis and commercial banks in Spartacist ANZ Publishing Co., Bush's "masterful" orchestration of a trouble as well. "This could readily be ~tfOtW~ .~"*,,,~.;~ the worse recession since the Depression GPO Box 3473 8chapii~:""'!'_~.~,,,,~;. broad coalition that pits the world ...... of the 1930s," one senior securities firm Sydney, NSW 2001 AUlTIlALIA .... AIa ..,IT,...... 11 CANAOA .... CIt.7I UIA ...... ,.',. against Saddam Hussein. So far the only Western state leader to break ranks is executive told the Journal. Austria's Waldheim. The policy planners American workers and minorities,

10 AUSTRALASIAN SPARTACIST individual only," referring to the various Bagmen ... splinters and spin-offs of the WRP and Former Black the IC generally. But what of those (continued from page 5) deeply involved in the blood crimes of the IC who have never made a public Panther ... North. The article contends: "The prin­ accounting and furthermore try to con­ (continued from page 3) ciples of Trotskyism ... were bartered for ceal their role? What of those, in this cash among the national bourgeois and case the SLL, who printed a Vietnamese featured as the Panther spokesman in a petty bourgeois leaderships of the Middle fascist paper, the Saigon Bell, and justify front-page article in the Philadelphia East behind the back ofthe International it as a "commercial operation"? And Inquirer. Over the next decade, Jamal was Committee." Behind their back? A bald­ what can you make of an organisation active as a crusading broadcast journalist faced lie, and an utterly transparent one which habitually drags workers parties, who became known as the "voice of the too, unless you are gullible enough to such as the pro-Castro U.S. Socialist voiceless" for championing the cause of believe that the IC could be turned into Workers Party, through the bourgeois the oppressed. He won wide acclaim and press agents of various corrupt Arab courts, up to and including campaigning was broadcast on national radio net­ despots without its cadres noticing. internationally last year on behalf of the works. In 1986 he was elected president David North was Healy's toady, and prosecution case in the U.S. govern­ of the Philadelphia chapter of the Assoc­ knew where Healy got his money. SLL ment's frame-up of Iowa trade unionist iation of Black Journalists. Jamal became leaders Nick Beams and Mike Head ran and SWP supporter, Mark Curtis, on a supporter of the Philadelphia MOVE a small group with a large operation, phoney rape charges? organization in the aftermath of the mas­ including a print shop and a twic.e-weekly David North's IC and his Australian sive 1978 cop siege on their Powelton paper. And they served their Arab bour­ SLL are proven political guns for hire. Village home. geois paymasters just as loyally as Healy. Moreover, they are consistently to be On 9 December 1981 the police tried In the midst of the bitter factional strug­ found on the wrong side of the class line, to kill Jamal in the streets, but failed. He no credit gle within the IC which followed Healy's from crossing a BLF picket line in 1986 was hospitalized with a bleeding stomach Student protest In 1967 to name overthrow in 1985, Cliff Slaughter, the (see Australasian Spartacist No. 117, wound and arres ted on charges of killing high school for Malcolm X. WRP's new leader, wrote in a letter to OctoberlNovember 1988) to siding with a cop. The prosecutor won the death WRP members (14 January 1986): imperialism against the Soviet Union on sentence by convincing the nearly all­ One need only look at the shotgun­ "Is it only the WRPwhich received financial every key question from Afghanistan to white jury that Jamal's use of the wielding cop standing over the stripped assistance from one or other Middle Eastern Panther slogan "Political Power Grows Panther victims of Rizzo's 1970 raid, or bourgeois national governments? Which Poland to the counterrevolutionary Bal­ other sections did so? tic secessionists. Over the Gulf the SLL Out of the Barrel of a Gun" (in the Phil­ hear the Philly police today ranting for "Is it not a fact that the Australian section sounds no warning to the Soviet and adelphia Inquirer article 12 years earlier) his immediate execution, to know what did receive a sum of (tens of thousand [sic] world's working class that the massive meant he deserved to die! As Mumia told Jamal meant. of dollars) in 1983? ... imperialist military presence threatens the court, "I believe America has proven Reprinted from Workers Vanguard "Is it not true that Cde Beams failed to No. 508, 10 August 1990 report the matter to the IC or to the WRP the USSR, because they see nothing in that quote to be true." delegates, but that he did report it to at least it to defend. And they share the Laborite some of the delegates who supported the reformist dream of the ALP lefts rising c: WRP suspension and certainly to Comrade ~ to power in Her Majesty's parliament, :; ." North? That is what happened. calling on them to form a workers gov­ co "Finally: is it not true that Comrade North :cos and Beams agreed the matter'should not be ernment! In principle the SLL is no Q. raised at the IC because they considered it different to the various anti-Soviet 'i did not constitute a 'class betrayal'?" Laborites they brand as social patriots :c~ Yes, it's all true. The SLL Central Com­ over the Gulf, except for their sinister, Il. proven capacity to serve any and various :~ mittee censured Beams in February 1986 Ol for failing to report receipt of money reactionary masters, if the price is right. • ~ from Arab regimes to the IC. Further information came from former SLL leader, Phil Sandford, who led a minority Rizzo's killer split from the SLL to found the Com­ Abu-Jamal ... cops strip search munist League. In the December 1986 (continued from page 3) Philadelphia issue of the CL's Socialist Press Sandford Black Panthers In relates how SLL leader Greg Adler was turies of racial subjugation. But, as the. 1970 raid. sent to Baghdad in 1979 to ask for PDC speaker at the rally said: $100,000 to buy a printing press. Sand­ "Racist state persecution is not limited to ford claims Adler didn't ask for the the United States. There is no death penalty money, but nonetheless Healy gave him in Australia at this point in time. However, Australian Aboriginals, particularly young a real dressing down for poaching on his black men, meet their death in state custody turf. Sandford goes on to report: as a commonplace." Vanzetti. Unions and Trades Halls to a workers government. All you union "The SLL's relations with the Libyan regime around Australia sent protests to U.S. . brothers and sisters here and all those require a separate article. Suffice to say they Denouncing the Hawke government's frame-up ofanti-Apartheid activist Kerry governments, and at news of the impen­ people who stand with them, it means were more productive financially thanks to ding execution of Sacco and Vanzetti . you have the power to say to this govern­ an even more slavish public relations job in Browning (see Australasian Spartacist the pages of Workers News and such things No. 137, June/July 1990), the Coalition thousands gathered in Sydney's Domain ment that this man must not die-this man won't die." as the memorable, Libyan-financed . Against Apartheid spokesman noted: to hear speakers from the NSW Labor brochure entitled Libya-the true story." Join the Partisan Defence Committee's "It'san attack on the anti-apartheidstruggle Council, the ALP, the International This brochure was authored by none and on anti-racist forces in this country, and Workers of the World and the CPA. campaign to save Mumia Abu-Jamal! other than Workers News editor Mike on militant left organisations.... We feel Soon after, on 23 August 1927, coal Take Jamal's case to your unions, civil Head. great solidarity with Abu-Jamal's struggle." miners along with several thousand rights, campus and community org­ Not one of Healy's lieutenants, from The Partisan Defence Committee sees workers in Sydney struck in defence of anisations and mobilise them to join the North down, uttered a peep of protest itself in the tradition of the International Sacco and Vanzetti. This kind of inter­ fight. Contact the PDC for speakers, about these corrupt financial dealings Red Aid, formed in the early 1920s to nationalist, united action needs to be tapes of Mumia speaking and literature. until the money dried up. It was this bring assistance to workers and Com­ rekindled amongst the Australian The campaign costs a lot; pUblicity and which ultimately led to the spectacular munists facing counterrevolutionary working class today, to fight in their own printing costs are massive. We are up implosion of international Healyism in terror in East Europe. Its Australian interests as well as those of their inter­ against the legal and financial resources 1985 and Healy's replacement by North. affiliate, the International Labour De­ national class brothers and sisters. As the of the capitalist state. Our chances of Workers News notes that "Mitchell's fence, emerged in the late 1920s around U.S. PDC staff counsel Rachel Wolken­ success rest on the justice of our cause degeneration into a lackey of Australian the American ILD-initiated campaign to stein emphasised at the Philadelphia and the determined support of all who imperialism is not the trajectory of an save the anarchist workers Sacco and demo to save Jamal, what's needed is a believe Mumia Abu-Jamal must not die. "re-invigorated working-class move­ Send donations to: Partisan Defence ment, including a black and red leader­ Committee, PO Box Q217 QVB, Sydney stand on "the side of Iraq against the ship which can fight to win, all the way NSW2000. Iraq ... warmongers and union-busters in Wash­ ington. And that means waging the class already ravaged by a decade of economic struggle at home. Even before the shoot­ "growth" in which the ricb got a lot ing has begun, millions of American SUBSCRIBE NOW! richer and everybody else got poorer, working people know that our enemies 0$5/6 issues (1 year) of Australasian Spartacist 0 $7 for overseas airmail now face outright depression and seeing are not in the Near East but right here: o $20/6 issues of Australasian Spartacist plus Workers Vanguard (24 issues), their sons and daughters sent off to die the greedy and vicious ruling class which Marxist fortnightly of the Spartacist League/U.S. for the greater profits of Exxon and is willing to spill the blood of thousands The above subs include Spartacist, organ of the International Communist League Texaco and George Bush's way of life. to protect its profits and its "right" to (Fourth Internationalist) lord it over us and over the im­ While th~ bourgeoisie gloats about the o $6/6 issues (one year) of Workers Hammer, paper of the Spartacist League/Britain "death of Communism," and the final poverished masses throughout the world. o $4/3 issues of Women & Revolution triumph of capitalism, this latest imperi­ The workers of this country have the alist adventure reveals how truly un­ power to stop the system in its tracks Name ______stable the American capitalist colossus and put an end once and for all to the Address ______is. Washington is still haunted by its imperialist war machine. Down with defeat almost two decades ago at the Washington's new war-a defeat for hands of a relatively small nation fighting "our" rulers is a victory for us. American State ___ P'Code Phone ______for a social revolution. But a wounded workers' militancy against Bush and the imperialist beast is more dangerous than "Republicrat" party of property will go Mail/make cheques payable to: ever. a long way to making the world a kinder SpartacistANZ Publishing Co., GPO Box 3473, Sydney, NSW,2001 Working people in this country must and gentler place .•

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 1990 11 J. Australasian . .... SPARTACIST

New Socialist LeffPremler State Bank of Victoria workers Kirner with Federal Treasurer protest against sell off, Paul Keating. 24 August. ocialist Left Makes

"The party's over" is nowadays the CIA's favourite for ALP leader. What refrain of all the bourgeoisie's media "opinion" did the Consul-General offer scribes. They're calling for increased regarding Kirner? capitalist austerity as the working people The pervasive moralist paternalism are lumbered with the devastating out­ Workers Pay that is part and parcel of social democ­ come of the '80s financial binge by high­ racy has had its most extreme expression flying corporate cowboys, who were shortfall of up to a billion dollars linked Cain's "excesses" they have hidden be­ under Labor in Victoria. The "wowser backed by an eager and willing govern­ to the collapse of the Victorian Econo­ hind and offer their services to clean up state" has been at the forefront of enfor­ ment. But while the ruling class raked in mic Development Corporation, a $2.7. the mess. The Kirner government is cing the most draconian drink-driving' profits, it was certainly no party for the billion loss to the state-owned State intending to cut some 20,000 public laws, heavy taxes on cigarettes together working class and oppressed. The '80s Bank of Victoria (SBV) and its merchant sector jobs along with reductions to with government sponsored anti-smoking Hawke era is synonymous with massive bank, Tricontinental, and the collapse of health, education and public transport days, and so on. Victorians (along with foreign debt (now approaching $160 Victoria's largest (and Australia's second services. Working people are going to be many other states) have been subject to billion gross), crunching interest rates largest) building society, Pyramid, hit with increased taxes and charges and wholesale cuts to social welfare a mass of "dob in" days: dob in a drug shaking confidence in the banking across the board to reduce the state's spending. Labor rule, federally and state, dealer, a child molester. The roads are system. debt and underwrite the SBV's losses. littered with signs telling you what to do has been underpinned by the Accord­ Soon to follow may well be the sale of and when to do it, lately many of them Arbitration straitjacket which has driven Socialist Left Appointed the State Insurance Office and the Gas sponsored by corpora te ou tfits like Coke. down real wages and slashed jobs and Receivers and Fuel Corporation. Even before it (A recent road safety report made the union conditions, resulting in a massive was delivered John Halfpenny announced obvious point that this multitude of do's redistribution of wealth further into the Already the mess has Laborites run­ the THC's acceptance of Kirner's "tough and don'ts is dangerous!) But while these hands of the privileged few. Today real ning for cover, amidst bitter recrimi­ but fair" austerity budget. The Socialist wages have fallen to their lowest level as righteous Laborites have been preaching nations. But if Hawke is worried about Left have announced that they intend to moral sermons to the masses, they and a share of the Gross Domestic Product - - the effects it will have on his govern­ liquidate the assets of bankrupt Victoria their cronies have been looting the (GOP) in 40 years, some 5.2 percent ment's stability, no one doubts that the Inc., an irony not lost on the bosses' public purse with shameless abandon. lower at the end of the '80s than in 1982. Victorian state government's days are press, cackling about the sight of yester­ Meanwhile the bosses' profit share of numbered. After months of desperate day's "left alternative" running today's Underlying the hypocritical bourgeois GOP is now higher than during the Men­ reassurances to the contrary, Labor recession. But you'd have to be a pretty moralism is naked repression. Victorian zies "golden age" (Age, 14 March). Premier Cain finally decided to concede hopeless Laborite hack to be surprised. Labor's cops are armed and dangerous, The Labor government's electoral that yes, it was a mess-whereupon he After all the Socialist Left, with their having shot more people in recent years viability during the '80s was premised on than any other police force in the quit. This was bemoaned by few, except base in the trade union bureaucracy, country, while the citizens are subject to its ability to deliver to the bosses savage Socialist Left heavyweight and Trades helped Hawke and Cain smash the BLF the most repressive gun laws. In early attacks on the working class. The union Hall Council (THC) Secretary John Half­ in 1986. bureaucracy sold this to the working penny, who complained about disunity September round-ups of "illegal" class with the cynical promise that things and disloyalty. Cain's demise was certain- _ Administering the capitalist state Chinese immigrants began in Victoria. looked better around the corner. Yet ly not regretted by the thousands of . exacts a price for a Labor "left." Bob About 30 students met the reality of now, widely des pised by broad sections of unionists like the building work­ Hawke prides himself on having taught official White Australia racism when they the population, the Labor government's ers, nurses and. tramway workers, to federal Labor the lesson of Whitlam's were picked up and jailed in Melbourne's boat has sprung some major leaks, and name a few, whose unions have borne overthrow in 1975-to govern in capi­ Maribyrnong Migrant Detention Centre has been buffeted by a series of financial the brunt of years of government attacks. talist Australia·you toe the U.S. line. The for skipping their English classes. This is scandals around the country, culminating Into the breach stepped the Socialist Victorian Socialist Left too has absorbed part of the racist campaign, braintrusted in the Victorian financial mess. In one of Left; and out of it emerged the new this lesson. In June Victorian ALP fac­ by Victorian Socialist Lefter, Andrew Aus tralia 's bigges t financia Icras hes ever, premier, Joan Kirner. Having buttressed tional organisers met at a private lunch Theophanous for left Immigration Mini­ the state Labor government, after run­ the Cain government for lJine years now, hosted by the U.S. Consul-General, ster Gerry Hand, to round up and expel ning up a total state debt of $27 billion, the Socialist Left have decided to dis­ Richard Block (Australian, 15 June), to some 90,000 "illegals" nationally. The this year also had to cover a budget pense with the thin veil of opposition to discuss Cain's successor. Hawke was the continued on page 8

Break from Labor! Build a Revolutionary Workers Party! i

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12 SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 1990