Hayden/Hawke's answer: two more years of Fraser Don't let the horror budget go unchallenged

f"''' :;;. ,~ For a general ! " f strike nowl Let the ALP take powerl Australian workers are smarting under the most vicious austerity budget in decades. On IS August the Fraser government set out to boost capitalist profits with a series of arro­ gant and brutal attacks orr poor and working people. Medibank -- the only significant re­ form of the Whitlam government -- abolished; .,ell","' !la, 1'aekM!!I ~asHd-;"y' sh1lrt"~ Eisfl' ~esigned to fall most heavily on low incomes; drastic cuts in already limping social ser­ vices; a freeze on unemployment benefits while prices continue to rise; even a means test on further cost-of-living increases to the pit­ tance doled out to old-age pensioners -- the message couldn't be clearer: the oppressed are to be mercilessly sacrificed on the altar of "business confidence". The bosses were over- Conti nued on page two 10.000 attended 21 August anti-budget rally ,in Sydney. Racist white rule in Rhodesia nears. bloody end

The guerrilla war against Rhodesia's white guerrilla leader Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe African action was a vote of confidence in the shaky colonial rule which began in the bush more than a National Union (ZANU). Black troops commanded by Salisbury "transitional government" produced by generation ago is now spreading waves of panic white officers and backed up by jet bombers and the 3 March "internal settlement" which brought among the residents of Salisbury's posh suburbs. helicopters swept over the border and destroyed Bishop Abel Muzorewa, tribal chief Jeremiah Outside the capital, farmers nightly huddle over what the Salisbury government called "ten terror­ Chirau and ex-ZANU leader Rev Ndabaningi Sithole their machine guns in fortified compounds knowing ist bases". A school was hit in the attack and 'onto the four-man Executive Council with Smith. that it may not be long before Salisbury begins an undetermined number of men, women and children But while the House was acting to prop up the to look like Saigon in the final frantic days be­ were killed. In the last such raid in November colonial settlers, the Carter administration, fore the ~ricans pulled out. Already white the Rhodesians claimed to have killed 1200 which has written them off as a lost cause, con­ settlers are abandoning their swimming pools and people. The only difference this time is that tinued its efforts to forge a compromise between tennis courts, leaving the country at the rate of the murderous attack was undertaken by a regime Salisbury and the Soviet-armed Patriotic Front 1000 per month. The sagging morale of the once­ supposedly moving toward "majority rule" and with Alliance of Mugabe's ZANU and the Zimbabwe cocky colonialists was further weakened with the the approval of black lackeys in the Rhodesian African Peoples' Union (ZAPU) of Joshua Nkomo. revelation that the chief of Rhodesian Customs government. Ian Smith and his three stooges Secur~ty and the Undersecretary for Defence, together with four businessmen, had been arrested Rhodesian leader Ian Smith pronounced the raid The fraudulent nature of the "internal settle­ for diverting millions of dollars in arms funds a success and was no doubt encouraged by the fact ment" and the hollowness of the claim that it into Swiss bank accounts in preparation for a that while the bombs were falling in Mozambique, represents a genuine sharing of power in a quick getaway. the American House of Representatives was prepar­ country where blacks outnumber whites 19 to 1 was ing a small bombshell of its own: a vote to lift revealed by the fact that Muzorewa, Sithole and The war is not yet over, however. On 29 July trade sanctions against Rhodesia if the elections Chirau were not even told about the latest raid the desperate white-supremacist regime launched a promised by Smith and his three black front men until after it had already begun! This, however, vicious assault on the Mozambique 'base areas of are held as scheduled in December. The House Continued on page eight Port Kembla pig-iron boycOH of 1938 ... see page 6 the sake of economic recovery can no longer be for major, across-the-board wage rises now, and Budget ••• maintained.' The Murdochs and Fairfaxes objected full, unconditional monthly cost-of-living ad­ only that Fraser should have been more discreet; justments on all wages! For immediate implemen­ Continued from page one the Financial Review (16 August) complained can­ tation of a 3D-hour work week with no loss in didly that the "Budget will wound organised weekly pay! Smash the IRB 'and all anti-union joyed. The stock market shot up the day after labour but only in a fashion which will anger it, legislation! Down with all penal powers! the budget was announced. For these parasites not destroy it". what even the right-l'lin::; press called a "horror Protest strikes are not enough budget" was good news. Already on shaky ground, at the same time On 30 August a meeting of some 500-1000 job Fraser's own credibility was eaten away by the delegates in Melbourne convened by the Trades So callous were some of the budget's pro­ murky "Withers affair". Fraser had sacked Sena­ visions that the press barons who had been urging Hall Council (THC) overwhelmingly voted to call tor Withers, his one-time right-hand man in the on the ACTU for a series of half-day nationwide Fraser to get tough On the economy muttered un­ Senate, from Cabinet after a royal commission easily that he was going too far. After an out­ strikes against the budget -- despite the oppo­ found he had "improperly" attempted to influence sition of the THC secretary, Ken Stone, whose cry in the papers, Fraser grudgingly rescinded the naming of new electoral districts. Other only one of the most provocative measures -- the mot ion for "a Special ACTU Congress to organise ministers were appalled at the "ruthless" sacking appropriate protest action" also carried. But deduction of children's earnings from family al­ for something which, after all, anyone of them lowances. For three years Fraser has promised he just as with the 24-hour general strike over might have done. But then it emerged that Ian Medibank in 1976, Fraser will easily be able to was bringing down inflation and unemployment and Robinson, the minister whose testimony had impli­ restoring the economy. For three years unemploy­ ignore a series of protest stoppages designed cated Wither~, had implicated Fraser as well; and simply to pressure the government to modify the ment has got worse, inflation has continued, real with Fraser refusing to say whether or not he had wages have fallen, a whole arsenal of anti-union budget. Yet the author of this proposal -- John asked Robinson to impugn his own testimony to Halfpenny, Amalgamated Metal Workers (AMWSU) laws has been used to intimidate striking keep Fraser clear, the image of stern propriety workers. Now the myth of common sacrifice for state secretary and Communist Party (CPA) member, and moral authority so carefully husbanded by the man who sold out the militant LaTrobe Valley r Fraser collapsed in tatters. The public opinion power workers last year -- had the gall to argue polls registered the combined effect: a swing that Fraser could "ride out" a one-week 'general Defend anti-budget "" to Labor big enough to put Labor back in if elec­ strike, but not a series of four-hour stoppages! tions were held now. Originating from a meeting of 300 unionists protestors! The day after the budget speech in Parliament, in the LaTrobe Valley, the proposal for a builders' labourers in Melbourne and waterside national general strike of at least one week's Cops in Sydney and Brisbane arrested a total of 139 workers in Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide walked duration became the focus for militants dissat­ people following the anti-budget rallies in those two dt­ off the job in protest. Amidst calls from the isfied with Halfpenny's token "campaign". But ies on 21 August. 129 of the arrests came in Brisbane, coal-mining unions and the NSW Austral'ian Rail­ this proposal still lacks a clear political per­ when 300 of the rally participants' attempted to march in ways Union for a 24-hour general strike, the spective for victory, substituting for a general violation of Bjelke-Petersen's repressive ban. The ten union tops and parliamentarians moved quickly to strike organised to win concrete defensive aims arrested in Sydney were among some 200 demonstrators exploit Fraser's soaring unpopularity and at the what remains merely a longer protest strike to be who had marched on the stock exchange following the in­ same time provide a harmless outlet for the ranks called off at an arbitrary set time. sipid ALP/Labor in Town Hall Square. by organising mass rallies for the following Co~ncil'rally A defensive general strike around the limited After the protestors occupied the ground floor of the stock week. But the thousands of working people who downed tools to attend these rallies clearly ex­ aims outlined above can be won. It would not im­ exchange, Wran's police waded into the crowd gathered mediately and directly pose the question of a outside. A leaflet issued by a "Stock Exchange Ten De­ pected more. As it turned out, they could scarcely have got less. battle for state power which, in the absence of a fence Fund" tries to "defend" two of the demonstrators revolutionary leadership, could only lead to from victimisation by despicably implicating all the dem­ Hayden's promise: after Fraser ••• Peacock bloody defeat. At this time, only the ACTU can onstrators in police charges of damage. All the charges In Sydney, maritime unions struck for the day organise and call a general strike. against the 139 must be dropped! The labour movement of the rally, 21 August; others stopped work for However, as one Waterside Workers delegate re­ must be mobilised in their defence! Condemn Labor faker the rally itself. Workers' marches from the Wran! marked at the Melbourne meeting, the ACTU is the city's most militant shops and unions converged "graveyard of disputes". Bosses' lackeys like on Town Hall. Close to 10,000 listened to fed­ Hawke and Halfpenny are certain to do their ut­ Fraser and the NSW Liberal opposition seized on the eral opposition leader Bill Hayden and NSW's most to sabotage and sellout even a defensive, "violent" demonstration at the stock exchange, which in­ Labor premier, Neville Wran, denounce the horror limited general strike. These fakers cannot be volved some minor property damage and a few slogans budget. The air of expectancy was tangible as trusted! Strike committees of elected shop-floor ("Make the rich pay") spray-painted on walls and doors, the rally waited for its "leaders" to suggest delegates must be formed to conduct the strike; to deflect attention from the vicious budget and embarrass some course of action. In the end all Wran could strike pickets and workers self-defence guards Hayden and Wran. They succeeded, as the latter two say was that he hoped the people of Australia must be organised. The presence of a clear rev­ gentlemen 'indignantly joined in the denunciation of the would not forget the budget at the next federal olutionary alternative in such a situation of cops'victims. In fact,·said Hayden in Parliament, these elections -- due in two and a half years' time! sharp class confrontation would threaten immedi- anti-budget protestors were "closet members of the Lib­ Hayden offered his belief there would be a new eral Party"! Liberals protesting against a Liberal budget prime minister within two years -- not himself, Continued on page eleven outside the stock exchange? Rather peculiar, but Hayden but Fraser's foreign minister, Andre~ Peacock! had "evidence": the demonstrators carried a placard Finding even mass rallies a little too dangerous, reading "Sack Hawke, Hayden and Wran". Hayden has been happy to retreat to the parlia­ mentary debating games, harping on the Withers In fact the placard read "Dump Hayden/Hawke/Wran - affair. For a Revolutionary Leadership of the Labour Move; Two days later, 8000 people in Melbourne were ment", and it was carried by the Spartacist League, letter--- treated to more of the same from the ALP shadow which was neither responsible for organising the'protest treasurer, Ralph Willis, and Peter Nolan of the Comrades, nor participated in the pointless and stupid actions that ACTU executive. ACTU president Bob Hawke stayed reportedly took place inside the stock exchange. But if away from both rallies, content to issue state­ The article in ASp 56 entitled "Smash homo­ some demonstrators may have been goaded into adven­ ments that the workers, in his view, would not sexual oppression through workers revolution" was turist stunts, it was a direct result of the frustration en­ support strike action. When he finally moved as a whole an excellent exposition of the gendered by Hayden's total failure to provide any lead to into action a week later, it was only to arrange bolshevik attitude toward the struggle against the rally. And in fact the only violence committed at the one of his specialty sellouts to defuse the po­ homosexual oppression which, though not a stra­ protest was that of Labor premier Wran's police. tentially explosive Telecom strike. tegic question for the proletarian revolution, is nevertheless a crucial aspect of the prolet­ "Closet Liberals", Mr Hayden? It is not the Spartacist The Liberal government and its policies stand ariat's struggle against all forms of oppression, League which aspires to administer the bosses state, de­ clearly exposed as the dirty work of the profit­ hungry big corporations, banks and private in­ as the "tribune of the whole people" in Lenin's nounces working-class protestors against the budget words. It is imprecise and therefore potentially rather than the bosses' cops who arrest them or holds the vestors. Yet the misleaders of labour refuse to lift a finger to mobilise the working class in misleading, however, to say that "gays are a portfolio as minister in charge of those cops. No - Mr small and generally petty-bourgeois layer" when Hayden and Mr Wran are the real "closet Liberals". self-defence. Workers cannot afford to wait two years, nor is there any reason they should! The of course homosexuals come from all classes of That is why they and all their type must be ousted from ACTU must organise a nationwide general strike society (although undoubtedly some petty­ the leadership of the labour movement through the not a mere protest stoppage -- with the limited bourgeois gays find "coming out" easier than struggle for a leadership committed to overthrowing aim of reversing Fraser's policies, bringing down working-class gays). The question is not the ~apitalism, not defending it. ,.I the Liberal government and forcing new elections. size or class composition of the homosexual The ALP has the support of the masses of Aust­ population but rather that the classless, de­ ralian workers, who want Fraser out. Enough featist sectoralism of the gay movement is a playing around in the cesspool of little parlia­ petty-bourgeois political expression of the gay mentary scandals -- let the ALP take the power ghetto lifestyle -- an illusory and unsuccessful now~ But the ALP tops refuse to carry out the attempt to escape oppression, rather than a extra-parliamentary, class-struggle mobilisation class-struggle solution. a monthly organ of revolutionary Marxism for the re­ necessary to take office themselves because they Comradely, birth of the Fourth International published by Sparta­ fear the challenge to capitalism, and to their P Naughten cist Publ ications for the Central Committee of the own perks as its loyal servants, such a mobilis­ Spartacist League of Australia and New Zealand, ation would entail. We want them in office so ASp replies: Comrade Naughten's point is well section of the international Spartacist tendency that workers will be able to see in practice that taken. And we would only add that it is the re­ these reformist bureaucrats have nothing to offer , EDITORIAL BOARD: Chris Korwin formists who in fact see gays as a petty- to the working class they claim to represent ex­ Len Meyers (managing editor) .bourgeois layer, (the "gay community"), divorced cept capitalist slavery in a different guise. from the real social power of the working class, David Reynolds Remember the Hayden budget of 1975 -- the first Inga Smith (production manager) and whose sectoralist politics consciously seeks austerity budget of this recession was a Labor to perpetuate this isolation. David Strachan (Melbourne budget! correspon dent) Down with the Liberal austerity budget~ Down CIRCULATION MANAGER: Roberta D' Amico with the anti-labour Liberal government! No more Sydney Spartacist league games in Parliament! For an immediate general GPO Box 3473, Sydney, NSW, 2001 strike organised by the ACTU to dump the Fraser public office (02) 235-8115 government and calZ new elections~ Expose the fakers -- let the ALP take the power now~ 2nd floor Thursday: 5.30 to 9.30 pm The demands of the general strike must incor­ SUBSCRIPTIONS: Three dollars for eleven issues 112 Goulburn St, Saturday: 12 noon to 5 pm porate the real immediate needs of the working Sydney (one year). class in response to Fraser's attacks: Full res­ AUSTRALASIAN SPARTACI ST is registered at the GPO, Sydney for toration of Medibank and reversal of all the posting as a publication - Category B. cuts in social services made by the Fraser government! Break the indexation wage freeze rinted by Eastern I Randwick, NSW Page Two AUSTRALASIAN SPARTACIST September 1978 , • -,,,..... • ' ~ ,,~ " : ,", - ': • ~ , ~ j. ".' I , Stalinist invasion of Czecltoslovalcia "remembered" - Maoists rally for NATO The trendy, small-"l" liberal Nation Review taneous development of workers councils that of significant political concessions, most no­ devoted its 11-17 August issue to commemorating sought to throw off the Stalinist bureaucratic tably the relaxation of political censorship. yoke while repulsing imperialist overtures; and the tenth anniversary of the invasion of Czecho­ But faced with workers' resistance to his slovakia by the Soviet Union and other Warsaw in a 1963 polemic the Chinese condemned policies Dubcek would inevitably have resorted to Pact countries. Among the contributors was one Khrushchev for wavering. repression as did the once-"liberal" Gomulka Albert Langer, described as a "pol i tical activist As part of its build-up to the 19 August rally regime in Poland in 1971. Every bit as committed and part-time strategic analyst", who made the the MIS held a forum on the nature of the Soviet as the Kremlin to accommodation with imperialism ranting anti-communism of the Nation Review's Union on 12 August. That the three MIS speakers at the expense of the international proletariat resident "Cold Warrior", Frank Knopfelmacher, could not agree on the question themselves is and to "building socialism in a single country" sound positively pacifistic. Langer painted a picture of a "fascist" Russia, even more mal­ evolent than Nazi Germ~y, and bent on world conquest. His "solution" was clear: make NATO and "Uncle Sam" stop their "dithering" and "ap­ peasing" and prepare to wage World War III against the "Soviet threat". What made the Langer piece of some interest was the (unmentioned) fact that he is the lead­ ing public spokesman and chief "theoretician" of the Maoist Movement for Independence and Social­ ism (~l1S). The MIS and its associated "cadre­ type" organisation, the Red Eureka Movement (REM), split last year from the Peking-loyal Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist) (CPA[ML]), claiming that China under Hua Kuo- feng is on the "capitalist road". Langer's j ournal­ istic debut preceded an MIS forum and rally to commemorate the invasion and (in the words of an MIS leaflet) "to highlight the increasingly ag­ gressive nature of Soviet imperialism". While wanting to distance themselves from some of the more embarrassing aspects of the Chinese line for Australia (eg fervent support for Fraser's "positive side") the MIS/REM have from inception been intent on proving their anti­ Soviet credentials. Last year, in an article en­ Prague, 1968: Czech students demonstrating against Soviet occupation. titled "Remember Czechoslovakia" (Rebel, 24 Octo­ suggestive enough of the cogency of the Maoist the Dubcek regime stood as an absolute barrier to ber 1977) the REM castigated "those" (meaning "theory". Indeed, Langer lamented the lack of the further advance of the working class in EF Hill and the CPA[ML] leadership) who "persist­ "Marxist" analysis of the "fascist" USSR. After Czechoslovakia toward an international socialist ently dragged their feet in opposing Soviet im­ two decades, the Maoists have yet to work out society. perialism". It endorsed "Mao Tse-tung's position their" line". Nor can they -- because their that the ruling circles in western countries can "theory" is a fraud, a cover for bureaucratic The primary impetus for the Soviet invasion was not fear of a military threat from West Ger­ be united with against the Soviet threat", con­ rivalry. cluding with the call to use the USSR's many (as the Kremlin claimed), much less the The Maoist "theory" substitutes for the "considerable unpopularity to unite all forces Maoist fantasy of a Soviet drive to maintain its Marxist materialist understanding of the state as "colonialist economic exploitation". Rather, that can be united against it. We must not "armed bodies of men" defending a pa:t'ticular set allow the Soviet Union to escape its isolation Brezhnev feared the possibility of political rev­ of property relations an idealist criterion as to olution in Czechoslovakia which would mortally by dividing, disorienting or confusing the whether or not the ruling bureaucratic clique has forces opposed to it." threaten his own position. As the 1956 Hun­ "socialist thoughts". The absurdity of this the­ garian revolution eloquently demonstrated, the This is certainly not "confusing". It is nothil)g sis is particularly evident with regard to East­ Stalinist bureaucracies -- precisely because but a call for "unity" with US imperialism, ern Europe where in most cases there wasn't even they are parasitfc excrescences rather than new, Fraser, resurgent German imperialism and its a "palace coup" which the Maoists could try to historically necessary, ruling classes -- are revanchist neo-Nazi elements, "Captive Nations" palm off as the "restoration". The central lead­ extremely brittle in the face of any real politi­ reactionaries, the Croatian Ustasha and other ership around Novotny in Czechoslovakia, Ulbricht cal upheaval. remnants of Hitler's Eastern Front extermination in East Germany and Zhivkov in Bulgaria ruled The Spartacist tendency unambiguously con­ squads in a counterrevolutionary "holy" crusade through the Brezhnev, Khrushchev ... and Stalin demned the Soviet invasion. To the Warsaw Pact periodsl When and how did they stop having troops Trotskyists would have explained, "You mm "socialist thoughts", cease being "good" Stalin­ should be in Vietnam fighting the imperialists". ists and become mere "capitalists" and "col­ While vigorously defending the nationalised prop­ onial lackeys" of a "fascistic" Kremlin? And at erty forms, Trotskyists would have fought for the eM p§ij:W 'Wi!l what point did these countries become "colonies"? perspective of political revolution to sweep away Ironically for the MIS, Pat Clancy's pro­ all wings of the bureaucracy -- a struggle which RUSSIllll1lDES Moscow Socialist Party of Australia, echoing the by its very nature could not have been confined Kremlin, asserts that Dubcek was headed on the to the borders of Czechoslovakia -- to establish Cl£CROSL01 AliA "capitalist road", pushing "through a petty bour­ workers democracy based on workers councils. geois model of consumer socialism which would bridge the gap towards the restoration of capi­ NATO "Marxist-Leninist" talism" (Socialist, 23 August 1978). Langer and In his Nation Review article Langer cited as Clancy are comrades under the skin -- both share proof of the "aggressive intentions" of the USSR the same reformist Stalinist methodology. The the numerical superiority of Warsaw Pact troops, view that the class character of a state can be tanks and planes in Europe and the growth of the changed without the state apparatus being Soviet arsenal. He neglects to mention the rec­ smashed, as Trotsky pointed out, simply runs the cord defence appropriations bill just passed in film of reformism backwards. If Russia, Eastern the US House of Representatives, US superiority THE SOVIET IN fOCUS 10 YEARS lATER Europe and now China can "go capital ist" through in the development of missile guidance and inter- a "reform" process at the top then why can't a Continued on page nine Claudia Wright P7 capi talist state "go socialist" in the same Albert Langer Pl0 fashion? 8 David Stalinism "with a human face" Trotskyism But for all its concern to "remember Czechoslovakia" the MIS does not offer any versus poli tical analysis of the "Prague Spring". Pro·NATO Maoist leader Albert Longer featured in liberal Dubcek's "socialism with a human face" was weekly Notion Review. neither a decisive break from Stalinist rule in Maoism the direction of proletarian democracy nor "capi­ against the Soviet Union. The MIS' 19 l'\.Ugust talist counterrevolution", but rather one of the Melbourne demonstration "against 50viet imperial­ more dramatic of the periodic attempts at bureau­ Why the USSR is ism", which drew only 20 people was a rally of cratic self-reform undertaken by the ruling Not Capitalist cheerleaders for a NATO version of Operation castes in Eastern Europe. By 1968 the Czech Barbarossa (Hitler's code-name for his 1941 in­ economy was in crisis, after years of stagnation suo vasion of the USSR). under the ham-fisted "orthodoxy" of Novotny. A China's Alliance The MIS insists that' the invasion of "little" "liberal" wing of the bureaucracy, led by Dubcek, with US Czechoslovakia is incontrovert ib Ie "proof" that purged Novotny and embarked on a program of econ­ Imperialism the USSR is an "expansionist, capitalist" power. omic reforms whose central features included Yet the heroic uprising of the Hungarian workers speed-up and productivity deals in the factories, crushed by Soviet tanks in 1956 is condemned as a increased wage differentials for professionals S1.00 "fascist counterrevolution". Why? Because Mao and technicians and the introduction of various and Chou En-lai played a key role in that in­ "socialist market" schemes pioneered by Tito in mai I to/pay to: Spartacist Publications vasion, urging Khrushchev (who, even then, the Yugoslavia and Kadar in Hungary -- archetypical GPO Box 3473 Maoists were to claim twelve years later, had "capitalist roadism" in Maoist terms. In Sydney, NSW, 2001. already "restored capitalism") to smash the spon- exchange Dubcek was forced to tolerate a series AUSTRALASIAN SPARTACIST September 1978 Page Three he coal strike of 1977-78 posed in its work, scores of miners made clear to the press constructs a phony amalgam between the [Healyite] Tmost dramatic form in recent years in the that they accepted the final settlement not Workers League and the SL. Aha, says Kramer -­ United States the central question of our epoch because they liked it, but because they pointing to the Workers League's idiotic position -- what Leon Trotsky referred to in the founding thought they could get nothing better under of backing Boyle supporter Lee Roy Patterson in program of the Fourth International as the the present leadership. the last UMWA election -- the McBrides, Boyles, "crisis of proletarian leadership". The cyni­ The miners held mass rallies in the coal­ etc are "lesser evils for the sectarians". Of cally treacherous conduct of the strike by the fields, as well as outside UW~A headquarters course Kramer knows full well that there is no Arnold Miller bureaucracy of the United Mine in Washington, denouncing Miller and his con­ correspondence between the wildly gyrating op­ Workers (UMWA) demonstrated, to anyone who is tracts. portunist positions of the i'lL and those of the honest, that these self-styled union "reformers" Thousands of miners signed petitions demanding Spartacist League. In fact, the political ban­ boosted into office by the [US government] Labor Miller's recall during the heat of the strike. dits of the WL supported Miller in 1972 and Department and the liberal bourgeoisie are no Miller himself, realizing how isolated and Sadlowski in 1976 -- policies which it held in more able and willing to defend the workers hated he was, took to hiding out in obscure common with the SWP! against the bosses than the Old Guard of the hotels in West Virginia, packing a pistol, and Eventually Kramer trips over her own contra­ trade-union bureaucracy headed by the likes of surrounding himself with bodyguards. diction. The real danger, she asserts, comes George Meany. Five years ago we were virtually alone in re­ fusing to jump on the bandwagon of Miller's Miners for Democracy (MFD). But today, when Reformists defend strilee betrayers thousands of miners are themselves demanding the ouster of the backstabbing UMWA president defend­ ing Arnold Miller is not a popular task. Most of the left which hailed his election in 1972 has simply sought to avoid the subject; none of these fake socialists has, to our knowledge, met the issue head on. The SWP [US Socialist Workers Party -- co­ US coal miners: thinkers of the Australian SWP] recently pub­ lished in its ~litant (23 June) a lengthy pol­ emic by Shelley Kramer entitled "Socialists and the Miners' Strike -- Where Sectarians Go Wrong". Ostensibly directed at ultraleftists, Kramer's article is a thinly disguised-apology for Arnold Miller and the trade-union bureaucracy. Kramer castigates the "sectarians" for attacking the Hate Miller, UMWA leadership as the central obstacle to vic­ tory in the coal strike, for criticizing Miners for Democracy, even for advocating labor boycotts of coal and solidarity strikes with the miners. According to Kramer, this is what can be expected from "small groups well isolated from the working class", whose ideas ostensibly have nothing what­ soever to do with the real need-s of the masses of working people. hate the SWP! One of the central targets of Kramer's attack ---- is the Spartacist League. We are not the least .... The }3(-,:J.\'i:I 11 ment is ca.lculate bit surprised at her charges; indeed, as Trotsky this new contrac observed, the accusation of sectarianism, coming mineownel's. In cosmetic change from reformists and opportunists, is most often a labor contract. The P&M con compliment. We welcome the opportunity to demon­ sions for autorr strate anew that our program for the coal strike, miner who hon( But it still g far from being sectarian, addressed the burning suspend or disc questions of the hour and found at least a par­ iog" a wildcat A few other 0 tial echo in the working class. It is rather the BCQA proposa day probation SWP, which has supported one of the vilest labor "incentive pay' traitors of all time, whose positions must be put health benefitl safety commit on trial here. ity" and "absl of the BCOA's \nd the P& Is Arnold Miller a trade-union bureaucrat? meeting the pensions, anc With the exception of one or two sentences working cond (out of a two-and-a-half-page article) of mild Thus it sho public conder criticism of Miller's conduct during the strike, quoted in t1 designed to provide the SWP with a cheap left calling the P! could live wi cover, Kramer's diatribe is directed at leftists, Miners demonstrate i Federal rot run" around "The p&M contract is not acceptable," they said. particularly for daring to attack Miller during the BCOA the strike. Kramer writes: "We want a contract negotiated and voted on by thp give" the rur, UMWA. Any contract will have to be a whole lot The stren better than the P&M contract." solidarity. "But to target Miller as the enemy, as the " ... \..n,'" ...... nficience in the ,ank sectarians did, could only steer the miners How reformist SWP makes pictures lie: placard at coal miners' demonstration attacks Miller as "company man" {left}; away from the real, immediate threats to the SWP's Militant crops same photo to delete offending slogan criticising traitor Miller {right}. very existence of their union." Does Kramer also think that 100,000 miners were from "those who are in reality undermining trade­ It is common enough for union bureaucrats to "sectarian" for demonstrating their hatred of union independence and democracy -- the Tony accuse those who criticize their misleadership of Miller during the strike? Boyles, Lloyd MCBrides, George Meanys, and a strike as "disrupters". Very often the union The SL's press coverage of the strike focused Douglas Frasers". (Not iceably abserit from this hacks and their apologists are able to convince on the stark contradiction between the fighting list are such "progressive" labor fakers as a number of strikers that this is the case. But aspirations of the miners and the sellout poli­ Sadlowski, Miller, etc.) But then Kramer makes this time Kramer has bitten off more than she can cies of the UMWA bureaucracy. We sought to in­ the mistake of providing us with an orthodox de­ chew. Does she really think that she can get tersect the justified disgust of the miners at scription of what trade-union bureaucrats do: away with characterizing those who felt that the their leadership by raising the slogan of a demo­ "The trade-union bureaucracy enforces restric­ Miller bureaucracy was the fundamental obstacle cratically elected strike/bargaining committee to tive labor laws, crushes the initiative of the to winning the strike as a small band of wild­ replace Miller and company in conducting the union ranks, concludes contracts and social eyed ultraleftists sitting on the sidelines of strike. In contrast, the MiZitant did all it pacts sacrificing the workers' interests, and the class struggle? could to cover up the militancy of the miners imprisons the union within the bosses' politi­ That is a gross insult to the coal miners barely alluding to the roving picket lines that cal parties. In short, the bureaucrats act as themselves, who repeatedly demonstrated their shut down scab coal -- while systematically 'political police' for the capitalist class." disgust for Miller's policies: glossing over the treachery of the Miller gang: labeling the defeated strike a "victory", play­ Sounds like a perfect description of Arnold They held out on strike for almost four ing down the anti-Miller sentiment among the Miller to us! months, repeatedly voting down Miller's sell­ ranks, even going to such lengths as cropping "Enforcing restrictive labor laws": like de­ out deals. And when they finally returned to photographs so as to eliminate strikers carrying manding that anti-strike court injunctions and anti-Miller placards (see photo this issue)! Taft-Hartley be obeyed? Now Available The reason why the SWP felt compelled to cover "Crush the initiative of the union ranks": up for Miller during the strike is simple; how about suppressing wildcat strikes? The true story of the namely, it regularly gives political support to "Concluding contracts ..• sacrificing the biggest class struggle workers' interests": even Kramer agrees that in recent US history Miller and his ilk. It is instructive to note - from the miners side. that nowhere in her long polemic does Kramer re­ "behind closed doors, Miller agreed to a Details the bank­ fer to the necessity of building left-wing oppo­ series of disastrous provisions and then tried ruptcy of miners'union sitions in the unions based on the Trotskyist to sell several contracts to the ranks". bureaucrat Arnold Transitional Program. Nor is this an accidental "Imprison the unions within the bosses' pol­ Miller •.• picket lines oversight. For the reformist SWP, bureaucratic itical parties": how about Miller's support in Harlan and "reformers" 1 ike Arnold Miller and steel "rebel" to Jimmy Carter, his kowtowing to strike­ Steams, Kentucky,- Ed Sadlowski -- who are actually bought-off breaker Carter during the strike and Miller's and much more lackeys of the Labor Department and the liberal own history of running on the Democratic Party besides. Not just reporting bourgeoisie -- represent a genuine alternative to slate? but hard analysiS the Meanyites. The SWP denies the need to build The fact is, it is impossible to even come and a program a communist leadership in the trade unions, in­ close to the Leninist definition of the trade­ for victory! stead viewing its own role as being advisers and union bureaucracy -- as a caste within the lieutenants of the liberal bureaucrats. workers movement which reflects the ideology of Price: $2.00 Kramer tries to slander her opponents by im­ the capitalist class, and indeed functions as the plying that those who oppose the Sadlowskis and "political police" of the bourgeoisie -- without Order from/pay to: Millers necessarily support their reactionary including in its purview the Millers, the Spartacist Publications, bureaucratic rivals -- Steelworkers president Sadlowskis, etc. GPO Box 3473, Lloyd "no strike" McBride and Miller's gangster Kramer's attempt to defend Miller's and Miners Sydney, NSW, 2001 predecessor, Tony Boyle. To prove this, Kramer for Democracy's use of the bosses' government Page Four AUSTRALASIAN SPARTACISrSeptember J978 against its opponents in the UMWA similarly ends geois state. From the time Miller was boosted in a shaiitbies. While paying lip service to the into power by the Labor Depart~ent in 1972, he principle of trade-union independence from the has assiduously demonstrated his fealty to the state, the petty-bourgeois SWP entirely subor­ capitalist legal order, repeatedly demanding that dinates this to some classless conception of wildcats be stopped in accord with anti-strike "democracy". For Kramer, the Trotskyist position court injunctions. This culminated in the cur­ that the achievement of genuine workers democ­ rent contract battle, when Miller and the ma­ racy is integrally linked to the struggle for jority of the UMWA district officials literally trade-union independence is dismissed as "sec­ took their marching orders from Carter and the tarian". Labor Department. The MFD and the government In order to carry out their pOlicies, Miller Thus, Kramer attempts to ridicule this pos- and the UMWA bureaucrats have time and again ition as follows: clashed with the ranks. Does Kramer wish to deny "But not by the sectarians' logic. According the considerable evidence of the bureaucratic to their rule book, the trade union struggle suppression of democracy in the UMWA: must proceed in two distinct stages. First Redbaiting of opponents and militants. comes the fight for trade-union independence. Fonmulation of the notorious ten-point program Then, and only then, are workers allowed to designed to discipline participants in wild­ fight for democracy in their unions. cats. '" The precondition for union democracy,' ac­ Attempted suppression of one wildcat after an­ other, including dispatch of goon squads to cording to Workers Vanguard, 'is the fight for '... independence of the workers movement from the dismantle picket lines. SL/US bonner during miners' strike called capitalist state.'." Expulsion of the left press from the 1976 UMWA "hot-cargo" (block ban) scab cool. convent ion. • Ultraleft? Sectarian? Here's what Trotsky wrote Behind-closed-doors contract bargaining, both union militants who protest corruption and on this issue in "Trade Unions in the Epoch of in 1974 aIld 1977-78; attempted railroading of discrimination -- even murder -- through the Imperialist Decay": sellout deals. No provisions for elected courts pose the main threat to the indepen­ "The second slogan is: trade-union democ­ strike committees, etc. dence of the unions." racy. This second flows directly from the Protest union corruption and bureaucratism by None of this matters to Kramer and Arnold Miller. first and presupposes for its realization the appealing to the capitalist courts? In 1957 when According to them, miners can vote on contracts complete freedom of the trade unions from the the McClellan hearings were convened to investi­ and therefore there is "democracy" in the UMWA. imperialist or colonial state." (our emphasis) gate the Teamsters, the SWP fought it tooth and As for the SL, we have no intention of allowing nail. 'From the standpoint of union democracy and Thus, in addition to the SL and thousands ,of coal the union hacks and their "left" lackeys to claim miners who hate Miller, Kramer may as well add to corruption, probably few unions were worse than her list of "sectarians" Leon Trotsky. the Teamsters of Dave Beck and Jimmy Hoffa. But the still-revolutionary SWP took a clear class It is in fact not the SL but Kramer and the position: SWPwho have a stages conception of trade-union, work -- who believe that independence 'of the "Union bureaucrats of the Hoffa-Beck type who trade unions and the other key principles of the have been the initial targets of the McClellan Transitional Program can be jettisoned in favor' probe are notorious for their thievery, gang­ of the reformist slogans of liberal bureaucrats sterism, and other corrupt practices in union like Miller and Sadlowski. Kramer takes as good office. But their removal is the internal coin the claims by Arnold Miller that he insti­ business of the unions, not a matter to be tuted democracy in the UMWA. Her proof? Miners left to capitalist politicians whose aim is to have the right to ratify their contract. Of undermine the unions themselves on the pretext course, revolutionaries do defend this right, but of fighting bureaucratic corruption." (from its existence is hardly proof that union democ­ resolution of 18th National Convention of SWP, 1959) racy is flourishing. East Coast longshoremen Dunne brothers - Trotskyist leaders of 1934 Minneapolis [wharfies] in the ILA and members of the Team­ strike. SWP today maligns that militant history. And as to the Landrum-Griffin Act of 1959, the sters [truck drivers] have the right to ratify legislation utilized by all the finks today to their contracts; does Kramer believe that Teddy that Miller's pistOl-packing strong-arming thug­ sue the unions, whether it is big-timers like Gleason and Frank Fitzsimmons run democratic gery, secrecy, redbaiting and strikebreaking add Miller and Sadlowski or smaller fry like Pete unions? up to workers democracy! Camarata of Teamsters for a Democratic Union, the The absurdity of abstracting a particular sup­ The SWP goes to considerable lengths to find a SWP wrote: portable demand from the context of the class precedent for suing the unions. Accompanying "To ask the capitalist government in Washing­ struggle is shown by the miners strike itself. Kramer's article in the Militant is a box en­ ton to defend the rights and interests of The strike was, in fact, conducted in an ex­ titled "Minneapolis Teamsters and the Courts", union members is like asking a pack of raven­ tremely undemocratic fashion by the Miller lead­ which boasts that the Trotskyists made use of ing wolves to preside over the reform of a hen ership of the UMWA. Bargaining was conducted, as Minnesota governor Stassen's "slave-labor law" house. Kramer admits, behind closed doors; the ranks had against Teamster president Dan Tobin. At that "The trade unions are the most elementary form no power to choose their negotiators or to formu­ time Tobin was raiding the Minneapolis truck of working class organization with interests late strike strategy and strike demands. Event­ drivers, who had just disaffiliated from the diametrically opposed to those of the owning ually, after 100 days of a heroic battle and [conservative, craft-union based] AFL Teamsters class. The task of defending the rights and after rejecting two of Miller's sellout pro­ and affiliated with the [newly formed industrial­ safeguarding the interests of union members is posals, the miners exercised their right to union federation] CIO. The raid was part of a the primary responsibility of the unions them­ ratify -- by voting for a deal that gave up their vicious witchhunt launched by Tobin's master in selves -- both members and leaders. miners' health card and still did not include the the White House, Franklin Roosevelt, which culmi­ "This task cannot be farmed out to the rep­ right to strike. (This rotten contract, worse nated in the famous Minneapolis sedition trial of resentatives of the business interests who than the 1974 sellout which sparked three years 1941 and the imprisonment of 18 Trotskyist rule the roost in Washington. The attempt to of wildcats, was termed a "victory" by the SWP, leaders. As one could readily surmise from the do so is a blatant confession of bankruptcy inCidentally. In the UMWA this view is held by circumstances, the appeal to the courts and the and can only lead to the most dire conse­ almost nobody outside the dwindling number of government against Tobin was doomed to failure (a quences." (Militant, 17 August 1959) Miller supporters.) Why did miners vote for this fact which the MiZitant neglects to mention). contract they despised? Because they had no con­ A far cry from the SWP today, which cheers on The injunction sought against Tobin, though Labor Department-ordered union elections, fidence that their leadership could win anything incorrect and contrary to the Trotskyist program, seniority-busting affirmative action suits, etc. better, and they saw no way to replace this was a minor incident in the history of the SWP's leadership. work in the Minneapolis Teamsters. Nor was it Stri ke sol idarity As Trotsky continually emphasized, the fight the only mistake made by the party in this work; The other section of Kramer's polemic is an for workers democracy is inseparable from the Trotsky, for example, more than once criticized attack on the class-struggle policies proposed by fight to build a class-struggle leadership of the the Teamster fraction for adapting itself to the the SL for the trade unions in defense of the unions. The labor bureaucracy, which is wedded politics of the pro-Roosevelt trade-union "pro­ miners strike. In particular, Kramer takes to the maintenance of private property, must in­ gressives". But such criticisms in no way umbrage at our denunciation of the empty "soli­ evitabZy seek to stifle the militant instincts of vitiate the revolutionary core of the Minneapolis darity" rallies the SWP helped organize and un­ the rank and file. In the UMWA, the decisive Teamster organizing of the then-Trotskyist SWP. critically hailed. In reality, these rallies had issue has been the MFD's reliance on the bour- At its high point, such as the 1934 general nothing to do with genuine solidarity; their strike, Trotskyist purpose was to allow various trade-union bureau­ leaders mobilized the crats to "make the record" in support of the workers directly in the miners, while insuring that any real act of soli­ face of the vigilantes, darity would be squelched. cops and National Guard [troops]. Today"the A perfect example was a Bay Area strike sup­ degenerate, reformist port meeting held March 11. The International SWP chooses to make its Executive Board of the ILWU [wharfies] had voted points about the for a one-day coast-wide dock shutdown in opposi­ character of the capi­ tion to use of Taft-Hartley against the miners talist state not by and called on the rest of labor to join in. When pointing to such this motion was presented to the rally, SWP sup­ struggles, but by eu­ porters present not only voted against it but logizing a two-bit helped mobilize the most rabidly right-wing el­ court suit against the ements of the labor bureaucracy to defeat it, by Tobin bureaucracy. a margin of roughly 120-70 (see "For Strike Ac­ tion to Defend the Miners", Workers Vanguard no As a matter of fact, 198, 24 March). The gutless SWP, which must the SWP, before it cover up every sign of militancy, never even re­ abandoned the Trotsky­ ported the ILWU strike call in its own press. ist heritage and sank (Unfortunately, the ILWU bureaucrats refused to into reformism during implement the call.) the 1960s, fought bit­ terly against finking In contrast to such cowardice, the SL and its to the courts against supporters in the trade unions fought to have the union bureaucrats. transport workers hot-cargo [black-ban] scab Today Kramer whines of coal, called on steel workers to wage a joint strike with miners, and in the face of Taft- Arnold Miller (left), Democratic Party patron Joe Rauh (centre), f\Jrmer Miller-type the SL position: "dissid,ent" in US seamen's union, James Morrissey (right). "By this [SL] logic, Continued on page nine AUSTRALASIANSPARTACIST Se'pteinber 1978 pag~FiVe Labour boycotts vs imperialist sanctions

The past decade has seen a proliferation of therefore in a position not of carrying out social revolution in China which a successful campaigns for economic boycotts of various sorts. conquests, but of defending those which it had mass resistance would inevitably have unleashed. Reformists and liberals have urged consumers to carried out a century earlier. But Australian capital recognised that its cen­ boycott South African sardines and diamonds; However in conflicts which are not part of, or tral, long-term interest lay in opposition to multinational corporations to boycott "racist" subordinated to, inter-imperialist rivalry -- for Japan. The inter-imperialist war which was profits by divesting themselves of South African example, the struggles against Italian imperial­ looming would find Japan pitted against the shareholdings; the United Nations and various ist aggression in Ethiopia and the Japanese rape militarily weak Australian bourgeoisie's patrons" "democratic" bourgeois governments to impose "no of China, against the South African racist the crumbling British empire and the rising American one, in a struggle for domination of China and the Pacific. The small Trotskyist Workers Party (WP) re­ sponded to the invasion with agitation for class­ struggle opposition to the Japanese aggression. The international proletariat had to take its stand alongside the oppressed masses: " ... if there exists in the world a just war, it is the war of the Chinese people against its oppressors" said Trotsky in a statement issued shortly after the invasion. Centred in Sydney, the WP had originated around dissident CPA members expelled in 1932-34 who had become familiar with Trotsky's revolutionary critique of the Stalinised Comin­ tern through American seamen docking in Sydney. Uniquely within the Australian labour movement, the Trotskyists refused to succumb to the chauvinist tide ushering in the coming inter­ imperialist bloodbath or to renege on their in­ ternationalist responsibility to the Chinese workers and peasants. SS Dalfram, boycotted by Part Kembla wharfies in 1938. Following the outbreak of war in China, the WP addressed a leaflet (dated 18 October 1937) to aid, no trade" or "cut all ties" with Chile, regime or the Chilean junta -- revolutionary Sydney watersiders raising the slogans: "Defeat South Africa, Indonesia and a host of other re­ Marxists approach the question of boycotts from Japanese Imperialism -- Support the Japanese Rev­ pressive regimes. The ACTU has banned wheat to the standpoint of how the working class can ren­ olution"; "For the overthrow of Chiang Kai-shek Chile, and union bans have protested against such der effective assistance to the oppressed through -- Power to the Workers and Peasants of China"! regimes. During the 1930s, in response to the class-struggle actions. Total, indefinite trade The Trotskyists called on the wharfies to "Refuse rise of Nazism in Germany and the imperialist boycotts aimed against repressive regimes from to load Japanese ships -- Refuse to handle goods rapes of Ethiopia and China by the Italian and outside generally hurt the oppressed masses as to and from Japan -- Don't buy Japanese Goods", Japanese imperialists, similar appeals were well as the oppressors, and are at best impotent warning against the trap of class collaboration raised for consumer boycotts, trade-union bans moral protests. An indefinite, total boycott of in which the CPA was to ensnare the Port Kembla and League of Nations sanctions. South Africa, even if such a thing could be ef­ watersiders a year later: fective without imperialist support, would do Whether or not socialists support such boy­ little more than increase unemployment and lower "Independent workers action will help the cotts depends in the first instance on who is the already abysmal standard of living of the op­ workers of China and Japan, will weaken using them for what aim and with what effects. pressed black masses. Trotskyists argued against Japanese capital, and will expose the hypoc­ Most recently, there has been an anti-communist such boycotts of Nazi Germany in the 1930s. How­ risy of our capitalists' sympathy for China. outcry for a boycott of the 1980 Olympic Games in ever in the case of Ethiopia and China, total There must be no calling on capitalist govern­ Moscow, ostensibly as a means of securing "human labour boycotts of Italy and Japan were aspects ments or League of Nations for action; ... any­ rights" for Soviet dissidents, but in fact as of a policy of military support to the anti­ thing they do will be an imperialist ma­ part of an international imperialist offensive imperialist struggles being waged. noeuvre which the workers can on no account against the Soviet degenerated workers state support." which has nothing in common with the struggle for In opposition to the open-ended liberal­ genuine workers democracy in the USSR. Obviously moralist campaigns advocated by reformists like The response within the rest of the labour such a boycott would be thoroughly reactionary the fake-Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party (SWP) movement was varied. John Curtin, leader of the and unsupportable. and Communist Party (CPA), the Trotskyist parliamentary Labor opposition, opposed any form Spartacist League (SL) has argued for well­ of boycott action. So did Jack Lang, loyal to Similarly, we give no support to imperialist organised labour boycotts focused around specific Labor's traditional xenophobic isolationism, ex­ trade sanctions. Boycotts carried out by im­ events and demands: trade-union bans on military pressed most sharply in its racist "White Aust­ perialist powers, or combines of imperialist shipments to Chile and South Africa; time-limited ralia" policy. A "left" cover for this iso­ powers like the League of Nations or the United protest bans, as in the case of a series of pro­ lationist refusal to supp'ort the Chinese masses Nations, are for the sole purpose of defending test bans by wharfies in Sydney and Melbourne in their struggle against Japan was provided by imperialist interests, interests ultimately de­ last year over the South African regime's murder Dinny Lovegrove, a vice-president of the Mel­ fended through war. The working class does not of black militant Steve Biko, or the year before bourne Trades Hall Council and erstwhile se1£­ take sides in inter-imperialist conflicts, in at­ over the racist slaughter in Soweto. proclaimed "Trotskyist" (to head later into the tempts to divide and redivide the world for mar­ extreme right wing of the labour movement), who kets and exploitation, even when, as they usually From the period of the 1930s and the oppo­ argued in the ALP paper Labor Call (14 October are, carried out under humanitarian guises like sition to the Japanese colonial drive the Port 1937) that opposition to Japan meant support for "combating" fascism, "making the world safe for Kembla pig-iron boycott of 1938 stands out as an the designs of US and British imperialism. democracy" etc. The Australian bourgeoisie is no example of such independent labour action. The more "progressive" than the Indonesian; British Port Kembla boycott demonstrated that support to The "left-wing" NSW TLC condemned "the Japan­ imperialism was no more "democratic" for its col­ labour actions and calls for government sanctions ese Government for its war of aggression against onial subjects than Japanese -- the oppressed were incompatible -- one expressed the workers' the Chinese people" and voted for a boycott of millions of Africa, Malaya, India etc were clear opposition to imperialism, the other the bour­ Japanese goods on 1 October 1937, to be followed about that. Earlier on the colonialist scene geoisie's own imperialist interests. Indepen­ than Germany and Japan, British imperialism was dent workers actions -- strikes and boycotts -­ represented a greater threat to those interests than even rival imperialist aggrandisement over­ seas. On the other hand the workers could not act independently if they were mobilised on a chauvinist basis. As Trotsky said of League of Nations sanctions against the Italian invasion of Ethiopia: "Support of the League and support of workers' act ion are fire and water; they cannot be united" (Writings, 1935-36). The Japanese invasion and labour's response In July 1937, having previously usurped con­ trol of I-lanchuria, the military cabal ruling Japan launched a renewed invasion aimed at conquering all of China as a desperately needed colony for Japanese imperialist ambitions. The Jim Healy, United Australia Party government of Prime Nin­ leading ister Lyons maintained an official neutrality -­ Stalinist the Australian bourgeoisie had no desire to pro­ and WWF voke Japan. Initially there was also some sym­ federal pathy, as expressed by the conservative Sydney secretary. Morning Herald, for the Japanese military junta's Stalinist Workers Weekly (24 January 1939) labelled sellout struggle against the "Communists" -- a desire to of boycott a "victory". see Japanese militarism crush the threat of Page Six AUSTRALASIAN SPARTACIST September 1978 n boycott of 1938

a month 1 ater by the ACTU (Derek McDougall, "The 1937) Trotsky noted that the chauvinist hysteria incorrect (for example as a secondary support Australian Labour Movement and the Sino-Japanese focused on the threat of Japanese subjugation tactic in a strike) the call for consumer boy­ War, 1937-1939", Labour History no 33, November could not be combated by simply discounting it: cotts in this case could only blur the crucial 1977). But the "left" bureaucrats' calls for distinction between independent labour action and labour boycotts were meant only for the minutes, "Naturally no Australian worker or farmer wishes to be conquered and subjected to Japan. bourgeois moralism. and their apparent "anti-imperialism" was in fact In the upshot, the Sydney wharfies placed a support to British and US imperialism (they had, For a revolutionary party it would be suicidal to simply say we are 'indifferent' to this standing ban on "war materials" for "aggressor of course, never felt the need to utter even a nations" (which included Germany). A threatened word of solidarity against British imperialist question. But we cannot give to a bourgeois and essentially imperialist government the showdown with the Lyons government over the ban domination of China). The ACTU executive wel­ was averted only through an eleventh-hour capitu­ comed "the condemnation of Japan" by that imperi­ task of defending the independence of Australia." (Writings, 1936-37) lation by Healy and company, who talked the men alist den of thieves, the League of Nations, and into lifting it before Lyons' 25 May deadline. the NSW TLC "Hands Off China Commi ttee" urged Leninists are opposed to the national subjugation that "Britain should stand with the United States of any people. But the Australian workers had no The Port Kembla boycott in protesting against the aggression of Japanese stake in "national defence" so long as it meant Then, on 15 November, Port Kembla watersiders imperialism". Both called for government trade the defence of Australian imperialist interests, blacked a shipment of pig iron bound for Japan sanctions. the defence of their own exploitation. The real aboard the freighter Dalfram. For nine weeks the allies of the Australian workers in opposing The CPA, too, "opposed" Japanese imperialism Dalfram sat idle, waiting for its load of pig Japanese imperialism were not their own slave­ by supporting its equally murderous rivals. This iron. For nine weeks, as the bourgeois press masters, as the Stalinists and left reformists was the period of the "people's front" in the railed that "Communists" were behind the strike argued, but the Japanese workers themselves. Comintern, a policy dictated by the diplomatic in order to stir up trouble, the ranks held their manoeuvres of the bureaucracy in the USSR. In Whereas the Trotskyists appealed to the ground. Chiang Kai-shek sent them a telegram of response to the rise of German fascism and Japan­ workers' internationalist sentiments in soli­ gratitude. And Robert Menzies, then attorney­ ese militarism, the Stalin bureaucracy sought to darity with the Chinese toilers, the Stalinists general under Lyons, earned the nickname he would "defend" the workers state through deals with the appealed to their chauvinist sentiments in fear take to his grave for his attempts to smash the "democratic" imperialists, at the expense of the of the "yellow hordes". The former led to class­ strike -- "Pig-iron Bob". proletarian revolution. The Stalinist parties struggle opposition to imperialism, the latter to Despite the depression conditions, the mid- were interested not in independent class action "national unity" with the imperialist exploiters. 1930s had seen a resurgence of labour militancy in defence of the SQviet Union and the colonial That was the CPA's aim: in the Port Kembla/Wollongong area, reflected in "The Lyons government must be forc'ed to pre­ the election of CPA supporters to union office vent the shipment of war materials to Japan. not only in the Port Kembla branch of the WWF but Japanese fascism menaces Australia. To send also in the Federated Ironworkers Association, such cargoes is a betrayal of Australia's se­ whose members worked in the BHP steel works which curity. It is open treachery to the dominated the town. The principal leader of the Australian people." (Workers Weekly, 21 Dalfrum boycott was CPA member Ted Roach, elected January 1938) secretary of the Port Kembla WWF only the pre­ vious year. Lyons was loyal to his class, to his "people". It was the CPA which was treacherous -- to the Public support for the strike was consider­ working class, the class it claimed to represent. able. Large numbers of unemployed provided a The bourgeoisie certainly recognised that patri­ pool of potential scabs in depression-ridden otism and class struggle were counterposed. As Port Kembla. Yet when the government invoked the the Sydney Morning Herald (25 Hay 1938) observed: licensing provisions of the Transport Workers Act strikes "might cause serious retardation of the -- the "Dog Collar Act" (so named because of the defence programme, and ... should be, according licenses it prescribed, worn around the necks of to the patriotic expressions of the wharf­ scabs) -- there were no takers. When the hated labourers, the very last thing they would de­ Menzies visited Wollongong on 12 January 1939 he ...... sire". was met by 3000 demonstrating workers; a group of women tried to storm the entrance to his hotel; . Boycotts of "war materials" and miners at 9 out of 10 mines in the district The Port Kembla action was only the last of a stopped work in solidarity with the wharfies. series of largely spontaneous rank-and-file labour boycotts of Japanese commerce expressly in "Tell us what the Port Kembla men say" .-,- I" solidarity with China, and often against the Yet the strike was not spread. Other unions wishes of the union officials. On 12 October were allowed to work the wharves throughout the ' " -.~-'---,;-'- - .- ~ 1937, members of the Fremantle Lumpers Union re­ struggle (so long as they didn't "work with ~ '-.:.-. .~ , fused to load coal onto a Japanese whaling ship; scabs") . Pickets were set up only after manage­ ) ----.. ____~l..~ -- then Geelong wharfies stopped work to protest ment scabs loaded the Dalfram with coal in early " '-' .. against the loading of Japanese wheat. On 19 January. The steel workers -- who were not even artoon trom Workers Weekly (18 January "1938): anti­ January the movement spread to Sydney, as a load leafletted until three weeks into the strike -­ Japanese racism in the service of the "people's front". of 500 tons of lead for the Melbourne Maru was were never called out in solidarity. Instead BHP blacked, followed a week later by a ban on scrap was allowed to lock out 4000 workers on 17 peoples, but in pressuring the "progressive" (ie iron bound aboard the Atsuta Maru. December, justifying it as a "stand-down" caused anti-Japanese, anti-German) sectors of the bour­ The ban was broadened to include tin clippings by the pile-up of pig iron. Rank-and-file mili­ geoisie into "anti-fascist" alliances. By dint tants demanded a general strike of miners and in­ of their influence in the Waterside Workers Fed­ when the men on the job decided these had mili­ tary application. Wool was loaded onto the Mel­ dustrial workers at Port Kembla, but the CPA eration (WWF) -- Jim Healy, IVWF federal sec­ leadership was adamant that the strike be con- retary, was a CPA member -- the Australian bourne Haru, on the other hand, on the grounds Stalinists were active in the militant boycotts that it "might be used for the civilian popu­ Continued on page ten opposing the Japanese invasion, but only for the lation of Japan" purpose of transforming them into pressure on (Workers Weekly, 21 Lyons for government sanctions. January 1938). Ad­ mirably, the wharfies Against imperialism or against the "yellow peril"? wanted only to stop Japanese militarism, Solidarity with China and fear of Japan were not infl ict hardshi1J on inextricably mixed sentiments within the working the civilian PO)U­ class. There was genuine indignation at the lation, but in nlOciern atrocities inflicted by the invading Japanese war, it is hard to clral'i militarists on the Chinese population, and boy­ the line between "civ­ cott action was welcomed by the Chinese masses. ilian" and "war ma­ At the same time, Australians had been brought up terials": wool could to see the Japanese people as a whole as the most after all be used for dangerous embodiment of the "yellow peril", and uniforms. The Trotsky­ fear that Australian pig iron exported to Japan ists correctly called would "come back as bullets" was strong. for "the extension of Fear of Japan was not without foundation. In independent workers ac­ denouncing the Stalinists' social-patriotic ap­ tion against Japan to peals to the Australian "defence effort" and include refusal to anti-Japanese racism, the Workers Party went handle ALL cOR~odities \938 ...... overboard, denying the threat of Japanese in­ to and from Japan" vasion of Australia altogether as "highly improb­ (Militant, 7 February PIG"IRON able" (Militant, 7 February 1938). However, as 1938). However the WP Trotsky pointed out in an interview with Sydney's was incorrect in SWlday Swz (17 August 1937), "it is imperative extending the boycott 157 """- for Japan to find a point of support in Aust­ call to include a gen­ rali~' because of its strategic military location eral consumer boycott ., " and natural resources, among other things. In a of Japanese goods. letter to the Workers Party (dated 23 December Though not in principle Pacifist, chauvinist anti-uranium movement distorts militant tradition of 1938 boycott, AUSTRALASIAN SPARTACIST September 1978 Page Seven the white-supremacist butchers in Salisbury and front men is a colonialist hoax in which the Rhodesia. desire a quick military victory for the forces of white population (four percent and shrinking • • the Patriotic Front. No Negotiations! Military fast) would hold effective veto power over the Continued from pale one Victory to ZANU and ZAPU! parliament by their control, directly or by nomi­ nation, over 28 of 100 seats. Moreover the army did not prevent the three black quislings from In the meantime Smith has attempted to curry favour with British Tories and US right-wingers and the police force -- the real basis of state defending the invasion authored by the all-white power -- as well as the upper ranks of the civil Rhodesian War Council. Chirau, a long-time toady sympathetic to "plucky little Rhodesia". The government has sent Sithole and Muzorewa on service would continue to be dominated by whites for Smith, simply repeated the statements of the for an indefinite period. white generals. Muzorewa, in London trying to propaganda tours of the US and Britain and sell the British on the "transitional govern­ churned out endless atrocity stories about the The fraudulence of the "internal settlement" ment", maintained a tactful silence. Si thole guerrillas. These tales make good racist copy as even a partiaZ realisation of the democratic openly defended the assault, claiming that, "We for the tabloid press but sophisticated Western aspirations of the black masses of Rhodesia was have started a democratic process, but there are leaders have been giving them an increasingly highlighted by the Smith regime's "anti­ forces outside this country that would like to skeptical hearing. Jimmy Carter's own black discrimination" ruling in August, fully six disrupt that democratic process, so that some­ front man, US ambassador to the UN, Andy Young, months after the "transitional government" was times we have to do things that we don't like to for example, in his notorious "thousands of US set up. Though Muzorewa pronounced himself do normally. As to whether such things are good political prisoners" interview charged the Smith "very, very pleased. • •• One of the greatest or bad", he continued, "that is not the point" regime with blaming the guerrillas for its own things that has happened to our country .•. " (New York Times, 3 August). No doubt the police massacres. (Sydney Morning HeraZd, 9 August), the ruling slaughter of four striking black mine workers While the just hatred of the black masses for did little more than "abolish" discrimination in public places (eg restaurants, hotels) which were already effectively open to blacks but did not touch segregation in schools, hospitals and resi­ dential areas. Yet this is the perspective -- in practice -­ of the ostensibly Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party (SWP) , not only for Rhodesia, but more im­ portantly for South Africa, with its potentially powerful black proletariat. Less than a year before the "internal settlement", the SWP's US co-thinkers denounced our comrades for the crime of characterising the US SWP's central slogan for South Africa -- "black majority rule now" -- as "inadequate" (US MiUtant, 15 April 1977). The SL's call to "smash apartheid" was labelled !l!' "bizarre" by the US SWP (quoted in Young Spartacus no 51, February 1977). ":' I. Even the SWP was compelled to denounce the "internal settlement" as a "victory for whites",

", """"", 1 only in the next breath to admit that "the white

> %- regime has been compelled to concede Black ma­ jority rule by the struggles of the Zimbabwean ~Salisbury, 1977 (from left): Muzorewa, Smith, Chirau and Sithale signing "internal settlement". masses" (Direct Action, 16 March). Even in the during a 15 August strikers' demonstration is the bloody-handed white colonialists leads nat­ SWP's terms "black majority rule" was inadequate something this aspiring black bourgeois would urally to attacks on the missionaries who ac­ -- "a victory for whites". But that did not stop more "normally l:i,ke to do". company the imperialists to Africa, there is them from continuing to insist on "majority rule" evidence that Rhodesian claims of guerrilla mass­ for South Africa, as opposed to the more precise, The point, as Sithole well knows, is that acres of missionaries and black villagers are radical-democratic demand for a constituent as­ neither he nor the other two black leaders have indeed cover stories for the atrocities of the sembly raised by the SL. Because for the SWP, any control over the all-white army officer corps regime's black troops. Sister Janice McLaughlin, intent on tailing petty-bourgeois nationalists or government bureaucracy anyway. The job these a Maryknoll nun expelled from Rhodesia by the and liberal imperialists like Young, the revol­ sellouts took when they joined the government was Smith government, pointed out in the August issue utionary mobilisation of the black proletarians simply to provide a phoney black cover for a of Seven Days the inconsistency in the govern­ of South Africa needed to achieve such democratic regime in which the white settlers would continue ment's charge that Catholic and evangelical demands is also ... "bi zarre". to call the shots. The case of Byron Hove stands missionaries suffering government repression for as an example of what happens when Smith's water­ Trotskyists have no illusions about the aiding the guerrillas are the victims of mass­ "socialist" and "Marxist" pretensions of the boys step out of line. Hove, the black Minister acres by those same guerrillas. McLaughlin re­ of Justice and a close associate of Muzorewa, was petty-bourgeois nationalist leadership of the ported that pro-government clergy in the Dutch Patriotic Front, who are qualitatively no differ­ sacked on 28 April for criticising racial dis­ Reformed Church are apparently immune from at­ crimination in the police and judiciary. ent than the now-exposed lackeys of white su­ tack. She quoted the remarks of a French mer­ premacism -- Muzorewa, Sithole and Chirau. All Muzorewa, who as an Executive Council member sup­ cenary who exposed the Smith government's game posedly had a veto over the decision, was not are aspirant leaders of a new black ruling class. when he stated in an interview with a Paris When these fakers are in power they will be un­ even consulted. But after blustering for three weekly that, "I have been told that in some oper­ weeks and threatening to resign, the bishop found able to blame the white colonialists for the ex­ ations there were Selous Scouts [a secret ploitation of the black masses. Joshua Nkomo is that he had no alternative but to accept Hove's counter-insurgency unit] who disguised themselves dismissal. To resign would have left him out in a notoriously opportunist politician. In the as Mozambican soldiers or guerrillas to attack early 1960s he pledged his loyalty to the British the cold without the backing of the guerrillas or the villagers and travelers or kill mission­ the government. Crown and supported the 1961 Rhodesian consti­ aries". tution, which was more white supremacist than Rhodesia on the ropes "Majority rule" - a reformist/imperialist hoax Smith's "internal settlement". Today Nkomo jet­ The white settlers brought the three black sets around the world courtesy of "Tiny" Rowland, The white settler regime in Rhodesia is a bar­ the Rhodesian founder of Lonrho, Africa's largest puppets into the government as a desperate at­ baric anachronism. Although detached from multinational firm. tempt to forestall the construction of a black­ Britain by the 1965 "Unilateral Declaration of ruled Zimbabwe over the dead body of colonialist Independence", Rhodesia remains a relic of the Robert Mugabe of ZANU is a practising Cath­ Rhodesia. But the attempt is not working. British colonial empire. The "majority rule" olic whose "Marxist" rhetoric is the standard ~~zorewa, Chirau and Sithole, despite the lat­ advocated by Smith and endorsed by his black cover for bourgeois nationalism in backward ter's claim to the allegiance of substantial numbers of ZANU guerrillas, have failed to at­ tract Patriotic Front fighters to respect a "cease-fire" or join the government side in a war Forward to the rebirth of the which has greatly intensified since the 3 March settlement. Emissaries sent by Muzorewa and Sithole to contact the guerrillas have been Fourth International! killed by them instead. The road to the rebi rth of Rhodesian forces have been unable to contain Trotsky's Fourth Inter­ the growth of the guerrilla insurgency, and national - founded 40 years government casualties have incresed to a rate ago this month, destroyed three times higher than the 1977 levels. Land­ mines and ambushes have made rural roads and even from within 15 years later by major highways wlsafe for travel by whites, dnd Pabloist revisionism - lies the government's loss of control over substantial over the pol iti cal corpses of areas of the country has compelled some white today's Pabloists who falsely farmers to make their own deals with the guer­ claim its banner. rillas, turning a blind eye to their activities "The Fourth International, in exchange for immunity from harassment and at­ tack. already today, is deservedly hated by the Stalinists, White Rhodesia is visibly shrinking and, un­ Social Democrats, bourgeois like South Africa where the population is 20 per­ liberals and fascists. There cent white with roots that go back centuries, the is not and there cannot be a settlers are simply too few to make an effective place for it in any of the last stand. Two thirds of the whites hold People's Fronts. It uncom­ British or South African passports and thus have one foot out of the country already. promisingly gives battle to all political groupings tied to Unable to suppress the guerrillas militarily the apron-strings of the bour­ or to entice Nkomo to throw his weight behind the geoisie. Its task - the abol­ "The struggle for the rebirth of the Fourth International promises to be difficult, long, "internal settlement" (despite the recent legal­ ition of capitalism's domi­ and, above all, uneven. But it is an indispensable and central task facing those who isation of ZAPU inside Rhodesia), the Smith nation. Its aim - socialism. would win proletarian power and thus open the road to the achievement of socialism for regime recently indicated its acceptance of a US­ Its method - the proletarian British scheme for an "all-party conference" in­ humanity. " revol uti on .... " cluding the Patriot ic Front. (Nkomo, the week earlier, had already announced his willingness to Leon Trotsky, "The Tran­ "Declaration for the Organizing of on International Trotskyist Tendency", international take part in such a conference.) Revolutionary si tiona I Program", 1938 Spartacist tendency, 6 July 1974 Marxists reject any political accommodation with Page Eight AUSTRALASIAN SPARTACIST September 1978 countries. His long-standing split with Nkomo's meeting. In both instances they were ruled "out perhaps a selection from the "New Tsars"? No-­ ZAPU is based not on programmatic differences but of order", in the second case by District 31 head it is a collection of writings by Leon Trotsky. on personal rivalry and above all tribal enmity_ Balanoff, Sadlowski's handpicked successor. The Significantly, during the MIS forum on the Soviet While ZAPU is based among the minority Ndebele story was covered in the bourgeois press, but the Union, Langer offered as his example of "teaching tribe, ZANU draws it support from among the SWP, which supports the Balanoff/Sadlowski lead­ by negative example" the SL pamphlet, Why the Shona-speaking majority. Even now there are ership of District 31, and whose trade-union sup­ USSR is not capitalist. Yes, for Stalinists pro­ widespread reports that Nkomo's men are clashing porters routinely cross such picket lines, has letarian internationalism is the "enemy" and with the ZANU guerrillas as the latter extend said not a word about it in the Militant. Trotsky and the Spartacist League are "negative their base into Ndebeleland. The defeat of the examples" _ While Langer may well enj oy being a An even more dramatic instance grew out of the Smith government would undoubtedly be followed by "part-time strategic analyst" for US imperialism pressmen's strike at the Washington Post, which the kind of intra-nationalist and tribalist there may still be supporters of the MIS seeking began in October 1975 and lasted for well over a bloodletting common throughout black Africa. The the reVOlutionary road. For them there is no end result would be the victory, as in Angola and year. As a result of extensive scabbing, in­ alternative but to begin a serious study of our itially by members of the Newspaper Guild, the Mozambique, of a vicously anti-working-class "negative example" .• regime, enslaved by imperialist domination. strike and the pressmen's union were broken. In the midst of the strike there was an election in What was true at the time of the "internal Washington-Baltimore Local 35 of the Guild. The settlement" stands as a powerfully prophetic SWP publicly supported Tom Grubisich for presi­ warning today on the eve of a guerrilla victory: dent. Grubisich, who advocated leniency toward "Confining the struggle within the narrow scabs, was narrowly elected over the incumbent Gay rights. • • framework of bourgeois nationalism will also Warren Howard, who at the time advocated disci­ mean the continued subjugation of the black plinary action against scabs. Having been put Continued from page twelve into office by scabs, Grubisich subsequently masses to poverty and wage slavery. On the police" and "demand[ing] that all charges against morrow of victory, the Nkomos and Mugabes -­ crossed the picket lines himself. He later ran for convention delegate on a program of bringing the 104 arrested be dropped [and] ... full demo­ aspiring exploiters one and all -- will prove cratic rights for homosexuals". as implacable class enemies of the African no charges against the Post scabs (see the 2 July workers and peasants as the white settlers. 1976 Militant). SWP trade-union leader Frank A protest picket'was organised outside the Only through the establishment of a Zimbabwe Lovell praised the Grubisich campaign as a model court hearings on the Monday morning, 28 August. workers and peasants government in the frame­ one, and the SWP gave the scab candidate "full" At a meeting of over eighty people that night, work of a socialist federation of southern support. ' attended by supporters of the SL, SWP, Inter­ Africa, will industry and agriculture be put national Socialists (IS) and Communist Party Of course, to the SWP respect for a picket (CPA), a united-front "Drop the Charges Com­ in the service of the oppressed. This re­ line as well as hatred for the sellout policies quires the construction of a Trotskyist party mittee" was organised. Such a genuine united­ of Arnold Miller and other trade-union bureau­ front committee, open to gay, women's and labour and concrete links with the massive and com­ crats is "sectarian" and alien to its brand of bative black proletariat of South Africa." organisations and all supporters of democratic "socialism". Fine. We are more than happy our­ rights on a non-sectarian basis is a crucial pre­ ("Imperialist 'Majority Rule' Hoax in Rho­ selves to publicize these treacherous positions desia", Workers Vanguard no 195, 3 March 1978) condition for an effective defence campaign and, of the SWP. But militant miners and other class­ if successful in its appeals to the organised (adapted from Workers Vanguard no 213, 11 August 1978) conscious workers should know that there is one labour movement, as a prelude to a far broader party in America that is not a scab party. It is campaign around the question of democratic rights a party that stands four-square for the Marxist for gays in general. Unfortunately, for its own program of working-class independence from the sectarian motives -- ie to protect the territory capitalist state, for the Trotskyist Transitional of its "own" "Anti-Festival of Light Committee", SWP ••• Program. This is the party that told the truth designed to organise a protest against the up­ about the Arnold Millers, Sadlowskis and their Continued from page five coming visit of British reactionary Mary White­ likes from the word go, and provided a fight ing house -- the SWP rejected the SL-proposed demand program for victory at every step during the that "Full democratic rights to lesbians and male Hartley demanded protest strikes. Workers great 1977-78 coal strike. That party is the homosexu

AUSTRALASIAN SP.ARTACIST September 1978 Page Eleven SPARtACIST Tile logic of reformism - CPA, SRC leaders scab at

Sydney University II _.Ai -

On 14 July, three weeks before the Student of the pro-CPA campus Communist Group (CG), that Representative Council (SRC) elections at Sydney if any work were done in the office during the University, the two secretaries who staff the SRC strike they would consider it, correctly, scab­ office staged a three-hour strike around the de­ bing. When the secretaries returned to their of­ mand for job permanency, a-vital necessity given fice, they found the shutters unlocked and the the fickle political winds which blow through the phone off night switch. Nicholls and Ramjan -­ SRC. They warned SRC president Barbara Ramjan "socialists" -- had scabbed! and acting honorary secretary/treasurer Gary Nicholls, a Communist Party (CPA) member and guru Nicholls and Ramjan are perhaps the two most prominent figures in the Broad Left, the "pro­ gressiv~' coalition in the elections supported by the Socialist Youth Alliance (SYA) , the CG, the International Socialists (IS), the Labor Club, the "Marxis t-feminis ts" etc. The Broad Left knew these two had scabbed; yet for two weeks this The Broad Left was thrown into panic and dis­ information was delib­ array, and the campus polarised on the scabbing erate:y suppressed. issue. On the afternoon of 31 July the Broad SYAer Liam Gash re­ Left held an "emergency meeting". This time even portedly had put a a censure motion was knocked back. Disgusted, ~ motion that the two be four independent members walked out in protest -­ - expelled from the Broad though not Gash, who reconciled himself quickly Left, but the motion was to covering for the scabs. But only one, Bill tabled -- so as not to Hammond, took the necessary principled step and upset the slate's split from the Broad Left. Within several days electoral chancesl The a statement condemning the scabbery circulated facts might never have by the Spartacist Club had gathered 67 signa­ come to light had not tures, including four Broad Left members. Among the Spartacist Club the many campus workers who signed it, one plum­ learned of the incident ber told our comrades: "I hope you do the same and brought it immedi­ for us when we have a strike". ately to the attention Though two off-campus ISers signed the anti­ · . d b 1917 NSW I'k of students staff and scab statement, IS student Hick Segretto stayed ______Sy dney Grammar an d Sy dney Unlverslty stu ents sea on genera stn e. campus wor k'ers. Continued on page ten Defend gay rigllts protestors - No more sectarian games Wran stages new mass arrests

For the fourth time in less than two number of ;:>rotestors arrested that day months, the NS\l Labor government of to 104! In that dragnet they al so ar­ premier Neville Wran has staged a mass·· rested three Right-to-Lifers as a face­ ive crackdown on supporters of homo­ saving show of "ir.qart ial it y" . So sexual rights, rivalling only the brutal were these t:1UgS in manhandling openly reactionary government of their victims that even Fairfax's Queensland premier Joh 13jelke-Petersen Sydney Morning Herald was compelled to for its flagrant disdain for eler,wntary register a protest at the cops' treat­ der.lOcratic rights. On 27 August police ment of one of their photographers who surrounded and broke up a march by was mistaken for a demonstrator. In­ some 300 participants at the Fourth cluded among the arrested were two sup­ Hational 1I0mosexual Conference in porters of the Spartacist League (SL) Sydney's Paddington Town Ilall. As the and six Socialist Workers Party (SWP) marchers were proceeding peacefully supporters. from Paddington to Hyde Park in order This brings the number of gay-rights to protest against a rally by the re­ protestors arrested by l'lran' s cops in actionary Right to Life organisation, the last two months to a total of l78! the cops moved in, ordering them to All the charges against all the 178 disperse on the grounds that they were must be dropped! The labour movement an "unlawful procession" and started to bears a serious responsibility and duty drag them off. in particular to mobiljse its unique The police attack was a deliberate social power to defend those arrested trap! The marchers were given exactly and demand an end to these incessant seven seconds to disperse from the time attacks. Trade unionists and members the cops gave the second order to dis­ of the ALP should condemn and repudiate perse. They had in fact already begun Wran's actions, as have at least tlvO leaving as the police surrounded them ALP branches in Sydney. At its 4 and began their indiscriminate round­ August meeting the Surry Hills up. When a smaller group of marchers branch passed a resolution "con­ made it to Hyde Park, the cops staged demn[ing] the arrests staged by Wran's another 17laSS arrest, bringing the total Continued on page nine Page Twelve AUSTRALASIAN SPARTACIST September 1978