Issue No. 101, April, 1983
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--- Number 101 April 1983 30 cents Defend Vietnam/USSR! US Bases Out! o , I r SpiraHingmass tinemployment and the elections were over, Hawke a plummeting economy routed. the shelved Labor policy to resume LiberaT/Nationlil Party cOalition 'of economic aid 'fb "ViefiiUh,~once'agath Malcolm Fraser in last mOnth's federal promising to "consult" fully with the election. Fraser's anti-red, anti-union US and ASEAN before taking precipi scare campaign about Labor's "social tous action. Then there is Labor's ist manifesto" hardly corresponded to opposition, to Indonesia's bloody Bob Hawke's program for "national annexation of East Timor, demanding reconciliation" backed up by an ALP an end to military aid to Australia's ACfU accord which promised to con main ASEAN ally, which the new tinue Fraser's wage freeze. And while Prime Minister denounced as "an the elections were chiefly fought embarrassment" . Meanwhile, joint around domestic questions, centrally Australian-Indonesian naval exercises the state of the economy, Hawke continue. There can be 110 question: wasted no time ,in adjusting Labor Hawke's Labor government, no less policy to the. dictates of the American than the despised Fraser government, alliance and Cold War anti-Sovietism. will be a government of capitalist Even before the election Hawke austerity and Cold War. squashed long-standing Labor policy The Labor Party offered not even to withdraw Australian troops from the minimal reforms to its working class US-led "peacekeeping" force in the base, but a "solution" of chauvinist Sinai which acted as border guards for protectionism, wage cuts and con Israel's genocidal invasion of Lebanon. tinued mass unemployment coupled A Begin fan from way back, Hawke with bipartisan support to Reagan's Top: The CIA's top-secret Pine Gap spy station, crucial for the US and Its promised to "consult" with the Zionist anti-Soviet war preparations. To Australian partner's anti-Soviet war alms. Defence of Vietnam, USSR butchers and, no doubt, the US envoys Washington they pledged loyalty to begins In Pine Gap, Diego Garcia and Trlncomalee. Bottom: North Viet who armtwisted Fraser into sending ANZUS and no interference with the namese Army troops following the liberation of Saigon In 1975. Vietnam the troops in the first place. As soon as continued on page two was a victory: two, three, many defeats for Imperialism! Free Gallagher! Defend the BlF! Labor Kniles BLF lor Social Contract One week after Fraser called his ill the main reason for the court changing ing class action which challenges the a favorite issue for back-stabbing fated snap election the High Court re their mind", said Gallagher, simply bosses' courts and laws. Gallagher is craftist bureaucrats. Then Labor fused Norm Gallagher, the Maoist stating the obvious truth that bour still in jail under Labor. The more than Premier Cain sent his cops against general ,secretary of the Builders geois "justice" merely reflects the re-· one-year-Iong ruling class campaign to BLF pickets at scissor-lift hire com Labourers Federation (BLF), his right lationship of class forces. break the BLF is being continued by panies (the demarcation dispute they to appeal a three-month jail sentence The jailing of Gallagher is an attack Labor as a public demonstration of its were expelled for). Over 80 picketers for "contempt of court". A day later on the entire working class. It should intention to subordinate the unions to were arrested, forcibly photographed, Gallagher was behind bars in Mel have been, and still.must be, met by a the capitalist state, with the complicity finger-.printed and refused bail unless bourne's Pentridge jail. His "crime" mobilisation of working class power. ofthe entire trade union bureaucracy. an undertaking was given not to return was the statement that BLF walkouts Th~ imprisonment of the BLF leader Two days after Gallagher was locked to the picket line. Next the em had reversed an earlier jail sentence for "contempt of court" is undisguised up, the Victorian Trades Hall Council, boldened building industry bosses for contempt. "I believe that by their union-busting, and sets a dangerous with full support from the CPA/ALP announced that BLF members en actions in' demonstrating, in walking precedent for state repression against "lefts", expelled the BLF, ostensibly gaged in a campaign for a 36-hour off jobs ... I believe that that has been anyone advocating any form of work- over a demarcation dispute - always continued on page two Registered by Australia Post - Publication no NBF0710 The fight for independence from the topped the ballot - considerably less Just compare the 1980s "peace BLF ... capitalist state and to smash its than the CPA, SLL and Socialist movement" to the movement against Arbitr&tion system, for industrial Party (SPA) where they competed.) the Vietnam war. To be sure, the continued from page one unionism to break through divisive Only the pro-Moscow SPA was more heterogenous mass of the Vietnam week and $40 pay rise would be stood craft lines - these questions will be subdued, no less capitulatory to the anti-war movement never broke from down, to be applauded by ACTU head crucial to forging the necessary necessities of "restraint", but fully the bourgeois defeatism and "little Cliff Dolan, who roundly denounced alternative leadership that can in aware that a Hawke-led Labor govern Australia" nationalism of Whitlam's the BLF for "breaching" the ALP deed transform th'e trade unions, in ment will be strongly pro-Reagan. Labor Party. But today we have a Trotsky's words, into "the instru "peace movement" which fails even to ACTU "prices and incomes" accord. Drive Out US CIAI Military It could hardly be clearer that even the ments of the revolutionary move oppose US imperialism in those areas most elementary defence of the trade ment of the proletariat" . Free Bases! where the Cold War rages hottest - unions· requires a hard struggle Gallagher! Defend the BLF! Down Labor's triumphant return to the especially where Australian imperi against the Labor traitors who pres with Labor's wage freeze! Break the Canberra treasury benches was pre alism is involved as in the Near East, ently "lead" the working class. ALP-ACTU stranglehold! For a class pared by continued disavowel over the where the Sinai force represents the last seven years of the 1972-75 first concrete example of US When Gallagher was jailed Hawke struggle workers party to fight for a workers government! Whitlam Labor government. The Australian military collaboration said, "The law has run its course", Whitlam government left a legacy of involving troops since Vietnam. and then refused to withdraw the resentment and deep distrust of Labor Labor government as a co-respondent Most telling, the recent demon in Washington. Whitlam was an im strations on March 27 (Palm Sunday) in the Federal Court's deregistration Labor ... perialist politician par excellence, but proceedings against the union. By in Melbourne and Sydney quite continued from page one from the outset of his government the consciously refused to take a stand knifing the BLF the high priests of links of the Labor lefts, particularly Labor officialdom hope to seal their us military and CIA bases in Aus against US bases in Australia, instead tralia, and likewise promised the anti-Vietnam Moratorium leader and raising the slogan, "US bases make sacred "social contract". The ALP deputy PM Jim Cairns, to Stalinist or ACTU "prices and incomes" accord is Australian ruling class that ALP Australia a nuclear target" and calling populist-nationalism and its links to CPA-influenced trade unions was seen for "Disarmament East and West". a program for suppressing union as highly dubious by the Nixon admin militancy in the context of the worst the trade union bureaucracy could And who are the "Peace Chiefs'" more effectively serve to implement istration, its CIA spooks and their in 1983? None other than Bob Hawke's depression since the 30s and intense Australian ASIO apprentices. The imperialist preparations for anti-Soviet the "sacrifices" necessary to revive ruling Labor Party, which while not profits and exports. And what they mount4in of evidence confirming CIA openly endorsing the demonstrations, war, codifying and deepening the involvement in the ouster of Whitlam already existing ties, principally via promised they intend to deliver. assured their political character. In In these elections the Spartacist in the 1975 constitutional "coup" is Melbourne the march was led by a the ALP, between the trade union tops still growing. But it was Whitlam's and the capitalist state. For the new League refused to call for a vote to donkey, Labor Premier Cain and Labor (see Australasian Spartacist, meddling with CIA operations at the ACTU head Cliff Dolan, who made PM as with the last, it's "free trade super-secret Pine Gap base at Alice unions" in Poland and union-busting no 100, February/March 1983). With clear his support for the ANZUS a soli4 ALP-ACTU stranglehold on Springs that finally brought down the alliance and US bases just prior to the at home. axe. Only now, the election over, are union militancy and Labor running on demo in an interview printed in the the BLF tops organising even the an openly pro-imperialist and anti Above all it was Bob Hawke, then Age. In Sydney the "peace festival" mildest protest, appealing· only to working class program, even the most ACTU President, who along with began with a church service in Hyde "freedom of speech" in the hope of critical electoral support could only Whitlam was centrally responsible for Park where thousands of ecologically "uniting" with their Laborite witch have been an endorsement of defeatist derailing the militant, spontaneous minded citizens littered the area with hunters.