NUMBER ~5~ JULY 197~ TWENTY CENTS
~ '- Imperialists welcome China's sabre-rattling Carter' sholy crusade . against Russia
In the backwash of the fighting in the Shaba (formerly Katanga) province of Zaire, the already , threadbare fabric of "detente" is ripping apart as leading spokesmen for American imperialism hurl a rapid-fire series of bellicose threats at the Kremlin. As US president Jimmy Carter ranted about the "Red threat" in Africa, NATO chiefs met to approve an $80 billion plan to bolster their war forces. InParis, the leading Western powers plotted the establishm~nt of a bought and paid for "All-Africa" mercenary army to guarantee their African property holdings. In New York, US negotiators spurned a strategic arms limitations (SALT) proposal advanced by the Soviet Union in favour of the unimpeded pursuit of nuclear first strike capacity. In a typical speech- Carter railed, "The Soviet Union attempts to export a totalitarian and re pressive form of government", comparing it with ~,_'~JJ,L4.~mQ_gratic'Y.ay'of life_ [which] w§lrEaTlt!>~j})$ admiration and emul ation bY"otber 'Pel)pIe' -t'hrough~ -1~:~.. out the world" (as in Vietnam!) before laying .-, );;. down imperialism's terms: "The Soviet Union must . . choose either confrontation or cooperation" (New , Cuba'in Zairean ca,pital Kinshasa (left); Corter's cold warrior Brzezinski in China. York Times, 8 June). This is what Carter's vaunted "human rights" campaign is all about: "democratic" US imperialism, responsible for the genocidal rape of Indochina and implicated in virtually every reactionary coup since World \Var II, threatens "totalitarian" Russia with military Pelcing raises outcry tis annihilation. While much of the left has simply appealed to the imperialist butchers for a more "even-handed" approach -- an occasional slap on the wrist of particularly despotic allies like the Shah of Iran -- the Spartacist tendency has unflinchingly exposed and opposed this supremely Vietnam expropriates vulgar attempt to refurbish the tarnished image of the American bourgeois state with the ultimate aim of preparing a military assault on the socialist foundations of the Soviet deformed workers state. The pretext for Carter's denunciations of Soviet "aggression" was his accusation that the Chinese capitalists Russians and Cubans in Angola had trained and Continued on page two Relations Between the People's Republic of Vietnam insists that the latest wave of refu China and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, gees is the result of its crackdown on private already strained by a territorial dispute over businesses in the South. An editorial in the the oil-rich Paracel and Spratley Islands Vietnamese Communist Party newspaper Nhan Dan coupled with Peking's open support for Hanoi's (29 May) queried: "One might ask whe,ther Cambodian adversary in the incessant border nationalization was supposed to stop in socialist fratricide and recent reports of isolated bloody Vietnam before the wealth of a number of capital incidents on the Sino-Vietnam border itself, have ists of Chinese origin?" reached,a new low in the last three months. Claiming that some 130,000 ethnic Chinese have Following an extremely liberal policy for fled across the rugged, mountainous and ill three years, during which private industry and defined border with Vietnam, Peking has violently trade (some 65 percent of the total market) in assailed Hanoi, charging it 'with racial chauvin the South continued and was even encouraged by ism and a long-standing policy of "unwarrantedly the bureaucracy, the Vietnamese Stalinist regime ostracizing and persecuting Chinese residents in struck hard in two successive waves in March and Vietnam, and expelling many of them back to April. Tens of thousands of party members and China" (Peking Review, 2 June). In response, youth were mobilised to occupy, search and inven Han-Oi -has denounced anonymous "rumour mongerers" tory all private businesses on the night of 27 who are conducting a "whisp-ering campaign" among March, following an abrupt announcement that day that "all trade and business operations of bour the 1.5 million Chinese reside~ts in Vietnam about a coming "big war between China and Vietnam geois tradesmen are to be abolished". This was because of China's support for Cambodia" followed up by a,clean-upof Ho Chi Minh City's (Asiaweek, 19 May). notorious open-air black markets and the intro duction on 3 Hay of a single new currency for all As the two nations exchanged bristling diplO Vietnam. . matic charge and countercharge, Peking froze its already niggardly aid program, beefed up its Singled out for heavy control was'Cholon, the military forces on the border, threw out three large Chinese quarter of the former Saigon, which Rape and sexual Vietnamese consulates in China's southern prov . was surrounded by police and soldiers just before inces (where there is a significant Vietnamese the 27 March announcement. Cholon historically • mino'rity) and despatched two "rescue ships" to has been the centre of the Chinese merchant and oppression evacuate the "victimised Chinese". Originally . financial class which has dominated private trade denouncing Peking's "rescue mission" as "gunboat in southern Vietnam. In particular, Cholon • • • page 4 diplomacy" Hanoi reluctantly agreed to the sea traders have lang controlled the rice trade in evacuation albeit with "strict" conditions . Continued on page tv/v
'_r...!~, , .~-_ ...... ~;;p;.~¥~::~_?~¥~_;:',;.o~~;1 y: <_,~- ~:"_~~-,,~c.bt::"-1t5 ..."'·- / crats have no interest in spreading genuine Carter ... social revolutions which might provoke the West and weaken their own bureaucratic stranglehold on Look who noticed Continued from page one the Soviet masses. The Kremlin seeks influence abroad by backing petty-bourgeois nationalists or the US coal strike promoted the former Katangan gendarm'es who at currying favour with capitalist regimes on the tacked and briefly held the Shaba copper centre outer with the West. When these "allies" of the In its 26 May issue Workers Vanguard (WV), paper of the of Kolwezi in May. The,US financed and trans moment kick sand in Russia's face and turn back Spartacist League/US (SL/US), announced t~at it would ported the mercenary scum of the French Foreign to the imperialists -- as has happened in Ghana, drop from weekly to fortnightly frequency. A statement Legion who, backed up by riotous Zairean troops, Guinea, Somalia ,and Egypt ,-- the Soviets simply by the Editorial Boord explained what it frankly called a murdered and looted to protect imperialist mine try to latch onto a new set of "friends", like "limited and orderly retreat": holdings and prop up the grossly corrupt and the bloody Ethiopian Derg and the Angolan regime. despotic l-Iobutu. But Carter's wild charges, "We do not lightly shift WV back to biweekly fre strongly denied by the Kremlin and Fidel Castro Far from safeguarding the defence of Soviet quency ... , The problem is not some absolute ove,rexten (and not even believed by the US Senate Foreign Russia, these pOlicies constantly undermine it. sion of our capacities, but rather one relative to the Relations Committee), have not stirred up much The West is able to exploit these dramatic rever quiescent period through which we are passing .... The enthusiasm in the US populace for a real showdown sals suffered by the Kremlin, just as it exploits inner capacity of the weekly to do its job has been with the Soviets.. Moreover, the sharp rise of the very real domestic crimes of the bureaucracy. well shown by its work in the recently ended miners' inter-imperialist economic competition has under The inevitable war threats of US imperialism will strike. However, our appetites as revolutionary Marx mined the ability of the US to simply dictate not be stopped by diplomatic deals or arms con ists have run too far ahead of recent objective possi- orders to its imperialist allies, as growing trol treaties, but by proletarian revolutions bi lities and for too long." trade protectionism pits the major industrial which disarm the rapacious capitalist class once nations at each other's throats. Except where and for all. Trotskyists defend the Soviet de Indeed, for four months during the great coal miners'strike generated workers state from imperialism because of 1977-78, week after week WV provided both on-the-spot their interests are directly concerned (eg France's African neo-colonies) the US's NATO of the gains of, the Russian Revolution that have coverage and in-depth analysis from the miners' side of allies prefer to avoid confrontation with the been preserved in spite of the bureaucracy's the barricades - denouncing Carter's strikebreaking at Soviets~ policies. But we also call for political revol tacks, exposing the bankruptcy of miners' "leader" utions to dump the Stalinist parasites of Moscow, Arnold Mi lIer, outlining a program for victory and aiding Carter's "China Card" Peking and Havana who imperil that defence and the determined efforts of SL/US supporters in the unions But the African uproar did tighten up the US make a mockery of socialism. The reforging of to initiate solidarity strike action and spread the conflict China alliance against the Soviet Union. Visit the'Fourth International, the world party of to related key industries such as steel and auto. ing China, US "national security" adviser, cold socialist revolution, is the necessary answer to So it was amusing to read in Direct Action (22 June), warrior Zbigniew Brzezinski, poured vitriol on Carter's Cold War threats and the spectre of nuclear holocaust .• paper of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), this comment the Soviets and Cubans only to be outdone by on the WV statement's reference to the "quiescent Chinese foreign minister Huang Hua. Huang jetted (adapted from Workers Vanguard no 209, 16 June 1978) period": "Apparently the Spartacists must have missed off to Zaire to tour the "battlefield" 'with the recent, record llO-day US coal strike! Mind you, it's Mobutu, praising him for leading "a just struggle not surprising when you co~sider that the Spartacists' •. , against '" Soviet Soc ial ist Imperial ism", Australian co-thinkers describe the mass opposition to denounced the death of a few white colonialists uranium mining and export in this country as'a 'diversion' (many were killed by Mobutu's troops anyway) and Vietnam ••• from the class struggle!" How ridiculous and insulting promised the dictator Chinese military aid. On Continued from page one to compare the coal miners with the assorted greenies and , his way to Zaire, Huang stopped off in New York where hemet with US'officials and hailed the pacifists who inhabit the ".ban uranium" swamp. But for the South, a key position, as agricultural pro the SWP to attack us for "ignoring" the strike - what imperialist intervention in A:~ica, telling the UN that the Soviet Union "is the most dangerous duction has not yet been collectivised since the shameless gall! source of a new world war and is sure to be its incorporation of the southern half of the country It was the SL which initJated and organised the o~ly chief instigator". No wonder the reactionary into the Vietnamese deformed workers state. Australian demonstrations in solidarity with the miners Murdoch's Australian (5 June) headlined its edi Chinese refugees - victims of "Soviet hegemonism"? and against the shipment of scab coal to the US. And torial "The welcome rattl e of Chinese sabres". what did the SWP do? Nothing - refusing even to en Ethnic Chinese have always made up a dispro It is their shared hostility to the Soviet portionate percentage of the so-called "boat dorse, let (ilone take part in, these actions. Their US' Union, though based on fundamentally different co-thinkers were among the most rabid opponents of soli people" -- the post-1975 seaborne exodus of causes, that lays the basis for the US-China Vietnamese refugees to Thailand, Malaysia, darit y strike action in the entire US labour movement, alliance which has been shaping up since Nixon even denouncing the call of the West Coast watersiders' Singapore, Hong Kong and Australia. With the visited Mao in 1972 while ~erican B-52s carpet expropriation of Cholon's merchants and traders union for a one-day protest strike as "ultra-left" (see bombed North Vietnam. Though both the Chinese ASp no 52, April 1978)! Thus, the US SWP ,played its this steady flow has become a flood and for the and Russian regimes 'are based on the abolition of first time large numbers are returning to the modest part in preventing the exemplary militancy of the private property, the'narrow nationalist outlook "motherland". Seizing on the chance to whJp up ,miners from leading to a generalised class offensive .and of "building soc,ialism" in "their, own countryl' anti-Vietnamese sentiment among the Chinese from there blowing the lid off the explosive class ten-' leads the Stalinists to repeatedly stab each masses Peking's propaganda machine has been dis sions long contained by the labour bureaucracy. other in the back. The vastly weaker position of tributing daily heart-rending accounts of beaten The WV Editorial Board statement concluded by affirm- the Chinese has led them directly into the arms and wounded refugees limping over the border. of the US. ing, Contrast this with Peking's total, cynical Brzezinski's trip was a significant step silence on the treatment meted out to a half "We will come back to a weekly Workers Vanguard towards sealing this alliance. Carter's Dr million ethnic Chinese (over 20,000 of whom have when either continuing sharp class struggle demands it Strangelove told the New York Times (28 May) that joined 150,000 Cambodians in seeking refuge in or simple bulk growth of the SUUS readily permits it. "The basic significance of the trip was to under- Vietnam) by its aUy, "Democratic Kampuchea", But beyond that stands our perspective, involving com· line the long-term strategic nature of the.. . during the brutal 1975 evacuation of Phnom Penh munist daily papers, in this country too; of a revolution relationship". Stressing their "parallel and the total razing of the urban economy. ary workers party, section of the reforged Fourth Inter. interests", Brzezinski exchanged presentations A 'th th' P k' d h d ' national. " , h' , " S Wl every lng e lng oes t ese ays, ltS Wlt the Chlnese' on the world sltuatl0n," " brlefed concern Wl'th th e " overseas Ch''''lnese lS t al'1' ore d them on the SALT talks and explalned ln detall US t f't l' t 't t' S 't f ' While the US SWP is busy running errands 'for "demo security directives that are still secret from 0 ,1 snug y,l~ 0 1 S an 1- oVle or~lgn cratic" sellout artists. and out.bureaucrats of Miller's ilk, th US bl ' Th US h d 'd d t 11 I POllCY· Hanol lS now denounced as an lnstrument the SL/US is forging the precious revolutionary cadres e, pu , lC. e ," as eCl e 0 se tle,0 f tIS OVlet'h egemonlsm '''' ln Sout h east ASla,' one 0 f Chlnese hlghly SOphlstlcated alrborne scannllIg th" t ll't " 'th h' hR" k' t who will lead the American proletariat to victory. " " e sa e 1 es Wl w lC USSla lS see lng 0 equlpment whlch can be adapted for ant l-submar1l1e" ' 1" Ch' E n k' R' d' h ' ~ " " enClrc e lna. ven.e ~ng ev~ew a mlts t at , warfare, materlal denled to the Sovlet Unlon on the f' t t f f ' t Ch' securit rounds. ' l~S mass en ry' 0 re ugees ln,o lna :ame y g ln Aprl1, after the crackdown on prlvate bUS1- Now Available Though China's "anti-imperialist" credentials ness. Yet a recent lengthy article in Peking are tarnished by its courting of a host of right- Review (26 May) on the "History of Overseas The true story of the wing governments, inCluding Iran Chile and Chinese and Their Glorious Tradition" denounces biggest class struggle Zaire, it is still useful to Washington to have "Soviet revisionism" ("in unison with L,in Piao !n recent US hi story Chinese diplomats running around deriding the and the 'gang of four"') for "slandering that - from the miners side. Soviet Union, apologising for US imperialism and ; Overseas Chinese belong to the 'capitalist Detail s the bank promoting more NATO spending. Significantly, in Continued on page six ruptcy of miners' union contrast to its crocodile tears over Soviet dis bureaucrat Arnold sidents the US bourgeoisie does not choose to Miller ... 'picket lines in Harlan and make an issue out of the repressive policies of Steams. Kentucky. the Peking bureaucracy, which are if anything, and much more harsher than the Kremlin's., Given ~eking's un besides. ambiguous bloc with the Pentagon and NATO, the a monthly organ of revolutionary Marxism for the reo Not just reporting best way for loyal Australian Maoists to prove birth of the Fourth International published by Sparta but hard analysis their undying fealty today would be to volunteer cist Publications for the CentralCor;nmittee of the and a program to join the professional torturers of the French for victory! Spartacist League of Australia and New Zealand, Foreign Legion. section of the international Spartacist tendl!ncy Prjce: $2.00 Soviet Stalinists cling to detente EDITORIAL BOARD: Chris Korwin Len Meyers (managing editor) Order from/pay to: While Carter has been on a Cold War rampage Spartacist Publications, the Soviets have tried to avoid drawing any con David Reynolds GPO Box 3473, clusions about his aims, hoping that he will turn Inga Smith (production manager) Sydney, NSW, 2001 out to be a "sensible bourgeois" like Nixon, whom David Strachan (Melbourne they could work with. Soviet spokesmen have in correspondent) stead focused their attack on Brzezinski. The Sydney Spartacist League attempt to coddle Carter while blasting CIRCULA TlON MANAGER: Roberta D' Amico Brzezinski is a classic example of the Stalin .. ists' historically futile pol icy of seeking to GPO Box 3473, Sydney, NSW, 2001 public oHice find the "progressive" wing of the bourgeoisie (02) 235-8115 with whom to practise "peaceful co-existence". 2nd floor Thursday: 5.30 to 9.30 pm But Brzezinski is not some bizarre right-wing nut SUBSCRIPTIONS: Three dollars for eleven issues 112 Goulbum St, Saturday: 12 noon to 5 pm who sneaked into the White House. Carter picked (one year). Sydney the mart precisely for his consistent anti-Soviet policies! AUSTRALASIAN SPARTACIST is registered at the GPO, Sydney for posting as a publication - Category B, Contrary to Carter's fear of Soviet-sponsored "Red upriSings" 'in Africa, the Kremlin bureau- h;·,; ';~o AUSTRALASIAN'SPARTACIST JuJy 1978 • ..' ~ ,',', ' ... " ' .' .',' '/ '.' , I r ~ ,.' • -.: ... Spartacist League f8ritain founded The rebirth of British Trotskyism
Founding conference of Spartacist League/Britain. Part 1 of this artiale (ASp no 54, June 1978), tat ion of the l'IRP/SLL' s All Trades Union reprinted in three parts from Spartacist Britain Alliance: In practice it turned qut to be The French municipal elections and Irish no 1 (April 1978), traaed the prehistory of the nothing but a forum for tedio,us recounting of general elections, which both took place in the fusion of the Trotskyist Faation (TF), a left op shop-floor struggles. As it became clear that [northern] spring of 1977, renewed the debate in position inside Alan Thornett's Workers Soaialist the rank and file would not flock to the CDLM _ side the, WSL on the question of popular front ism, League (WSL), and the London Spartaaist Group simply because it put "democracy" in its name, in particular on the question of votes to the (LSG). Expelled in 1974 from Gerry Healy's it soon turned into an arena for mutual ac workers parties of a popular front. At the WSL's Workers Revolutionary Party, Thornett's repu commodation between the II[SL and other left summer school in July this issue was debated both tation as an industrial miUtant at Leyland's groups (specifically the IMG [International Harx at the session on Ireland and at the National Cowley faatory and his seeming Trotskyist ist Group] and I-CL [International-Communist Committee [NC] meeting. It was indicative of the orthodoxy (though not aatually to the left of League]). Most importantly, the platform of this scant importance given to such "-abstract" sub Healy) soon attraated leftward-moving formations pan-union propaganda bloc -- like Alan Thornett's jects prior to this time that even Soaialist 'to the WSL. From its establishment in 1975 the campaign for president of the Transport and Press editor John Lister, backed by Alan LSG aarried out a systematia propaganda perspea General 'Workers Union -- did not seek to break Thornett, could consider it a rightist notion tive toward the aentrist WSL, among other osten the mass of British workers from their Labourite' that any self-proclaimed revolutionary would even sibly Trotskyist groupings, the first fruit of traditions and consciousness. whiah aame in late 1976 when the WSL's Liverpool The CDLM programme comes branah proposed, in opposition to the leadership, down to opposition to wage reaognition of the Spartaaist tendenay's prin controls and spending cuts aipled line on the Cuban Revoiution. and calls for more democracy in the unions. It even limits the call for national- Part 2 of 3 isation to those firms However, the real catalyst for the amorphous threatened with bankruptcy or left-wing opposition whicK was to result in the large-scale redundancies. It Trotskyist Faction was ,the WSL's intervention in does not contain any demand the British cla-ss struggle. A challenge to the for the expropriation of all Thornett leadership took shape around objections capitalist industry, thus to the WSL-created Campaign for Democracy in the placing the CDLM to the right Labour Movement (CDLM) and to its failure to of the maximum programme of place the government question at the centre of the Labour Party on this question. There is no WSL trade-union work. This failure was particu larly glaring after the formation of the Labour mention of opposition to the presence of the British im Party's parliamentary coalition with the Lib erals in March 1977. perialist army in Northern Ireland or to the Labour In response to the reappearance of this "lefts "' chauvinist call for British version of the popular front for the import controls, much less Labour prime minister Callaghan (left), liberal leader Steel: partners in first time since World War II, the international of the need for a l'flvol- . parliament~ry coalition. Spartacist tendency' called for "a policy of con utionary workers government. ditional non-support to Labour in upcoming elec tions unless and until they repudiate cOglition Describing the reformist CDLM, an LSG leaflet consider voting for the workers parties of a ism" C'Break the Liberal/Labour Coalition in noted that it embodied the central weakness of PQPular front. Britain", Workers Vanguard no 152, 8 April 1977). the British left: " ... glorification of spon At the NC meeting spokesmen for the opposing But even though Callaghan and company had sup taneous 'rank and file' trade union militancy positions -- Steve Murray for voting for workers pressed even the organisational independence of and ... political capitulation to British social parties in a popular front and Mark Hyde and Jim the Labour Party by openly tying it to the bour democracy" ("CDLM: WSL' 5 'Short Cut' to No Short against -- were directed to submit docu where", 27 March 1977). A parallel criticism was geois Liberals -- with, moreover, the acquiesc ments defending their respective positions. ence of every single "left" MP from Tony Benn and raised in the,Green-Kellett-Piercey document: Without waiting for the resolution of the debate, Michael Foot on down -- the Workers Socialist "Our failure to make the question of programme however, Soaialist Press went into print on 17 League simply concluded that the "lefts" "should and government central was no~ confined to the August declaring that it would continue to call have demanded and themselves set up a new lead pages of Socialist Press. It was evident at for votes to Labour until such time as there were ership based on social ist policies" (SoaiaZist the CDLM recall conference .... actually joint Lib-Lab slates. And as the fac Press, 25 March 1977). "Although a special resolution was passed by tion fight developed, for the first time drawing Within the Workers Socialist League there was the conference on the Lib-Lab coalition, the hard lines on programmatic questions in the WSL, dissatisfaction with the persistently apolitical vital political question facing the conference Thornett, Lister and company became far more character of the WSL's trade-union work. A first on government was relegated almost to a side cautious in toying around with positions which document, "The WSL and the Governmental Crisis" issue, discussed separately from the wages had been branded "Spartacist". ([WSL] Internal Bulletin no 19, 2S May 1977), struggle and the fight for leadership in the submitted by Green, Kellett and Piercey, at trade unions .... " Workers government and "Make the lefts fight" tempted to programmatically generalise the objec The LSG leaflet also attacked the WSL's justifi In the course of the discussions over the tions: cation fQr its adaptation to shop-floor mili question of voting for candidates of a popular "Although the toolro~m strike objectively' tancy: "For a small grouping, like the I'ISL, to front, some individuals switched positions and challenged the Social Contract and posed the decide to 'shake off propagandism' in order to the battle lines began to be drawn. A document, removal of the anti-working class Labour proceed directly to 'conquering the masses' is "The Coalition, 'Make the Lefts Fight' and the Government, the consciousness of the leac.ler profoundly anti-Leninist. A revolutionary or Continued on page seven ship thrown up in the struggle, the subjective ganisation only acquires the ability to lead factor, did not correspond to those objective whole sections of the proletariat as it assembles "'" tasks. . .. Al though the WSL alone recognised . a cadr~ trained through hard principled struggle Stop deportation of that the toolroom strike precipitated a major for communist politics" ("CDLM: WSL's 'Short governmental crisis, Socialist Press failed to Cut' to, Nowhere") . make the question of government a central pro grammatic issue during the strike." The Green-Kellett-Piercey document touched on Asian workers! the WSL's policy of shunning polemical combat On 21 June Commonwealth cops swooped on Patons At this time Green-Kellett-Piercey had not decis with centrist groups, although the criticism was Brake Replacement factory in Melbourne, arrested twenty ively broken from,the WSL's accommodation to largely empirical and put in the mildest terms: Malaysian workers and threw them in the city watch Labourism, and were searching to render th~ per "We also showed political weakness in not taking house. A week earlier a similar raid netted eighteen ennial Thornett slogan, "Hake the Lefts Fight", up the IMG adequately at the conference ... their Asian workers in the Albury-Wodonga area. Accused of revolutionary. They called on the l'ISL to "place argument that the CDLM shouldn't (pol itically) being "H legal" migrants, they face imminent deport demands on the lefts to support the [toolroom] counterpose itself to the Stalinists' 'diversion ation. This crackdown by the Fraser government is cal strike against the Social Contract and remove the ary' initiatives was part of their left cover for culated to make Australia's 60-70,000 "megal"migrants right wing [of ~he parliamentary Labour Party]". Stalinism. The difference between us and. the Pabloites was not that they had differences of the scapegoat for unemployment. Joining Fraser jn whip The Campaign for Democracy in the Labour j,love ping up anti-Asian racism are the "leIt" officials of the ment, founded in 1976, was an uninspired imi- -where and how to fight for programme •.. but they are not prepared to fight at a 11 for programme". Amalgamated Metal Workers and Shipwrights Union (which , Neither, it turned out, was the Thornett leader- covers most of thePatons workers) who, in keeping with Spartacist Britain "'" ship, which responded:' ' their chauvinist protectianism, have criminally refused to Second issue now out defend these workers! The Spartacist League joined in "We are told by the comrades that we did not forming an Ad Hoc Committee Against the Deport~tion of Includes: take up the IMG adequately at the conference. Asian Workers which held a protest demonstration at the - "Racist furore over immigrotion" That we should have made a clear statement on - Anti Nazi League: fighting fascism through carnivals Immigration Department offices in Melbourne on 27 June. their role as a left cover for the Stalinists. The demands of the demonstration must become the de Such a course of action would have been a Subscribe! International rates (outside Europe): disaster. It would'have been certain to drive mands of the entire trade-union movement: No deport 12 issues - air £3.00, surface £1.80 the IMG out of the CDLM." ("Reply to 'The WSL ations or victimisation of Asian warkers!' Full citi Order from/pay 10: Spartacist Publications, and the Governmental Crisis''', by Alan zenship rights for all migrant workers, legal or "il PO Box 185, London WC1H 8JE legal"! \.. .J Thornett, [WSL] Internal Bulletin no 21) AUSTR,'LASIAN SPARTACIST July 1978 Page Three
~",, __"'lliitiili'iI\'pI!i'>Ii~i!fIi!_ ~_'" :':':"i?~~~¥:-o..'~':: ",- ~_"""'4l'7U -~" ..... "'"~ ne July night last year four men from Sydney labour reserve force. Thus while destroying the struggl e against personal "sexist ideology" ("the OUniversity's elite St Paul's College gang Church's temporal power the triumphant bourg personal is political") could at one time take on banged a woman from the Women's College. Three eoisies enlisted religion as a moral policeman a radical appearance, the failure of the feminist months later, one of them, her boyfriend, won the and insisted on the morality of monogamy, con movement to mobilise any significant number of S1;, Paul's "Animal Act of the Year Award" by de formity to stereotyped sex roles and the brutal women in struggle, to achieve any significant scribing for his mates, in lurid detail, his repression of so-called "deviant" forms of sexu reforms or to hold on to those paltry reforms ocket prowess. The woman, deeply if not doubly ality, backed up by the state's filthy machine that were granted by the Whitlam government be humi'liated, then accused them of gang-rape; they of physical terror: courts, cops and prisons. fore recession set in, have led to a retreat claimed she had consented. Only with the destruction of capitalism will from the field even of reformist social struggle. This scandal, reported in,an artic~e in the this sordid reality of official hypocrisy and re The focus of feminist activity on rape, National Times (21-26 November 1977) co-authored pression be swept away. The Bolshevik Revol- ' centring first around wreath-laying ceremonies in by noted bourgeois feminist Anne Summers, dis -ution, in abolishing private property as the memory of women raped in war and the Rape Crisis comfited the university ~dministration and enraged campus feminists. For the Anglican warden of the- college, it was a disgusting act, rape or not: "A woman to be shared by four men in ~wo hours? .. It's monstrous conduct. But it's not rape." For the feminists and their ad vocates, like the fake-Trotskyist Social ist Workers Party, it was rape pure-and simple, consent or not. mlether the St Paul's incident was a case of rape could only be determined by resolving the murky clash of allegations between principle of social organisation'and with it the centres which could do little more than provide the accused and the accuser. Unlike the offended basis for class division, mandated not ,only the social counselling for traumatised rape victims, college warden, Marxists do not see group sex, or full formal equality of women (reversed only' has led increasingly to an open bloc with reac any other form of consenting sexual behaviour, as gradually following the political counter tionary advocates of state censorship and more "monstrous"; unlike the feminists, we do not revolution led by Stalin) but began to lay the legal repression. label any heterosexual encounter as "rape". foundations for their full social equality as well. To the limit of its meagre resources it Feminists of different political stripes - Although invariably influenced by neuroses and socialised household duties and made the care of from the bourgeois-feminist Anne Summers to the sexist attitudes and in the context of very real children a social responsibility, freeing women "Marxist-feminists" -- have elaborated different and powerful social and economic pressures fully to enter fully as equals into the productive life reasons-for putting rape at the centre of women's consensual sex does exist. Rape however trans of society. For the first time the individual oppression, but they all share a common basic forms what is ordinarily a mutually pleasurable was freed from the restrictions and consensual act of sexual gratification into a of state and society on sexual nightmare of terror, degradation and humiliation expression: for the victim. Arid the dividing line is pre Cisely effective consent. "[The new Soviet legislation] declares the absolute non The National Times article compared the St interference of the state and ,Paul's incident to the case of the small rural society into sexual matters, Queensland town of Ingham, where revelations had so long as nobody is' injured come out 'a year earlier of brutal ancl systematic and no one's interests are en gang-bangs and apparently explicitly forcible croached upon. gang-rapes. Certainly the two cases demonstrate " •.• Concerning homosexuality, in common the particularly repugnant and pervas sodomy, and various other ive male chauvinism of Australian society, ex forms of sexual gratification, pressed in the image of the ocker male and' the which are set down in European ethos of mateship. The degradation to which legislation as offenses women are subjected here and the way in which against public morality - male chauvinism is expressed within the particu Soviet legislation treats lar national culture is ~ttested to by these exactly the same as so Australia's high incidence of gang-rape. In a called 'natural' intercourse. recent incident a gang of Sydney bikies, includ All forms of intercourse are ing the wife of one of the gang leaders, invaded privat-e matters." (Grigorii the household of a woman who had purportedly been Batkis, The Sexual Revolution a bike:"gang "
/ .• _"", ..,..-~;..:;"~",,<....:c. ...._ ... __ c~f-i~....:. national minorities (which include besides the Doughney, union independence from the capitalist Vietnam. Chinese, large numbers of Khmers and the poss state is no principle -- the "principle" is • • ibly racially doomed Montagnard tribesmen, the "union democracy". The astute Doughney observes Continued from page two Aboriginals of Indochina) as that·of the Han that "bureaucratically-run unions also serve the doninated central Chinese bureaucracy toward the interests of the bosses", concluding that "any class'" and seeks to evoke international sympathy Chinese Moslem, Tibetan lL"1d Mongol'ian popu attempt to democratise them" serves the interests for "the victimized Chinese refugees" -- who lations. of the workers. The "left-wing" AMlVSU did not so include black market speculators, rice traders, As for the economic policies of the Vietnamese much as call a single mass meeting during the money-hoarders and sweatshop capitalists rushing bureaucracy, the nationalisations were certainly recent awards "campaign" and one-day stoppage. out of Vietnam. inevitable, particularly given the extreme Couldn't it do with a dose of "democratising" But while the vast majority of "overseas laissez-faire approach of the previous three 'court interference, comrade Doughney? And what' Chinese" are of course not capitalists, neverthe years. However, it is not our task to give about every other union 'in Australia? Union less, like the Jews in medieval Europe and to advice to these Stalinist bureaucrats. The re "democracy" at the cost of class independence is some extent the Lebanese Arabs in Africa, they cent abrupt shift in economic policy recalls the the "principle" only of reformist bureaucrats out have historically formed an educated, petty brutal 1956 North Vietnam land collectivisation of power. bourgeois' and merchant caste which has dominated campaign which led to several isolated peasant The IS, whose supporter David Shaw is actually revolts and a mass exodus (mostly of Roman in the BLOC, is also clever enough to "Beware the Catholic villagers) to Diem's puppet regime in Courts!" (Battler, 6 May) and intones that court the South. Such bureaucratic methods of carrying action is "a legitimate tactic but not the key out necessary social transformations are charac to victory" (BatHer, 3 June). "Not the key to teristic of Stalinist rule and are further proof victory"? It's the only "key" the BLOC has ever of the fact that the Stalinists came to power tried! And the only door it fits is the one that through military victory, not through workers' would lock ClarrieO'Shea back into the prison uprisings, in the course of which (as in Russia) cell from which he was freed by a massive many o~ the native capitalists would undoubtedly workers' ' mobi lisation less than a decade ago'. In already have been expropriated. response to a Spartaci~t League (SL) question (at It is possible that regardless of the me~hod a 22 June IS-sponsored forum at Sydney Univer and pace of expropriations, there would have been sity) if the BLOC's court strategy didn't lead to a mass exodus of Vietnamese Chinese to the capi a call for jailing Gallagher (ironically enough, talist countries of Southeast Asia as well as a comrade of O'Shea), speaker Joe Owens vowed China. However, a genuinely communist government that "personally" he wanted to "put the bastard in Vietnam would want to retain the relatively in there". Not a single IS supporter voiced an well-educated Chinese minority and to use their object:i,on! talents in a collectivised, planned economy. Moreover, the integration of the Chinese minority Gallagher - "70 percent positive, 30 percent negative" would counter Vietnamese national narrowness and Such open class treason is justified by' the centuries-old hostility between the Annamite Gallagher's "left-wing" opponents by portraying and Han peoples. him as unique within the trade-union bureaucracy, as a man whose hold on the leadership is due While of course Trotskyists support. the expro almost entirely to wholesale chicanery and priation of the capitalists, the precise ways in which a victorious proletarian state carries this episodic thuggery. Indeed, even Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist) (CPA[ML]) chair through depend upon specific circumstances. In man EF Hi'll, rumour has it, has on occasion any case, it is the working class itself, through "summed up" his "closest comrade-in-arms" by democratically elected soviets and a Leninist paraphrasing Mao's famous evaluation' of Stalin: vanguard party, which must wield the power and 70 percent positive and 30 percent negative. determine the decisions of the central state ap And, significantly, many cadre of the Maoist paratus regarding economic policy. Only through breakaway Red Eureka Movement have long viewed Refugees arriving in China from Vietnam. a workers political revolution establishing such 'organs of proletarian democracy by overthrowing "big Norm" as just anoth'er union bureaucrat. private trade in southeast Asia. Peking knows the parasitic bureaucracies, from Hanoi and Yet the bosses, particularly in Victoria, this full well, having found this community quite Peking to the Kremlin, will it be possible to put would not have been unhappy to see Gallagher go. useful as a pressure group for the expansion of an end to the bloody nationalist conflicts which Focusing on his post-election threat to revive economic ties with China. In the same way as the oppress the working people and make a mockery of last year's ineffectual but industrially costly Chinese Stalinists use Hong Kong capitalists to the Stalinists' claims to be constructing "guerrilla campaign" for a $30 pay rise, Rupert transact business and have deliberately main socialism .• Murdoch's Sydney gutter rag, the Daily Mirror (30 tained this colonial leftover as a vestige of (adapted from Workers Vanguard no 209, 16 June 1978) May), ran a blazing editorial the day after Chinese capitalism, they also seek to use over Gallagher's re-election, headed "Stop this man seas Chinese in southeast Asia as a "fifth now". column" -- not to spread revolutionary struggle but to serve as anchor points for establishing Gallagher and Black are no better' nor worse client relations with various capitalist regimes than the BLOC. The BLOC's claim to militancy in the region. China's large-scale propaganda BLF ••• rests with the Qantas job's·record of industrial campaign over "victimised Chinese" in Vietnam is Continued from page eight action over job issues. Indeed, when a BLOC no doubt partly aimed at winning the good will of candidate at Qantas, Duncan Williams, was sacked "overseas Chinese" leaders now that the Kuomin in mid-June in a blatant political victimisation, fused to scab on the BLF -- as they refused to the workers walked off demanding his reinstate tang dictatorship in Taiwan seems definitively scab on the Fairfax printers two years ago -- and headed for oblivion. ment. But this proves only that the BLOC's de defied the arrogant court order? T9 support the featist excuse for relying on the penal powers National oppression in Vietnam, China BLDC court campaign as these "Trotskyists" did, that the ranks cannot be mobilised for fear of could only mean opposition to any militant action the sack in this recession-ravaged industry -- is Given the long-standing animosities between by postal workers demanding: Defend the BLF the Chinese and Vietnamese peoples (which the completely fake. The BLOC in office would behave against court interference! Government hands off no differently than "democratic", "militant" Stalinist bureaucracies exacerbate for their own our unions! purposes) undoubtedly some genuine atrocities of Communist Party members, John Halfpenny and Sam ethnic persecution are occurring. While Peking Black to courts: "Get nicked" •.. sort of Armstrong, who thrust one of the grossest sell Review (16 June) claims "tens of thousands of The Gallagher-imposed NSW leadership is a bu outs in years down the throats of the LaTrobe Chinese were transported overland to the border" reaucratic clique with hardly any base at all. Valley power workers. -- presumably from the Cholon area -- many of Under Black's stewardship branch membership has The ranks can be .mobilised against rotten bu those crossing the border are clearly long-term continued to plummet from around 10,000 before reaucrats, bosses' attacks and unemployment - residents of North Vietnam and in no sense . the recession to a current level of under 3000. but the program of the BLDC is a program for capitalists. Among their number are many Nung Subcontracting is increasingly rampant, a sure demobilising the ranks. Instead of fighting for tribesmen, a Chinese ethnic group, which confirms sign of organisational disintegration. Until a 3D-hour week at no loss in pay and a full, reports of Hanoi's long-standing difficulties recently, those branch· meetings that occurred automatic cost-of-living escalator to replace with the minority populations in the border re were practically secret and when Black did hold the indexation swindle, the BLOC tells them that gions: As the vicious border war with Peking's an open meeting this month his supporters were Gallagher's "$30 and 35 hours" campaign costs Cambodian ally drags interminably on, these long swamped by BLOC supporters. The Maoist election them money while Black warns that industrial term residents have every reason to fear racially posters (invariably printed in "patriotic" blue) "disruption" like that at Qantas will lose them directed victimisations of "unreliable elements" have pandered to anti-communist and union jobs. Reformists inevitably stand opposed to and "Han fifth columnists" at the hands of the parochialist sentiments among mere backward both consistent .union democracy and class inde- chauvinistic Vietnamese regime. workers, denouncing the BLOC as part of a ;' The "independently" reformist Communist Party grandiose Kremlin conspiracy to incorporate the • I"" of Australia has come out in support of Hanoi's BLF into the Building Workers Industrial Union Stop Maoist gangsterism. version of events, notably in an obsequious (run by pro-Moscow Socialist Party. president Pat Clancy) at the expense of "BLF jobs" and to bring On Thursday night 29 June two Australasian Spartacist whitewash job by their Hanoi correspondent Chris sellers were viciously attacked and bashed by Bui Iders Ray (T1'ibwle, 7 June).. But revolutionaries Australia under the thumb of "Soviet social imperialism" . Labourers Federation (BLF) organiser and Maoist thug understand that the policies of the Vietnamese Se.an Cody during a regular sale at the Trades HallHotel, regime will be every bit as oppressive toward Yet with its insistence on mobHising the Sydney. Cody, who was drinking with other BLF officials courts and not the ranks the BLOC handed. Black including Steve Black, bloodied one comrade's nose and JUST OUT! the opportunity to pose, cynically, as the punched the other in the head several times. The pre union's defender against the encroachments of the vious Monday night, Builders Labourers for Democratic Spartacist no 25 bosses' state. Court writs voiding the union Control candidate Duncan Williams and two others were (international journal of ballot addressed to the Maoist officials were the Sportaci st tendency) ini tially returned unopened with a friendly "Get bashed by several of Black's supporters, The entire left nicked" scrawled on them in reply. Class and workers movement must stop this Stalinist gangster Includes: struggle militants would have mobilised a cam ism and defend workers democracy! We will not be intimi- "Radi cal Egal itarian" paign to ensure Black's ballot was run demo ,dated! ;) Sfalinism: A Post cratically by demanding rank-and-file-elected Mortem committees to oversee all phases of the ballot. ~ , price: 50 cents Instead Olive supporters burnt their ballot Spartacist League papers and waited for the courts to come jn. MELBOURNE ...... (03) 62-5135 Order from/paY to: In a piece on "Courts; ballots and the BLF" in GPO Box 2339, Melbourne, VIC, 3001 Spartacist League, his column laughably labelled "On the picket GPO Box 3473, line" (Direct Action, 15 June), SWPer Jamie SYDNEY ...... (02) 235-8195 Sydney, NSW, 2001. Doughney readily concedes "the dllnger of <'my court interference in the unions". But, argues \.. GPO Box 3473, Sydney, NSW, 2001 Page'Six AUSTRALASIANSPARTACIST July 1978 , I pendence precisely because they have no desire to workerism. In a letter dated 13 July 1977, Green to push through a motion subordinating the com mobilise workers in struggle against the capital wrote ·to Holford: mittee to the Gay Solidarity Group (GSG), effec ist system. The only leadership which can pro "I have been re-reading some of the tively excluding any (and directed in particular vide consistent militant direction to builders Spartacist's material over the last couple of against the SL of course) from the committee who labourers in their pressing struggles against the 'days, including some of their basic documents refused to endorse the GSG's reformist/sectoral bosses is one committed to a program linking (declaration of principles, intervention at ist "gay charter". those struggles to the fight for workers power .• the 66 IC conference), their letter to.the OCI This serious attack on gay rights in NSW comes and their letter to the [Spanish] LCE, and the in the midst of a reactionary campaign inter founding document of their French section, the nationally, spearheaded by such types as Anita Ligue Trotskyste de France. What has struck Bryant, Mary Whitehouse and the Festival of me is the absolute consistency with which they Light. In the face of this onslaught the reform have fought for their positions since the ists of the CPA and SWP spurn the mobilisation of British Trotskyism • • • early 1960's, and through ,the period sub a broad campaign centred on the labour movement Continued from page three sequent to their foundation they have been in favour of even further isolating gays from ac able to build .in a real way both in America cess td the social power of the working class. Workers' Government Slogan" ([WSL] Pre-Conference and internationally on the basis of democratic Full rights for gays can only be secured by Discussion Bulletin no 2, January 1978), was centralism. smashing the capitalist system, a task requiring written during late [northern] autumn by Green, "Poli tic'ally they seem to me to represent the the construction of a Trotskyist vanguard party.• Holford, Kellett, Murray, Quigley and Short which only revolutionary ,current in existence. They called for a position of "no vote for the candi have understood the revisions of Pabloism and dates of workers' parties (like the Labour Party) the complementary errors of the IC in a very which are in a Popular Front combination" (Thesis complete way, have analysed and fought all the Healyites are 2 of the conclusion). On the question of the petty bourgeois radicalism that has been slogan of a workers government the document took prevalent since the late 60's (feminism, New the position of Trotsky, who spelt this out in Leftism, guerrillaism) and in a complementary lousy liars fashion have stood out against the'capitu discussions with leaders of the then "Revisionism reaches new heights", blared the head revolutionary American SWP [Socialist Workers lation of the so-called Trotskyists of the USFI (both wings) to Popular Frontism and to line of the latest (22 June) Workers News effort at what Party]: " .•. the dictatorship of the prolet passes in its pages for "polemic". Describing a rather ariat, that is the only possible form of a the widespread economism that has afflicted the left since the working class began to straightforward three-way debate betw.een the Communist workers' and farmers' government". Thus point 7 Party (CPA), the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) and the, of the conclusion states: break out into struggle in a big way over the last decade. This political independence and Spartacist League (SL) before a political study group in "The WSL advances the slogan of 'a workers' consistency has been reflected in a very pre the Blue Mountains on 26,May as part of a "desperate government' as a pseudonym for the dictator cise and conscious understanding of the tasks campaign of opposition to Trotskyism", author Nick ship of the proletariat. Its essential con that face small groups of revolutionaries in Beams surmised, ",The fact that the discussion took tent -- a government that rules in the the present conditions, summed up in their place shows that there are hardly any differences at all" interests of the working class and bases formulation of the fighting propaganda group. among the three organisations! Workers News, published itself, not on the bourgeois state, but on the The value of their positions has been apparent by the Healyite Socialist Labour League (SLL), used to independent organisations of the working again and again in facipg the problems that stridently demand that the SWP join it in a ",parity com class -- remains, whether or not it is advo actually confront the WSL (syndicalist ap mission" to "investigate" the SLL's absurd "charges" cated as a propaganda or an agitational proach, obscuring of the need for a new revol that US SWP leader Joe Hansen is a GPU/FBI agent. slogan." utionary party opposed to the Labour Party, Had the Healyites got their wish, this could only "prove" Concerning the question of voting for popular misuse of resources, neglect of the left that there are "hardly any differences at all" between front candid'ates the document states forcefully groups and the lack of a consistent political the SLL and the "GPU accomplices"! that this is no tactical or tec~nical matter. line which is clearly before the membership as This question is today the dividing line between it carries out its work, question of inner The occasions when' Workers News even claims to ad those who give "critical" support to the popular party democracy and leadership). I 'have come dress the politics of the SL are infrequent. This time, as front, seeking to place it in power, and the to the conclusion that their approach to the before, it is the product of a political embarrassment. Bolshevik policy of proletarian opposition to Labour Party has the virtue of at least ac The SLL was unable to pre.vent our protest pickets from coalitionism. But this is far from a passive or cording with the real situation in the work exposing the Healyites' political exclusion of all SL sup abstentionist position. The authors of the ing class, and the fact that the Labour Party porters and other leftists from their ".public" showings of document wrote: is losing support very rapidly -- they see the film, The Palestinian. As a result, at one such " ... We call for the unions nationally to work directed at the LP 'as having the purpose showing at Sydney University a ,number of people turned withdraw union sponsorship from all MPs who of splitting and winning advanced workers away disgusted by the exclusions, and a letter of protest support the coalition ... , through grappling with the turns in the signed by a number of outraged non-Spartacists appeared , "We must develop a fight in local Labour objective situation and the manoeuvres of the in the student paper, Honi Soit. Party constituencies for the removal of sit reformists, while maintaining clearly the ting MPs and the selection of candidates who necessity for a Trotskyist party in front of Why the exclusions? The SLL cannot tolerate Trotsky stand on a revolutionary programme opposed to the working class. On the trade unions their ist criticism of its total political obeisance to the petty the coalition .... In bye-elections at pres idea of the trade union caucus seems to pro bourgeois Palestinian nationalists of Al Fatah. But to ent we can give no support to LP candidates vide the possibility of a genuine growth and justify their exclusionist thuggery, they must maka it out who defend the coalition and will have to the serious training of a new leadership with that the SL is some sort of Zionist, pro-imperialist outfit consider critically supporting in some cases out liquidation or opportunism, which the CDLM of ",provocateurs". The particular fabrications are as centrist or revisionist candidates if they to me represents. Again on Ireland they have absurd, of course, as they are vi Ie: we have ",the same make opposition to the coalition and wage con seriously confronted the problems presented by position as the South African Prime Minister v.orster" on trol central to their platform." (liThe Co the particular form which the national ques "the armed struggle by the African people"; we support alition, 'Make the Lefts Fight' and the tion takes (not a new position incidentally, the terrorist actions of the Red Briga.des because we call Workers' Government Slogan") and indicative of their ability to confront for their defence - as the SLL criminally refuses to do - Whereas in the past the WSL had not taken a major theoretical questions concretely and-in against the bourgeois state; because we "attack the PLO clear position on the question of voting for relation to the world political situation). in the Middle East" we "oppose" "the struggle of the - popular front candidates, its capitulation to "I saw ... at Grunwicks on Monday. They asked oppressed people of Africa and the Middle East •.. di social democracy was clearly expressed in the me if I had any questions on their politics or rected against imperialism", etc. ' standing demand to "make the lefts fight", the things I couldn't understand. I was in the alpha and omega of Thornett's policy toward the uncomfortable position of having to say that I Yet, directly above this last lie is printed a photograph Labour Party. This policy came under sharp at could quite see the logic of their of an SL picket at one of the film showings'- an excel tack in the oppositionists' 'document: positions .... This was t~e only formulation lent photo, prominently featuring three placards one of that I could come up with to actually fore which reads clearly: "UN/Israel out of Lebanon! Defend "The present unity of Heffer, Benn, Foot, stall a discussion over points which I agreed PLO against Zionist terror! - Spartacist". It is some Healey, and Callaghan in jointly defending the with any way. That made me realise that I peculiar sort of "Zionists" who defend the PLO against coalition reveals the essential programmatic have a responsibility to face up to their agreement between the 'left' and right .... Zionists! What can ,one say of liars who produce unim existence and my essential agreement with peachable evidence flatly refuting their own lies? Only " ... we should in no way create a false dis them. From now on I intend to fight for that the Healyites are not even competent slanderers. tinction between them and their right-wing bed their politics inside the WSL." • fellows when the 'lefts' are in no way dis [TO BE COWTlNUEDJ tinguishing themselves from the right wing by their actions .... To place demands exclus ivelyon the 'lefts' when they are unified with the right wing in opposing the struggles in the working class developing on the two decisive issues of wage control and the co Wran's .COpS • • • alition, means that the I'ISL argues that the Continued from page eight 'lefts' do fundamentally differ from the Subscribe 11 issues - $3 right-wing. When the 'lefts' have made no Over the next four days committee supporters, break from the right, not even verbally aHied working'mainly at Sydney University, raised over Overseas rates: themselves with the wages struggles, the de $140 in donations toward the legal defence and surface mail - $3 for 11 issues mand that they 'kick out' Healey, Callaghan et gathered more than 150 signature endorsements of al acts in practice to strengthen illusions the defence committee and its two demands. both in the 'lefts' as an alternative leader airmail - $5 for 11 issues (except ship and in reformism. Meanwhile the fake-Trotskyist Socialist Europe:lNorth America). $10 for 11 "This present orientation of the movement, Workers Party (SWP) , ad,ept at tailing the "gay issues (Europe/North America) summed up in the slogan 'Make the Lefts movement", could not make up its mind whether to Fight', elevates the tactic of the united support the principled defence effort or not. While some SWPers worked with the committee, front and critical support into a strategic NAME ______~------orientation. others, like Sydney University students Liam Gash ADDRESS ______~ ______"The League places these demands on the lefts and Jon West, actually retracted their signatures because it makes its starting point a precon from the committee endorsement sheet! But the ceived desire to secure unity with the left Sydney University neophytes of the reformist CPA, CITY STATE ______the Communist Group (CG), sought to actively sab against the right, and from an ahistorical POSTCQDE ___ perspective that the task is to take the work otage the defence campaign. They had not ing class through a fresh stage of reformist bothered to mobilise so much as one signature for betrayal." (Ibid; emphasis in original) the campaign, much less trade-union support through CPA union bureaucrats like John Half mai I to/make cheques rayable to: Around the time of the WSL 1977 summer school, penny, yet they were quite capable of "mobil Spartacist Publications, some of the emerging oppositionists began to . ising" to swamp a defence meeting in order to GPO Box 3473, realise that fidelity to Trotskyism required a wreck the united-front campaign. At a meeting Sydney, NSW, 2001 full-scale programmatic combat again?t Thornett's of the defence committee on 30 June they managed AUSTRALASIAN SPARTACIST July 1918- Page Seven ~ L ~':I;';::' ~",- 'i<"~, );,~<_~.. iel"T'7$ , 2M J . tr\r!~fr~:,"",,::_- ~,,~ - : ~ Defend the 601 Jail Wran's s.adistic cops! 26·June protest at Sydney tentral Court hearing for 53 arrested two days earlier; brutal attock by Wran's cops led to 7 more arrests. working-over so vicious that his screams could be tated police attack (he should know, as mlnlster Mass arrests at Sydney clearly heard. of police!). Wran angrily denounced them as liars (Sydney Morning Herald, 28 June), demonstrating When more than a hundred people turned out two in the process the futility of the reformist il gay-rights demos days later for a protest outside the hearings ot lusions of such gay "leaders". There could be no the 53, they were met by some 150 cops who re clearer evidence that whether a Labor or Liberal peated the brutal performance of the Saturday administration is in office, the government is On Saturday night, 24 June, Labor premier night, throwing several demonstrators over raii Neville Wran' s cops 'launched a brutal and pre st,ill a bosses' government and the police the ings and arresting seven more, including an ASp professional enforcers of the bourgeois social meditated assault on homosexuals and supporters photographer. . of gay rights at a "Mardi Gras" festival march order. culminating Sydney's "International Homosexual This sadistic cop rampage must be condemned by From the start the Spartacist League (SL) at Sol idarity Day". Having consistently harassed the entire labour movement and all defenders of tempted to mobilise a broad-based united-front the marchers, the uniformed swine surrounded the democratic rights. The full power of the trade defence ef£ort with the power to repulse these marchers as they entered the Kings Cross area union movement must be mobilised to demand that attacks. The SL was the only left-wing organis and, with their identifying badge numbers re all the charges against the 60 be dropped immedi ation to distribute a leaflet, entitled "Jail moved, proceeded to indiscriminately bash and ately. Any class-conscious militant can feel IVran's sadistic cops!", at the Monday protest. arrest. Fifty-four people, of whbm all but one nothing but contempt for labour traitor Wran who, At a defence meeting that evening an SL proposal were charged, were dragged off to the notorious currying favour with the country vote for a pro to establ ish a united-front "Defend the Sixty Darlinghurst police station, where the tweQty jected end-of-year election, went out of his way Committee" based on the demands, "Drop the four women were thrown into one two-man cell, the to shower abuse on the cops' victims. A depu charges! Full democratic rights for lesbians and the thirty men into another. Peter ~rurphy, a tation of gay activists who had spoken to IVran male homosexuals!", was carried overwhelmingly. well-known leftist and supporter of the Communist claimed he thought they had a "good cause" and Party (CPA), was singled out for a backroom "it may be true" that there had been a premedi- Continued on page seven NSW 8l' elections - no choice for ranks "BLs for Democracy" push - . penal powers against· Gallagher With the cynical candor of an entrenched bu no candidate -- one villain is no better manipulation by Black of the branch electoral reaucrat, Maoist Norm Gallagher attributed his than the other! roll. And when Black, rather than defying the re-election as federal secretary of the Builders court outright, put on a union ballot in addition Labourers Federation (BLF) in late May to the Every bureaucratic atrocity of the Gallagher/ to the court's, they appealed to Sweeney to stop ranks' - preference for "the villain they know to Blac~ leadership the BLDC has met ~ot with a it. And so he did -- by ordering Australia Post mobilisation of the ranks but with a trip to the the v~llain they don't". Gallagher had outpolled to seize BLF postal ballots. bosses' Arbitration courts, only too willing,to opponent Brian Rix, a job delegate at the Sydney This attack was welcomed by the cynical Qantas site and candidate of the Builders delive~ the fate of this union into the hands of the class enemy. When Gallagher took over the office-seekers of the BLDC and their "revolution Labourers for Democra~ic Control (BLDC), by a ary" hangers-on. They could not' care less that vote of 4218 to 2430. ' NSW branch in 1975, he expelled its demo I cratically elected officials; Joe Owens, Jack allowing the bosses' courts to dictate who is in But the vote for Rix, not a nationally known ~ndey and Bob 'Pringle, an outrage against the the union makes a mockery of the union movement's 'figure and handicapped by the marginal existence democratic rights of the ranks which must be op ability to discipline genuine scabs and strike of the BLDC outside NSW, reflects strong discon posed. But Owens et al "fought" it by getting breakers, like the bosses' "martyr" of Broken tent with the Gallagher regime. The problem the Federal Court to overturn the expulsions; and Hill, Noel Latham; that calling on the bosses' facing Gallagher now, as the NSW branch ap when Black defied the decision, they went courts to order and supervise the elections proaches a similarly BLDC-engineered, court straight back to the court and demanded that it legitimises Fraser's anti-union legislation supervised state election pitting Gallagher's NSIV force the BLF to give them their union tickets. empowering the courts to do just that -- in order gauleiter, Steve Black, against Noel Olive, also Having got the court to order the state branch to root out "militant minorities". What would from Qantas, is that his villainy is only too election, the BLDC then went to Justice JB the International Socialists (IS}, Socialist well known and remembered in NSW. But, as in Sweeney of the Federal Court to have it taken out Workers Party (SWP) and Socialist Labour League the federal contest, BLs concerned with defence of the union's hands entirely, claiming (doubt have had to say if Redfern postal workers had re- of their union and their livelihoods have less with considerable justification) wholesale Continued on p-age six Page Eight AUSTRALASIAN SPARTACIST July 1978 ~ ----