Tribune BACK COPIES Attention libraries, schools and tertiary institutions!

T w er ly oac.K co pies of h LH, dating from May 1978, .ire available as a set for $18.00. Single copies are aiso available; Numbers 70-90 52 Earlier editions $1. All post free. Write to ALR. PO Box In its 60 years, Tribune has been A247, Sydney South 2000. illegal, praised, quoted, raided, Spring 1983, No. 85, Kimberley Land Rights* daily, sued, abused, searched, Melal Industry crisis • US copied, busted...but we have never bases • Unemployment in been silenced. the 1930s • $2.

In the last few months Tribune has carried interviews with arms expert Andrew Mack on the disarmament talks, NDP senator Jo Vallentine. political economist Ted Wheelwright, singers Margret RoadKnight, Jeannie Lewis and Robyn Archer, playwright Stephen Sewell, the Women's Housing Company, Shorty O'Neill from the National Federation of Land Councils and many others. Summer 1983, No. 86, Life If you want a genuinely broad left under Labor** Philippines Eurocommunism • Land weekly newspaper, you can t be left Rights • Reviews • $2. without it. Autumn 1984. No. 87, Organised crim e in NSW Uranium and Labor • Subscribe! Interview with Noel Counihan • $2.

Subscription rales: Two years $45, One year $2K, Six months $15, three months S8. Institutions S35. Students, pensioners, unemployed: One year SIS, Six months SKI, three months $6. Prisoners free.

I enclose S ...... for subscription. ittw* .* * »■ « ■ -r^mrwm +**d I jfc.w Name:

\ddrev»: ...... Winter 1984, No. B8, Nicaragua • The Accord • ...... Post code Feminist Strategies * Issues for working parents Bank card No. □ □ □ □ □ □ □ □ □ □ □ □ □ [ ! $2. Date Sign Note: Copies of ALR numbers 67, 69. 73. 76 and 83 Send to: Tribune Circulation, 4 Dixon St. Sydney 2000. die n> very short suDply Number 93 ______Spring 1985

t

r e c e iv e d

■as Printer and publisher 2 • Briefings 0 '05 Red Pen Publications P/L, 4 Dixon Street, Sydney 2000. The Hancock Report, East Timor Editorial Collective 4 • Discussion and Reply Brian Aarons, Eric Aarons, Hilda Andrews, Malcolm Andrews, Steve Catt, Wendy Carlisle, Mark Cole, Mike 6 • Just Add Women and Stir Donaldson, Gloria Garton, Phil Gissing. Colin Griffith, Juliet Hollingsworth, Excerpts from Dareite Duncan's talk to the N.S.W. Teachers Federation on the U.N. David McKnight and Linnell Secomb End of the Decade for Women non-government forum, held in Nairobi, Kenya, this (Sydney) Sheril Berkovitch, Jim year. Crosthwaite, Hans Lofgren, Paula Miller, Derek Payne, Romaine Rutnam, Zimmerman (Melbourne). 7 • Post-Mortem on the Taxation Summit

Accounts and distribution Two perspectives on the summit from Peter Groenewegen and Warwick Neilley. Hilda Andrews and Malcolm Andrews (Sydney) Olga Silver and Derek Payne 10 • The British Miners' Strike: Mike Donaldson (Melbourne). An assessment of the lessons of the recent miners' strike Design and Layout Wendy Carlisle, Colin Griffith, 18 * Socialism Next Time: Roger Coates Juliet Hollingsworth, A review of socialism In the 1890s, with an eye to the future Typesetting Gloria Garton 24 • Rethinking the Housing Crisis: Colin Jones Correspondence and enquiries A critical plea for new directions in our housing policies Australian Left Review, Box A247, Sydney South PO, Sydney 2000. 26 • Technology: The Challenge for Trade Unions: John . Mathews Will trade unions respond creatively to the impact of technology on the nature of work?

32 • Which Way the ABC?: Marius Webb

The defence of the ABC needs to rethink the issues of ratings and popular culture 34 • Troubled Times: Sheri! Berkovitch ALR welcomes contributed articles and reviews within the framework of an open The development of genuine trade unions in Thailand faces increasing repression concept of marxism. Contributions should be typed, double-spaced, on A4 40 • Reviews paper or smaller. Manuscripts which are not clearly typed and easily legible will not Australia's First Cold War, edited by Ann Curthoys and John Merritt be considered for publication. Unused tn Our Time by Verity Burgmann manuscripts will be returned if The Limits of Soviet Power by Jonathan Stee! accompanied by a stamped, addressed In the Tracks of Historical Materialism by Perry Anderson envelope. Maximum word length for Letters from Spain by Lloyd Edmonds. articles 4,000 words, and for reviews 1,500 words. 48 • Browsing

Australian Left Review 93 T W B T P P i ;p p p P P B R IE FIN G S 0 3 3 ' 31 3 3 3 3 3

union movement. be eligible for union has urged the widening of The Hancock The report also comes membership and to have existing powers to enforce down on the side of Report the terms and conditions of compliance by unions and substantial integration of their contracts subject to individuals through a the federal and state the authority of the system of industrial relations sys­ commission. This is based a) stricter undertakings in tems, citing uniformity in on the overwhelming respect of future conduct decision making and evidence of sub-conract- b) imposing conditions of closure of the gap between ors working for less than conduct on the organis­ the general level of benefits award conditions. (For ation enjoyed by state and instance, the current c) altering the constitution ■ m federal award workers, as meatworkers' dispute in of the union to change the some of the reasons in the N T.) area/s of work it covers support. • existing restrictions d) suspending the regist­ Integration of the federal which prevent occupations ration of the union on such and state systems would such as fire fighters, school terms and for such period entail regular meetings Addressing the 1983 teachers, social workers, as it sees fit. between the heads of all ACTU Congress, Prime being covered by federal e) cancelling the regist­ tribunals, dual appoint­ Minister Bob Hawke made awards should be removed ration of the union. ments for some judges/ the point that because • the Act should be The trade union move­ commissioners, joint Australian industry (capit­ ment is opposed to such sittings on major cases amended to make it more alis m ) is u n d erg o in g difficult for new unions to sanctions. The effect (e.g. national wage cases) considerable structural be registered where they would be to increase the with consequent applicat­ change, it is appropriate are to be based on the dependence of the union ion to both state and that trade union structure craft/occupation of the movement on the courts, federal award workers of should adjust to that membership. There is a robbing it of its independ­ the benefits. change. clear intention to encour­ ence and the ability to The ACTU has endorsed In practice, this view was age the formation and determine its own affairs. this general proposal. In expressed by the establish­ While the government NSW there was opposition development of industry ment of the Committee of has yet to express the from the Labor Council and unions (this would have the Review into the Industrial Hancock recommend­ the state branch of the ALP, effect of increasing the Relations Law and Systems problem for craft unions ations in law, there is ampie both of whom argued the (the Hancock Committee) facing deregistration) evidence that if it is given superiority of some state by the federal government. •existing unions who have the opportunity, the awards over federal awards Over 150 separate less than 1,000 members government will move to as a principal reason. This submissions were made to introduce substantial is opposed to the popular must show cause why they the committee on subjects change. argument that workers who should not be deregistered including industrial •amalgamation of unions There is a recognition are fortunate enough to relations, new technology, should be made easier that sortie structures are enjoy conditions which are powers of the commission, through a decision by buried deeply in tradition better than others' should federal and state systems, consenting unions based and it will not be easy for assist those less fortunate. separation of arbitral and on a simple majority of the government to effect judicial powers, and law those voting in the ballot, some changes at least in relating to organisations. thus doing away with the the short term. Some The committee rejected existing requirement that unions which could be the free market approach more than 50 percent of the affected by such changes to industrial relations members must vote in are included among the advocated by some major order for the ballot to be government's closest corporations, the Liberal valid. supporters. Party dries like John •the ACTU should play a Changes which are Howard, and former greater role in resolving designed to improve the Treasury chief John Stone. demarcation disputes. efficient operation of Certainly, adoption of Disputes would be first unions based on the those view would have referred to the ACTU for criteria of rendering spelt the deat-knell to the resolution and only in the maximum assistance to the ALP—ACTU Accord. The The Hancock Committee event of this process being membership will be less privileged sections of also recommended: unsuccessful would the supported by many. the community would have •the federal tribunal commission entertain an been further disadvant­ should be empowered to application aged. order compensation •the current legislation Jack Cambourn, Instead, they endorsed and/or reinstatement of with respect to fines for federal secretary, FEDFA the maintenance of workers who have been organsiations, penalties centralised wage-fixing, a unfairly dismissed from and/or imprisonment for decision which carries the their employment individuals, be repealed. endorsement of the trade •sub-contractors should However, the committee

2 Australian Left Review 93 Pj^pTm p 13? B R IE FIN G S '-

liberated areas. And Yet Fretilin, under the East Timor because of the support of leadership of Xanana, was the East Timorese people, able to rebuild, spreading and despite the genocide, their guerrilla units again December 7 will mark the and the fact that they are from east to west, tenth anniversary of the forced into concentration throughout the whole [fullscale Indonesian camps and face starvation country, In March 1983, the invasion of East Timor. Ten daily, the Fretifin guerrillas Indonesian forces in East | years of genocide and of have survived wave after Timor were obliged to resistance. Ten years of wave of large-scale agree to a ceasefire and people stopped fighting for betrayal by successive offensives launched by negotiations with Fretilin, independence, and if I Australian governments Jakarta. Nothing seems to after they had failed in people such as ACET and silence on the world be able to destroy their will successive operations to stopped supporting them, 1 stage. Ten years in which to win victory. crush the guerrillas. they say, then the East between 100,000 and While many Indonesian Timorese people would ' 200,000 people out of a commanders in East Timor suffer no longer. This is population of 650,000 in wanted peace, Suhartoand nonsense: the East , 1974 have perished. Murdani In Jakarta rejected Timorese know their fate if The genocide perpet­ in and, after a series of they stop fighting — to die, rated against the East provocations, Fretilin more slowly perhaps, as Timorese people by the relaunched the war with a slaves to the greed of the Jakarta generals has generalised armed up­ Jakarta generafs. exceeded, proportionally, rising in August 1983. The Whatever threats Hay­ that c a rrie d o u t in Indonesian troops stepped den makes, the radio Kampuchea or Biafra. up their norrifying contact will operate from And yet, the East atrocities and continuously Darwin as long as it Timorese people led by swept the country search­ operates from East Timor. Fretilin still resist the ing for guerrillas, but with Hayden has surrendered invaders. The re-estab­ tittle success. In 1984 alone any respect he may have lishment of radio contact 600 Indonesian troops had from progressive on January 6 this year, were killed, as against 70 forces. He aggressively between Darwin and Fretilin losses. Of coure, seeks to defend Jakarta on Fretilin leaders in the many hundred civilians every occasion, even mountains of East Timor, were killed by Jakarta's condemning the recent confirms the capabilities of troops. Amnesty International the Fretilin guerrillas. report, sight unseen, as Fretilin's achievement in The re-establishment of "grossly exaggerated". smuggling a radio trans­ radio contact, which was With a cynicism and ceiver into their liberated The succes of Fretilin announced publicly on opportunism that puts areas can be measured guerrilla actions is detailed May 26, has severely Peacock to shame, Hayden against the following facts: in the reports they have embarrassed both Jakarta has forfeited any right to unlike the liberation send by radio to Darwin, and Canberra. Despite all expect any support for any struggles in Africa, East and republished in East the bluster, the funda­ future leadership chall­ Timor has no friendly Timor News. T h e s e mental problem for Jakarta enge. His reputation as border, indeed no border at successes are even more is that there is a radio in "Honest Bill" has been all, except with Indonesia, remarkable because in the East Timorese mount­ replaced by one of a The blockade imposed by 1978 and 1979 Jakarta ains, not that there is one in cringing "drover’s dog" Jakarta has prevented any succeeded in almost totally Darwin. Bill Hayden jumping whenever Jakarta weapons or other material destroying Fretilin. All of pressured the cabinet to barks... reaching Fretilin. the Fretilin central refuse a radio licence to the Unlike the New People's committee inside the Australian Coalition for Denis Freney Army in the Philippines country were killed, with East Timor (ACET) to (which also lacks land the exception of two operate the radio link. borders), no tourists can leaders: Xanana and Hayden, like Peacock LET EAST TIMOR enter east Timor. There is Mauhunu. Today they lead b e fo re him , is o n ly SPEAK FUND very little trade and what the resistance. Fretilin concerned about pleasing $ 10,000 - there is, Is controlled by the forces were forced to the Jakarta generals, and generals. surrender in large num­ not about the genocide Emergency Appeal to And yet, because it has bers, along with their East Timor suffers. maintain radio link the near total support of the weapons and ammunition. Indeed, Hayden and with East Timor. East Tim orese people Only a small group in the other apologists for Donations to: inside and outside the far eastern point of the Jakarta's genocide, seek to LETS FUND country, Fretilin was able country survived, with blame the victims for the PO Box A716 to sm uggle a ra d io scattered remnants else­ actions of their persec­ Sydney South, 2000. transceiver into its where. utors: if the East Timorese

Spring 1985 3 XDLI'DLjDI>DDDISCUSSIONandREFLYYYYYYvY' 'YV

violence and the machine. And what BATHURST BIKE are we to make of their "cock- RACES: a Riotous fighting"? If it is the barbaric animal Chris Cunneen "sport" it should be no part of a Assembly A Riotous Assembly socialist culture. If it refers to some sort of macho human contest it af polfcr utf Mh*f oarfi HM laa. Or H Ht C M should be no part of a feminist culture. Phil Shannon ^jl ' *•!•» ■! UtM. Media bias and language confusion aside, Cunneen's positive For a left analysis of crime, law and attitude to the bikers rests on his order, Chris Cunneen's article on the assertion that "bikers, like many biker/police confrontation at other sections of the working class, Bathurst ("A Riotous Assembly", do not like 'coppers'". Cunneen ALR 92, Winter 1985) is limited by his approves this dislike, but how tendency to treat the conflict as a widespread or justified is it? Which battle between Good and Evii. and how many sections of the Understandably keen to oppose both working class dislike what police capitalist media attacks on a functions? It is at least equally proletarian outgroup and a possible to assert that more working strengthening of the police as a class people (not just the property- repressive agent of the state, owning middle class) are more Cunneen lapses into an idealisation concerned with the policing of crime of the bikers and a demonisation of (which hits poor working class the police. Unfortunately, Cunneen is people hardest and most often) than not alone in resorting to the language with the crime of policing (that so of romanticised stereotypes in order preoccupies the academic left], to demonstrate the left's proletarian Angels, an "outlaw" gang, must be a Cunneen's celebration of bikers credentials — Brave Bikers versus misrepresented and heroic group of might be dampened somewhat if Callous Cops is a morality play on oppressed. Their use of molotov bikers were to frequent in large similar lines to the Pure Prisoners cocktails and dynamite against the numbers the halls of academe and versus Wicked Warders of some left courts is uncritically accepted by not just working class suburbs and writing on prisons. Cunneen. While such methods do towns. Certainly, the mass media making a have their time and place (during the Few on the left would disagree that "folk devil" of the violent bikie serves anti-Nazi resistance, for example), we must be interested in "the fate of the capitalsit class in selling papers that time and place is not Australia in marginalised groups" but some and upping the ratings, denigrating the 'eighties. groups (Red Brigades, the National all working class dissent and To state that the police presence Front, Bikers) may deserve to be legitimising an increase in politically and harassment caused the marginalsied from other groups, the repressive police goods and services. "problem" is to oversimplify. rest of the working class and However, just because, for example, Although police tactics certainly socialists. bikers and strikers get a bad capitalist provoked the bikers on Mount It is not to accept the language of press coverage does not automat­ Panorama, that does not justify the the headlines to say that socialism ically imply that bikers are worthy of bikers' violent reaction. It is not riding in a biker pack will not look all the same degree of socialist defence. surprising that, as Cunneen tells us, that attractive to a working ciass with Just because Bathurst provided a for the bikers to "jeer and insult" the deep and legitimate concerns aboul pretext for the establishment of the police in their "pig pen" and to throw crime, law and order. Tactical Response Group (TRG) to rocks, bottles and molotov cocktails repress "student demonstrations, should invite a counter-response. BLF pickets and Women Against Police are not simply academic Rape In War marches" does not mean abstractions of’ state power. They that a TRG would not have been also have feelings which can get Chris Cunneen formed to control the latter anyhow, hurt, and bodies which can get and does not mean that, in opposing injured. I would like to reply very orietly to the TRG, we should invest the biker Cunneen’s sensitivity to the boo- some of Shannon's criticisms of my subculture with similar virtues words used by the enemy ("bikie article on the Bathurst Motorcycle extended to labour and social gangs" causing the "trouble") does Riots (ALR 92). I find it particularly movements, not always extend to his own 'good alarming, given Shannon's obvious Cunneen, however, does just this. words'. The biker subculture is ignorance of the crowd who visit By putting biker "riots" in quotation sanitised. They have "fun" on Mount Bathurst, that he should support the marks he implies that they are less Panorama in a "fascinating" dominant capital/state interpretation than violent anarchistic eruptions^ "carnival". They are "buoyant and of events. I say ignorance because, as rather, they are more like direct happy" when fighting police. But how I stated in the article, there have been action forms of conscious class innocent and pure is their culture? no "gangs" at Bathurst at least for the struggle and organised political From Cunneen's description it is last six years, that is, during the resistance. Similarly, the Hell's also a macho’ scene, celebrating period.when the largest "riots" have

4 Australian Left Review M )DDLDLDDDLQDISCUSSIONandREPLYYYYYY'v Y'YT occurred. After going througn court policing methods that the TRG Apology records, talking to people and represent have made no dent in the attending the Races, f can see no solution frequency. However, the reason for regarding bikers as any TRG has been effective in controlling Dear Comrades, different from other young working various forms of working class I refer to your treatment of my class men, except that they ride bikes activity. Secondly, given the article in ALR No. 92 — you called it and demonstrate some solidarity connections between heroin "The Technology Test". My title as because of it. The vast majority of addiction, property theft and the submitted was "Research and Policy them are mechanics, welders, fitters involvement of some police in the Development". and iabourers; many are just finishing organisation and distribution of drug I was distressed at the degree of their apprenticeships, and a fair sales, it may be more accurate to see success you had in destroying some number are unemployed. Thousands the police as part of the problem of aspects of the article and its overall of these people have now been crime rather than its solution. appearance. My complaints are: criminalised because of police Shannon's bottom line is that "the 1. You gave the article a false title. interference in their popular police have feelings ', that they are 2. The text was transposed in such a recreation. To say that they are "not academic abstractions". manner as to destroy the flow and "macho" as Shannon does, is in a Perhaps he should talk to the friends distort the argument. sense to state the obvious. Of course of the 21-year-old youth who 3. You used sub-headings in a they are sexist. How many working ''accidentally" blew his brains out distorting way. class males aren't? The particular with a police revolver at Penrith 3.1 The first sub-heading, "Intelligent style of masculinity displayed by Police Station recently. But, then Computers", should have had a working class men may be overt and again, he was only a junkie, hardly a question mark after it. crude but it is no more or less a cut above a bikie. 3.2 The second sub-heading, "A Way display of the relations of patriarchy to Go?" should not have had a than the activities of bourgeois men. question mark, Is Shannon suggesting, instead, that Note re 3: The sub-headings were we support yachting or the Correction yours and, with theabove corrections Chardonnay-sipping activities of the and minus the transposing, would rich because they display better We apologise tor errors in have been useful. manners? "Psychiatry. Making Criminals Mad" Shannon never escapes from the M. Bound. by Denise Russell (ALR 92). bourgeois representations of working class activity. He has no On p. 21, the omitted first line of We apologise for the errors made in trouble in describing the "riot" as a paragraph 4 should be "In the DSM- the layout of Max Bound's article in "violent, anarchistic eruption". II, there is a category entitled .... " ALR 92. The text was accidentally Unfortunately, he misses the whole transposed to such a major extent point. Notions of "riot" and "public On p. 32, the paragraph beginning "Burning out parts .... " is misplaced that it is not possible to correct it order” are highly problematic. The without reprinting the entire article. and should be in the next column result of the application of the title to We apologise to the author and to our after the paragraph ending " .... particular activities is far from readers. academic. The most extreme forms of irreversible brain damage". repression become legitimated. Where else are sucn para-military This book asks some of the hard questions police profiles acceptable? To equate the bikers with the National Front and Just Out! confronting the left: the Red Brigades would be laughable if the results weren't so devastating. Why has the economic crisis no) resulted in It is exactly the tactics used by the deepening radicaiisation? state and the media to deny all * Has socialism list its vision? Can it be regained? opposition. No one is trying to endow * Can the left meet the challenge of the new right? * Has the left really understood feminism? the bikers with conscious organised * Should we work for a 'red and green'alliance? political activity except possibly the police and the media (i.e. "These A new socialist party? * Why renewal? Why now? 'riots' must be 'organised' by 'outsiders"'. The same statements Available from left and progressive bookshops were made concerning the British or have it mailed by sending $3 (post free) to: "riots" in 1981 and 1983). Shannon's statements on crime as Renewal Books it affects the working class deserves PO Bos A716 two comments. Firstly, the police Sydney South, NSW 2000 have shown themselves incapable of dealing with the type of crime directly (Make cheques payble to David Me Knight.) hitting the working class. For example, crime solution rates with motor vehicle theft and break, enter and steal are abysmally low. The 5 Spring 1985 JUST ADD 1985 marks the end of the UN designated decade for women. In forthcoming issues, ALR Intends to publish more on the Issues and proceedings arising from the Nairobi Conference held to mark the end of the decade for women.

Below are some excerpts, trains of thought, from Darelle Duncan's talk to the NSW Teachers' Federation. WOMEN AND want to make clear right at the beginning that I didn't go to the Official Government Conference which was to / evaluate the Decade for Women, I went to the Non Government Forum. At the Official Conference, they discussed a document "Looking to the Future 2000", a document which I’ve still to see, because I was unable to get one from the Offices of the Status of Women before I went. The Forum, however, was open to non-government organisations, and to that Forum came some 13,000 women from all over the world, and some men. What I'd like to say is that I believe, and I think it has been borne out from my involvement in the Forum, that the single biggest development we have had over the last ten years is the development of feminist theory, feminist theory with a practical element involved. One workshop that I went to at the Forum, "What is Feminism", opened by Charlotte Bunch, discussed what feminism wasn't. Charlotte said that feminism wasn't a Wherever you find famine, it was said, you will find thai laundry list of women's issues which you could tack onto women and children are the majority of the victims. Womer the end of everything; it wasn't just add women and stir, as and children make up 80% of the refugees in Ethiopia. Yet she put it. It was the development of a perspective, a way of at the camps, women play no role in decision-making; it is looking at issues. ... by looking at the situation and working still the men who make the decisions, it is the men who out why it is that women are in a certain position, decide where the food goes. The women who were working developing a theoretical analysis and then working out in that area felt that it was vital to get women into decision practical ways and strategies to overcome that. Since I've making. come back and looked through my notes, I've thought, well, The women from Kenya conducted a workshop on the that's what has happened. Over the last ten years, it has led education of women and girls. They looked at textbooks tc to the legitimising of what women want, it has given us ways see what roles men and women play and found all the me« to articulate that. Bearing that in mind, I thought I would go doing everything! In one book on agriculture, there was one through and mention some of the issues raised, looking at woman and all the rest were men. the issues in another way. female circumcision and infibulation workshop waj •he Conference was held in Kenya, a third world i run by African women. They estimated that 75 country. In Kenya, as in most third world countries, A# l rI million women and girls have been subjected to this, Tm women v do two-thirds of the food production and two- cultural practice. The African women stressed that they thirds of the agriculture. Yet, when our experts go over didn't want the women in the West to do anything except to there on development projects, they don't talk to the give money for their campaigns because they have very women, they talk to the men. So they develop projects good organisations throughout Africa. In the last five years which are quite inappropriate for the African scene. And, in every single country in Africa, they have established over the last ten years, food production has actually gone committees which work against the continuation of this down in Africa because our aid and the way we have been cultural practice which continues to really discriminate doing things, looking at things, has completely excluded against women. women. The most important development has been the At the "Tech and Tools" Forum there was a poster saying development of a feminist perspective in looking at thes? "If it's not appropriate for women, it's not appropriate". I issues and organising around them. I think that the impact think that says it all. For example, in terms of agriculture, of the women's movement on the third world has been women have to go and collect the water, and it takes them tremendous. So. when they talk about feminists being six hours, even where they have put in irrigation. Instead of white and middle class, I don't think that is true any more asking the women what they needed and putting in pipes to The spread of ideas has been enormous, and with that son pump water, the women are still walking miles. of development, I believe we can change the world.

6 Australian Left Review 93 Post-mortem on the Taxation Summit

There are no simple answers for the left on the problem of taxation, says Peter Groenewegen, who argues a controversial stance in his review of the Tax Summit. It's possible, he suggests, that since Option C and its compensation package have been ditched, we may end up with an even less satisfactory situation.

he much heralded and much through the risky expedient of with respect to lump sum maligned tax summit is long summitry. superannuation and the assets test, over. After a week of talking and the 1984 restructuring of the r he origin of the tax summit income tax rate scale which failed to and debate, was anything achieved? Most readers of the daily press and cannot be seen, as some prevent those on average earnings watchers of the electronic media can journalists had it, in a entering the 46 percent bracket and J created anomalies for social security be excused for thinking that the concession squeezed from the Prime summit ended in disaster for the Minister during a talk-back radio recipients solved only on a government, in particular for the show on the hustings. Its origins are temporary basis. Prime Minister and Treasurer, and far more deep seated. The fact that the process started in that the cause of tax reform has had a In the first place the need for a tax EPAC in December 1983 and that massive setback. summit arises from the severe EPAC received well over 500 political constraints on tax reform submissions on tax reform showed Likewise, those associated with built in to Australia's political that, in the minds of the public, tax welfare and community services system: the short electoral cycle in reform was long overdue, groups may have celebrated the the federal sphere, aggravated by the victory over Option C, with its superimposition of state elections hat appears to have come broad-based consumption tax on which the government needs to take out of the process? goods and services without into consideration; the built-in Contrary to press reports, a exempting the necessities of life but opposition in the Senate which, surprising degree of unanimity on a with considerable compensation for barring enormous landslides at number of important issues. Two the disadvantaged and low income double dissolutions, is now an surprising results stand out to my groups. institutionalised feature of the mind. Many such judgements at this federal system and the high degree of First, the unanimous support fora stage must be premature. In the sense opportunism on tax matters, crackdown on tax evasion, if need be that, as yet, no legislation has come (everything must be opposed) from with the support of a national out of the summit process of politicians in opposition. identity card: a strategy which should consultation and debate, little can be Secondly, the government was not be destroyed by spurious civil said about its actual outcome. forced into basic tax reform because liberties considerations. More the easy options were no longer importantly, consensus was reached However, those claiming that the available. (The last free tax lunch was on the need to broaden the indirect ‘ summit ended, and had to end, in the revenue bonanza for the Fraser tax base, to which the ACTU, failure, have failed to understand government from import parity through its secretary, gave assent both its nature and the almost pricing of domestically produced insofar as broadening the existing irresistible forces inherent in the oil.) wholesale sales tax base and retail current tax situation which drove the taxation of services is concerned. government to an attempt to tackle This was disclosed to the Inflexible revenue is the reason for lax restructuring and tax reform government by experience in its first the recognition of this necessity. term of office: the political backlash Even with implementation of the to its reform initiatives in May 1983 income base broadening of option A

Spring I*>85 7 Post-Mortem on the Taxation Summit

through taxing fringe benefits, It may be noted that, in the matter The messy alternative of introducing capita] gains tax, of dealing withnax havens, the White expanding the wholesale sales taj removing some tax concessions and Paper itself expressed a substantial base — and more particularly the cracking down on other areas of degree of impotence. direct taxation of services— was ate avoidance, the tax system will not be Those who seek a major role for not being appreciated by at least able to yield the required revenue in a the public sector in this country or some trade union leaders, fair manner without moving more who have the more limited desire to particularly the fact that the mosl efficiently — and more equitably — sec it hold its own, need to grasp that efficient way of introducing suet into the taxation of consumption this requires a rising tax share of services taxation is by a payroll (a) spending. GDP because of the small on the labour employed in providinji There are few revenue bonanzas productivity growth potential in them. and no cargo cults either from supplying community services. The bottom line of this is that lapping the multinationals (much of In that sense, the welfare groups' vigilance should be e xercised top! that is wishful thinking), or business victory over the broad-based reform into the right direction in general (despite the relative decline consumption tax may have been a Income base broadening of Option/ of company tax which has been much pyrrhic one: a fair proposal in should go hand-in-hand with tin misunderstood) or the elimination of a comprehensive package was extension of indirect taxes ot the threshold which sections of the rejected because of opposition to one consumption. Wealth taxes in ih(] right and left see as an unexploited of its components without full inheritance area particularly should tax quarry. realisation of the implications of that remain on the agenda for reform. Effective taxation of the first raises choice. The post-budget tax package win complex issues of international This "fairness" can only be indicate whether tax reform taxation, made even more compelx appreciated when the White Paper's implementation will take some root by removal of the foreign exchange compensation package is compared in this country as a consequence^ restrictions, part of the floating of the with other compensation offers the summit. dollar in 1983. accompanying structural change in In addition, real aspects of the past, and when the revenue Peter Groenewegen is a professor in the disincentives to invest are inherent in consequences of not having broad- Department of Economics at the raising effective rates of business based consumption taxation are fully University of Sydney. He attended tlu Tax Summit in Canberra recently. taxation in general. realised.

The success of working class and community groups in opposing the government's tax reform proposals has implications for the future, says Warwick Neilly, which extend far beyond achieving an equitable tax package.

sufficient to state that the final extraordinary. The ALP's he defeat of the Hawke assessment by a wide range of traditional working class base was government's reform pro­ organisations was that it would have brought to the brink of complete J posals for the Australian resulted in the poor and low to dissatisfaction, and the blame for this taxation system was a victory for the middle income earners paying more must be directed, not at other majority of people in Australia. tax, not less, in the short and the long factions, but at the right wing. It was also an historic victory in term. It would have disrupted It is important, post-summit, to that, through what will no doubt economically and socially important understand how the government'^ prove to have been an aberration in industries such as housing, driven proposals were defeated, the government policy formulation, the down consumption in many other implications of this for future full weight of working class and areas, and generally reversed the progressive political activity and, a! community groups' opinion was expansion in the Australian another level, to make an assessment effective in rolling back an essentially economy which has been of the package of reform which the conservative proposition structured experienced in the last two years. government will finally introduce. around a new, universal So, even within the context of consumption tax, orthodox social democratic The Final Package? economic thinking and policy I he character and potential effects formulation, the preferred option of olitically, the government is of the government's preferred option the government was beyond the pale. obliged to come forward witha for reform needs no extensive The political logic of the right wing package which benefits the analysis at this point. It is probably P of the government was also poor and low to middle income

8 Australian Left Review 9J Post-Mortem on the Taxation Summit

| earners. Ji was to the organisations of truth in this, but it is really only demonstrated the community's clear representing these people that the part of the story. opposition to the government's plan. government had to finally concede. In fact, if the trade union response But the central co-ordination of A package which does not do this wilJ had not been consolidated by the progressive forces, through key be rejected by these same stirrings of rank-and-file trade organisations, was the principal organisations, and the gross unionists and by the activities of reason that the opposition inequities of the tax system will not progressive, as well as some succeeded. be redressed. conservative, union leaders, it may For those with least capacity to very well be that the ACTU Implications for the Future pay, this means significant leadership would have had neither reductions in PAYE marginal tax the will nor the inclination to defeat i the government does not come rates lor low to middle income the government's plan. up with a package aceptable to earners, changes to the spouse rebate Unqualified credit should be given / working class and community as proposed by Jennie George on to sections of the ACTU leadership, organisations, taxation will continue behalf of the ACT U at the Summit, such as secretary Kelly and president to be a significant focus of struggle. Ino extension of wholesale taxes to Dolan, who demonstrated a capacity The range of forces which rolled essential goods and services and to carry through the opposition of back the consumption tax will have further reforms in the social security the vast majority of affiliates to the to assess its future work in this area, ' area, beyond the 1985 Budget, to deal government's preferred option. but following the success on with "poverty traps". The ACTU negotiating team taxation, the opportunity and the For the wealthy and those with the worked as a collective throughout will exist to work around other issues capacity to pay, it means an extensive the summit and in the build-up to it, as well. and revenue raising fringe benefits and its work was pivotal to the Unemployment is one of those tax extending to the self-employed, ACTU's role in the debate over issues. Despite the glowing picture maintenance of the higher income reforms. continually painted by Treasurer marginal PAY E tax rates and further Little has been said, though, Ln the Keating, many of us are, not action against tax avoidancc and capitalist press, about the role of confident that capitalism in minimisation, including areas such community, women's and welfare Australia is able or willing to provide as the cash economy in a wide range organisations. Of all the groups full employment. of industries. participating in the summit, they In fact, the current hype over the We can safely predict, though. that assessed, very early in the piece, the economy and its growth is the issues of making the rich pay in deficiencies of the government's ideologically disorienting, disguising full, or even in part, will not be taken proposals. many undesirable trends — up by the government. It is almost Extensive co-ordination prior to increased monopoly (Coles/ Myer, trite to consider otherwise, given the the Summit among progressive Woolworths/Safeways), deregul­ tenor of the government's activists in these organisations and ation of finance and increasing presentation of the 1985 Budget, and trade unions ensured an effective interest rates, permanently high its projected revenue figures which exchange of views and agreement on unemployment in specific regions, clearly demonstrate that PAYE alternative demands. The ALP left difficulties in the rural economy, earners as a whole are being called on played an important role in this increased imports over focal to pay more. process, as did independent marxists manufacture, to name some Already, less than tw'o months and socialists and members of the important areas. alter the Summit, the government is CPA and the Association for Attempts to discount wage rises, being dominated by the right wing Communist Unity. The work carried youth wage levels, private rental forces which were routed on the tax out at this level ensured that the issues and public housing, issue, and we can justifiably fear that people's voice on tax reform was disarmament and the ANZUS treaty the final package will offer mere heard. — these are ail important areas in crumbs to those most in need of Keating provided the progressive which active co-ordination can tax reform. movement with an opportunity to ensure that the left continues to truly represent the vast majority in advance as the collective Australia, and it succeeded. Much of representative of the majority in this was not readily discernible to the Australia. community at large, but it was The environment exists for the Who Defeated the decisive at the Summit. growth of a new political movement Government's Main Proposal? The Centre-Left of the ALP also to displace the rightwing domination played a role in the defeat of the plan, of the labour movement and to effect rincipal emphasis has been as it also carried out consultative and genuine social and economic reforms given in the capitalist media to co-ordination work in the in Australia. Pthe trade union movement as community. being responsible for achieving the Ihe wide range of community Warwick Neilley is a research officer with result at the Summit. meetings, petitions and rallies which the Building Workers' Industrial Union. There are strong elements of took place around Australia also

Spring 1985 9 Mike Donaldson The British Miners' Strike:

The British miners'strike had elements of a classic confrontation between the New Right and a well-organised and militant union. While no simple lessons can be transported from Britain to Australia, questions must be asked about the role of the Labour Party, the lack of support from the rest of the union movement and about the tactics of the miners themselves. Mike Donaldson asks some of the questions and discusses the issues.

a special issue of The Miner, the journal of the believed that they had suffered defeat, and 68 percent said National Union of Mineworkers (NU M), published they were ready to take industrial action against pit on 7 March, carried the banner headline, "Victory? closures in their districts. What Victory? The Fight Goes On". In it, the NUM stated, And yet the miners clearly did not win. The NUM did 'The {National Coal) Board wanted to close 20 pits and not achieve its objectives, the closure program has not been axe 20,000 jo b s.... They have not been able to do so. They withdrawn, and the mineworkers went back without a wanted to close five pits immediately .... They have not negotiated settlement. Over twelve months of intense been able to do so. They wanted to commit the union to struggle, 9,000 were arrested. 600 sacked, 300 imprisoned, signing an agreement closing pits on economic grounds. some for up to five years, and two killed, and the union was We have not and will never do so. The Board did not want badly divided internally. any independent appeal body introduced into the colliery But the NUM was not smashed, as the Thatcher review procedure. They have been forced to accept such government intended. As Peter Carter,1 a National a bo d y" (italics in the original). Industrial organiser with the Communist Party of Great Surprisingly, given that all mass media coverage has Britain (CPGB), pul it, the government's strategy was to been to the contrary, most mineworkers appeared to agree isolate and destroy the best organised and most militant with The Miner'sstatement. A poll conducted for Granada sections of the labour movement, and for this the Thatcher TV's Union World found that less than one in four miners government had prepared meticulously.

10 Australian Left Review 93 British Miners' Strike

The Thatcher Government's Preparations n 1981, British coal stocks stood at 37 million tonnes; three years later they had risen 35 percent to 57 million. he Conservative Party was deeply affected by the / In 1982, the head of the Central Electricity Generating victories of the miners in 1972 and 1974, and the Board (CEGB), the wealthiest body in England, with assets Energy Minister under Conservative Prime Minister of 40 thousand million pounds, was replaced. He had been r instructed to substitute oil fqr coal in the power stations Healh was directed by the new Conservative leadership to provide a detailed report on the lessons that could be and to accumulate coal stocks. He was reported to have drawn from the government's defeats of those years. thought that this view was "hysterical". In the year that he According to Beynon and McMylor,2 the resulting left the CEGB, oil imports increased by 33 percent.4 report, based on highly confidential discussions with In 1983, coal fuelled 76 percent of electricity generation, business people and former public servants, "was a deeply but during the strike oil became the major fuel including sobering one for senior Conservatives". It pointed to the the main fuel for electricity generated for industry,5 During potential power of well organised unions in key industries, the third week in January 1985, with most of the country and drew attention to the concentration of industrial snow-covered and some parts experiencing the lowest power caused by advanced technology, the economy's temperatures for 20 years, the power stations produced an dependence on electricity and the central role of coal. The all-time record 46,125 megawatts of electricity. It was the report said that the increasing complexity of electricity third night that month that power supply had reached generation meant that the state could no longer use the record levels. The new chairman of the CEGB. formerly armed forces to take over the running of the coal and oil- head of the atomic Energy Authority, privately boasted of fired power stations. his role in defeating the miners.* The cost was It was against this background ihat Thatcher directed astronomical. Early in September 1984 it was revealed that Nicholas Ridley, currently the Minister for Transport, to the extra costs were of the order of 20 million pounds per produce a more detailed and strategic document. This week. report was widely leaked in 1978. and made quite clear the intentions of the Conservative Party before it even became the government. The report, as it was outlined in The Economist, said, in part: Every precaution should be taken against a challenge in electricity or gas. Anyway, redundancies in those industries are unlikely to be required. The group believes that the most likely battleground will be the coal industry. They would like a Thatcher government to: a) build up maximum coal stocks Michael Crick commented, "During the early part of the particularly in the power stations: b)make contingency plans for 1984-85 dispute the government persistently refused to the import o f coal: c) encourage the recruitment of non-union intervene: most of its work had already been carried lorry drivers by haulage companies to help move coal where out".7 Coal stocks had been built up and alternative energy necessary: d) introduce dual coal/ oil firing in all power stations sources found for the power stations. Legislation was as quickly as possible. enacted reducing social security benefits for strikers' In addition, the report recommended that the greatest families. Employers were armed with sanctions under the deterrent to any strike was "to cut off the money supply to civil law and the police had in place co-ordinating the workers and make the union finance them". It also mechanisms to minimise the effects of flying pickets. suggested that there should be a large, mobile squad of On the other hand, according to Hy we! Francis, chair of police equipped and prepared to handle pickets and the Wales Congress in Support of Mining Communities, protect non-union drivers to cross piclet lines.3 and chair of the Welsh Communist Party's Energy and Mining Advisory Committee, the miners were "The government's strategy was to isolate "exceptionally ill-prepared",s and destroy the best organised and most The Miners' Response militant sections of the labour movement, and for this the 1 hatcher government had "W'W’Zith that remarkable clarity of vision allowed by W m r hindsight, most commentators within the labour prepared meticulously .... " * * movement and the NUM itself now suggest that the failure to hold a national ballot of NUM miners was a The National Coal Board, with tripartite consultation, tactical mistake. It was a mistake because, as one miner put had trade union representatives on its decision making it "it was like a monkey on our back" throughout the year, bodies and subscribed to the tripartite formulation, the enabling Tory propagandists to sling at the trade union Plan fo r Coal, re-signed as recently as 1980. In case senior movement yet again that old, old favourite — that trade management had been intected by this proximity to trade unions are anti-democratic. unionists, the Thatcher government moved quickly to The decision not to hold a national ballot was a mistake install American import, Ian MacGregor, who had been because it cut across the NUM's long established principle responsible lor managing the butchering of British Steel, of national unity, national decisions and national action. Britain's government-owned steel corporation, and before The NUM general secretary, Peter Heathfield, put a that, British Leyland. convincing argument against the holding of the ballot thus.

Spring 1985 11 British Miners' Strike

"It cannot be right for one man to vote another man out oL It is easy enough to appreciate why the rank and file a job;.... a ballot on wages is a ballot which everyone enters miners did not want a ballot - Thatcher wanted one, on an equal basis and everyone is affected equally; on jobs MacGregor wanted one and the media wanted one. it is a different matter, especially when jobs are at risk in A scab union had existed in Nottinghamshire between some areas and not others", 1926 and 1937, and in the 1979 and 1983 general elections, But, nonetheless, the absence of a national ballot several traditional mining constituencies had fallen to the allowed those pits which continued to work to justify their Conservatives. The Labour Party was losing ground even action by saying that, because no ballot had been held, they before the strike and, according to some within it, could legitimately continue producing. Beynon suggests continued to do so with increasing rapidity as the strike that this, in turn, meant that many other workers refused developed. solidarity action because "the miners can't get their own members out".9 Mass picketing of working pits was also a The Labour Party Assesses Itself direct consequence of the absence of a ballot. The struggle to convince the vast majority of the Nottinghamshire he position of what is called, lor reasons t don'l miners and the other Midlands pits that they should understand, the "hard" left of the Labour Party was engage in a national struggle was not assisted by what they J predictable and probably accurate — the leadership saw as their disenfranchisement. The strike became, in of the Labour Party "sold out" the miners. Indeed, part, and was projected by the media as being almost Labour's parliamentary leader, Neil Kinnock, was widely

entirely, a moral, political and physical struggle within the derided by strikers as "Ramsay McKinnock", after working class movement. Ramsay MacDonald, Labour's leader during the 1926 Finally, failure to hold a ballot was a mistake because it General Strike and the Labour Party failed to raise, now appears almost certain that had a national ballot been vigorously questions of unemployment and energy policy, held at the opportune time, it would have been won. or to question the workings of the police and the legal Seasoned communist militants tike George Bolton, vice- system. president of the Scottish Area of the NUM and Alan The Labour Party's "soft" (?) left grouping, the Labour Baker, a Lodge secretary from Wales, said that the NUM Co-ordinating Committee published its own analysis After could have won a ballot "hands down" in April or May.10 the Strike, which was also critical of th Party's leadership. According to Beynon,*1, where opinion polls had been The fact that the strike was inevitable from day one o f Thatcher's carried out among the miners, as they had been on at least second term, and that the stakes being played for were so high, five separate occasions in different parts of the country never seemed to he fully grasped by the Labour leadership. From between March and July, the results showed "support for the outset they acted as though the strike h’u.v an embarrassing the strike which was deeply set and surprisingly strong" — diversion from “real politics" in Parliament and the electoral in two MORI polls, 62 percent in March and 68 percent in arena. They appeared to wait impatiently for the strike to end..11 April, supported the strike. The Guardian too, suggested The Labour Co-ordinating Committee said that the that, even in the closing weeks, 55 percent of the miners still Labour Party passed its time stating what it did not, backed the strike. support and was able to produce only one lea (let during the 12 Australian l.eft Review 93 British Miners' Strike H u V t i

12 months. The analysis concludes, "II the strike shows anything it is that centre poltiicsand the new realism art’ not adequate weapons to take on Thatcherism".1-1 The Trade Union Response

innock spoke, it is true, in the autumn at the Trade Union Congress (TUC) and at the Labour Party national conference in support of the miners (but, says Beynon, by implication criticising them)14 and there were resolutions passed of solidarity and support at both conferences, even though the NUM had waited five months on into the strike before approaching the TUC for I support. But the 'piling up of leftwing block votes" at both conferences did not mean that there was a general, concerted or dynamic lead given for industrial action or Ieven to honour the picket lines.15 With the exception of the i rail unions who had supported the NUM from the beginning and some sections of the Transport and General Workers' Union, the official trade union movement was either unwilling (as were the power workers and electricians) or unable (left unions) to deliver the goods in travelling in heavily protected convoys. Despite twenty- any sustained and systematic way with industrial action at four hour mass picketing, and hundreds of arrests, the the point of production. As Francis bitterly commented, supplies were never halted for more than a day or two.18 trade union solidarity has at best been reduced to 75 turkeysfrom The mass-picketing tactic failed, generally, perhaps Uanwern steelworkers. At its worst, it's the army o f well-paid because the economic situation had changed so faceless scab lorry drivers trundling along the M4 to supply dramatically since 1972 and 1974, when it had been foreign coke to the Uanwern "brothers" who supplied the turkeys.16 employed with considerable success. As George Bolton commented. Although every one of the hard-coal pits struck and no When you were addressing factory gate meetings .... you got coking coal was produced at all, the steelworkers, whose support in terms of money and of food. But you got a strong industry depends on coke, were unable to take solidarity feeling of "we can't come out on strike with you because our action. Not only did the divisions among the miners and factory isn't very secure, there are 4 million (unemployed) out the absence of a ballot impair the legitimacy of the strike in there, and please give its coal, because if we can't get coal, and we the eyes of steel and power workers, and become the can't keep producing, then we lose the market for our factory's pretext or excuse for non-existent industrial support, but product and our factory will close".111 the steelworkers, in particular, had been devastated by a closure program under the very MacGregor who was "A national movement grew which found now attempting a similar job on the coal industry. As one women not only behind 'their' men but miner put it, "The steel workers are shell-shocked after also beside and in front of them .... " what has happened to them, it's like asking for a blood transfusion from a corpse".17 Alan Baker added that there are "certain ideas common The British Steel Corporation came to the assistance of to wide sections of the British working class, including the the Coal Board by not discouraging the widely circulated power and steel workers and some of the miners who went rumours that of the five steel "super mills" that remained on strike, that if you keep your head down and battle on open, one or even iwo, might "have to close". and make your industry profitable, it will survive, that In South Wales, steelworkers in the giant strip mills on somehow the government is trying to make British the coast co-operated in the limitation of supplies of coal industry competitive in order to live in the modern and coke under the close supervision of rail unionists and world".20 NUM delegates. Steel production was cut back as coal and coke deliveries were reduced to 10 thousand tonnes a week Defending and Transforming the Communities during the first few months of the strike, until the NUM declared that a complete blockage would be placed on fuel hen you close a pit. you kill a community" was deliveries to steelworks. By October, South Wales v l / a common slogan in the pit villages, one steelworks were receiving over 20 thousand tonnes a week, ' * shortly adopted by pit communities in parts of twice as much as they were receiving before the blockade N.S.W. It stated succinctly what the strike was about, and was imposed. what the miners and those with whom they lived had Miners, their wives and strike supporters massed day always claimed it was about, the preservation of and night at the gates to prevent the deliveries, as trucks communities, households and jobs. Along with the Lodge from the same haulage firms that had been used to break organisation, the local committee of the Women Against the steelworkers' strike four years earlier, broke through. _Pit Closures movement became central to working class resistance. Spring 1985 13 British Miners' Strike

tn Derbyshire alone, 40 miners' wives groups were We have defended our union against the most dastardly formed, initially out of the material need to provide food,' government ever known in this country. We are stronger today but from this a national movement grew which found than ever. There is a strong body o f women in every pit. We can't women not only behind "their" men but also beside and in look backwards. front of them, "South Wales women threw off all that Many had seen the NUM and its members as garbage about being 'behind' their men, and began overwhelmingly male and hence conservative in social occupying coal board offices, blockading steelworks gates values. This view is being challenged as men's lives are and touring Europe putting the case for the defence of their being changed. As Arthur Scargill said, the struggle "not communities.'"1 As a spokeswoman from the Bently only transformed the lives of women who. until that time, Women's Action Group declared, "We've done everything had had a narrow vision of what their role was and should the men have, we've done more, we've done kitchens, be. It transformed our lives in the union." speaking, rallying, picketing, the only thing we haven't done is go down the pit and we intend lo do that when the Creating a Resistance Movement strike is over",22 he most compelling leature of the thousands of "The failure to hold a national ballot of miners'support groups which sprang up throughout Britain during that year was their incredible diversity NUM miners was a tactical mistake .... " r and breadth. Trade unionists, ethnic organisations, women's groups, gay and lesbian organisations, individual The involvement of working class women in political Labour Party branches, all parties to the left of the Labour organising and campaigning has had a profound effect on Party (though the SWP was a latecomer to the support gender relations within the communities. A woman from groups) forged what the industrial editor of the Financial Bently commented, "At one time I didn't care about coal. 1 Times called a ''network of new alliances" which provided (was) a wite, tnose things didn't concern me".2-’ Women's "vigorous, efficient and national support". involvement in broader political issues has been The women from Greenham Common were quick to accompanied by a marked change in domestic social comc "home" to the Welsh valleys whose women had relations. Lorraine Bowlerfrom Barnslev Women's Action initiated the Greenham protest, and food continued to Group told hundreds of women gathered for a Women arrive in West Wales from the Greenham women Against Pit Closures (WAPC) rally, throughout the strike. In Liverpool, 14 separate support groups raised one million pounds with contributions coming from most factories. The body plant at Ford Halewood give 1,000 pounds every fortnight and another Ford plant between 300 pounds and L300 pounds every week, lmp.essive support came from those areas already suffering the blight of de-industrialisation. Toxteth was one of the first places to develop a support group. The support group in Kirkby, another Liverpool suburb shattered by economic collapse, achieved a 50 percent response to its door-to-door collections. The slogan of the London Dockland Miners' Support Group was "Don't let the mines go the say way as the docks" The secretary of the Docklands Group said, "We know from the experience of what happened to us I am sure I hat fo r .tome or most o f the women here today it is the what will happen to them."26 same in their homes as it has been in mine over the weeks. There Unemployed people were prominent in the work of the are arguments now as to whose turn it is to go on a demonstration support groups and, in some places, such as the or picket, and whose turn it is to babysit. Talk about job sharing! Merseyside, the unemployed staffed the centre which co­ We've seen it at its best over the past eight or nine weeks.24 ordinated the work of the various support groups. Or, in the words of another miner's wife radicalised in In Southampton, Cardiff, Manchester, York, Glasgow the struggle. and Edinburgh "Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners" The Women Against Pit Closures movement has had, groups were established. In London, 3,000 pounds had and will continue to ha%e, a dramatic effect on the working been raised by December through regular collections at class's understanding of itself. Betty Heathfield of WAPC gay and lesbian clubs. In October, a large contingent of told a rally on International Women's Day, shortly after lesbians and gays were guests in the households of the the strike was over, Dulais Valley in Wales because of their outstanding jVcw when we're in (the) pub we sit with the men and join in financial support for the valley. instead o f chatting about kids and home and things. We can sit Afro-Caribbean groups, Cypriot groups, the Asian with (them) and talk about (the) pit. We want to know about community and Turkish people contributed and organised things, about what's happening in the union. Some mornings I've support. When the South Wales Striking Miners' Choir been picketing before him and I come home and he's done the entertained an entirely black audience in Walsall, one of housework. I've always thought well, men do the thinking. But I the choristers thanked the "ethnic minorities" who had speak my mind now more than Tve ever done.25 been outstanding in their support. A black spokesperson

14 Australian Left Review 93 British Miners’ Strike

The task of feeding up to 20,000 households meant the development of an alternative welfare state within Wales. Howells commented, Our defences were found badly wanting. The citadel was falling apart. The people o f the coalfields had no choice but to createnew defences and in building them they discovered old socialist and collectivist truths. They realsied that by uniting and sharing all that they had. they could survive and overcome the worst that the present state apparatus could throw at them.12 With the failure of Labours parliamentary representatives to provide an effective national support structure for the movement of resistance, support groups throughout Waless "got on with the job" and organised an alternative welfare system, a system of distribution according to need. The Wales Congress in Support of Mining Communities is the Welsh national political expression of the multitude of tangible, cross-cutting and overlapping alliances, expressing the links with the women's and peace movements, local authorities fighting funding cuts, the replied. "The Welsh are an ethnic minority in Walsall".27 A unemployed, the Communist Party, Labour Party Nottingham miner commented "I've never been racist, I branches, Plaid Cymru (nationalist), cultural don't think, but I'd never really understood it betore." organisations, gay and lesbian groups, environmental Peace groups, too, have contributed to the miners" groups and the churches. support and the slogan "Mines not Missiles" became Congress delegates continued to meet weekly to set common at CN D rallies. The Enfield women's peace group priorities and guidelines for the development and in London wrote, maintenance of the new welfare system and to discuss We were inspired by the women, We wanted to show them that strategy and tactics. When the strike ended, the Congress thev weren't alone, that we need each other. Our links with the met again on 17 March and decided to continue the women in Cannock have helped overcome our isolation and struggle in defence of the communities. sense o f powerlessness.ls A conference convened in December was attended by "That the strike was inevitable from day representatives from 1500 support groups. This was an one of Thatcher's second term and that organisational expression of what one commentator has termed "a network of unexpected alliances"2'1 constituting the stakes being played for were so high overall what Hywel Francis has called a resistance never seemed to be fully grasped by the movement which sustained about half a million people for nearly a year. He commented, "even more perceptive and Labour leadership .... " revealing was the simple ceremony in Italy during the Support lor the miners' struggle transcended national strike when women activists from Coelbren and Hirwaun boundaries. Scargill was very aware of the significance of were made honorary members of the Italian resistance".50 international support and was deeply appreciative of the Wales: Building a State Within the State efforts of Australian workers. On 9 March, he told 9,000 people attending an International Women's Day rally. r r f h e South Wales coalfield with over 20,000 miners The Australian government contacted the Seamen's Union of [ t remained solid and, after 10 months, only one Australia and said: 'Now the strike is over, will you release the percent had broken the strike, despite the initial coal and let it be transported overseasT The Seamen's Union reluctance of most South Wales lodges to strike. In the 14 cabled the NUM and said they would only release coal when the central valleys, only 14 had returned to work by mid- NUM told them the strike was at an end. That's internationalism, January. In the two pits of the North Wales field, support that's trade unionism. was patchy and collapsed in November when most of the 2,000 mineworkers went back. Can We Draw Lessons? In July 1984, the Welsh miners became the first victims hatcher is not Hawke, the NUM is not the Miners of the new anti-union legislation brought down by the Federation, Women Against Pit Closures is not the Thatcher government. Sequestrators not only froze union Miners Women's Auxiliaries, the National Coal funds but also money raised for food right across the r Board is not the Joint Coal Board, CRA, BHP, Shell and coalfields. The response of the Welsh communities was British Petroleum, the Dulais Valley is not the overwhelming. Welsh women and men addressed hundreds of meetings each week, "twinned" pit villages Burragorang Valley, the TUC is not the ACTU, the British with factories and working class suburbs, and organised Labour Party is not the ALP and the CPGB is not the large co-ordinating centres in Liverpool, Birmingham. CPA. The lessons that can be drawn, given these and other Oxford, Bristol, Southampton, Swindon. Reading and .. major differences, are limited. If inferences can be made London.’1 IS Spring 1985 / COAL%\ < X NOT I DOLE

they probably apply to specific tactical instances or to the without the active support of other sections of the union more general level — the identification of tendencies and movement. It was this support that was largely absent, sets of issues, rather than to the perhaps more useful area with the consequence that, while the struggle could be, and of strategies. was, sustained, it was not, and could not be, won. In the first case, I am puzzled by a number of things. The failure of large sections of the trade uniot Why did the Yorkshire NUM not tread carefully and movement to support the miners at the point of gently, instead of crossing rapidly and vehemently into production, the only place where people's power can be Nottinghamshire and so driving the Notts miners into a unambiguously decisive is, as I have suggested, largely a position from which they could not shift? function of depressed economic circumstances which rob Why were the pits in which a majority struck not workers of the resources and confidence to struggle in that occupied to keep the minority out, thus keeping the focus way. on coal and jobs rather than on picketing? But the lack of such support must also be laid squarely a; Why didn't the lodges put non-production care and the doors of other actors within the trade union movement, maintenance crews into the struck pits to prevent the the political parties, who failed during the last decade to sterilisation that sometimes occurred, in so doing making help trade union activists understand the class nature of the point that the coal was not MacGregor's but the union politics, and to forge relations based on that people's, and would be conserved for them by the miners? understanding across trade union organisations, Given the intensity and significance of the struggle, why The lefts of the British Labour Party continue the didn't the NUM leadership heed trie opinion polls, or, thankless job of stacking and restacking branches only to given wall-to-wall academics and social scientists find, when they finally make some ground, that the rulei supporting the struggle, why didn't they conduct one of are changed. They continue to fail to organise around their own membership? workplaces and industries and continue to encourage some Does the isolation of the NUM within the trade union of their more able members into the pleasant wilderness of movement suggest that industry specific unions may be parliamentary backbenchism. structurally less able to generate union support than general unions whose members are spread across "Many people new to political involvement have industries? become experienced and effective speakers, More broadly, it has been fashionable of late to take the expert organisers and confident socialists, theif rather useful insights that the state itself is sometimes conflicted, that it does not always and everywhere confidence based on a growing understanding necessarily act in the interests of the capitalist class, that that the a priori equation of revolutionary genuine though partial victories can be won from it, and to politics with the margins is as unnecessary as it is draw from these insights an extreme position that says that destructive." the state does not represent, articulate, advance and defend the interests of the capitalist class overall. The Communsit Party, with a fixed and deliberate If there is one fashionable myth that cannot survive the intent, continues to shoot its toes off, and both parties have strike, it is that. The British miners faced a sustained failed to provide the political education which would help militant, carefully planned campaign organised by the trade union activists look beyond their immediate parliamentary executive of the state and carried through concerns to the equally vital concerns of the class as a by its agencies. whole. Such schooling, said Eric Hobsbawn, "the That the NUM survived at ali is remarkable. That the Communist Party (of Great Britain) provided for NUM was not destroyed is attributable to the massive and generations of workers and intellectuals, men and sustained support that it received; that it did not win is women".33 But it does so no longer. Nonetheless, as attributable to the support it did not receive, from within Massey and Wainwright-14 stressed, a lot has been learned. itself and from other trade unions. Many people new to political involvement have become experienced and effective speakers, expert organisers and he principle lesson of the strike must be that no confident socialists, their confidence based on a growing section of the trade union movement can face a understanding that the a priori equation of revolutionary J mobilised and confrontationist state and win politics with the margins is as unnecessary as it is 16 Australian Left Review 93 British Miners' Strike

destructive. There has also been the learning of other new skills — how to manage thousands of pounds on behalf of iiundreds of people, how to confront and overcome the* real problems of building an alternative welfare system. Massey and Wainwright concluded in much o f their wow, many of the support groups illustrate in practice the kind of movement we need to build in order to achieve socialism. A commitment to change through building up democratic power at the base, in the factories and communities; a breaking down o f the traditional, inhibiting boundary between wade unionism and politics; a sense o f heal strength and identity which at the same rime is not parochial; a commitment to a non- sectarian bur principled form o f unity, in which different political tendencies are respected and work together; an emphasis on reaching out, a confidence that radical demands can be popular if they are argued for. f Loretta Loach, a member ot the Spare Rib collective, has commented, "through the links that have been established a learning process has taken place, one which has been mutually beneficial to working class women and middle class feminists".35 The women's organisations continue in the communities, with the full support of the NUM, as does the Welsh Congress in Support of Mining Communities. There is not, and never was, an inherent exclusivity between class politics and the social movements, nor is it just a matter of adding them together. What is important is the recognition and fostering of their mutual interdependence and influence. As Hobsbawn points out, the broad alliance is a necessary complement to class politics, not an alternative to it.36 While support groups were, in important ways, prefiguratjve of the sorts of organisations which socialists seek to build in a new world, and were necessary for victory to be won, they were Mike Donaldson teaches sociology and is ■ member of the Centre , not sufficient to attain it without the decisive support of for Technology and Social Change at the University of workers organised at the point of production. Wollongong. He was in Britain as th strike ended.

17. Huw Beynon, "Introduction" in Digging Deeper, p. 19. FOOTNOTES 18. Kim Howells, "Stopping Out: The Birih ot a New Kind of Politics", in Digging Deeper, p. 145. 19. Baker. Bolton el at, Marxism Today, April 1985. p. 25. t. Peter Carter. "Striking the Righl Note". Marxism Today. 29 1 March 20. Baker. Bolton et al, p. 23. ! 1985, p. 31. 21. Kim Howells, "Stopping Out”, in Digging Deeper, p. 139. | 2. Huw Beynon and Peter McMyior, "Decisive Power T he New Tory Slate Against the Miners", in H, Beynon (cd.), Digging Deeper: Issues in 22. Loretta L.oaeh, "We'll be Here Right 10 the End .... And Alter: Women ihe Miners' Strike, Verso, London 1985, p.34. in the Miners’ Strike", in Digging Deeper, p. 175. 3 Beynon and McMyior, pp 35-36, 23. Loretta Loach, p. 172. 4. Beynon and McMyior, p. 37. 24. Loretta L.oaeh, p. 171. I 5. Beynon and McMyior, p. 38. 25. Loretta Loach, p. 172: 6. Michael Crick, Scargill and ihe Miners. Penguin 1985, p. 127. 26. Doreen Massey and Hilary Wainwright, "Beyond the L'oalfields: I he I 7. Crick, p. loy. Work ol ihe Miners' Support Groups', in Digging Deeper, p. 153. 5. Hywel Francis, "NUM United. A Team in Disarray". Marxism Today, 27. Hywel I rancis, Marxism Today. February 1985, p. 33. 29. 4, April 1985. p. 32. 28. Doreen Massey and Hilary Wainwright, "Beyond the Coalfields", p. 9 Huw Beynon, 'Introduction’', in Digging Deeper, p, 17. 160. 10. Alan Baker. George Bolton. Ken Cupstick, Dave Priscott. "The 29. Hywel Francis, Marxism Today. April 1985, p. 14. Miners'Strike: A Balance Sheet", Marxism Today. 29, 4. April 1985. p. 30. Hvwd Francis, Marxism Today. February 1985. p. 13. 24. 31. Ktm Howells, "Stopping Out", in Digging Deeper, p. 135. 11. Huw Beynon. "Introduction", in Digging Deeper, p, 12. 12. Anon, 1 he Lessons for Labour U niiy in ihe Coal Strike". Guardian. 32. Kim Howells, p. 147, 22 March 1985. 33. Eric Hobsbawm. "The Retreat into Extremism", Marxism Today, 29, 13. Huw Beynon, "Introduction" in Digging Deeper, p. 5. 4. April 1985, p. 12. 14. Hywcl Francis, Marxism Today. April 1985. p. 31. 34. Doreen Massey and Hilary Wainwright. "Beyond the Coalfields", in pp. 166-167 15. Huw Beynon, "Introduction" in Digging Deeper. Digging Deeper, 35. Loretia Loach, "We'll be Here", in Digging Deeper, p. 169. (6. Hywet Francis, "Mining, the Popular Front". Marxism Today, 29,2, February 1985, p. 13. 36. Eric Hobsbawm, Marxism Today, April 1985, p. 10.

Spring 1985 17 CLEAR THE WAY ! IT IS COMING ! IT I f

Roger Coates Socialism Next Time

In this timely review article, Roger Coates looks at the early development of Australian socialism, with particular reference to Verity Burgmann's recently published book In Our Time: Socialism and the Rise of Labor 1885-1905.

S.

IS Australian Left Review 93 Socialism Next Time

n her recently published book In Our Time: Socialism spread outward from the centre, permeating colonial life. and the Rise o f Lxtbor 1885-1905. Verity Burgmann As great movements of ideas were generated, mainly at / takes us back a hundred years to a much simpler time. the imperial centre, they echoed in the Australian colonies, In the 1880s, the immigrant people of a large southern even if somewhat muted. Often, because of the truncated, hemisphere island, fairly recently seized bit by bit from its incomplete form of the transported society, these ideas Aboriginal inhabitants, in six quite disparate colonial took on a different shape and tone and an Australian, but settlements, parts of greater Britain, were struggling still recognisably British style, emerged. While the forging towards an ambiguous nationality and a degree of of the Australian colonies promoted the growth of independence. imperial Britain, an increasing conflict of interests led to an This very important book deals with the early Australian sentiment, the precondition for an emerging development of a socialist sentiment in these British nation.3 colonies. It is a fairly,straightforward account of first wave Australian socialism, written largely colony by colony, Australian socialism was certainly with the emphasis on New South Wales. One of its pluralistic if not, at times, ill-defined and strengths is the forceful narrative, and there are some very useful political biographical vignettes of some of the less fuzzy." well-known radicals and agitators of the time, as W'ell as better known figures such as William Lane, William By the middle of the 1880s, an identifiable Australian Morris Hughes and William Holman. (These of course all class structure had taken shape, with workers and owners ratted. One of Burgmann's sub-themes is the whys and of capital as the two principal social forces. Conservatism wherefores of socialist ratting, but 1 think her analysis is a remained the dominant ideology, but a rival libera I-radical bit superficial.) praxis gave the conservatives little peace. Through the The book as a whole is a much more thorough treatment 1870s and '80s, the active workers, principally through the than any previous account, filling many gaps and enabling growing trade union movement, forged trade and inter­ us to get a much clearer idea of what happened and of some colonial links to the point where, in one major heavily of the connections and interactions. Unfortunately, capitalised industry — mining (both metalliferous and however, despite the subtitle, it tends to focus loo narrowly coal) — a genuine if simple industrial union ideology on its own period and the socialists as such. It sometimes emerged and bits of this ideology quickly spread to the ignores or minimises the wider context, thus tending to pastoral industry (the other major productive capitalised leave important points un- or under-developed. industry) and to the crucially important maritime For this reason it needs to be read in conjunction with transport industry.4 other texts, particularly those of Gollan, Nairn, Turner In this context, then, socialist ideology appeared in the and McQueen, and the economic histories of Fitzpatrick.1 Australian colonies although, in fact, the socialisms from Socialist thinking, propaganda and agitation appeared Britain and the United States were not first in the field. on the eastern seaboard of Australia in the mid-1880s, While, after 1788, the dominant Australian society and first, because it reflected contemporary intellectual trends culture was largely Anglo-Saxon with a Celtic admixture, in the major anglophone centres of the world, especially leaving aside the interaction with Aboriginal life and London, New York, Chicago and San Francisco, British culture, there were always other ethnic and cultural and American publications and news arrived and components of the social mix. circulated in Australia six to twelve months alter Burgmann forcefully demonstrates that the German publication, and directly and indirectly the ideas they and, to a lesser extent, other communities, especially the brought were taken up, printed and talked about. Italian, provided a leavening of continental socialism. It Returning colonists, new immigrants or visitors were affected, not always marginally, the majority anglophone other sources of new ideas.2 communities in South Australia, Victoria and Mew South The Australian colonies were a British base in the South Wales. Pacific, and the Australian economy and society reflected The Allegsmeiner Deutscher Verein (ADV) (General this state of affairs. The evolution of Australian political German Association) in South Australia, the site of a culture was the result of the continuing struggle between German community since the 1850s, actually predated the various conservative and opposing reforming currents. Melbourne Anarchist Club (1886) by a few weeks. The colonial economy, apart from the exploitation of the Although the ADV fulfilled a very important general large, accessible gold deposits, operated largely as a cultural and social role for the German-speaking people, supplier of raw materials to the metropolitan industries its political orientation lay very definitely towards the and markets. By the 1880s, the principal colonies had Social Democratic Party of Germany. The ADV become very valuable British assets with important cities participated in many activities of a general political whose town halls and other principal public buildings character including affiliation to the Labor Party in 1891. reminded visitors of the great Victorian structures found in Manchester and Birmingham. Continental Socialism British Influence erman socialists and radicals were very important # _ in Melbourne (1887) and Sydney (1890) too, and aralleling the British influence in the economy and influenced such important native Australians as institutions, from at least the 1820s, a simplified William (Dr.) Maloney and Harry (H.E.) Holland, The Pform of political and cultural debate and action latter, one of Australia's and New Zealand's most Spring 1985 19 Socialism Next Time

important international socialists, was strongly influenced main schools, apart from Marxism: state socialism, by the emigre Sicilian architecture student, Francis ” municipal socialism. Bush socialism and Christian Sceusa. Sceusa had been forced intoexile in the 1870s after socialism, although she identifies another school, referred being active in the Italian section of the First International. to as Modern socialism, a form of small-scale, self-helping, In 1893 he represented both the Social Democratic co-operative socialism. This school shared its ami- Federation of Australasia, an ASL breakaway, and the authoritarianism with the libertarian socialists and ASL (Australian Socialist League) at the Zurich Congress anarcho-communists, who formed a possible sixth school. of the Second International. On his return to Australia, It would be wrong to suggest that the early socialists and after a triumphant visit to Sicily, he continued his activity socialist organisations operated solely within a particular in the very important, anti-racist International Socialist school or that there were mutually exclusive trends, with Club (ISC). In 1907 the ISC was one of the important no cross-currents or individual shifts of opinion. centres of the socialist second wave. From its bar profits it The first groups in both Melbourne and Sydney were

William Lane in 1892

financed the publication of the International Socialist extremely heterogeneous, without any well-defined Review (ISR) modelled on the American /SR, with predominant tendency. In Melbourne, essentially the same Holland as its increasingly influential editor. group of people formed or belonged to the Anarchist Club The continental influence aside, it must be (1886), the Melbourne branch of the ASL (1889) and the acknowledged that the socialism and socialist models Social Democratic League (1889). In like manner there followed in Australia were predominantly British and, to a were anarchists and libertarian, state and so-called lesser extent, American, The three main British socialist Modern socialists in the ASL in Sydney and Newcastle organisations in the 1880s were the SDF (Social before 1890. Democratic Federation), the Socialist League and the State socialism meant a society in which, through the Fabian Society and all these were replicated to some state, the public or community owned, controlled and degree in name at least in Australia,5 Just as the naming of operated the means of production, distribution and organisations followed British models, the Australian sort exchange as the way of eliminating private capitalist of socialism that they propagated predominantly followed ownership and control and the consequent hardships and British and American schools of socialist thought. evils. In practical terms, it meant getting control of the What sort of socialism took root in the Australian parliamentary state though elections and legislating for colonies? socialism.6 First-wave Australian socialism was not uniquely Stale socialism undoubtedly became the dominant trend eclectic. Socialism in most countries was heterogeneous, by 1890, and its influence was strongly felt in every centre but British socialism from which the Australian brand and colony up to 1905, as the first wave of socialism spread largely derived was particularly unsystematic with many throughout Australia, cross-currents. Australian socialism was certainly Many readers would be surprised by the extent of the pluralistic if not, at times, ill-defined and fuzzy. Burgmann influence of municipal socialism in Australia, particularly lays greater stress on Marx's influence on first-wave in Queensland, where the concept of Greater Brisbane Australian socialism than is usually the case. Before grew out of the impact made by the existence of the examining this claim in a little more detail, it may be worth London County Council and the development of Greater considering the various schools of socialist thought that London. Foreshadowing Fred Paterson's7 work fifty years became part of Australian socialism in the 1880s and '90s. later, Ned (E.Y.) Lowry, casual labourer and Townsville Four or live more-or-less distinct schools or trends wharfie and militant libertarian, for three years before his emerge from Burgmann's account. She distinguishes four sudden death in 1898, waged a brilliant campaign for

20 Australian Left Review 93 Socialism Nexl Time municipal reforms in ihe tar northern city (pp. 170-180). Marxism It was the English Fabian socialists who advocated and hich bring us to Marxism and one of the major pushed so-called municipal socialism as part of their tactic points of Burgmann's argument. In the early of "permeation", initially regarding it as a preferable development of Australian socialism, just how approach to strict state socialism, which was more the important was Marx's influence? Were Marxists thick on domain of the British Social Democratic Federation under H.M. Myndman's leadership.11 the ground? When W.G. Higgs9, asked at the 1891 Royal Commission on Strikes to name a well known socialist Karl Marx writer, said "I think Karl Marx, who believes in State Co­ operation, would be the nearest", he seemed to suggest they A Ithough so-called scientific socialists insist that were.10 On the other hand, Robin Gollan does not list their argument is not ethically but scientifically Marx in the index of either of his books on the period and *■ based, Karl Marx was clearly a great moralist, and observes that "Perhaps Marx's theory of value was not one of the appeals of Marxism has been its underlying widely known .... "n ethical force. But in the development of socialist thought, Burgmann disagrees, stating in her introduction that especially perhaps in England, a concern for ethical and "labour historians have underestimated the impact of liberal values became divorced from the economistic and Marxism in this period" and arguing if any single idea deterministic values that most early English Marxists could be isolated and designated as the driving force of the emphasised. (The outstanding exception, of course, was socialist movement in this period, it would be the notion of William Morris). surplus value". Even Burgmann herself, in at least one very British socialism tended to draw quite heavily on both important case — that oi William Lane has (ailed to ■an evangelical, dissenting and non-conformist Christianity recognise the impact Marx made in a specific conjuncture. and a secular rationalism for its social and personal ethics. Her second point, however, is very dubious. Within English socialism, dating back at least to Robert If Burgmann is right about the underestimation of Owen, there is a strong ethical strain. Burgmann, 1 think, Marxist influence, what was this Marxism like? Especially fails to fully pick this up. If she had, it would have been at the beginning of the period, there were probably few of analytically reasonable to subsume a lot of Bush socialism Marx's works readily available. Capital I was translated and Christian socialism into a more comprehensive school into English only in 1887, although there may have been of ethical or idealistic socialism. Moreover, such an copies ol the German or French versions around for those analytical point makes it possible to approach William who could read those languages. Those Marxist ideas that Lane with greater balance. were propounded tended to be economistic and As part of the heterogeneity of early Australian deterministic in the spirit of Orthodox Marxism (pp. 58, socialism, there were strong libertarian and anti­ 122-3, 168, 176, 180, 194). Burgmann does draw attention authoritarian strands from the start. The Melbourne to one or two reasonable accurate discussions of surplus Anarchist Club and the early ASL both had marked value, particularly in the early pamphlets of the important libertarian leanings. Because of William Lane s proclivities Victorian socialist pamphleteer Tom Turnecliffe,12 but to and attachment to the American socialist writer, Edward say, as she does, that the socialist movement aimed at "the Bellamy, in Brisbane the libertarian influence seems to reconquest of surplus value" is overstating the point. have been weaker. However, Lane's younger brother, Moreover, it appears that she believes that the frequent Ernie (E.H.) was quite at ease with all manner of rebels and references to the right of labour to its full product confirms radicals. Long after the older Lane had abandoned his this claim. socialist beliefs and ideals, Ernie Lane, throughout a very long life, remained in the forefront of the work of building socialism from below. "There is no way round the state, The broad aims of the libertarians were essentially the conceding all the limitations and sources same as the state socialists', but they differed radicaly about detail and method. They believed in a socialism that of weakness in state action. Any viable was at once more individualistic and more concerned with socialist strategy in Australia is the self-action of the workers themselves. They favoured a self-helping socialism rooted in self-managed co-operative dependent on this realisation." enterprises. They sought to prepare the working class for a real revolutionary change by thorough, all-round socialist Loosely, very loosely, tms demand could notionally be education and extra-parliamentary mobilisation. linked to Marxist economic and social analysis, but it is The most important of the purely libertarian not really Marxist. That labourers are entitled to and organisations was the Active Service Brigade (ASB), should demand the full product of th e ir labour is decidedly form ed in Sydney in 1893 as the 1890s depression hit home. pre-Marxist. It is, in fact, the principal economic point It prefigured much of the style, philosophy and tactics which arose from the Ricardian anti-capitalist school of adopted by the Chicagoite direct-actionist IWW economic thought that flourished in the 1820s and '30s. (Industrial Workers of the World) in Sydney twenty years With Owen, it provided the theoretical basis of the first later. In fact, one of the ASB's principal figures, John phase of English socialism.13 Thus, first-wave Australian Dwyer, took part in launching the Sydney IWW local in socialism can be linked to the earliest developments of the 1911. 21 Spring 1985 Socialism Next (line

English school, but to seem to attribute it to Marx is misleading. A Marxist socialist would have raised the demand for the abolition of classes or at the very least the abolition of the system of wage-labour. Of the most significant theoretical analyses Burgmann quotes, one of the clearest is the 1894 ASL's Manifesto to the People of Australia (p.58). This has quite a sharp edge, referring to "class antagonisms", "capitalist class", "wage-earning class", "class supremacy" and "robbery" but it finally merely calls for "the mode of production for profit" to be superseded by "national or collective production for use" (p.58).

William Lane

s Michael Wilding14has rightly pointed out, there is / 1 at least one place in the contemporary literature The ideal home at ‘Com e, the second attempt at where elements of a stronger marxist analysis can be founding a utofitan colony in Paraguay found, namely in the much maligned William Lane's towards organised Labor parties. Between about the remarkable socialist novel The Workingman's Paradise, middle of 1891 and 1892, Lane's analyses have more of a but Burgmann ignores these aspects of Lane's thinking Marxist flavour,,v although still mixed inescapably with (pp.20-24). his more basic views — views which, for a variety of For the last fifteen or twenty years, especially, it has been reasons, got the upper hand in 1892-3, as Lane became fashionable to denigrate Lane, largely because of his disillusioned with his vision of Australia as a potentially terrible racist sentiments, which were not confined to the ideal society. Chinese and blacks, but were anti-semitic. too.15 My intervention is not an attempt to whitewash this ghastly Other Features weakness, but to bring the debate closer to Robin Gollan's reasonably balanced judgment of twenty-five years ago,1'' although Gollan did not recognise adequately the here are plenty of other features and qualities ol first- "Marxist" tendency in Lane. wave Australian socialism which deserve a full Lane was not a Marxist but an eclectic thinker and r examination, but that is hardly feasible. Some will J writer with a complicated socialist outlook. Only twenty- say that I have not addressed the feminist issue and I regret I four years-old on his arrival in 1885, and in Australia for that. Burgmann gives more prominence to active female , only eight years, he was more of a regional than a national socialists and the place of women in the socialist movement i influence. Nevertheless, Lane made a major impact on the than any previous author on the topic but, for reasons I can * Australian scene. Initially a devotee of Henry George, but only guess at, does not address the socialism/feminism i probably influenced by an interest in labour questions in issue head on. Canada and the United States, including the activity of the Her study emphasises once again the special importance radical Knights of Labor, in 1887-8 he moved from a of the eastern seaboard but, within this broad geographical basically radical nationalist viewpoint to a well formulated division, there were and are very important regional socialism. At rock bottom, his views put him in the differences, something evident in the contemporary ethical/idealistic school but, for several years, he socialist scene. Although Burgmann does not bring it into incorporated other tendencies - state socialist,17 really sharp focus, there is plenty of evidence of the communitarian, co-operative and Marxist. importance of popular socialist culture, a subject that There are two key points here that make this emphasis warrants separate study. on Lane so important. Lane was not only a self-taught In the ten years before 1905, Victorian socialists sowed talented thinker and writer who embraced significant the seeds of the mass socialist party Tom Mann helped elements of Marxism.1® He was, for three or four crucial form in 1905-6. Between the socialist co-operative society years, an organiser and leading force of the vanguard of the behind the newspaper Tocsin and the Tocsin clubs, the Queensland labour movement. With Albert Hinchcliffe, Victorian Labour Federation, the Victorian Socialists' Charles Seymour, Matt Reid and others, he laid out the League and the Social Democratic Party of Victoria, there plan and form of the Australian Labour Federation, a were important connections and the creation of a definite, scheme for =a radical national trade union organisation characteristic political and cultural milieu which makes the with political goals which, in 1889-90, brought Queensland VSP (Victorian Socialist Party) a much more intelligible Labor to a new degree of perfection. That they failed in the phemonenon. short term is not very surprising. What is striking is that the For two or three years before 1905-6, Tom Mann had attempt was made. conducted his unique political and industrial campaigns The Marxist quality in Lane's thinking became strongest which were to last until his departure for England in 1909. in the particular conjuncture of the bitter defeats of the The ultimate issue raised by Burgmann and not, in my 1890 Maritime Strike and the Shearers' Strike of the first opinion, really dealt with adequately, is the part first-wave half of 1891, the same conjuncture that tipped the balance socialism played in crystallising the idea of independent 22 Australian I.efl Review 93 Socialism Next Time

Footnotes 1. Robin Gollan, Radical and Working Class Politics, MU I1. Melbourne, I960; Bede Naim, Civilising Capitalism. ANU Press, Canberra 1973; Ian Turner, Industrial Labour and Politics, ANU Press. Canberra 1965; Humphrey McQueen. A New Britannia. Penguin Books, Ringwood, 1970; Brian Fitzpatrick. British Imperialism and Australia, 1783-1813, George Alien and Unwin, London, 1938; Brian Fitzpatrick The British Empire in Australia. MUP, Melbourne, 1941. 2. William Lane, bom in Bristol in 1861. arrived in Brisbane in I885aiter eight years in North America, bringing with him, allegedly. Henry George's Progress and Poverty; between 1885 and 1890, S.A. (Sam) Rosa, A.G. Yewen. Matthew Reid, all members of the SDF. arrived or returned to Australia. The radical doctor and early socialist, W.D. (Dr.) Maloney also returned to Melbourne in this period. He became the MP for West Melbourne in 1889. 3. This sentiment was. of course, often radical, anti-imperialist white chauvinist and anti-semitic. all at the same time. Sec C.J.H. Clark (ed.) Select Documents in Australian History 1851-1900 (Sydney 1955). pp. 564-5. 4. W.G. Spence, Australia's Awakening (Sydney, n.d.) pp. 24, 34; R.N. Council Ebbels, The Australian Labor Movement 1850-1907(M elbourne, I960), p. 14; Robin Gollan, The Coalminers o f New South Hales ( Melbourne, labour political representation and the emergence of 1967), pp. 69-71; Report of Proceedings. Sixth Annual Conference, Labor parties in each colony. Burgmann's book gives a Amalgamated Shearers' Union of Australasia (Sydney. 1892). p. 17. much more solid factual basis to those who argue that 5. The Australian Socialist League (1887), Social Democratic League (1889), South Australian Fabian Society (1891). Social Democratic experience of the social and political crisis ol 1890-1 tipped Federation of Australasia (1892), Queensland Social Democratic the balance towards electoral and parliamentary struggle. Federation (1892), Queensland Socialist League (1896). Victorian Labor had to enter parliament as a united and disciplined Socialists' League (1897) and the Victorian Social Democratic Party political party if Labor's wrongs were to be righted. Labor (1902) and so on. The odd cases were the Brisbane Bellamy Society formed by William Lane in 1887 and the Socialist Labor Parly (1900). had to mobilise to put pressure on within the 6. William Lane's socialism was a fairly typical mixture, with the parliamentary state. ethical/ idealistic strand tending to become uppermost, but he did not rule Burgmann attributes the failure of first-wave socialism out state socialism. "An Act of Parliament may prevent wage-slaves from to the dominance of the state socialist school of thought. It being worked sixteen hours a day. An Act of Parliament, granted that was the influence of state socialist thinking, she argues, Parliament represented the dominant thought of the people could even enforce a change of the entire social system". John Miller (William Lane). that led to the formation of the Labor parties, and this, she The Workingman's Paradise (Brisbane. 1892) believes was a monumental error. The socialists got 7. Incidentally, Fred Paterson's ideological evolution testifies to the enveloped in parliamentary state activity and sucked into a persistence of heterogeneous cross-currents into third-wave Australian morass from which they could not extricate themselves. socialism. See Red Pen Publications Sixty Years of Struggles (Sydney, 190), vol. 1. pp. 8-14, But there is an alternative explanation which Burgmann 8. Alan McBriar makes the point that the Fabians, particularly Sydney does not seriously consider. From about 1884, the most Webb, really, mainly built on the work of the London radicals. A.M. tried and tested in the intercolonial trade union movement McBriar. Fabian Socialism and English Politics. 1884-1918 (London, had begun to ponder deeply the establishment of a distinct 1961). pp. 3-4, 187-233. 9. Higgs was editor ol the official trade union paper Australian political party of labour. The condition of this possibility Workman. Formerly secretary of the New South Wales Typographical was the existence of a popular parliamentary Association (the printers' union), he was an early member of the ASL. consciousness that went back more than two centuries in l.ater he was c ditorof the Queensland Worker, a Senator, Minister of the English-speaking societies. The growth and spread of this Crown and a Labor rat. 10. Brian McKinlay (ed.), A Documentary History o) the Australian consciousness, especially in the 1890-1 crisis, determined Labor Movement 1850-1975 (Melbourne, 1979). p.5 11. the relative success of state socialist thinking among the 11. Gollan. Radical and Working Class Politics, pp. 106, 225. Kobin more active workers. The trade unionists who were in the Gollan. Ihe Coal Miners o f New South Wales ( Melbourne 1963). p. 177. forefront in 1890-1 came to believe that independent action 12. Later Victorian parliamentary leader of the A.L.P. and a Wren man to pressure the parliamentary state directly through on whom a character in Frank Hardy's novel Power Without Glory is based. political campaigns, election and parliamentary struggle 13. G.D.H. Cole. A History of Socialist Thought, vol. I. (London, 1953), was the way to go. Nor were they entirely wrong. pp. 110-2, 114-6. Because of the problems that followed from this course 14. M. Wilding. "Introduction. Lane, Workingman’s Paradise, pp. 41-8. of action, and still follow, Burgmann cannot concede the 15. Clark (ed.). Select Documents, pp. 565-6. Wilding. "Introduction", pp. [32-8], Lane, Workingman's Paradise, p. 9 truthful part of state socialist thinking. Indubitably, no 16. Gollan, Radical and Working Class Politics, pp. 105-6, 116-7, 124-6. truly viable solutions to the problems yet exist. But side­ 17. See Lbbels, labour Movement, pp. 165-6 lor a strongly slated slate stepping or evasion will do no good. There is no way round socialist view. the state, conceding all the limitations and sources of 18 Wilding, "Introduction . pp. |4l-B|. 19. Lbbels, Labor M ovement, pp. 139-40; Lane. W orkineman’s Paradise. weakness in state action. Any viable socialist strategy in pp. 107-8. Another possible factor in this process may have been the Australia is dependent on this realisation. Not ignoring presence of marxist militant A.G. Yewen who worked in Brisbane on any other avenue for campaigns, movement and pressure, (lie Worker in 1891-2 before returning to Sydney to work with Holman modern socialist strategy needs to acknowledge that the and Hughes on the New Order in 1894. majority of first-wave pioneer socialists and trade union militants grasped an important truth, despite their Roger Coates is a Sydney teacher and unionist with an interest in labour history and socialist thought.______imperfect understanding. 23 Spring 1985 Colin Jones Rethinking the Housing Crisis

Most housing theories are concerned with housing finance. Few propose changes in social relationships. Colin Jones puts forward arguments for the development of a revolutionary housing theory.

he purpose of this article is to introduce a number of housing r theories, to examine the nlflfri various problems they raise, and to put forward arguments for the development of a revolutionary Jim Kemeny's views are based on housing theory. Obviously, an article the premise of creating 'Tenure of this nature can be only a sketchy Neutrality". This means that the outline. Its main function is to be a different tenures, i.e. owner catalyst for debate and for the occupation, public tenants, private development among the left of an i tenants and rental housing co­ should be distributed as equitably as understanding of socialist housing operatives, should be treated equally, possible, but they totally ignore the theory. This is important for two so that no one tenure obtains problems of how to ensure that there main reasons. Firstly, if the Accord is financial benefit, either through is an adequate supply of housing. to continue or is renegotiated, it will capital gains, explicit public subsidy, They advocate such policies as taxing I be important that we have a well or imputed income (estimated rental imputed income and national developed housing theory, so that the values on owner occupied pooling of public housing rents. "social wage" can be applied in properties), The alternative theory is a socialist context to housing. Hugh Stretton has, over a long advocated by Michael Ball, who Secondly, "Shelter" (Australia), a period of time, published a large argues that there needs to be a change coalition of housing groups, has not amount of material on housing and in social relationships. He envisages yet developed a truly comprehensive social theory, but his main thrust has that this would take the form of housing theory nor does it even been to encourage home ownership. nationalisation of the building officially support any existing This has been based on the view that industry, land, real estate agents and theory. a housing proposal must be designed building societies, as well as an which achieves equity in three key y y o u sin g theory can be divided agreed price system for properties. aspects — between institutional and r - M into two main groups, those He does foresee that home ownership Idomestic capital, between the three -*■ concerned with housing would exist, but the houses would be main housing tenures (private finance and those proposing changes sold on long leases (a practice long ownership, private rental and public in social relationships. Most housing accepted in Britain). rental), and between classes. His line theories belong in the first group has been to encourage housing although there are great differences he problems with theories equality between classes, by which he in the conclusions reached. Three based on housing finance are means that all classes of society main theories are those by Jim that they are purely reformist should have the opportunity to be r in approach and could easily be Kemeny, Kilroy and McIntosh, and home owners. This implies that a Hugh jjtretton. Jim Kemeny's and I disbanded when governments I system has to be developed to enable Hugh Stretton's views both draw on change, or be used to implement people on low incomes to purchase the Australian experience. Kilroy rightwing housing policy, for houses. and McIntosh's arguments are based example, by changing the emphasis Kilroy and McIntosh see the on British experience, and have been of subsidies that may be granted. housing problem in terms of the implicitly endorsed by "Shelter" These theories, therefore, make only distribution of a scarce resource. (Britain). minor adjustments and fail to They argue that this scarce resource address the real problems. These

\ I

24 Australian Left Review 93 problems are the inability of the intensive use of sub-contractors, fhe descriptions of houses for sale. e.g. house building industry to provide skills of these companies are in replacing estate agent phrases with sufficient housing of good quality at management of the building process accurate descriptions - "renovator's low cost either for rent or sale. This and in competitive tendering. It can dream" would become "in poor can be achieved only by changes in be argued, therefore, that, should condition"; "ideal first home" would social relationships, allowing land be nationalised, there should be become "very cheap". The market motives other than profit or financial no compensation if the building could be used to set the price, with a viability to be taken into account companies were nationalised. The tax levied on any surplus over the set when looking at the housing most appropriate way of organising price. Nationalisation could also problem. Social factors must be the nationalised building industry allow the use of modern technology taken into accounL when assessing would be to set up a series of local so that people moving interstate, for the true costs and benefits of enterprises with a high degree of example, could be helped by their providing housing. It may be that, worker control. Exceptions would local agency. presented with a housing theory include those national companies Extensive analysis of housing which specialise in building freeways, theory is not within the scope of this etc article, but it is hoped that it will The main argument for the provoke discussion and debate t nationalisation of land is that the around this important issue, j

Colin Jones has been a housing activist for several years and now works as j Housing Worker for St. Kilda Rental j Housing Co-op in Melbourne. He is a I member of the CPA.

based on the need for social change, people will decide that such a housing policy should be implemented, even in a pluralistic democracy. However, even if this M value of land is created by the were not possible, a revolutionary community, either through the policy can be used as a tool to demand for new buildings, or measure the etfectiveness of other |g through its value being based on its policies, although the revolutionary zoning under planning laws (and, of Recommended Reading policy should always be seen as an course, plarurrag sboyld be achievable goal. democratic), li^nd, wn)ll*e most Michael Ball, Housing Policy and Economic So, in advocating a policy which goods, does not have -ajNost of Power. Methuen and Co.. London, 1983. requires social change, the production, nor does using the land destroy it. Land can always be David Donalson and Clare Ungerson, consequences should be shown. The Housing Policy, Penguin, London, 1983. redeveloped. Once land is I first effect is the nationalisation of nationalised, it should not be sold, Jane Drake and Roy Darke, Who Needs building companies. This raises the Housing, Macmillan, London, 1979. ^ question of who will be nationalised except by long lease and how this nationalised industry At the moment, land and property Jim Kemeny, Die Myth of Home Ownership, could be organised. It should be are sold or leased through private r Routledge and Keegan Paul, London, 1981. noted that most profit made by the real estate agents. However, if houses John Lambert, Chris Paris and Bob Blackaby, # building companies emanates Irom are sold at some controlled or Housing Policy and the State, Macmillan, their large land holdings and from regulated price, then there would be a London, 1978. commercial property holdings. The need fora centralised agency system. John Ratdiffc, Land Policy, Hutchinson, companies do not have large This could be locally based to allow London, 1976. amounts of capital invested in plant for uniformity in the implementation Leonie Sandercock and Michael Berry. Urban and machinery due to the fact that of policy and the standardisation of Political Economy, George Allen and Unwin, most• of» it is hired,m and because 1of the language in advertisements and Sydney, 1983. Spring 1985 25 John Mathews Technology: The Challenge for Trade Unions

Strategy for a democratic socialism must begin with democracy and control in the workplace, argues John Mathews. Confronting technological change means dealing with more than the externals of jobs won or lost — it means looking at the labour process itself and the workers' ability to enhance their skills and increase their control of their labour.

nter a typical workplace today and you find "autonomous technology". alienation, frustration and anger. Work is It is as widely subscribed toon the left as it is on the right; Efragmented into meaningless, repetitive and boring indeed, in "vulgar marxist" terms the "forces ol tasks. The worker feels a victim of a giant technological production" are held to be the determining inlluence on all machine, whose workplace appearance is simply the most social development. concentrated expression of a wider social phenomenon. I he notion of a technological imperative operating We hear much of the wonders of microelectronics ol through machines, processes, and equipment subject onl} the information societv, of an end to dirty, dangerous and to considerations of technical efficiency, is pure ideology.1 demeaning tasks, of a life of leisure for all and yet in It obscures and, indeed, is meant to obscure, the fact that reality we see workers being robbed of their few remaining technology is a social construct, the summation ol skills, work being subjected to further "speed up'' and innumerable choices made in the past, and all reflecting the paced by electronic monitoring, and a society which is interests of the developers and promoters of technological based on work for the few and unemploy ment for the many innovations. being created before our eyes. It is easy enough to identify this multi-faceted malaise Modern scholarship has now revealed the social choices but what is to be done about it? involved in the development of hierarchy, division of labour and the technical form for the production "Unions should oppose an excessive apparatus.’ We know now that non-hierarchical. non- fragmentation of work into jobs which become fragmenled, skill-enhancing rather than skill-degrading devoid of skill or interest." technical options were available, but not developed. I herefore it remains ai least an open question whether Is the organisation of work dictated by the technology the present demeaning organisation of work can be employed? Is alienating work the price that we pay for changed without incurring massive productivity and material prosperity? The conventional answer to this is yes, efficiency losses, and lea\ ing us all freezing in the dark. II Our levels of productivity, we understand, depend on this is the case, in what directions do we want to see division of labour, mechanisation and increasingly on changes, and what should be the strategy for securing automation. Hierarchies of authority, we understand, are them? built into the very process of production. It is seen as Ultimately, we seek a humane and democratic work absurd to question these truths; it is tantamount to wishing organisation as the loundation of a humane and to return to a mythical golden age of craft production, but democratic society. We seek a situation where workers are without the amenities of modern life. dignified, proud of their skills and contributing them to This idea, that there is a logic to technological society. How do we move from our present to our desired development which determines the social form of work state? and its productivity, is possibly the single biggest obstacle I believe that workers themselves, organised through to the achievement of a justand equitable society. The idea their unions, must be the prime vehicle of this transition. is known variously as "technological determinism" or as The transition must be a process, rather than a simple-

26 Australian Lcfl Review 93 Technology: The Challenge for Trade Unions

It is at the point of change that workers may agree toco- operate with a certain type of innovation, but to oppose another type. Through such agreement they are best able to secure satisfactory working facilities, and a measure of control over the new technology. T his is not a Luddite position, but one which discriminates between socially progressive and regressive technologies.1

ence the importance of a trade union policy on technological change, and on the labour process H(i.e. the content and organisation of work). We are clearly living in a period of dynamic admustment to the Australian and world economy. There will be more, rather than less, technological change in the future. In place ol merely opposing change because of the absence of adequate social security and retraining facilities provided for those affected by change, the unions should be insisting on these "safety net" provisions as a m inim um and then formulating positive proposals regarding the direction ol change and the technical options to he selected. Ol course, the unions ana their members have suffered grievously from the effects of technological change in the past. Unplanned and unregulated technical innovation has thrown thousands of workers out of a job, with only the dubious consolation that a dynamic economy might offer some ol them alternative work at some time in the future. Technical innovation, particularly mechanisation, has frequently been used as a weapon lo curb the militancy ol key groups of skilled workers.4 And unregulated technological change has set union against unions as occurred in 1 J when the introduction of scissor lifts in the construction industry threw builders' labourers out of work and set (heir union against the other building trades Ben on Liberski unions (resulting in the expulsion fora lime of the Builders Labourers Federation from the Victorian Trades Hall Council). minded revolution or assault on the pinnacles of economic These have all been bitter lessons, and bought dearly, power, it must start with workers securing some degree ol I hey have resulted in unions throughout industry control over their own labour process, and then move confronting employers, when technical changes arc through lurthcr stages ol control o\er production, trade proposed, with demands for job security and protection, and marketing, then finance and investment. In other and for retraining of displaced workers. These demands words, this is a strategy of gradual achievement of force a degree of social responsibility on the employers and industrial democracy, starting with workers'most concrete restrict their ability to discard an unwanted worklorce at and pressing concerns; such as their health and safety, and will. In Australia, employment protection standards have immediate control over the content of their work. lagged behind those secured in many other countries. The long-awaited decision of the Australian "But once such a security net is established, then Conciliation and Arbitration Commission in the the unions can become instigators and I ermination, Changeand Redundancy case, handed down proponents of technological change on their in two instalments in 1984, moves some way to consolidate terms — that is where socialist values can begin the position achieved by some unions, and brings to context the hierarchical, authoritarian and Australian employers more into line with their overseas competitors.5 inhumane values we see all around us today." In line with ACTU policy, some unions have been able to move beyond mere job protection, and have negotiated II the unions are to lead this process of transition (and Technological Change Agreements with employers. These they wilt either lead it or become its casualties), then they are now common in the Scandinavian countries, in must formulate some criteria by which to define a humane northern Europe and the UK, and they have been won in and progressive work organisation. These criteria will not Australia as well, notably within Telecom in 1980. be technically determined, but socially imposed. And it is This agreement flowed from a celebrated dispute at the point of technological change that such criteria may between Telecom and the telecommunications engineers be imposed most forcelully. over the introduction of computer-controlled switching - apparatus, with the engineers insisting that the new

Spring 198? 27 Technology: The Challenge for Trade Unions

technology not be introduced in such a way that an elite corps of maintenance stall be created and the majority slowly lose their skills. They successfully imposed their own job design proposals to accompany the new technology, thus preserving skills and career structure. In line with the formal agreement, changes in technology within Telecom are carried through now only afterspccilic written agreement on job specifications, skill levels, training and promotion matters has been obtained. Similar agreements now operate within sectors of the railways, and of the Commonwealth and states' public services. Again, the year 1984 saw a substantia] consolidation ol these gains in the decision of the High Court ol Australia upholding the validity of procedures requiring an employer to consult with a union over proposed technological changes/ The entire Irade union movement had been waiting lor this case to work its way through the courts from the Victorian industrial tribunal where the Federated Clerks first tried to vary their award and insert a clause on consultation over technological change. The High Court decision opens the way for unions in every jurisdiction to seek to insert similar consultation clauses in their awards and thereby impose legal requirements on employers, (The requirements are modest compared with those enacted in legislation in the Scandinavian countries.)

t is now widely recognised that dealing with technological change requires the unions to attend to I more than the external features of the proposed change (numbers of workers, training details, work value and his system of ''scientific management" ("taylorism"), considerations). It is now seen as essential that the unions the employers staged a coup in the early 20th century and negotiate a framework of participation and consultation expropriated the workers' control over the labour process, indeed, of joint determination — in which the internal putting in its place an immense management apparatus details of any proposed technical change may be whose role was to issue precise work instructions and hammered out before the change is carried through. monitor every aspect ol the production process with a chain of paper moving from desk tw desk, and now from "We hear much of the wonders o f computer to computer microelectronics — of the information society, of an end to dirty, dangerous and demeaning It is this control over the internal details ol the labour tasks, of a life of leisure for all — and yet in process, over the content of work, that must engage the unions now. 1 hey will be claiming back no more than was reality we see workers being robbed of their few lost a lew decades ago but this will set them on a course remaining skills, work being subjected to further with lar-reaching implications. They wiil not he 'speed-up' and paced by electronic monitoring, attempting to roll back ihe workplace and technology to and a society which is based on work for the few the turn of the century but to claim the latest technical and unemployment for the many being created advances and propose new technical advances which before our eyes." placea premium on workers'skills, which provide a flow ol current information allowing workers to take meaningful decisions, and which put an end to the slavish, Ihese details will include the precise technical authoritarian hierarchies of work processes modelled on spccilications oi the proposed change; the manner of the assembly line. organising work; the job content and skill structure ol the work; the different technical options available, and other This demand is not as radical as it may sound. It is stated factors. quite explicitly by Robert Reich in his influential book. Not so long ago. and certainly into the early years of the The Next American Frontier, published in 1983, where he 20th century, these matters were normally the province of says: "The industries that will sustain the next stage of the worker and not of the employer (except in high America's economic evolution will necessarily be based on technology process industries like the chemical industry). a skilled, adaptable and innovative labor force and on a Yet that time seems so far away! more flexible, less hierarchical organisation of work."” Following the inspiration of Frederick Winslow Taylor

Australian Left Review W Technology: The Challenge for Trade Unions

I this is what is being demanded by a liberal US should be co-ordinated by "work co-ordinators" elected economist, then the unions should be demanding no from the workforce, rather than by supervisors appointed less. In particular, in connection with each proposed unilaterally by management. (This is not to say that I supervisors are incompetent, but only that they are not case of technological change, the following issues should be taken up. accountable for their actions to the workers of their shop.) • Unions should oppose an excessive fragmentation of The office of elected "work co-ordinator" greatly enlarges work into jobs which become devoid of ski!! or interest. the scope and functions of existing job delegates. They should impose a conception of jobs in which workers • Unions should insist that work co-ordinators be supplied are enabled to comprehend the entire process of with all relevant, up-to-date information on current production, and exercise some control over the process production or activities, to enable them to comprehend the leading to a finished product or activity. •To this end, all job classifications categorising workers as "operators" of a particular machine or piece of equipment, should be opposed. Such designations as "press operator" or "VDU operator" reduce workers to appendages of machines, and deny their skills as workers. Unions should impose job titles which relied the goal ol the job or the end-product produced (e.g. "metai parts fabricator" or 'text editor and processor"). "Technical innovation, particularly mechanisation, has frequently been used as a weapon to curb the militancy of key groups of skilled workers," • Unions should insist that each job carrying a specific job title should contain a variety of tasks requiring a diversity of skills. As a general criterion, jobs should encompass aspects of conception as well as execution, thereby overcoming the catastrophic division between mental and manual labour enforced by "scientific management". •Unions should state openly that the fundamental "property" of workers is their skill (otherwise known by management theorists as "human capital"). The central object of trade unions should be the protection of workers' skills and their enhancement via a process of lifetime training and career development. Unions should seek to have employers recognise the fundamental nature of skill, by making skills the centrepiece of negotiations over wage systems, job classifications and work organisation accompanying any proposed technical change. There is nothing in common between a union-imposed gradation of skills, and a management-imposed job hierarchy. • Unions should oppose all "time and motion" type work role of their work group in the totality of operations, and study and in particular oppose the electronic monitoring of to be able to take meaningful decisions. Computerised individual workers, and impose instead group data systems under workers' control should be demanded. performance targets. • Unions should insist that employers allow work co­ • Unions should root out once and for all divisive wage ordinators to meet together frequently, on their own as systems based on individual incentives, premiums and well as with management, and that such a works council bonuses, which isolate the performance of individual form the germ of any industrial democracy initiatives. workers, and set workers in competition against each • Unions should insist on collective ownership of other. These systems were introduced in the last two knowledge of the labour process. Workers can only decades of the 19th century with the sole purpose of exercise a degree of control over work to the extent that breaking the "internal contract" system and boosting they understand the process — and so it should be a productivity via inter-worker competition. The ACTU fundamental demand of unions that employers provide the stated its opposition to such incentive payments systems in requisite information. In some cases, this will mean 1947, 1949 and again in 1953 — but unions have failed to refusing to recognise the legitimacy of employers'claims of follow through and obtain their removal, nor have they "commercial confidentiality". adequately explained the basis of ACTU opposition to the • Unions should develop their own set of criteria by which membership.*1 to judge w'hether a proposed technological change is likely •Unions should oppose any proposed work organisation to be beneficial or harmful. Such criteria might include the based on a military model of a technical hierarchy. Work following:

Spring 1985 29 Technology; The Challenge for Trade Unions

1. The technology should require specified skills which, in aggregate, are superior to existing skill requirements. 2. The technology should provide a well-defined career path for workers involved with it. 3. The technology should be such that displaced workers may be retrained to operate it. 4. The technology should create a minimum of job classifications with a uniform skill gradation between them. 5. The technology should not involve excessively repetitive action. Any cycle or task should take at least 10 minutes to perform. 6. The technology should encourage unity of conception and execution by an individual worker, e.g. sell- programming of computer-controlled machine tools. 7. The technology should provide adequate stimulus and variety. 8. The technology should favour group, work targets, and not depend on monitoring of individuals nor on a hierarchy of control. 9. The technology should generate current data on its state or performance that is available to the work-group and in particular to the elected work co-ordinator. 10. The technology should be comprehensible, in principle, to all workers involved with it. 11. The technology should not expose workers to uncontrollable risks to health or safety. 12. The technology should be socially useful.

"In other words, this is a strategy of gradual achievement of industrial democracy, starting with workers' most concrete and pressing on the job remains an abstract demand, incapable ol concerns; such as their health and safety, and mobilising the workers as long as it is not organically immediate control over the content of work." linked to the demand for concrete workers' powers over the conditions of work."9 This is still the major challenge facing the unions. It is a Such a set of criteria could then be used by unions in challenge that can best be accepted at the point of negotiations over the design of new technologies. They can technological change, for ii Is at this poini that competing be used by systems designers in exactly the same way that conceptions of social utility, the purpose of work, work more conventional specifications are used to guide and organisation and skills, can come into conflict with each frame choices. other. It is through such clashes that the future shape of our social order is decided. hese points add up to what may be described as a trade union "labour process policy" which may T be used to guide unipns'negotiations with employers he perspective of this article, then, is that the point, over the introduction of new technology. or moment, of technological change is a key. What if the unions refuse to adopt these proposals, and Tstrategic point of intervention where socialist values continue to confine their activities to matters concerned can contest the mechanical-financial values of the with the externals of work — pay levels, hours, and employers and prevail. The perspective is one of a strategy workina conditions? In this case, the efforts of socialists to for achieving socialism, as a value system and process, at establish an equitable, open and democratic society must the perpetually moving point of change (or at the "cutting be hampered by the lact that workers have no experience edge", or "at the margin" to use the terminology of both of these concepts when at work. The process of change engineering and economics). needs to start at the most basic level, which is that of the workplace. If democracy is denied there, it cannot flourish This is a strategy that is radically opposed to the notion anywhere else. that socialism is a social system that can be achieved In 1964, the French socialist Andre Goiy published a overnight, as a result of a transfer of political power — for short manifesto, Strategy fo r Labor, in which he called on such a strategy, apart from being simple-minded and non- the unions to develop a policy of workers'control over the specific content of work. Twenty-one years on. his text still resonates with relevance. He insisted that: "Formal recognition of the union organisation and of civil liberties

30 Australian Left Review 93 Technology: The Challenge for Trade Unions

achievable through democratic means, is responsible lor security platform, and there are no current steps being ihe fetishisation ol politics by socialists in the past, and the taken to establish it. terrible neglect of the real and pressing workplace issues Some of the long-standing demands of the unions, tor a that should have been taken up but were not, lor tear ol measure of job security, lor severance payments when becoming "contaminated" by the capitalist system. It was workers are made redundant, and for prior consultation this attitude that Andre Ciorz railed against in 1964, and before change takes place, have been met by the recent which appears now to be, at long last, in decline. termination. Change and Redundancy case decision of Certain things have to be done. Before workers and the Conciliation and Arbitration Commission. These are unions can drop their hostile and defensive attitude to steps in the right direction. But. until there is a humane and technological change (an attitude wholly justified b\ the generous community response to the victims of terrible costs that workers have borne as a result of 200 technological change, it is unrealistic to expect the unions years of unregulated technical change) an adequate social to markedly change their role as defenders of the status security net needs to be established to compensate those quo. But once such a security net is established, then the who are most directly affected by changes. Such a security unions can become instigators and proponents of net was recommended by the Myers Committee technological change on their terms — and that is where (Committee of Inquiry on Technological Change in socialist values can begin to contest the hierarchical, Australia CITCA) in I980MI. and supported in AC'I'll authoritarian and inhuman values we see all around us policy - but it does not seem to be part of the AI .P social today.

NOTES AND REFERENCES John Mathews worked for some years on occupational health I, On the notion of "autonomous technology' and Us critique, see and safety questions for the ACTU. His paper Technology, trade 1-itngdun Winner, “Do artifacts have politics?' Daedalus. 109 (Winter unions and the labour process, from which this article was 1980). pp 121-136. This icxt discusses the social shaping of technology as extracted, was prepared while the author was on a visiting well as the more familiar (heme of technologies having social elfects. fellowship in the Department of Humanities at Deakin Winner likens technologies to laws, in that they exercise ongoing University, Victoria. Copies of the full paper can be obtained restraints over people's behaviour. These themes arc dealt with more from the Department of Humanities, Deakin University, discursively in Langdon Winner, Autonomous Technology; Technics- Victoria 32f7. out-of-control as a theme in political thought, Cambridge, Ml I Press, 1977. In this text. W inner adopts a somewhat bemused stance in relation to some of the more e xtremc statements that "technology is out of control". e,g, Jacques Ellul. The Technological System, New York. Continuum, 1980. intervention 2. For an interesting medieval example, see Marc Bloch, "Advent and triumph ol the water mill'. Ln his Land and Work in Mediaeval Europe. publications I ondon, 1967. For examples in the modern industrial era. see the source cited in section 1, the Labour Process, below. 3. On the l uddites and their rehabilitation from stupid machine breakers HA R /MASCULINITY to intelligent workers opposing a particular type of technological change because they were expected to bear all the costs of transition, see E.P. Articles by: Thompson. The Making o f the English Working Class, London, Bob Connell Chris Cunneen Penguin, 1968. 4. Robert Oranne, A century of iabour-management relations at Jocelyn Dunphy Adam Farrar McCormick and International Harvester. Madison. University of Gavin Harris <6 Leigh Raymond Wisconsin Press. 1967. Brian Martin Brian Pinkstone 5 Australian Conciliation and Arbitration Commission, Decision; Termination. Change and Redundancy Case, Melbourne, 2 August 1984. Ross Poole Noel Sanders Print F6230: Supplementary Decision, Sydney, 14 December 1984, Print Terry Smith F7262. 6. Sec Decision of High Court re Commercial Clerks Award. Canberra, 1984. This case stemmed from a Decision of the Industrial Relations On: Commission of Victoria, granting a variation of the Commercial Clerks Constructions o f masculinity: American bases Award (no 3 of 1982) to provide for consultation over technological in Australia; The Nazi Visual War Machine: change. This decision was appealed by the employers, and the appeal upheld by the Supreme Court of Victoria, Judgment re Commercial Boys and Crime; War and Male Desire; Aust­ Clerks Award, 12 May 1983 (case M 16405 of 1982). The Federated Clerks ralian Peace Movements; Gender and Nation­ Union then appealed this decision to the High Court. alism: the Milperra Massacre: The P.E. o f Arms 7 Robert Reich, The Next American Frontier. New York, Times Books, 1983. and Disarmament. 8. Australian Council of Trade Unions, Consolidation of ACTU Policy Decisions 1951-1980, D 46-4S0. $6.00 per copy, subscriptions per 3 issues - indiv­ 9 Andre Gorz. Strategy for Labour, 1964. In Branko Horvat et al (eds.), Self Governing Socialism, Volume 2, New York, International Arts and iduals $16.50, institutions $13.00; overseas - Sciences Press. 1975. $AUS23.00 <£ $38.00. 10. Report of the Committee of Inquiry into Technological Change in Australia, Technological Change in Australia. Canberra, AGPS, 1980. The committee was established by Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser on 1 P.O. Box 395, Leichhardt, NSW, 2040, Australia. _December I97X, and consisted of Professor Rupert Myers (chairman), Mr. ACoogan.and Mr. W. Mansfield (federal secretary of the Australian Telecommunications Employees Association).

.Spring 1985 31 The ABC is now suffering one of the most savage attacks in the last ten years, ironically from a Labor government. We must defend the ABC, yet we also need to do some rethinking about why we should defend it, whether ratings are important and what we mean by 'culture', argues Marius Webb, in a paper presented at the recent conference on Culture, Arts, Media and Radical Politics.

suppose that I would like to pose It often means High Art and analysis except to say that I think far the question first. What is the everything which that entails but, too many people who talk about it ABC? then again, it has a lot more going for tend to forget the word "mass". The The ABC is an unfortunate it than that. For instance, culture is concept of "mass" in relation to conglomeration of many people's something in which your friendly electronic media is very important, beliefs about radio and television biochemist grows germs, and if I'm and is, in a strange way, programs that they like best. Rarely pressed, 1 think that 1 prefer the latter underestimated. In relation to the is it a comprehensive understanding definition because it really conveys ABC, it is often quaintly reduced to of a confusion of often competing what 1 think culture is all about. the rather tiresome argument about cultural influences. Using the world Culture is what we do. Culture is ratings. But if we are going to talk "cultural" immediately leads me to an about what we live in, and develop in about mass media then we have to effort to define what we mean by that and, in the end, culture is really how talk about ratings. We have to word. we develop. understand them and we have to be "Culture" is one of those prepared to argue for, and against, ingenuous words that slipseasily into n u t back to the ABC. The ABC them. 1 am not a subscriber to the the subconscious and gives most of is also part of what we call the argument that ratings do not matter. us a feeling of middle class ease. But mass media. The concept of They are inherent in the concept of what does it really mean? mass media doesn't need too much the mass media — for what is it, if it

32 Australian Left Review 93 Which Way the ABC? does not appeal to a mass (and that bureaucrat's conception of a celebrated 50 years of the ABC — means a lot of people). program layout. which was probably not a bad thing The mass media have understand­ The concept of "massness" may — but what worried me at the time ably got something of a bad name, not seem an important consideration was an implicit assumption that 50 and I'm not here to argue their worth, in relation to the future of the ABC years was only halfway to 100, and but their importance relates to the but 1 think the ABC does have in here we all were, intact in an fact that they have a mass audience important mass type of audience, organisation that was going to last and that the future is going to be forever. There are \ery tew suburban dictated by the way we react and cope Now, 100 years is a long time in newspapers which have influenced with our audience from now on. anyone's language. Some empires social change in a large sense, as To return to my original concern, (more famous than the ABC!) have readers of the Murdoch press in 1975 we probably think about culture in not lasted that long. I just think we would probably realise. However, rather limited terms. We do not think should be wary of defending for the this is not to say that small media do of sport as culture because we think sake of defence alone. And maybe not have an effect (as long-time in typically anti-Australo-working- the ABC, if it's not meeting the needs readers of The Glebe would know). class terms, but if we ignore sport, of its audience, does need to change. I do not think that we, that is then 1 don't think we know much The future holds many challenges workers in the media, can afford to about our culture. for the ABC, one of the most ignore what is often disregarded as If we are to look to the future of the significant being the introduction of merely popular, i don't want to ABC, then we have to look to the the satellite which will, among other overemphasise the point, but the almost recent past and, given what things, continue to erode the ABC's reality is that if the medium does not I've already said, the point at which role. have a major audience, then it does radical change really started Because of the satellite, the ABC not have impact and it therefore does to happen occurred when Packer may no longer have one of the key not have social importance. took over cricket in the late 1970s. At elements which made it worth To translate what I'm saying to that point, one of the key elements of having, that is, the ability to be a another sphere, Shakespeare, the ABC's hold on the Australian national broadcaster. Mozart and the Beatles have all been public suddenly disappeared. The biggest questions facing the "popular" but not dismissed as There were, of course, other effects ABC, I believe, are some of the "mass". Of course. I'm not arguing but, suddenly, a great deal had dilemmas and problems I have that anything that is "mass" is of the changed. Couple this with the buying outlined. We have to do better in same value and importance, but that of the ABC's current affairs certain areas than the commercials, you have to take the concept of resources and you can see that there and that does not mean just doing the "mass" into account when you are was more than a subtle share raid stuff that they do. It means creating talking about things like the ABC. going on. I don't need to comment on new forms and having the courage to This is not simply because of the the situation today, except to point follow them through, such as the impact of numbers but also because out that at 2-MMM, Sydney's top- ABC's present involvement in electronic media, like many other rating commercial FM station, 12 Aboriginal broadcasting. performance arts, exist only while hours of the radio day are currently The present financial restrictions they are going on. handled by people who used to work are perhaps worse than they have In other words, you can't afford to for the ABC. ever been, because we have not miss the bus — which explains a lot here is a great danger in developed the appropriate reflexes to about the neuroses of the people who defending an institution like defend the ABC against a vindictive program major television channels, the ABC or, in fact, any Labor government. In many ways, but also something about people who r this aspect is perhaps one of the most institution. Defence is likely to throw make valuable and interesting radio one into a reactionary mode. understated elements in the present programs which get buried in some Why? Two years ago we all debate on how to defend the ABC.

Marius Webb has worked for the ABC for over a decade, including as a co­ -ordinator of Sydney's 2JJ (now 2JJJ- FM), and as a staff-elected member of the Commission. He now works in the Human Resources section of the ABC.

Spring 1985 33 Sheril Berkovitch Troubled Times: Thailand's Trade Unions

Despite enormous difficulties and opposition, a genuine trade union movement has emerged in Thailand in recent years. In this article, Sheril Berkovitch looks at the background leading up to the current situation and recent moves towards trade unionism in Thailand.

^-'fince 1975. trade union organising in Thailand has Europe, who were supported by military officers. Since been enormously difficult. The majority of trade that time, Thailand has had a constitutional monarchy, unions are ''yellow", or pro-management and with a parliament. However, Thailand has effectively been workers face severe repression if they attempt to organise under military rule since 1976 and real power lies with the unions. Despite this, over the past few years, workers in military forces. Thailand have been sticking their necks out and There have been numerous military coups in the last 50 attempting to form genuine trade unions that take years, and "democratic" rule has only existed during the workers' needs into account. three years between 1973 and 1976, when a student-led "revolution" occurred. Even during this period, however, Historical Background dictatorial practices continued, with police, armed men, security forces and military seeking to control and destroy rior to 1932, the political system in Thailand was an popular movements. Although Thailand had general absolute monarchy. Within a feudal system, Thai elections in 1976, the members of the Upper House were P people were generally serfs, working for a landlord, appointed by the Thai elite, almost all of them military and and cauld not work for anyone else without the landlord’s bureaucrats. permission. Buddhism, the major Thai religion, was used Thailand's government is an obstacle to popular by the monarchy as an instrument of control complete movements, such as the trade union movement. In i 952, an control by the King who was considered an "untouchable" anti-communist act was passed which implied that anyone person. Bureaucrats, or servants of the King, were opposing the rulers could be accused of communism, and, considered superior and only men could become indeed, large numbers of people have been arrested and bureaucrats. killed. Anti-communism has been consistently used as a With the beginnings of the industrialisation of Thailand tool against the labour movement. in the second half of the nineteenth century, the western Despite the involvement of international capitalists in capitalists, notably the British, began importing Chinese Thailand, it has never been colonised. Some workers for industrial labour because the Thais themselves commentators have claimed that this has been one of the were restricted to serfdom. These Chinese workers became major problems for the progressive movements in the first generation of the working class. They were Thailand. They feel that the Thai people have not had a considered "free" people by the King (on payment of an tangible force to struggle against. Nevertheless, the Thais annual’tax), and had the freedom to buy and sell their were successful in ridding the country of US military bases labour and goods. They gradually became the small which were used as staging posts in the Viet Nam war. traders, petty bourgeois, and capitalists, and as they Using militant tactics and mass mobilisation of the people, became upwardly mobile they were replaced in the the bases were removed in 1975. and US activity stepped working class by T hais. up in the bases in the Philippines (such as Subic Bay Naval In 1932 the absolute monarchy was overthrown by a Base and Clark Air Base). coup, instigated by a group of intellectuals educated in

34 Australian Left Review 93 Troubled l imes: Trade Unions in Thailand

Economics goods that the Thai people neither want nor need. With industrial expansion, people from other sectors, hailand is primarily an agricultural country, with the such as farmers, have increasingly become workers. In major products being rice, fish and wood. However, 1982. the Thai Civil Liberties Union(TCLU) found that 80 between 1961 and 1981, the growth rate of the percent of Bangkok workers came from the rural sector. J The working class has rapidly expanded, although it is still industrial sector in I hailand averaged 9.4 percent, compared with 4.1 percent for agriculture, the textile only about one third the size of the agricultural sector. industry has grown particularly quickly. There has been u shift away Irom food processing as the major export item, The Labour Force to a broader range of exports including clothing and here are 25 million people in the Thai labour force, textiles. Few high technology products are manufactured about one half of the total population. Sixteen in Thailand as yet. although there is a growing electronics T million work in the agricultural sector, and nine

Hava Jeans Strikers 1975

industry, t-oreign investment is largely from Japan and the million in the non-agricultural sector (TCLU, 1982). US, although there is some Australian investment. The industrial sector is divided into two areas — As with the majority of countries in the South East Asia "formal" and "informal". The formal sector covers the region, Thailand has been under pressure from middle- and large-scale productions, and is dominated by international financial institutions, such as the World foreign-owned companies. The informal sector comprises Bank, to follow a particular path of economic small scale production, small businesses and workshops which produce for the local market and supply the larger "In 1980 there were nearly six thousand multinational companies as sub-contractors. Small-scale unlicensed factories in only four provinces in industry employs approximately 52 percent of the workforce. Thailand, which the workers themselves have Forty-seven percent of the total Thai labour force are labelled Hell Factories'." women although, in the formal sector, this reaches around 80 percent. The total figure excludes workers in illegal development which gives the best access to foreign-owned (unlicensed) factories, and prostitutes, of which more later. companies and banks. This has meant a greater Their wages are considerably lower than men's and there dependence on exports to the western industrial countries. are no benefits such as maternity leave. As well, foreign companies are given tax and other In 1980 there were nearly six thousand unlicensed concessions to encourage investment in Thailand where factories in only lour provinces in Thailand, which the there are now tree trade zones, or export processing zones, .workers themselves have labelled "Hell Factories". Many geared mainly towards the export market, and producing of them employ women and children, forcing them to work

Spring 1985 35 Troubled Times: Trade Unions in Thailand

at least 12 hours a day with meals provided, and low wages. sector. Others tend to work in heavy industry or become Some workers receive no wages at all. These factories often monks in their late teens, thereby achieving a high status. buy teenage girls and children from poor rural families who cannot afford to feed them. These young workers Working conditions often find that there is no job waiting for them and many are forced into prostitution as a means of survival. Often a he following case study amply illustrates typical young girl will arrive at her place of work to find that she is working conditions in the Thai industrial sector. expected to work in a brothel. As well as this, many young Names have been changed for security reasons. women workers find it necessary to work as prostitutes at J Napha was born in a rural village in Thailand. At 14, her night, while working in factories during the day, simply to family sold her, through an "employment recruitment earn enough money to survive, and perhaps send some agency", to a family-owned company in Bangkok which money back to their families in the provinces. produces batteries for the local market: Peang Teng Ltd. (PTL). The factory employs 40 people. "Organisers have used methods such as English Napha's working day is around 12 hours, with no extra classes for the workers, or cultural or sporting payment for overtime. Her take-home pay is 40 baht (A$2) activity, to get the workers together on a regular per day, the "newcomers" rate, which is less than two- or semi-regular basis." thirds of the legal minimum of 70 baht (AS3.50). Only long-serving employees of over two eyars receive the Child labour is another serious problem. There are minimum wage. Because of unsafe working conditions and minimal laws existing to control the use of child labour. subsequent poor health, many workers leave before the For example, it is forbidden to employ children below the two-year probationary period is complete. age of 12, and only with Ministry permission for those Napha's job is to paint chemicals onto lead sheets and to between 12 and 15, but these regulations are rarely roll lead sheets. She does this without any protective enforced. clothing or safety equipment. Earlier this year, Napha's While the majority of women workers are in the hands were caught in the lead rolling machine and she multinational companies with larger workforces, child could not work for several days. Her hands were swollen labour is mainly confined to the informal sector where the and painful. She received no compensation and her workforce in a single factory may only be 20 to 50 workers. complaints were ignored by the factory owner. Napha is This makes it far more difficult for them to be organised. not alone. Many other workers in the factory have also According to a Thai labour activist who visited Australia suffered injuries and sickness, such as deep cuts from lead recently, men are also mainly confined to the informal sheets, lead poisoning and poor health through the

"Make Melbourne Marvellous" Chain Reaction and Australian Left Review invite you to come along and voice your views on the issues raised by Discussion Day the Socialist Alternative Melbourne Collective in their Sunday, 13 October draft program for a democratic, socialist, anti-patriarchal At the YWCA and ecology respecting Melbourne. 489 Elizabeth St Melbourne We welcome requests for additional workshops on areas of interest to you. A preparatory meeting to start 10 am to 4.30 pm considering the issues will be held on Tuesday, 13 August Registration Fee $5/$3 concess. at 7.30 pm at 12 Exploration Lane, Melbourne. Tobekept informed of developments please register early by filling in the following form.

Program: Welcome Name: Introductory Speakers Teabreak Address: Workshop discussions on: Phone N o .:...... Shape of Industry, Shape of Melbourne, Coalition for Workshop request: change, Other workshops as requested Enclosed Is SS/S3 concession tor registration: S ...... Lunch Repeat of Workshops / wish to order...... copies ot Make Melbourne Marvellous at $5/$3 concession, plus $1 postage each Teabreak Report back from Workshops Enclosed Is $ ...... lo r ...... copy/copies. Farewell. (Cheques payable to the SAM Collective, CA Communist Party of Australia, 12 Exploration Lane, Melbourne 3000. Ph: (03) 662.3799),

36 Australian Left Review 93 Troubled Times: Trade Unions in Thailand

inhalation oi chemicals. When Napha was injured, she was told that il she stopped work she would not be paid, so she had no choice but to return after a few days, despite her pain. Jn other factories, workers have been trying to obtain the minimum wage, or have asked lor safety equipment, an end to forced overtime, and overtime payments. The workers at PTL are not yet unionised. When they attempted to organise themselves in the past, they were threatened with the sack and, in fact, two leaders were dismissed. Now, the Industry Minister has served a closure notice on the factory because of the leakage of toxic substances into the local residential area. If the factory closes, the workers will have no income and because they are not yet unionised, they have been unable to fight back at management. However, some progressive workers in Napha's factory have been attempting to organise a union to fight for better wages and conditions. So far, the factory owner has refused to close the factory and has not installed a waste treatment system or safety equipment because he claims it is too costly. The workers' struggle at PTL will be long and hard. Trade Unions he Thai government has, for decades, aimed to control the labour movement through the outlawing r of organisations, manipulation and domination of workers' organisations, and through labour legislation. An Australian who spent eight years working in Thailand said that, although Thai labour legislation, on paper, looks very good — the best, perhaps, in South East Asia — in 'h r A m = , fact, it is manipulated to work directly against workers' Australia Asia Worker Links interests. It is extremely difficult to register a union, and only single factories can do so. There are very few trade- based unions. The years 1958-1972 were a dark period for the labour movement. Workers were not allowed to organise trade unions or to bargain collectively. The political uprising of October 1973, led by the student movement, overthrew the based unions (besides the metal workers and the auto military government and gave encouragement to workers industry). to organise. In 1975, the Labour Relations Act legislated There are four labour centres in Thailand: the formation of unions. • The Thai Trade Union Congress is the progressive Most unions in Thailand are factory-based, and grouping and is stronger than the government-recognised federations and congresses are weak. As well, employers congress. The ongoing development of this centre provides prefer to bargain at factory level with workers, seeing the cause for optimism that the genuine union movement will business as a "family affair". Progressive workers have also expand and progress. preferred to develop self-reliance and self-determination in • The Labour Congress of Thailand (LCT) which is factory unions, meanwhile attempting to build unity and government-recognised and affiliated to the International co-operation among different unions. Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU), from During the period 1972-1982, there was an increase in where they receive some money for education. It does not struggle for better working conditions, with collective adequately represent the interests of workers. bargaining and strikes being used by the workers. For • The National Free Labour Congress (NFLC) which is example, one thousand women workers from the Hara military-backed, Blue Jeans factory were on strike for seven months from • The National Labour Congress (NLC) which is October 1975 to May 1976, and were supported financially employer-backed. Both the NFLC and the NLC have by other workers and progressive students. They occupied unofficially merged with the LCT, although there are the factory and produced and distributed goods differences between them and conflicts of interest. themselves. Employers have made attacks on workers through Textile workers were at the forefront of labour struggles various means such as lock-outs, black listing during that period. Currently, the rubber workers are probationary periods for employment, the use of spies in strong and well organised, and are amongthe few industry- the workplace, and the manipulation of the workforce Spring 1985 37 Troubled limes: Trade Unions in Thailand

through rightwing workers' leaders. Government also - to the spirit house and pray, also promising that they will works in cohorts with management. When women workers be good workers and not cause trouble for the company. from an electronics factory went to register their union Workers are fearful that, if they attempt to organise, earlier this year, government bureaucrats telephoned the something bad will happen to them. Probably this would management to let them know whai was happening. mean the loss of their job — nothing at all to do with the Other tactics are also used to deter workers from power of the spirit house, but rather the power of the forming genuine unions. When women workers staged a employer. picket on the steps of the Ministry this year to demand the implementation of the legal minimum wage, rather than All of this makes it terribly difficult for progressive attack the picket line with military or police, government workers to organise. ignored them, hoping they would get bored. It sounds very Although workers have been given the legal right to simple, but the tactic worked. Employers also use factory organise unions, they face severe harassment and even closures as an attempt to bust unions. Workers may find death if they do so. This repression has been common since that the factory closes down when they go on strike, only to the 1976 military coup. Nevertheless, unions have open again with a new, non-unionised workforce at a later responded with strikes and rallies, demanding an end to date. plant closures and violation of labour laws. They demand the legal minimum wage, as well as increased wages and "Workers on a building site refused to continue better working conditions. working because several men had been killed on the job. Management then built a "spirit house" Progressive workers and union organisers face many on the site, claiming it would protect the difficulties because of the repression that takes place in workers, who then returned to work, with no factories. For example, the union organiser at the Safcol factory outside of Bangkok (there is also one in the improvement in safety conditions. provinces to the north of Thailand, but little contact has been made there), often has to wait until late at night to Religion is also used by management as a means ol meet with the workers. Often they are forced to remain in control. In 1981, male workers on a building site refused to the factory for overtime and may not get home until ten, continue working because several men had been killed on eleven or twelve o'clock at night. After working such long the job. Management then built a "spirit house" on the site, hours, workers are too tired to consider union activity. claiming it would protect the workers, who then returned Organisers have used methods such as English classes for to work, with no improvement in safety conditions. the workers, or cultural or sporting activity, to get the The idea of the spirit house as a system of control has workers together on a regular or semi-regular basis. These been widely implemented. It is a combination of Buddhism methods have often proved successful. Labour organisers with a Hindu influence and a large number of factories feel that they must first get together with the workers and have spirit houses. At the Australian Safcol factory, for form a trusting relationship, often staying overnight with example, one and a half hours outside Bangkok, a spirit them in their homes, before any genuine educational or house has been built at the gate. New workers are told to go organising activity can take place. These activities must be

Special prices for complete set SOCIAL ALTERNATIVES or individual back issues. The Internationa! Magazine Focusing on Social Change and Alternative Strategies Single copies: $3.25 Social Alternatives provides a forum for the 4 issues £14 S20 £8 () yr) (individuals) (institutions (pension, analysis o f social, cultural and economic and libraries) TEA S, dole) oppression and focuses on the development of 8 issues $25 536 alternative strategies to effect social change (2 yr) (individuals) (institutions towards greater freedom and a more and libraries) participating society. Subscriptions cover the cost of surface mailing — Overseas airmail, add $4 VOL. 4, No. I: Social Protest Cheques and money orders (SAUST) payable to VOL. 4, No. 2: Radicalising Schooling SOCIAL ALTERNATIVES VOL. 4, N o. 3: Feminism I wish to begin with Vol: No.: VOL. 4, No. 4: Radical Culture VOL. 5, No. 1: New Zealand Society Nam e ...... VOL. 5, No. 2: Environmental Politics Address ...... VOL. 5, No. 3: World Peace; Australia’s Role State ...... P /c o d e ...... C ountry the Editors, Social Alternatives, VOL. 5, No. 4: Creative Unemployment Department of External Studies, University of Queensland. 4067. AUSTRALIA.

38 Australian Left Review 93 Troubled Times: Trade Unions in Thailand

Workers’ housing opposite one o f the SAFCOL factories in Thailand carried out "underground" because, if management or government find out about them, workers will be sacked Sheril Berkovitch is Education Officer with Australia Asia and the organiser may face imprisonment or other more Worker Links, Melbourne, an organisation working with trade violent forms of harassment. unions in Asia and Australia, building solidarity networks and Nevertheless, labour activists feel that the work they do campaigns for better conditions for Asian workers. She is a member of the Communist Party of Australia. (An edited version is necessary to raise workers' awareness of their situation of this article will be available in pamphlet form, free of charge and to develop strong and progressive trade unions in from A AWL, PO Bos 264, Fitzroy, Victoria 3065. Enclose a Thailand. Despite their enormous difficulties, they are stamped envelope.) struggling on in the face of adversity.

arena Australian Companies in Thailand

71 There are fewer Australian companies in Thailand than in some other countries in S.E. Asia. However, they are there fot similar reasons; low wages, bad working conditions, and i t The Unions and the State of Queensland labour laws which favour the employers. This all adds up to A Garrison State: The Police in Arms more profit, and less jobs tor Australian workers. i r The US contra Nicaragua Sstcol, one of the better-known Australian companies, operates under the name of Safcol and has ie Education: The New Conservatives Thailand Ltd, several factories, including four fish canneries. The Australian i r Has China Gone Capitalist? Dairy Corporation has an interest which produces dairy i r The State of Nuclear Terror products. Australian Consolidated Industries (ACI) has a range of factories producing glass, fibre cartons, adhesives, i r Jack Lindsay's Marxism and industrial detergents. BHP manufactures zinc oxide through Thai Lysaght Co. Ltd. Rapco manufacture auto parts. Arena is an independent marxist journal of Dunlop Olympic has just invested A$12 million to contract criticism and discussion, published quarterly in an Ansall rubber factory to produce for export to world Australia. markets. A similar factory was bought in Malaysia in 1976 to replace a factory employing 600 workers in Melbourne. $4 per copy, $12 subscription for individuals, A variety of other companies have interests in Thailand, $20 for institutions. (Overseas: $5.50, $16, $25) although the Australian business names are not known? manufacturing a range of products such as animal feed, P.O. Box 18, North Carlton, 3054, Australia. gypsum boards, refrigeration compressors, and feather products.

orlng 1985 39 Reviews CULTURAL OFFENSIVES OF THE COLD WAR Reviewed by Drew Cottle

the global content of the Cotd War communists jailed, liberals and AUSTRALIA'S FIRST and its direct bearing on Australia — radicals silenced and a "spy scare1' COLD WAR: Volume I, a major political deficiency. concocted to preserve Australia as a Society Communism and The shifts in the power balance in suitable area for long-term corporate , world politics must be examined to American investment. Having W.C. Culture, edited by Ann grasp the meaning of the Cold War in Wentworth and B.A. Santamaria bleat Curthoys and John Merritt. Australia. Come the end of the about "communist conspiracies" and George Allen & Unwin, Second World War, the USA "the enemy within" made sound emerged, largely unscathed, as the business sense. 1984. Paperback, 243 leading capitalist country. The Soviet In its desire to demonstrate pages, $12.95. Union, which contributed most to the Australian capitalism's "exceptron- defeat of European fascism, was alism", Australia's First Cold War Jk ustralia's First Cold War: devastated economically and socially overlooks the obvious: the Cold War Volume 1 will be a disapp- by the war. Vast tracts of Russia, its was an ideological smokescreen ointment to those eager to richest agricultural and industrial concealing the corporate US understand the political significance regions, lay in ruin. Over twenty invasion and eventual take-over of of that ’'scoundrel time", the Cold million Soviet citizens died defending key sectors of the Australian War, Although its title suggests there their country from the Nazi economy. Bruce McFarlane's essay is more to come, this reviewer hopes onslaught. During and after the anti­ delineates this corporate US that it is not more of what is offered in fascist war, liberation movements in strategy. Saddled with its rigid this first volume. The various the former colonial empires and structure, however, the book contributors carefully explore those elsewhere began their long struggle separates the McFarlane contribut­ areas noted in the book's title — for national independence. ion from the cultural and social society, communism and culture. All looked threatening to the aspects of the Gold War. instead of But, oddly, an intellectual timidity imperial powers, particularly the integrating them. pervades most of these writings on American colossus. To ensure its such a contentious period. Odd global supremacy, the White House, indeed for a book which assumes we the Pentagon, the US State are in a second Cold War. Chapters Department and their Wall Street on the Cold War's social conte:^ masters unleashed the Cold War. oo much of the text is given over (Alomes, Dober and Hellier), a Socialist Russia, the war-time ally, to Meredith Burgmann s literary witch-hunt (Ashbolt) and became, by 1946, the Red Anti- T exposition of the government post-war economic policy (McFar- Christ. Communism was vilified, "response" to the "Communist lane) are memorable for their detail, denounced and purged, along with threat" which officialdom itself had argument and commitment. Yet even its supporters and sympathisers so assiduously created. As well these fine pieces of writing cannot throughout the "Free World". researched as it is, Burgmann's remedy the book's overall deficiency. The unholy crusade against investigation of the Cold War's high A three-tiered structure, in which communism found its ready politics lacks any thorough the economy, society, government supporters in Australia. As consideration of the "secret state" and culture are rigidly separated, Australia's First Cold War makes (ASIO, etc.) or Washington's limits the general argument and abundantly clear, a generation of influence over Australia's politics. denies integration. Apart from this progressive Australians was Burgmann's criticisms of H.V. Evatt structural flaw, the primary weakness hounded by the anti-communist are unwarranted, There were imperial of Australia's First Cold War is its "witch-hunters”. Only a terse forces which quietly undermined insular orientation. Ambiguously, the commentary is offered in the book's Evatt's efforts at reform in the book's title infers this intent. The "Introduction" on the "manufacture" international arena, Evatt vacillated Cold War in Australia did have of the Australian Cold War by the US on many questions, but his defence specific indigenous characteristics, and its Australian minions. Strong of democratic liberty during the Cold but it was not peculiarly Australian. trade unions needed to be smashed, War distinguishes him as an The editors and many of the unreliable Labor governments individual of courage and integrity contributions give scant attention to replaced, the public service purged, when other "good Labor men" fled

40 Australian Left Review 93 Reviews

McKernan, Ashbolt and Docker are more successful. Limiting them­ selves to the cultural politics of Australia’s Australian literature, these authors demonstrate the intellectual ferocity First Cold War of the Cold War. McKernan and VOL 1. SOCIETY, Docker illuminate the shifts in these COMMUNISM ANDCULTURE cultural struggles, the Left and Right responses and the Machiavellian manner in which the radical nationalist literary tradition was driven from the universities, to be maintained precariously thereafter by a threatened progressive minority. URGENT APPEAL Unlike most of the contributions, Allan Ashbolt's essay on the "literary mugging" of Vance Palmer is deeply moving because ol its sense of With your help the Rainbow 0?! JTV, tot .'Ij't/.Mtfw personal outrage and polemical Warrior will sail again arew stki? eloquence. Palmer, a great nurturer IMMUN1OT P, IKBeix sharks tZVAnr.SA* MMLTN tST PARTV I of the Australian tradition, was On July 10, in Auckland Harbour, New Ic e, w a r m denounced as a "fellow traveller" by Zealand, the Greenpeace flagship, the H . CHmKY. VICTORIAS ROYAL 00 . Rainbow Warrior was the Victim of a £M t*lyAnn Cirttw mg Jofui Mfftiff ATION C those literary jackals. Wentworth and ■ - u a r PARTY 0WICE8 HAO>EI> Keon, from the vantage of series of explosions. The crew were laasiitowiaTpj parliamentary privilege. This account blown into the harbour and the ship sank within a matter of minutes. One of Palmer's victimisation and crew member died as a result of this from, or rolled with, the reactionary response is Ashbolt’s testimony to a disaster. true Australian patriot. tide. The Rainbow Warrior has been one Of Similarly, Cain and Farrell's the mainstays of the Greenpeace autopsy of Menzies' war on the environmental movement since 1977. I / I # orthy as Ashbolt's chapter is, She is a symbol of people's concern for Communist Party neglects the V W the orientation and structure their environment and their beliefs in a American presence. A perusal of of Australia's First Cold War makes it safer world for all. American archival sources might a disappointing text. Its front cover Auckland was the Rainbow Warrior's have revealed the support the FBI and Women's Weekly reproduction of a latest stop-over on its very successful CIA provided that great "Queen's portrait of Joseph Stalin underlines campaign to highlight the growing man" in his efforts to crush this disappointment. The drawing of militarisation in the Pacific. communism and, with it, all Stalin is presented without any semblance of civil liberty in Australia. political explanation. Though the WITH THIS IN MIND IT IS NOW THAT WE MUST CONTINUE ALL THOSE CAM­ Menzies was a trusted accomplice of editors and contributors may find Uncle Sam after 1949, despite his PAIGNS AND FOLLOW THE IDEALS SO Stalin loathsome, most are aware of WELL EXPRESSED BY THE RAINBOW grovelling to imperial Britain. His the owner of the Women's Weekly's WARRIOR AND HER CREW IN THEIR career lay securely in American thoughts on the matter. When Stalin HOPES FOR A BETTER WORLD. hands. died in 1953, Frank Packer’s Daily Telegraph celebrated publicly. TO DO THIS WE NEED YOUR HELP! n their chapter on post-war Packer at the time was president of conservatism, Alomes, Dover and the Australia-America Association, a YES, I want to see the Rainbow I Hellier catalogue the Cold War’s spawning ground for Australian Warrior sail again. I enclose a effects on many aspects of material compradores. donation of ...... life such as immigration, clothes, Moreover, many of the topics YES, I w ant to become a education, hire-purchase, housing, printed boldly across the front page Greenpeace member (SI5 a year, religious sectarianism or popular — the Victorian Royal Commission $10 concession) I enclose literature. Their broad empirical on Communism, the 1949 Coal survey offers glimpses of the Cold Strike, ASIO’s formation, the ANZUS War’s effects, never its causes. Alliance, the Korean War — all crucial Send to: Greenpeace Australia Because the authors shy away from to an understanding of the Cold War (NSW), 1/787 George Street, any consideration of the political in Australia — are barely considered Sydney 2000. Ph:(02)211.0089. economy of the Cold War, everything within the body of the book. One can appears disparate, fragmented. only hope that the dominant role of Alomes and his fellow writers fail to the USA in Australian affairs will be see the cultural Cold War for what it carefully addressed in the next was. the means to break the instalment. Failure to learn the Drew Cottle is a post-graduate student confidence and strength of the lessons of domination and completing a thesis on the Brisbane Australian working people and to dependency in the First Cold War Line at the University of New South offer up a variant of the American bodes ill for any understanding and Wales dream as the only possible future. subsequent political action in the On another cultural level, that of present one. Will we always be literature, high and low, the essays by "servin’ USA"?

Sprint >985 41 Reviews LESSONS FROM THE PAST?

Reviewed by Ken Norling

made by these agitators, and the agitators and their families": organisations they helped build up, Burgmann has made every effort to IN OUR TIME: Socialism to the early growth of the labour bring out the role of women in these and the Rise of Labor 1885- movement and to the formation of the movements, and the attitudes of the 1905, by Verity Burgmann. Labor Party in each of the states of organisations to "The Woman Australia. Question", but politics of the day George Allen & Unwin, were very much a male domain, and 1985. Paperback, 236 It is an impressive record, one long these issues do not really make it to pages, $9.95. overdue for recognition, and one the centre of the stage. which must affect our understanding And just to remind us how little of the origins and nature of Australian some other things have changed, she labour. In particular, it is a record of provides an account of the likely past socialist strength that is largely career of a member of the Australian ■ m erity Burgmann's book In Our unknown. Burgmann shows clearly Socialist League: \ m Time: Socialism and the Rise that wherever radical or progressive W Labor 1885-1905 is deliber­ movements arose, socialist A typical pattern for a new recruit was to ately and consciously controversial. organisations or individual socialists manifest great earnestness at first, then It shows how historians of different played key roles. boredom, then disillusionment, then non- generations and different political attendance, then non-payment ol dues outlooks have sought to draw until being expelled lor being unfmancial. different lessons from the experience This process took, on average, about six months. of the 1890s to support their own n Our Time is not just an account conceptions of the nature of of the organisations and public The account is based on minute Australian politics, Australian society / figures of the day, however One books of theWaterloo branch which and the Australian working class. of its real achievements is its have survived from the late 1890s. (p. depiction of so many of the rank and 93) In Our Time sets out to rewrite from file activists, the agitators on the But, as members drifted away, below this history of the early days of streets, who did so much to make others replaced them, and a good labour politics and to use this socialist ideas a part of the everyday many battled on, year after year. They perspective to illuminate the life of working men and women. were sustained not just by a moral development of both socialism and commitment, but also by a deeply felt the labour movement. Burgmann provides numerous belief that they would see "Socialism sketches of the careers and in Our Time". Perhaps the most its central argument is that those characters of these people — often eloquent statement of that conviction early movements were created by the eccentric, sometimes pathetic, but came from the Queensland labour work of a generation of agitators, always dedicated. She describes journalist, H E. Boote: socialists or anarchists who people like Harry Holland and Tom "explained society from a working Batho and their families, producing Socialism will come. The very stars in the class viewpoint, who offered a the socialist paper, Northern People, heaven are on our side. The Future is ours. critique of that society and suggested on a tiny press in a galvanised iron (p. 175) that a society should instead be room in Newcastle, living as often as created where workers were not not on a diet of bananas, home­ This certainty about the exploited and oppressed", (p.1) grown grapes and water, while inevitability of the triumph of Those agitators were working men continually facing police harass­ socialism was a persistent theme in and women, largely self-educated, ment, for the authorities then were the propaganda of the period. and in a time of massive social just as hysterically hostile to socialist Burgmann provides a very good upheaval, they found a ready propagandists as at any time in our account of the different conceptions audience among their own class. history. current in the labour movement at this time of how socialism was to Burgmann describes, thoroughly it should be noted that In Our Time come about. They ranged from the and painstakingly, the contribution is very much an account of "socialist separatist utopianism of William Lane

42 Australian Left Review 93 Reviews

and his followers, which earned them They shared this uncertainty about to their sad fate in Paraguay (and how to achieve their goal with inspired various efforts to establish socialists throughout the world at rural socialist communities within that time. Burgmann devotes Australia), through the co-operative considerable attention to the impact movements to the various forms of of foreign socialists and socialist state socialism which, in one way or ideas on the Australian movement, another, foresaw the institution of the attributing the dominance of socialist millentum through reformism, at least in part, to an legislation passed by the colonial Australian cultural cringe in the face parliaments. of reformist trends overseas.

But what happened in Australia was merely the reflection in a very small mirror of dilemmas that will ut the real aim of In Our Time is persist as long as there is an to distinguish another current organised labour movement within a B in the social ferment of the capitalist society. Australian 1890 s, a current which was socialists found it no easier than any consciously committed to the others to reconcile the struggle for revolutionary transformation of revolutionary change with everyday society, and which had widespread activity which showed that the support among a working class working class could improve its lot which was ready for such a within existing society, and could transformation, only to have its improve it more easily the more energies diverted into reformist democratic reforms it won within that strategies, and especially into an society. over-reliance on parliamentary representation by the Labor Party. Almost a century later, socialist movements still tend to divide into A possibly revolutionary situation revolutionary purists and ineffectual had not produced revolutionary reformists, and what constitutes a change because It certainly makes clear that there real revolutionary strategy remains were organisations and movements an issue of contention. Perhaps it Labonsm won the day .... simply because in existence in the 1890s which would do more justice to activists ot the socialists who worked so hard to represented new forms of working earlier periods who struggled with produce these parties (the slate Labor class political and industrial activity. Parties) were fundamentally mistaken in the same problems, without the their belief that socialism could be (One particularly interesting one was benefit of the experience we have reached through the parliamentary the Active Service Brigade in Sydney, had, to not castigate them for failing process. Though socialism sowed Ihe whose tactics in many ways to achieve what we cannot. seed, Labonsm reaped the harvest, (p foreshadowed those of the 195) Unemployed Workers' Movements of Despite these disagreements, In the 1930s.) However, to assume from Our Time is a fine book. It is The concluding lines of In Our this that the mass of the working class important that we remain conscious Time sum up: was ready to commit itself to battle of how long and how hard the for the revolutionary transformation working class of this country has .... too many socialists were reformists, of society, if only it had been provided struggled for a better world, free of enamored in the main of parliamentary with the right leadership, requires a exploitation and oppression, and strategies, for a mass revolutionary leap of faith all too familiar in movement to develop. However, Verity Burgmann has added revolutionary strategies, unlike reformist contemporary politics, and just as considerably to that consciousness. strategies, cannoi be said to have failed in unverifiable in the context of the their application, (p. 198) 1890s.

It is a bold contention, but how far And before it is possible to speak of revolutionary strategies not having can it be justified by the experiences Ken Norling is a member ot the of the m ovements Burgm ann failed because they were not applied, Communist Party of Australia. He describes? There are two obvious it is necessary to show that there were works in the international Bookshop, difficulties — one is to demonstrate revolutionary strategies to be Melbourne. that the basis for a mass applied. In fact, what is striking about revolutionary movement actually Burgmann's description of the existed in the 1890s, the other is to socialist organisations of this period define just what is meant by a is that while they had revolutionary revolutionary strategy. For alt its dreams, virtually without exception achievements, In Our Time finally they lacked any ^conception of a does neither strategy to achieve'those dreams,

Spring 1985 43 Reviews SOVIET INFLUENCE LIMITED Reviewed by Hans Lofgren breakdown of "detente" in the late alternative supplier of arms, the THE LIMITS OF SOVIET 70s had very negative effects on the Soviet form of socialism today has POWER: THE KREMLIN'S Soviet Union. little attraction to Third World in the early '60s, the emergence of countries. FOREIGN POLICY — China as an independent power On the positive side, a number of BREZHNEV TO CHER­ weakened Soviet strategic security as countries of "socialist orientation" NENKO by Jonathan well as its credibility as the leadinq (Angola. Mozambique, Ethiopia, country of socialism. Though Sino- South Yemen, and others) emerged Steele. Penguin, 1984. Soviet relations have improved since in the 1970s and have established Paperback, 289 pages, the early '80s, Steele agrees with close links with the Soviet Union, $8.95. most other writers on the subject that However, these nations are the Soviet Union will continue to plan exceedingly poor, and have had little for a "worst case" scenario in its choice but to continue to depend on dealing with China. The possibility of the capitalist world for most of their s the Soviet Union as much to trade. The Soviet Union has not been blame as the United States for the a two-front war will remain as a constant element of Soviet strategic able to provide large-scale economic f nuclear arms race? Why are assistance. Despite their highly planning. Soviet troops still fighting the war in publicised adherence to the Afghanistan with no solution in "scientific socialism" of the Soviet sight? Is the Soviet Union a force for Viet Mam, on the other hand — in variety, the countries of "socialist progress in the Third World? These, the language of most Western orientation" have not significantly and other questions are subjected to observers — is a Soviet "gain". Steele contributed to an increase in Soviet a sober analysis in Jonathan Steele's shows, however, that the Vietnamese prestige or influence in the The Limits o f Soviet Power, It is a leadership, which has a long history developing countries generally. book free from the alarmism of the of independence, today has far more Soviet writers also acknowledge that "Soviet threat" propagandists, but autonomy vis-a-vis Moscow than the most of their new Third World allies also of the apologetics of those who East European countries. From the are in such deep crisis that their see Soviet foreign policy as based on Soviet point of view, there are further advance towards socialism is the principles of "peace and political and military advantages in its by no means assured. socialism", close links with Viet Nam, but in Steele's conclusion, which is in economic terms, it Is an enormously sharp contrast to the commonly costly friendship. accepted thesis of a global Soviet "expansionism", is that Soviet Cuba, Viet Nam and Mongolia influence has declined over the oast belong to a different category. As full twenty years. Despite Soviet rhetoric members of the CMEA (Council for to the effect that the "socialist world vents in a number of countries Mutual Economic Assistance), they system" is becoming ever more in the '60s and '70s, discussed are part of the "world socialist powerful, Steele argues, the Soviet by Steele, show that the Soviet system". Contrary to the notion of Union is, if anything, less influential E "expansionism", It is important to Union has had very limited success in as a political, ideological and its attempts to establish a lasting note that the Soviet Union has not economic model in the world today influence even in states which at one been keen to add to the membership than in the early 1960s. stage were close to Moscow. The of the CMEA. Most of the countries of Brezhnev presided over a rapid military might of the Soviet Union has "socialist orientation" have buifd-up= of military power, but this not been easily translated into friendship treaties with Moscow, but did not correspond to a growing political, economic or cultural and have not been offered full global influence of Soviet-style ideological influence. Though Soviet membership of the CMEA. Angola socialism. The Soviet leaders diplomatic and political support is and Mozambique, though considered suffered a number of serious foreign acknowledged by many countries by Soviet theoreticians as having policy setbacks during Brezhnev's striving for independence from the advanced beyond "socialist eighteen-year reign. In particular, the West, and Moscow is a major orientation" towards the building of

44 Australian Left Review 93 Reviews

where Soviet involvement has been Review of "In the Tracks of THE LIMITS OF portrayed by sections of the Western Historical Materialism" cont­ media as aggressive, the Soviet inued. leaders had little to do with the original unfolding of events and only n place of the moral and strategic SOVIET became involved following requests vacuity of structuralism {not the for assistance from internationally / only example of the retreat of recognised regimes. The invasion of socialist culture, but probably the Afghanistan is an exception to this most influential). Anderson proposes POWER pattern but, in Steele's analysis, fits a new path for marxist discourse. He THE KBEHUX'S FOREIGN into the picture of a foreign policy sees the possibility for a relevant, POLICY- BREZHNEV TO CHESNEMHO based on the overriding objective of renewed marxism in a discourse national security, which accommodates elements of In Steele's view, there is no both a restored marxist utopianism evidence for the existence of an (a tradition extending from William expansionist dynamic to Soviet Morris and Saint-Simon to Herbert policy. Though striving for increased Marcuse and E.P. Thompson) and influence, this is something most practical social analysis (represented major powers have in common, and by Raymond Williams). A continuing Soviet initiatives are a priori no less dialectic between these two streams legitimate than those of any other will yield a strategy of promise and nation. There are examples of "practical hopes" The result will be policies which seem to conform with closer to the critical theory of the JONATHAN STEELE ft the ideology of the Communist Party Frankfurt School of Habermas, of the Soviet Union, but there are also Marcuse, et al . whose critique innumerable cases of unprincipled evolved primarily at the philosophical dealings with repressive regimes level, as such failing to describe the "people's democracy" and socialism, (Uganda, Turkey, Libya, and so on). strategic processes Anderson calis have not even been guaranteed Steele's book covers many other for. A key element of Anderson's security against South African aspects of Soviet policy as well as prescription for marxist renewal lies aggression and have had to enter into those referred to here. It is in the description of a feasible humiliating agreements with their a thorough survey of Soviet policies socialist model which is faithful to all enemy. in all major parts of the world. It's a hopes for the liberation of society readable book, devoid of abstract­ from advanced capitalism, and hence ions and academic language. The is not confused with Russian or The rise of Islam has further reader might object to its empirical, Chinese models. For Anderson, the complicated Soviet policy in the matter-of-fact approach to economic considerations of the new areas adjacent to its southern border. society are paramount, and he refers The revolution in Iran resulted in the international politics, which tends to underestimate those features of the to Alec Nove's Economics of a emergence of an anti-communist Soviet system which set Soviet Feasible Socialism as a basis for regime. In the Middle East, the Soviet politics apart from those of other big developing a functional economic Union has been largely excluded powers. In particular, the importance strategy from exerting any influence on the of marxist-leninist ideology hardly Anderson’s appeal seeks to unite Arab-lsraeli conflict. Soviet relations figures at all in Steele's analysis. the causes which challenge with Syria, Iraq and Libya, countries Nevertheless, The Limits of Soviet advanced capitalism (the feminist often portrayed in the Western media Power complements Fred Halliday's and peace movements are crucial), as closely aligned with Moscow, are more analytical The Coming o f the under the common banner of the one strained and Soviet influence Second Cold War very well for an hope for a new society: the path of minimal. In the whole of this region, understanding of the global politics historical materialism, it is a only South Yemen is a close ally of of the present time. persuasive appeal to which those the Soviet Union. who feel the need for change should respond enthusiastically. It's a small book, but it may be that the program for fundamental social progress ar from having pursued an Hans Lofgren works in the Politics proposed by Anderson recaptures expansionist and adventurous Department at Melbourne University the brightest hope for our time. Fforeign policy, Steele argues that the Soviet leaders have generally been cautious and conservative. In James Koebne works at the Arts cases such as Ethiopia and Angola, Council of the ACT as Music Co­ ordinator. and his major interest is in the field of aesthetics and its radical potential.

Spring 1985 45 Reviews "An Obscure Scandal of Consciousness.... "

Reviewed by James Koehne of writers like Foucault. Lacan, IN THE TRACKS OF Derrida and Levi-Strauss as part of HISTORICAL MATERIAL­ the retreat of socialist culture. At a ISM. The Wellek Library time when the popularity of these IN THE TRACKS writers and others in the same mould, Lectures by Perry And­ like Jean Baudrillard, is on the erson. Verso, London, 1984. increase in the Antipodes, Paperback, 106 pages, Anderson's consideration of the structuralist trend in philosophical $11.50. thought is important for us

Structuralist analysis — in f the 1960s was a decade which whichever sphere of interest it may be held out the promise of an directed — begins with the / emergent hope for change, the distinction between external 'seventies was the decade in which structures (the real of '‘signs") and those possibilities were ruthlessly the subjects of th^se structures (the halted, or, more truthfully, "signified"), and proceeds to focus overpowered by the forces resistant attention on the mechanisms and to change. Midway through the characteristics of "signs" and \ndt‘r»on 1980s, we are becoming familiar with structures (the realm of "signs") and cynicism as the mental attitude for analyses in this model have been our times produced, extending widely from Ihe original application of structuralist This demise of hope is strongly theory as a method of linguistic connected with '.ne decline of study, to applications in music, a philosophical/pohtical.practical marxism's popular strength as a literature, anthropology and. necessity — fails because of its strategy for building a new and better ultimately, social theory. The single-minded emphasis on the society. Capitalism has dealt structuralist approach is dispass­ "signs" of capitalism (rather than the effectively — as ever — with the ionate and rigorously eschews the "subject", which, after all. is where murmurings of change which rose to influence of historical or personal the oppression lies), and its failure to the surface around 1968 (in Paris, context. Nothing is relevant but the develop a renewed strategy for most notably, but in other places and structure, which seemingly never change There is a limit, says ways as well). Intheface of numerous alters — in fact, it will defy all efforts Anderson, to the extent to which a international failures and remarkably for change. No wonder so many language theory model can be efficient suppressions of socialist structuralist writers have ended up applied to society. The result is a revolutions, the response of the celebrating negation (Baudrillard)'or retreat from the program of intellectual left has been a thorough become champions of conservatism. socialism, concomitant with the reinvestigation of marxist philos­ Structuralism forgets, says growth of a broader "scandal of ophy. One of the strongest Anderson, the most important consciousness" which tolerates the philosophical currents to direct its element of any critical theory status quo and legitimises a lack of attention to the reconsideration of (particularly social theory) — the commitment As structuralism marxism has been French subject belatedly becomes trendy in structuralism and post-structuralism. Australia, the post-modernist, post- Anderson characterises the rise of political "scandal of consciousness" erry Anderson's critical structuralism as a retreat from threatens to establish a prevalence in examination In the Tracks ol commitment and struggle our way of thinking Historical Materialism Structuralism's critique of marxism P considers the work in critical theory — in itself a laudable aim and Continued page 45

46 Australian l.i-ft Review 9J Reviews

AN AUSTRALIAN IN SPAIN

Reviewed by Steve Niblo

bear upon the repressive forces of the LETTERS FROM SPAIN by day, Edmonds joined the 15th Lloyd Edmonds, edited by International Brigade. Since he knew how to drive, a somewhat rare skill in Amirah Inglis. George Allen Spain in 1936, he was assigned to a & Unwin, 1985. Paperback, transport unit. He was involved in 200 pages, $9.95. keeping open a lifeline to Madrid and he also supplied republican troops at such important battles as Brunete, loyd Edmonds' visit to the old Albacete and, in the later stage of the country developed in directions war, on the front at Catalonia. (As Lhe never imagined as he sailed Edmonds remarked, as soon as he out of Melbourne for Britain in July, started to learn Spanish, they 1936. He became one of that small changed languages on him.) band of Australians who volunteered to join the International Brigades and 1 #ignettes abound in the study. fight in defence of the Spanish I W Travel to and from Spain Republic during the Civil War. ™ showed the poignant support Letters from Spain, by Lloyd for the volunteers which flew in the Edmonds, is a compilation of the face of the official neutrality policies surviving correspondence from of the governments in Britain and England and Spain back to his family France. It is fascinating to hear him in Australia. Amirah Inglis edited the talk about meeting such people as collection and contributed an EDITED • BY • AMIRAH • INGLIS Hemingway, although some of these introduction and afterword to the accounts will have to await the further volume. book on the topic by Amirah Inglis. Initially, the trip formed part of that was that process which eventually led The accounts of the hardship of tradition of Australians visiting him to Spain. However, one of the battle and the trying features of Britain for reasons which related to most interesting aspects of the book military life form an important part of curiosity about the family's origins is the way it shows how a man of Edmonds' experience. Late in the and also as a part of the process of peace eventually decided that events war, he fell ill and did not return to establishing a separate Australian in Europe, associated with the rise of Australia with the other Australian identity. Edmonds' introduction to fascism and the expansion of veterans to the chorus of the rise of fascist intervention in Germany and Italy, were too great a congratulations he so deserved. Spain was particularly direct — as his threat to ignore. Events quickly overwhelmed that ship sailed through the Mediterr­ In his delightfully understated experience. World War II and the cold anean, he saw the military airlift of the correspondence, the process war made his experience fade from Nationalist troops from Africa to emerges by which his concerns grow view. For some decades his story was Spain, However, his initial interest and become a commitment to known only to friends in the labour was in Britain. militant anti-fascism. Harold Laski, movement. So it is of value to have the political scientist at the London this record preserved. His was a good School of Economics, was quite struggle in a just war; this recognition he early section of the book is influential in convincing Edmonds to is long overdue. an interesting record of his take the bold step of volunteering to Treaction to daily life in Britain serve in the armed forces of and the comparison of his Republican Spain against the Steve Niblo teaches history at La Trobe experiences at work with conditions generals' revolt. University in Australia. Being an educated man, As part of that tradition of Edmonds enjoyed surveying the internationalism by -which attempts intellectual currents of the day, and it were made to bring mass pressure to

Spring 1985 47 Browsing

SOCIALIST REGISTER 1984: inadequate housing. These are often THE USES OF ANTI-COMM­ tales of tribulation,but they also UNISM, edited by Ralph Josephs display marvellous tenacity, a rough Mill band, John Savllle and Marcel humour and an indomitable courage. Llebman. Merlin Press, 1984. Coat Available from the Living Museum $21.00 paperback. 363 pages. of the West, 1st floor,42-44 Ferguson A N ANTHOLOGY OF M ULTKUU UIA J. WRITING St., Williamstown 3016. As usual, Socialist Register is late in arriving in Australia, as usual it is expensive but, unlike many editions JOSEPHS COAT: AN ANTH­ its contents have a unified theme — OLOGY OF MULTICULTURAL the uses which have been, and are WRITING, edited by Peter being, made of hysterical anti­ Skrzyneckl. Hale & Iremonger, communism by rightwing politicians Sydney, 1985. 224 pages. and governments. Some of the articles are historical, including one This collection demonstrates how which compares the domestic greatly Australian culture has been politics of the first cold war in enriched by the work of writers from America, Britain, Canada and non-English-speaking backgrounds, Australia, while others look at including — and the editor lays great contemproary politics, such as the stress on this — Aboriginal poets and role of the "Red Threat" in U.S. story-tellers. It brings together the foreign policy, and the nature of the work of thirty-eight writers, all of "new philosophers'1 in France. whom have struggled both with an unfamiliar language, and with the everyday discrimination that has COUNTRY TO NATIONAL: transnational corporations, the been the lot of non-Anglo-Saxons In AUSTRALIAN RURAL POLITICS growing militarisation, and the this country. The strength and AND BEYOND, edited by Brian emerging forces for change. Of diversity of their stories and poems Costar and Dennis Woodward. special interest is a chapter on the show how well they have overcome Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1985. relationship between Australia and those barriers and, hopefully, this $12.95 paperback. 150 pages. the Philippines, covering Australian collection takes us one step closer to investment, the tourist industry, and the day when such writings, and the our government's support for the For much of Australian history, the experiences they describe, are fully Marcos regime through trade credits, recognised as an integral part of our ALP and other left organisations development aid, and military (including, at times, the Communist society, not as something alien. training Party) have had the support of rural Available from Community Aid THE STALINIST LEGACY: ITS workers and a! least some small Abroad, 75 Brunswick St., Fitzroy farmers. Today, the most popular 3065. IMPACT ON TWENTIETH- politician outside our big cities is CENTURY WORLD POLITICS, undoubtedly Joh Bjelke-Petersen. LIFELINES: STORIES BY edited by Tariq All. Penguin, This book may not offer a left analysis WOMEN IN THE WESTERN London, 1984. $12.95 paperback. of how that conservatism has become 551 pages. entrenched but, in the absence of SUBURBS OF MELBOURNE, such an analysis, studies by some of Edited by Robyn Hollander & Margaret Jacobs, published by Whatever reservations one might Australia's leading political scientists have about the politics of the editor, of the organisation of rural politics, Melbourne's Living Museum of The Stalinist Legacy is an interesting both nationally and on a state-by- the West. $5.00 paperback. 68 reader. It assembles various critiques state basis, provide some insights pages. of Stalinism, from Trotsky and the into a conservative force currently Left Opposition, through to writings being mobilised against both state Lifelines provides the autobio­ on contemporary Eastern Europe and federal Labor governments. graphies of five working class and the USSR, and particularly the women, compiled as part of an oral Solidarity movement in Poland. While history research project. There are THE THIRD WORLD WAR — THE many of the writers are, or have been, differences in the ages, ethnic PHILIPPINES FRONT, Commun­ part of a political current that origins, and educational back­ identifies itself with Trotsky, ity Aid Abroad, Melbourne, 1985. grounds of these women, but the Khrushchev's secret speech, various $7.50 paperback, 50 pages. shared experiences are clear — a Yugoslav statements, and Josef procession of jobs which are tedious, Smrkovsky’s account of the end of A short, weli-produced dossier on physically exhausting and the Prague Spring are also reprinted. the current situation in the underpaid, with lack of recognition of Philippines. It documents human their skills by male employers and Ken Norling. rights abuses, examines health foremen, and a family life of raising services and working environments, children without assistance from the the state of the economy with father, or with physical abuse, particular attention to the role of without child care, and generally in

48 Australian Left Review S3 2 N D FLOOR 17 ELIZABETH ST MELBOURNE 3001 03 61 28 59

Sfi§§LEN.N&2 5g <-K l|6g f OT 5 U j r h r f z gf g C c ENGELENGELS U4^ t/5 ^ 5 0 f h O H 'P * l ^ u-52rri Hii a (

* 1 , 4X4/ \JU VLXjp V_A_y ^pMr^ THE INTERNATIONAL BOOKSHOP CARRIES AUSTRALIA’S LARGEST RANGE OF BOOKS 'V ON POLITICAL AND SOCIAL ISSUES. <5 BOOKNEWS’ - QUARTERLY LIST OF NEW BOOKS AVAILABLE ON REQUEST MAIL ORDER SERVICE PROVIDED ALSO SECOND HAND LEFT BOOKS, JOURNALS, PAPERS. i ) Ls) W ($) '<& ( r ) (d 9 Organised Crime: Legitimate Business' and The Labor Right

Kimberley Land Flight and Resources

Crisis

Noel Counihan His Ait and His Politics

Living under Labor

What other socialist quarterly can offer you all this plus photo essays, news

briefings and reviews?