Date: Thu, 7 Mar 1996 09:42:20 GMT
From: Steve Wallis <S.Wallis-AT-mmu.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: Conservatives win Australian election


Gary (g.maclennan-AT-qut.edu.au) wrote:

> I'll put my tuppence in here and say that I do not feel that "objective
> conditions" are favourable in Australia.  Also I do think there *has been a
> definite move  to the Right*.  The empirical evidence for  this is surely
> the huge success of the four racist candidates- one of whom Campbell has links
> to a psuedo fascist organisation The League of Rights.  I as much as anyone
> want to believe that the rejection of Labor does not = a move to the right,
> but the fact is that we now have in this country a member of parliament
> whose platform is expliticly racist and anti-aboriginal and she was elected
> to a traditional working class seat as well.

You're there on the ground in Australia, so you're obviously in a
better position to judge whether there has been a shift to the right
in society as a whole.  Let me make some points, however.

Results in elections are just one indication of the complex processes
going on in society - I think it was Marx who said something like
"elections are a snapshot of the mood of the masses at a particular
moment in time".

In Britain, over the last few years, there has been a big shift to the
right at the tops of the Labour Party and the trade unions (due to a
number of factors including the 80s boom and the collapse of
Stalinism).  However, amongst the working class as a whole, we'd argue
that there has been a shift to the left [and yearly opinion polls on
social issues in the Guardian back that up].  Workers' confidence is
still at quite a low level, however, largely due to the defeat of the
miners' strike in the mid-80s - but the situation is starting to
improve in that respect too.

In that period, a fascist has been elected to a local council (in part
of London) for the first time for many years - so the success of the
racists in Australia you mention does not in itself signify a shift to
the right.  Indeed, the much greater strength of the anti-fascist
movement than the fascists (in Britain - maybe in Australia too?) is
an indication of the opposite.

Much of the left in Britain was completely demoralised by Major's
victory in 1992.  Some, like Martin Jacques, editor of the Communist
Party's Marxism Today until it folded, concluded that the fight for
socialism was over and that Britain would have an everlasting Tory
government like in Japan (highly ironic considering what's happened
there since).  However, within a matter of months, there were huge
demonstrations (a quarter of a million on the biggest) against pit
closures, and Major soon became the most unpopular Prime Minister
since records began.

So what I am saying is - don't be too disheartened.  I'm sure things
will pick up before too long.  I don't know how - maybe there will be
huge movements against savage cuts in the welfare state.  I don't know
how long it will take for the anger which there must surely be amongst
ordinary workers at the betrayals of the Labor and trade union leaders
to lead to action against them - but I think it is much more likely
that it will take the form of moves towards disaffiliation of trade
unions from the ALP and towards the setting up of a new party, rather
than there being a mass influx of workers into the ALP to transform it.
[I say this because it is an international trend - I don't know much
about Australia specifically.]

Steve Wallis
Militant Labour
Manchester, UK

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   /----------+ Centre for Policy Modelling,         Email: S.Wallis-AT-mmu.ac.uk
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