From: "Hartin, Tony" <thartin-AT-vitgcdu1.telecom.com.au>
Subject: Re: Australia - whats happening
Date: Wed, 21 Aug 96 10:45:00 EST



>From: Adam Rose <adam-AT-pmel.com>
>Date: Tue, 20 Aug 96 11:58:32 GMT
>Subject: Re: Australia - whats happening

>Tony,
>In France at the end of last year, some rank + file organisations
>were set up, but they were not strong enough to take the leadership
>of the movement, once the government gave some concessions, and the
>bureaucrats really put the brakes on. Is there any sign of this sort
>of thing happenning ?
> --------------------------------------------
>From: Zeynep Tufekcioglu <zeynept-AT-turk.net>
>Date: Tue, 20 Aug 1996 22:08:27 +0300
>Subject: Re: Australia - whats happening
>
> [...]
>
>By the way, also for newcomers, I have a reputation for "mindless 
activism".
>I believe that the only way to spread a revolutionary influence among the
>working class is getting involved in all the fights, directly. The budget 
is
>a working class issue, if anything ever is. In our experience of mindless
>activism, the ability to be able to tell the workers exactly why and how 
the
>government was lying, the underlying reasons for it and the ability counter
>the bourgeois propaganda case by case, number by number, greatly enhanced
>our ability to engage in even more mindless activism.

Let me say first of all, the scale of what is going on in Aus, at least at 
the moment, is nothing like the upsurge in France at the end of 1995. So 
far, there have been a few demos which went beyond the control of the 
bureaucrats (which is not that difficult to do) and a few quite good 
strikes, one of which has one considerable solidarity.

But there is something significant happening and its worth analysing it.

First the Aborigines. Labour had a strategy of incorporating the leadership 
of the community in the bureaucracy of government, setting up a peak body 
ATSIC to distribute government funding. Some of the leaders did nicely out 
of it, meanwhile the lot of most aborigines got worse. The Liberals 
(conservatives) have slashed funding to ATSIC and the resulting anger from 
below has put pressure on some of the leaders to start resigning. There has 
been a militant minority of Aborigines in the Gulf country in Queensland who 
have been standing up to mining companies in the last little while.
It seems as if the "Canberra Cavalcade" gave this minority the opportunity 
to have a disproportionate effect on the rallies.

There is genuine widespread anger amongst aborigines. There was a big riot 
in a small town in the North West of Australia just recently. The problem is 
that the aboriginal community is relatively small and widespread, this 
presents a problem of organising a fightback and of intersection with the 
working class (though the Canberra rallies would have done wonders).

The BTR strike of which I have some experience is probably the most militant 
in Australia at the moment. But it hasn't even looked like going beyond the 
officials yet. At least not consciously. But you can see the beginings of 
organisation amongst the rank and file. The most obvious example of this is 
a phone list at the picket. If the cops look like coming in the BTR workers 
ring around the nearby factories to get workers out to defend the picket 
line. The more workers who have had an experience of beating off the cops, 
the more who want to come down.

The officials have had a problem up until now. They have to sound militant 
and the bosses have been intransigent, but I think overall our bosses are a 
craven lot. I think they will head back to the safety of class collaboration 
if things get even a bit nasty. The very afternoon of the Canberra events 
they sent a fax to the officials asking for negotiations to begin again 
(they walked out of talks last week).

Politics and the ability to spread it amongst the workers becomes crucial. 
The gut instinct of the workers is to cheer the riot at Parliament House, 
but the ideological assault by the media and their own officials soon beats 
them back. At the BTR picket line however workers have had the experience of 
figthing the cops on the picket line, so why is it so bad to fight them at 
Parliament House ? Revolutionaries have to  intersect with the ideas that 
can take the struggle forward.

But how to do this ? I agree with Zeynep - if you don't particpate directly 
in their struggle you can't expect them to even begin to take you seriously. 
But it is far more important to have revolutionaries in the actual 
workplaces involved. The realtionships that are built amongst workers in 
their workplaces and even in their communities are invaluable initially in 
being able to get a hearing and be taken seriously.

So it suggests a three pronged strategy for revolutionaries. a. build your 
party, b. participate in workers struggles, c. intersect at the level of 
ideas. The absence of any of these, or even to get the balance wrong is to 
not go forward.

Tony Hartin

P.S: I too have a reputation for mindless activism. My perceived 
ultraleftism makes me a figure of fun in my organisation at times. But that 
doesn't stop me from being convinced that I am right!


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