Ark Tribe rallies promise “You’ll never walk alone!”

Vanguard August 2010 p. 10
Nick G.

South Australian construction worker Ark Tribe has had his case adjourned until September 13th. The political embarrassment for the Prime Minister of going to an election with a worker in gaol under her laws has thus been avoided.

Ark’s lawyers have done a great job in questioning the credibility of prosecution witnesses, but whether or not they ultimately succeed in keeping him from a 6-month prison term, it must be remembered that the whole edifice of capitalist justice is weighed against the working class.

Laws expressing the class domination of the capitalists protect their property ownership and the entire set of exploitative relations involved in the drive to accumulate profits derived from the appropriation of surplus value created by workers.

The so-called “independence of the judiciary”, which maintains a formal separation of judicial appointments from the government of the day, is in practice undermined by the lack of independence from the ideological values of the ruling class for which the government is invariably a craven servant.

This is the context in which an ordinary worker who refuses to attend a secret interrogation about a union meeting on safety issues can go to gaol for six months, whilst a boss will never be prosecuted for exploitation or theft of surplus value.

What the Ark Tribe case did bring out into the open during the three trial days in July is that the anti-worker ABCC bypasses its own stated processes in order to intimidate and harass workers. Its own website says that it is meant to exhaust all other channels to obtain information from workers before enforcing its Section 52 secret interrogation requirements.

ABCC Inspector Seamus (“Shameless”) Flynn told the court he had only tried to contact Ark by phoning the latter’s mobile, which had twice rung out. Asked whether he had then sent a text message to Ark, he said no, as he had been using a land line. But, did he have a mobile with him? Yes, he did, but chose not to use it to text Tribe. Nor did “Shameless” try to contact him by snail mail or by visiting him at home.

It was straight to the coercive powers of Section 52.

In contrast to the staid proceedings inside the courtroom, the scene outside and indeed around the country, was one of lively and vociferous support for Ark. CFMEU federal president Dave Noonan had said that Ark would never walk alone into a courtroom, and that pledge has been made good with tens of thousands of building workers and their supporters stopping for marches and rallies in other capital cities and regional centres each time he has fronted the bosses’ courts.

Ark Tribe – here to stay!
CFMEU – here to stay!