Nick G.
ABC TV’s recent two-part series Whitlam: The Power and the Passion was a
welcome reopening of discussion about a major event in Australian political
life.
However, it missed the opportunity to
fundamentally analyse the role of US imperialism in orchestrating what was in
reality not a simple “dismissal” but a semi-fascist coup.
Neither did it analyse - and nor could we expect it to have analysed –the role of social democracy in confining the working class to capitalism.
Tentative
expressions of independence
Coming after a long period of pro-British and
pro-US servility by conservative governments, and in the wake of widespread
opposition to the US imperialist war of aggression against Vietnam and to
conscription, Whitlam appeared almost visionary in his decision to withdraw
Australian troops and end conscription, recognise the People’s Republic of
China, abolish the death penalty, abolish university fees, establish legal aid
and Medibank. There were tentative
expressions of a more independent Australian outlook, including replacing “God
Save the Queen” as national anthem and creating a national honours list in the
place of the imperial system.
As if this were not enough, Whitlam and his
Minerals and Energy Minister Rex O’Connor instigated a move to “buy back the
farm”, focussing on the largely foreign-owned mining industry. This not only challenged multinational
domination of the Australian economy but induced the government to seek finance
from the Middle East rather than from the imperialist centres of finance
capital: New York, London and Tokyo.
US imperialism took umbrage at this
insubordination and in 1973 Nixon appointed career coup-master Marshall Green
as Ambassador to Australia. Green had
been in charge of the US Embassy in South Korea at the time of the 1961 coup d'état that brought Major-General Park Chung
Hee to power (father of the current South Korean president Park Geun-hye). He was later appointed US Ambassador to
Indonesia in time to oversee the toppling of the anti-imperialist Sukarno
government and the murder of half a million communists.
Narratives of the
Whitlam dismissal do not, as a rule, examine the implications of Whitlam’s
irritation of the US overlords, concentrating instead on immediate players in
the saga such as Whitlam, Cairns, Fraser and Kerr.
The ABC TV series
is no exception. A thorough exposure of
the role US imperialism played in the constitutional coup would not suit the
ruling class although it is very much sensed and understood by the advanced
sections of the working class.
Failure to rely on the people
The anti-Whitlam
coup developed as an Opposition move to block Supply in the Senate.
This was scripted in such a way as to require the Governor-General to withdraw Whitlam’s commission to form government.
Whitlam was
ultimately complicit in his own sacking.
US imperialism had sent Marshall Green with a hangman’s rope, but it was
Whitlam who placed the noose around his own neck by his appointment of Sir John
Kerr as Governor-General.
Kerr was an
anti-working class arch-reactionary and associated with various US-funded
institutions. He had disgraced himself
in 1969 by jailing Victorian Tramways Union secretary and CPA (M-L)
vice-chairperson Clarrie O’Shea over his refusal to pay fines imposed on his
union. As noted by this paper on March 7, 1974, “Sir John Kerr has a very
doubtful record in Australian politics.
His appointment does no credit to those who appointed him”.
Throughout 1973
(Green’s appointment), 1974 (Kerr’s appointment) and 1975 (the lead-up to the
Supply crisis), our Party consistently and regularly warned the working class
that a coup against Whitlam was being prepared.
Kerr performed
his role and Whitlam was sacked.
Addressing a
crowd of supporters outside Parliament, Whitlam urged Australians to “maintain
your rage”. But he qualified that and
his full statement was: “Maintain your rage and
enthusiasm for the campaign for the election now to be held and until
polling day.”
Whitlam could
have gone back into Parliament House and resumed his seat as Prime Minister of
Australia. This would have been
consistent with his view that the Governor-General was bound by custom and
practice to act on the advice of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. He did not believe the Prime Minister and
Cabinet were bound to follow the orders of the Governor-General. Yet that was what he did.
For all of his
flirtation with the traditions of the labour movement (calling associates
“comrade”, for example), Whitlam was, as he proudly proclaimed on more than one
occasion, “a bourgeois”.
Both as a
bourgeois and as a Labor reformist, the idea of encouraging a confrontation
between the people and the capitalist state machinery in the streets of the
nation was anathema to him.
By refusing to
stand up to Kerr by continuing to function as the elected Prime Minister,
Whitlam gave no focus or purpose to the maintenance of rage other than to wait
for the casting of ballots.
Treachery to the interests of the people
(above: November 12 1975 and Bob Hawke asks for a day's pay in lieu of mass struggle against US imperialism.)
This was simple
treachery to the interests of the people.
And it was matched the following day when the “gruff, abrasive
cream-puff” of an ACTU President, Bob Hawke, rejected union calls for a
nation-wide strike and urged workers instead to donate a day’s pay to an ALP
re-election campaign.
The great
struggles and national strikes that took place over six days following O’Shea’s
jailing forced the ruling class to back down and manufacture an opportunity to
have him released.
Hawke could have
drawn on that legacy and brought the undeniable strength of collective working
class action to force a second retreat by the reactionaries. But his tradition was that of the Victorian
and NSW Trades Hall misleaderships who had refused to back the O’Shea general
strikes.
Fraser now had
the incumbency, the time and the complicity of the vanquished to ensure his
electoral victory over Whitlam.
The troops that
had been put on stand-by to threaten blood should stain the wattle were not
needed.
And we continue
to this day to be bound hand and foot to US imperialism having had the one
chance to really mount a mass challenge to that rule snatched from us by system
loyalists in the leadership of the ALP.
No comments:
Post a Comment