Anti-biker laws aimed at you and me

Vanguard November 2013 p. 4
Jack D.

The new anti-biker laws being tested in Queensland are squarely aimed at you, at me. Other state governments are trying to do the same thing.

Campbell Newman and his crew of fascist minded misfits are working to dismantle the trade unions in that state. Newman and Co are blatantly and happily serving the interests of the multinationals and the largest of big business. They are against workers having any rights other than the right that workers must obey the bosses at all times and do so without question.

This stance is backed by the Abbott federal government, at least tacitly. The question for them is how to achieve this aim. Here then, lies the root of the attempts to vilify, demonise and attack and gaol the bikers.

Firstly, what are these so called ‘outlaw motorcycle clubs’? These clubs comprise both ordinary working people with a love of motorcycles and an independent lifestyle, and that social element referred to by Marx as the lumpen-proletariat. In the October-December 2010 issue of our theoretical journal Australian Communist, we described the lumpen-proletariat in these terms:

“This section, derived from the working class, has no links to the productive process.  It consists mainly of more or less permanently unemployed working class people who exist on the fringes of capitalist society.  Some are broken in spirit by poverty, lack of education and opportunity, health failure, drugs, alcohol, etc.  Some engage in petty crime to survive and a handful try to assert some some power by criminal activity and gang violence and do not identify with the working class.  In some cases they are a sub-group which the ruling class can deceive, bribe or intimidate to undermine and attack the organised working class.  The capitalist state actually needs their criminal activities (often linked to “respectable” business connections within the bourgeoisie) as an excuse for attacks on the rights and liberties of the working class and allied classes. They are miniscule in size.”

So-called “outlaw motor cycle clubs” are (currently) legal clubs; they are not outlawed, i.e. illegal, clubs as such. There is only one club called the ‘Outlaws ’, the rest have other names. Certainly there are a few “naughty boys and girls” in the clubs, and very many who are not so. (People cannot be branded as criminal because others they associate with may be. If that were the case we would all be in the clink.)

Current laws are not vicious enough to control the population in the view of the most reactionary of the capitalists. Stronger laws are needed in preparation for the ever deepening series of crises capitalism is facing in the foreseeable future. For this reason they wish to demonise a group of people, publicly denigrate them, and test out new suppression methods on them.

The reactionaries want to bring in guilt by association, just as was the case in Hitler’s Germany. It wants special prisons, tough punishment and deprivation. Brutal houses of torture, something like Mauthausen was in Germany. This is why the new laws, the planned building of special prisons and so forth.

What is the real purpose?

These laws, prisons and this demonising of a group of people have a vile purpose. The aim is to use the same process repeatedly. Next they may attack the militant trade unionists; then the whole trade union movement and its supporters.  There is no difference in principle between “special laws” for bikies and “special laws” for construction workers - the one prepares the way for, and serves as an excuse for, the other.

Jointly with this, laws to make community support for workers in struggle illegal may well be passed very soon, if not already in by the time this is in print.

If this process is allowed to continue unchallenged, we will then see other groups attacked, opponents to business interests like the people opposing McDonalds in Tecoma; political parties that oppose capitalism in any way; human rights groups; environmentalists fighting ecological destruction and so on. Specific activists and their families will be targeted. This is the sort of thing we will face in Australia if we do not organise and defeat these bad laws.

Already they have the concentration camps in place which have been aimed at the militant working class since before they were built. These are the remote area “detention centres,” so called; really they are just concentration camps in some of the remotes areas of Australia which have been tested out on refugees arriving by boat.

Remember, Howard’s anti-terror laws have already implemented Hitler’s policy of “Nacht und Nebel” (night and fog). People are taken off the streets on their way to work or to somewhere else, as if they disappeared on a dark foggy night. No one knows where they are, what happened to them or even if they are still alive. Their very existence is denied. ASIO can do that to people now; can hold them for a fortnight at a time. How long do you think it will be before this may happen to you if the current trend continues?

Already some of the mining multinationals are readying their operations to take advantage of these law changes in Queensland. The mine at Collinsville closed down last month. It is expected to reopen next year. The workers have been told that they will not be employing union members at all when reopening.

We can validly ask, “Are these new Queensland laws being put in place for use by such multinationals?” The answer must be a resounding Yes! Newman is a real lick-spittle of the multinationals and the actions already going on in preparation for these anti biker, anti-worker laws coming into place shows there is a lot of collusion between the multinational interests and the current Queensland government.

It seems the bikers are the test case. If challenges mounted by the bikers do not succeed then the working class are really for it, we will be very deep in the brown stuff.

Prepare for heavy fights ahead

We have ongoing and increasingly severe fights ahead of us. There is no room for complacency. We need to challenge every move toward these fascist laws and put a stop to them here and now. We are not fighting for a few more crumbs from the bosses table; we are fighting for our very existence, for our freedom and rights as workers and the wider community.