Statement from Black Lives Matter protests in Alice Springs and Sydney

 Written by: Louisa L on 27 October 2020

The statement printed below was read at the Black Lives Matter protest in Sydney, on Monday, 26 October. In Alice Springs later that day, Constable Zachary Rolfe was charged with murder for the shooting death of Warlpiri teenager, Walker, at Yuendumu last year. After Walker’s death, there were immediate Australia-wide protests. The numbers attending were unprecedented on this issue of Aboriginal deaths in custody since before the Royal Commission, 30 years earlier.  

The response to Walker’s death fed into the massive protests early this year.

Monday’s protest coincided with a NSW parliamentary inquiry into black deaths in custody. The family of David Dungay (above) spoke at the Sydney protest and his mother also gave evidence at the inquiry

Despite tens of thousands being allowed to attend the Rugby League Grand Final at Sydney Football Stadium the evening before, a police permit stated that only 45 people were to attend the protest in Sydney’s domain. In pouring rain, well over 300 people joined the protest, despite police demands. 

At the same time, hundreds rallied in Alice Springs, marking the first time anyone has been charged with murder for the over 400 Black deaths in custody, since the Royal Commission.

.............

A committee elected from Warlpiri People to lead the response to the fatal shooting of one of our young men

… We are dealing with a very serious issue that will have big consequences. There must be justice, forgiveness and also big changes.  A new start. A revolution. 

We need to end violence and the wrath of our police and reclaim our rights to control our own communities.

Right now, every time we see police with a gun, we are terrified. This shooting is the first time since the Coniston Massacre that police have shot Warlpiri People. They are getting more and more weapons, more power and more racist toward us than for many years.

Things started to become very bad with the NT Intervention back in 2007, when the army was sent to our communities and all our rights were taken away from us.

We are a proud People, strong in our language, culture and our Lore. But the police and government rule over us and treat us as enemies in our own land.
All the investment in Yuendumu since the Intervention has been against the community. They built a big police station to terrorise and control us. The Basics Card controls our money. It feels like the Intervention opened the door to anyone to come in and wipe us out, not just shooting us, but taking away our identity, our Tjukurrpa.

Here we really are as the Warlpiri People. We have no rights to self-determination. So many of our People, including our children, are taken away to prison.
…
When the shooting happened, our young People stood up as part of Black Lives Matter Movement that is happening around the world. Being part of this movement is very special for us, and seeing what is happening with black people being killed by the police everywhere, and we know everyone is getting stronger, fighting for their freedom.  … It gives us hope that a new day is coming, when the racism will end and our Lore and culture will be respected.

We want everyone supporting Black Lives Matter to stand with us for justice for Walker.

This means those responsible must be held accountable. Justice for Walker also means that power must come back to the Warlpiri People and the violence and control against us must end. We want our rights back to continue what happens in our communities and on our land. Stop this Intervention and all the racist laws we are under. Reset our local councils and give us the resources we need to employ and serve our people. The police must put down their weapons before they come into our land. We cannot walk around in fear in our own community. 

Respect Warlpiri Lore, the real Lore of our land. 

Note: A section referring to Constable Rolfe has been omitted. The transcription may be slightly inaccurate, due to heavy rainfall while the recording was taking place.

 

Talk on the centenary of the Communist movement in Australia

 Written by: Michael Williss on 27 October 2020

The following is the text of a talk given by CPA (M-L) supporter Michael Williss to a meeting held to commemorate the centenary of the founding of the original Communist Party of Australia. The meeting was jointly organised by the SA Labour History Society and the Search Foundation. Four of the six speakers were from the Search Foundation which had dissolved the old CPA in 1991. Bob Briton, former General Secretary of the current CPA, and now General Secretary of the newly formed Australian Communist Party also spoke.

Comrades and friends,

We are speaking today on a platform whose focus is The Communist Party of Australia, 1920 – 2020: Achievements celebrated – lessons for the future…
I want to address you as a representative of one of our three Communist parties – in my case, the Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist).

My personal preference for the focus of our talk would have been The Centenary of the Communist Movement in Australia 1920 -2020.

The original Communist Party (CPA), founded on October 30 1920 did not see out its centenary.  It was dissolved in 1991.  It lasted 71 years.  

The achievement we should be celebrating is not the dissolution of the original CPA, but the continuation of work in the name of Australian Communism by people whose commitment to Marxism-Leninism was stronger and more determined than those who walked away from it.

I am not making an exclusive claim on behalf of my own Party.  The CPA (M-L), formed in 1964, is now 56 years old.  The current CPA was created by a pro-Soviet group that left the CPA in 1971, originally naming themselves the Socialist Party of Australia and then renaming themselves the Communist Party of Australia in October 1996.  In early 2019 a group of members left the current CPA and declared the foundation of the Australian Communist Party (ACP).

It should not matter whether a Communist party is fifty years old or five days old.  If it expresses its commitment to a future Communist Australia in the name it carries, and makes a genuine effort to involve itself in the struggles of the Australian people, then it should be accorded an equal status with all others.
That is the position we have adopted towards both the current CPA and the new ACP.  We have said that “Neither our Party, the CPA nor the ACP are the original Communist Party formed in 1920. No Party can claim that the centenary of the Communist movement in Australia and its inspiring history belongs to it alone.” 

I can tell you that both the ACP and the CPA have agreed with us.  Bob Briton is here and can confirm that for the ACP.  In an email discussion with me earlier this year, CPA President Vinnie Molina said, “We do recognise and agree that our two parties were both grown out of the original Communist Party of Australia dissolved in 1991.”

We have also adopted the position towards both the CPA and ACP that we should acknowledge the ideological, political and organisational differences that exist between us. Each Party can reserve the right to express its own opinion on these.  However, advanced workers and activists in the various progressive movements find it difficult to accept the reality of three separate Australian Communist parties. Advanced workers and the more militant sections of the trade union movement vigorously promote the slogan United we win, divided we fall. 

It must be our responsibility as Communist parties to try and unite in the service of the Australian working class.  We can reserve our differences whilst seeking common ground.

For example, after the initial hostility arising from the split in 1963-4, moves were slowly made towards reopening discussions with others in the Communist movement.  At a conference on the History of Communism in Australia held in Melbourne in August 1980, our founding Chairperson, Comrade Ted Hill offered self-critical reflections on his own role in the divisions between Communists in this country. He concluded by saying: “We are concerned to develop in every possible way the unity and integrity of the Communist movement. There must be exchanges of views and the deepest possible study of Marxist-Leninist general principle in order to guide actual struggle in Australia.”

On 18 September 1982, at the suggestion of our Party, a discussion was held between representatives of the CPA (M-L) and the CPA.  The latter was represented by Bernie Taft, Mark Taft and Rob Durbridge.  It was agreed that Ted Hill, representing the Party that had proposed the talks, should make the opening remarks.  At the end of a lengthy presentation, Hill concluded;

On what we regard as fundamental questions of Marxism we are perfectly happy to discuss them. They should not necessarily be put on one side and hidden as though they don’t exist. If discussion shows greater importance should be attached to agreement on given questions then differences can be placed in a subordinate position. Differences on many questions doubtless exist and their resolution or ultimate critical disagreement may be a fairly long process. The search in our opinion should be for common ground, the narrowing of differences and joint efforts in unity in the struggles and demands of the Australian people. Sooner or later the Australian people will insist upon one Communist Party that upholds in Australian conditions the fundamental principles of Marxism. Hence our proposal about this discussion. Every effort ought to be made at least in exploring the ground for agreement both for our two sides and others who avow adherence to Marxism.

In the course of discussions that lasted over quite a few hours, Durbridge suggested a joint statement and suggested the SPA be included.   He said, “I feel it would be much more powerful if the whole Communist movement including the SPA, made a statement in a very general way on the current circumstances and working for the workers.” 

Hill agreed, saying that “Perhaps publication of the material of the other” could be achieved, and suggested that the Socialist Workers Party, a Trotskyite organisation that had a certain following, and some of whose members Hill did not think “are so bad”, should be included.

The outcome was a four-page supplement to which each of the CPA, CPA (M-L), SPA, and SWP contributed a page.  It was carried in each of the parties’ papers.

Further talks between the various left parties and organisations occurred in December 1984 and January 1985. 

In 1983, the Hawke government, with the support of the ACTU, and leading members of the original CPA, had introduced the Accord. This attack on wages and conditions was the green light for employers to misuse sections of the Trade Practices Act against unions when they attempted to fight back. Robe River, Dollar Sweets, Mudginberri and SEQEB were all cut to a template and encouraged Communists and progressives to develop a fightback agenda. Comrades of ours in the ACT were instrumental in organizing the first National Fightback Conference in Canberra in 1986.  The emphasis was on developing networks of activists across a range of organisations.  I recall talking to Hill and Gallagher one moment, and Peter Symons and Jack McPhillips (SPA) the next. 

Communication was open and respectful.

Participants left Canberra having agreed to establish state Fightback committees and to convene again in Melbourne the following Easter. The core of the continuing Fightback organizing were the four parties: CPA (M-L), CPA, SPA and SWP. However, differences arose between those who wanted to promote an agenda of rank and file militancy independent of the ALP, and those who sought to take advantage of the disillusion with the ALP to create a “more progressive” social-democratic party. A document in support of the latter, Towards a New party of the Left, was widely circulated, mainly by CPA members and those in a new breakaway from the SPA, Pat Clancy’s Association for Communist Unity (ACU). 

Now I know I am speaking to an audience that I assume is largely supportive of a social-democratic alternative to capitalism, but I am also speaking as a Communist about a century of Communist movement in Australia.  

Regrettably, the moves within the CPA to support a new social-democratic party saw the rot set in that would prevent the original CPA from ever seeing in its centenary.  However, the Communist movement continued and still exists.

Despite the dissolution of the CPA in 1991, the discussions which had taken place between the parties had ongoing value.

One important practical outcome of the discussions between the parties was the relative ease with which the labourers’ union (largely under the influence of our Party) and the craft union (largely under the influence of the SPA and its rebadging as the CPA) were able to combine into one construction union. In the late 1980s, the Builders Labourers’ Federation was deregistered by the Labor Government. In the early 1990s agreement was reached on an incorporation of the remnants of the BLF with the BWIU in a new union, the CFMEU.  In Victoria this process was led by our comrade John Cummins who became the new union’s Federal President and was President of the Victorian branch until his death in 2006.  In South Australia, a remarkably respectful and mutually supportive relationship between our comrade Martin O’Malley (BLF) and the SPA/CPA’s Bennie Carslake (BWIU) saw the CFMEU take its rightful place as the union for all construction workers.

Recognising the great significance of the defeat of Menzies’ referendum to ban the Communist Party, the CPA and ourselves jointly organised and sponsored a meeting to celebrate the 60th anniversary of its defeat.  Veterans of the campaign from both parties spoke. That was on October 23, 2011.

More recently, on the occasion of the centenary of the October Socialist Revolution, our Party proposed, and the CPA agreed, to issue a joint statement on that momentous event.  The same statement was carried by both parties.

In an International Women’s Day event in Melbourne last March organised by the ACP, CPA (M-L) activist Shirley Winton was an invited speaker.

No doubt there will continue to be opportunities for the three parties to seek common ground whilst acknowledging and reserving differences.

One of those differences is the question of organisation. The original CPA was an open organisation largely built around suburban branches.  When we reestablished ourselves as the CPA (M-L) we decided that membership should in general not be disclosed, and that it should where possible be workplace based. 

Workplace based organisation concentrated the Party’s efforts on workers at the point of production and deliberately steered our focus away from organizing around local, state or federal elections.

Non-disclosure of membership had three objectives: to minimize surveillance of our members by state organisations; to give them some protection from individual harassment and intimidation by fascist street thugs; and to prevent the barriers to their political work that can be erected by people who have swallowed the all-pervasive anti-Communism embedded in our education, our culture and our political system. 

An early study of our Party by ASIO conceded some success with the first of those – making state surveillance difficult.

The ASIO report, 101 pages long and written in 1968, four years into the life of our Party, stated:

“…many of the Party’s characteristics do not conform with those usually attributed to a Communist Party. Whilst it is possible to establish, by means of membership cards, the size and complexion of the C.P.A., to describe the Party’s organisational structure from its National Executive, through State, District and Section Committees to Locality Branches, to clearly delineate policy and policy changes in the C.P.A. and to observe its activities in many fields, ranging from the “cultural” to the industrial, it has not been possible to do these things with regard to the C.P.A. (M/L).” 

In effect, our Party organises as an iceberg, with a relatively few public spokespeople and most members engaging in mass work in their workplaces and community organisations, but often without attribution to the Party of the gains and advances that they achieve in mass work.

So, what are the lessons for the future?

Communist organisation is still needed in Australia, as indeed it is in every capitalist and socialist society.  In our view it needs to take seriously the application of Marxism-Leninism to the struggles of the people, and to its creative development in the light of changing circumstances.

Australian Communists have maintained their ideological, political and organisational structures despite the attempt to destroy them by Menzies, and the success, to a certain extent, of their destruction at the hands of those who did achieve Menzies’ goals in 1991.

We do not need an international socialist motherland or fatherland. We have grown up and left the home of the Comintern. Khrushchevite revisionism saw the restoration of capitalism in the Soviet Union long before the formal dismantling of left-over socialist institutions by Gorbachev and Co.

Likewise, the Deng-era reforms have taken China from the socialist road to the capitalist road, and even to the highway of social-imperialism.

Some are tempted to see the restorations of capitalism in such strong bastions of socialism as an indication of the failure of socialism.  The Chinese Marxist Pao Yu-ching has argued strongly that these restorations were not failures, but defeats. If they were failures inherent in socialism, we would be justified in abandoning the effort to establish it here.  If, however, they are defeats then we are justified in maintaining our commitment to a socialist future, ever more confident that we can overcome the forces opposing us.

We were often called, in our early days, the “Maoists”.  It was intended to be a disparaging label and we did not use it ourselves. However, we continue to draw inspiration from the somewhat clumsily translated term Mao Zedong Thought.  We are determined to continue our study of the classics of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and Mao Zedong, as well as those of our founding Chairperson, Ted Hill, not to be know-alls, not to take solace in an out-of-date dogma, but to know the teachings in order to use the method, as Stalin-era President of the USSR Mikhail Kalinin said “daily, hourly, in the most diverse, peculiar, unprecedented circumstances.”

The centenary of our movement is a living, continuing process and not an exercise in nostalgia for a Party that was dissolved in its 71st year.

Despite our relatively low public profile, we continue to recruit great young people who are doing fantastic, effective mass work in their workplaces, their communities and around questions of the defence of democratic rights, defence of the unemployed and precariously employed, and for an independent and peaceful Australia freed from the grip of imperialism and its drive to war.

Long live the Communist movement in Australia!

More than meets the eye – the CPA(ML) in NSW Part 2: Vietnam, state forces and an east wind

Written by: Louisa L on 27 October 2020

The Vietnam Moratoriums brought politics to the fore among workers and students. Though outnumbered, party members were involved in leadership through Worker Student Alliance.  Despite ‘Maoist’ labels, WSA was regarded respectfully within the leadership. It went out of its way to leaflet factories and talk with workers as well as students. Students were the main, but not exclusive, targets for most other groups.

WSA emphasised the need to see the war as part of US imperialism’s attempts to broaden its empire especially in Asia, through a series of wars and coups. Unlike other groups, it organised and propagandised for independence. 

Our members and supporters were deeply involved in the leadership of the Draft Resisters Union (DRU) here, especially in its later stages. One had already joined the list of those jailed around the time of the huge Moratoriums in 1970. Through till Whitlam’s election in December 1972 a coordinated plan by the growing band of those refusing to register for so-called National Service was rolled out. At every appearance by Liberal politicians, another resister would stand, give his name and address, and demand to be arrested. 

This had a profound impact every time it happened. I still remember the collective intake of air as my quiet and serious friend Steve from school days, sitting next to me but without a word, suddenly stood to confront Attorney General Ivor Greenwood. He was not arrested, though secret police were very evident. There were too many brave young men like him. Jails would overflow and suburban outrage with it.

Memories of times past are imbued with their spirit. And so it is with this article. It carries the marks of its birth.

Young university students are prone to adventurism. The party’s militancy drew in young supporters who, like this writer from 1975, often lacked working class discipline. The actions that grew from this are covered in numerous books and articles. NSW based pieces almost always come down one-sidedly condemning “Maoist” adventurism. 

But would the same writers condemn the adventures of the DRU’s pirate radio station, illegally broadcasting at night, with balloons put up with the antennae and careful watch kept for tracking police? All the while, many hundreds of resisters waited their turn, hid or had spectacular escapes.

During the Vietnam War and soon after, groups like Worker Student Alliance, which played such a big role elsewhere, operated only briefly in Sydney. Key targets were the U.S. military bases that increasingly littered the continent. WSA soon merged into the Anti-Bases Action Coalition and then into the Campaign Against Foreign Military Bases in Australia, CAFMBA. The party took the initiative in all three, but they had wider membership. 

CAFMBA operated from the late 60s to mid-70s. This alphabetic mouthful which was easier to pronounce than it looked, had clear impetus from our party. It was small, and joined bigger things, aimed at US imperialism, organised from Melbourne and Adelaide.  Here, its members, some of them ex-draft resisters including one who had been imprisoned for this ‘crime’ took part in the thousands-of-kilometre Long March, a bus and vehicle convoy, to Northwest Cape in 1974. 

As the convoy arrived at towns across Australia, leaflets, megaphone diplomacy, street theatre and quiet conversations greeted locals. It was the first, but not the last time that street theatre made an appearance in the work of our members and supporters through the 70s.

Things were heating up, on many fronts.

The State and Revolution

The Vietnam War and the Moratoriums educated many people about the ruthlessness of the state overseas and locally, where police removed identifying numbers before committing deliberate organised violence. 

Sydney police were also notoriously corrupt and brutal. In cahoots with major crooks they ran crime. Everything from illegal gambling, drugs and prostitution to who could hold stalls at Paddy’s Markets, then the major fruit and veg market. Murder was their game, so bashing a few protesters was an afternoon picnic. It bred contempt from the people. 

For some like this writer, either you cried and hid, or decided to resist, because it was clear the police were overwhelmingly outnumbered by the people. There were instances which particularly shocked contemptuous police. Gay Liberation’s young men and women fought furiously as police tried to make arrests. This was not what Sydney coppers expected! They had bashed and murdered and blackmailed queers with impunity. Then an International Women’s Day march outside Bidura Girls’ “Home” in Glebe made sure those that police attempted to arrest were freed none too gently. 

Several young blokes in or close to the party in Sydney were casually sexist and homophobic. They copped furious flak from a majority of young members and supporters, some of whom had been involved in the battles with police against the same attitudes. The so-called universal “he” in E.F. Hill’s writing was also criticised.

In April 1975 the Vietnam War ended. The world’s mightiest power had been defeated. The masses, with good leadership, had made history. People sensed this collective power. We were all asking big questions.

An East Wind

The East Wind Bookshop was managed by Bert Chandler in Pitt Street, Sydney, then part of Chinatown, from the early 1960s. It was the party’s public face. Paperback editions of communist classics for a dollar or less brought legions young people to the shop, including this writer who as a schoolgirl bought ‘The Communist Manifesto’, little thinking how important it would be in her life. 

Bobby Da Fong, not of Chinese heritage was nicknamed for his summer and winter thongs, made a reluctant living as a tattooist, often persuading potential customers against getting one. His heart was with the revolution and hour upon hour he slogged in the East Wind Bookshop, with another comrade who gave up PhD study (pre fee-free university courses, a rare event for the son of Jewish refugees) to devote himself to the movement against war in Vietnam. Both set up openly Marxist-Leninist stalls, as well as supporting WSA and the Moratoriums outside factories and at universities. 

Wharfie Jimmy Dabron joined them most afternoons after lugging cargo all day, to lug boxes and bags of books. Because the turnover was so high, there was plenty to do. Jim was kind, tough, calm, generous and a deep political listener and thinker with long years of working class experience. He had lots to teach, but was always learning. 

This was unlike many of us young people, focused on a revolution or coup round the corner, studying the Marxist classics and Australia, but also caught up with frenetic activity, too often thinking we knew it all.

By the mid-1970s the bookshop increasingly held Australian political economy and history books, including a groundbreaking but largely forgotten book, “The Black Resistance”, which used the sources of British colonial invaders, to show not only massacres but a continent-wide guerilla war holding hostage the invader’s desire for safety and total control, for around a decade or even longer in each area it attempted to occupy. Authors Barry York and Fergus Robinson saw it as “An introduction to the history of the Aborigine’s struggle against British Colonialism” and dedicated it to “those brave men and women who died defending their country.”

In the acknowledgements, they wrote, “A special debt is owed to the political inspiration provided in ‘Australia’s Revolution’ by E.F. Hill.” 

ASIO & Co

Of course, the East Wind (and later Australian Independence Bookshop) was bugged by ASIO. This contributor remembers well a comment on the outcome of a series of medical tests she’d made there being repeated by “a member of the public” as she handed out leaflets for the July 4 protest of 1975. It was meant as a threat. We know you and what you are doing. There were many other examples. People with no political involvement were followed, simply because they visited what were “known houses” of communist activity. This could be based on just one suspected communist living in a big university share house with numerous visitors. 

In the 70s, a number of the political Special Branch of NSW Police specifically targeted activists associated with the party. Attempts to arrest some were accompanied by “Gotcha!” which proved premature, as our supporters never went without a struggle! Even family members had their home phones tapped, on the off chance that some commo skullduggery might occur in residences not lived in for years by said Maoist baddies.  (This well before the scandals were uncovered that saw Premier Bob Carr disband Special Branch and promise its files would be available to all those featured in them. But not it seems to at least one party member whose partner applied with her signature as a surprise birthday present.) By the 80s, Special Branch members would regularly visit the shop and trawl its shelves. We knew them. They knew us. 

Nazis and their mates preferred to visit when only an old and frail Bert or, in later years a youngish female, were alone. Bravery is not their strong suite. They had a particular hatred for “Maoists” who, when they gathered to jeer at one May Day parade (unlike those on the ALP-dominated podium) quietly made sure they never had the gall to turn up again.

(Like Covid, capitalist conditions eventually suited them. The first leaflet distributed, in 1976, by National Action, now Australia First, declared it wanted “the sound of Maoists ripping off their Eureka bumper stickers to be deafening”. We immediately knew we were on a winner.)

Eventually the shop’s name changed to the Australian Independence Bookshop. By then it held Sydney’s largest collection of First Peoples’ books outside Black Books, run by Aboriginal cooperative college Tranby. The Australian Independence Bookshop, had a regular flow of First Peoples, workers and students through it. 

Paul Keating’s recession “we had to have”, combined with the effect on Australian people’s reflection after the collapse of socialism in the Soviet Union, the temporary preeminence of the USA and the shutting down of the remnants of the old Communist Party of Australia, saw the bookshop move from Haymarket and eventually close. This was not long after the Socialist Party of Australia’s bookshop, five doors down also closed. 

We had long since buried our hatchets, if not our quite different ideologies and ways of organising.

More than meets the eye – the CPA(ML) in NSW Part 1 Bert and Syd

 Written by: Louisa L on 26 October 2020

The breadth of the work of the Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist) has never been readily apparent to those looking on. But there’s more than meets the eye. 

For several decades after its formation in 1964, the CPA (ML) worked in a hostile environment in Sydney where the old CPA, dissolved in 1991, was strongest.

Khrushchev’s poisonous “secret speech” to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1956 caused huge divisions in the Australian party (after initial but superficial condemnation) and in progressive forces across the world. Till then, the Comintern, the international organisation of communist parties run by the Soviet Party, had the final say in who ruled the roost in the Australian Party, even though communications had been very patchy in the early years. 

International relations between parties had not been understood in those years, when the Soviet Union was under constant and brutal attack from united capitalist forces. 

Much of these inter party relations are analysed in E.F. Hill’s work, particularly in the posthumously published ‘Communism in Australia, Reflections and Recollections’ which makes a much more dispassionate appraisal of events which had each side in Australia hurling insults and, in front-line industrial unions, even violence.

In Sydney, parties that followed Trotsky’s lead, miniscule before 1956, were growing by the 1960s. The old CPA, with its increasingly relaxed attitude to organisation and a New Left liberalism in the face of corporate power, was relatively large. Some struggled against liberalism within the CPA, but study of Marxism in Australian conditions was often superficial and its young members often existed in a block, with little direct contact with the wider community beyond those who called themselves left. 

The greatest strength of these parties was in Sydney.

Painting targets

In a recent book, “The Far Left in Australia since 1945”, the introduction to Chapter 2 on “Maoism” suggests the CPA (ML) and its followers were “arguably the most despised grouping within the Australian Far Left”. 

Let’s leave aside the wisdom of an avowedly left critique using the term “far left”, which certainly paints a target on any groups so named, especially when politicians and media talk of “extremists like Antifa”. 

Beyond that, the term of “despised” gives the idea of something below human condemnation, as if we should have been grouped with paedophiles and those in power who covered up their activities. 

This is despite the contending parties or groups still bearing the names “communist”, “socialist” or “left” having largely buried the hatchet in the 1980s at such events as the 1989 Fightback Conference in Melbourne, which saw presentations from almost all of those parties. In Sydney it led to direct cooperation against nationwide attacks on the working class. 

Bert 

Only a small part of our members have ever made their membership fully public. There were times in the old party when not revealing membership was also important. Witness Bert Chandler.

Bert had both acclamation from the people and attack from their enemies. Few now know his name.

Written records about Bert begin in 1932 when he was prominent in the ALP in country NSW. As Lithgow Mayor in 1937 Bert was ‘responsible for the most progressive works in the history of that municipality’. (Grenfell Record and Lachlan District Advocate 1 June 1939)

The Advocate said he was deeply involved in cultural, political and welfare issues, as diverse as the Show Committee, hospital board, Horticultural Society and as an “active organiser for the relief of distress amongst the unemployed”. This foreshadowed the broad community connections of our later member.

By 1937 he was on NSW ALP’s Central Executive.  

He remained with the ALP when the Communist Party was illegal between June 1940 and late 1942, able to work and speak freely.

In May 1943, as General Secretary of the NSW Labor Party, he told the Wollongong May Day rally that “there must be a complete organisation of the people” in order to defeat fascism. (South Coast Times and Wollongong Argus Friday 7 May 1943)

In all likelihood he had been already a member of the CPA for some years, but in 1945 he publicly joined, moving straight on to the Central Committee. By 1947 he was CPA electoral Campaign Director.

Cold war, hot water

The Cold War poured heat on dissidents. In 1953 Bert was one of three men charged with sedition, under Section 24D of the Commonwealth Crimes Act, after raids on suburban homes and the Communist Party’s offices.

The Crown Prosecutor raged, quoting this sentence, “The monarchy is a useful weapon to protect the system, to stifle class-consciousness, foster class-collaboration, and paralyse working-class action for social change.” (Illawarra Daily Mercury Thursday 20 Aug 1953) Shock horror!

The prosecution failed. For Bert, who ran the party’s publishing business (making money by sales of the racing paper ‘Trot Guide’) they tried again. Bert was hauled before the 1954-55 Royal Commission on Espionage, nicknamed the ‘Sharpley Commission’ after a communist renegade or spy, Cecil Sharpley.

Bert was undeterred. In 1964 he took a leading role in the new party led by Hill. With him he brought his wide connections with everyday people and communists across the state, his organisational skills and his courage. By then he was working at the state-owned Small Arms Factory.

A comrade who worked closely with him when he managed Sydney’s East Wind Bookshop from the late 1960s said, “He was single-minded in his struggle to make socialism a reality in Australia. He never veered from his course. But no one is perfect. He could be too demanding.” Remarking that was hardly surprising given the hard times he lived through, the comrade said he was a “wonderful man. I loved him. He made history in Australia”. 

To this writer, he was kind, gentle and ethical, a communist measured in his words and actions. He was the meeting point of a web of people across the state. 

Syd 

During the anti-Japanese war, the party developed close links and members among the Sydney Chinese. These links were cemented during the1938 Dalfram struggle at Port Kembla, when then Attorney General and later Prime Minister Bob Menzies earned the nickname “Pig Iron Bob” for trying to force waterside workers to load pig iron bound for Japan. 

It followed the 1938 massacre of up to 300,000 thousand Chinese people by invading Japanese troops in Nanjing. Workers also warned our pig iron could return as bombs.

The Chinese community was galvanized, and their staunchest allies were the communists. When wharfies led by Ted Roach refused to load pig iron bound for Japan onto the Dalfram, the Sydney Chinese community largely supplied them with food, straight from the markets. (Rupert Lockwood War on the Waterfront)

Syd Clare was an active member of the Waterside Workers Federation in Sydney. The dispute influenced him, as it did all waterside workers in Australia. 

Syd appeared in the WWF film The Hungry Mile leading striking workers off a ship. He joined the CPA (M-L) at its foundation in 1964. He was not the only WWF or Seaman’s Union member to join, including in Port Kembla. But they were definitely in the minority. 

The old party which controlled the union, worked to box in members of the CPA (ML). The public membership of the old party meant they were all well known, both to the bosses and the union officials. At times there were immediate physical threats. This is not to sling mud, as the split was bitterly felt on both sides, but just a statement of fact.

Some of our WWF members and supporters were of Chinese and Aboriginal heritage, and worked more freely in the Australia-China Friendship Society, where Sid was NSW Branch President for many years, or in the Chinese Youth League. A frequent visitor to China, Syd and the Society were devoted to the Gung Ho Industrial Cooperatives movement (the International Committee for the Promotion of Chinese Industrial Cooperatives) and raised considerable funds in support of their work. 

Towards the future

A larger group operated, under similar conditions to the waterfront, in the building industry, especially in the Builders Labourers Federation. They formed the bulk of the group that supported the takeover of the NSW BLF by the Federal organisation, with support from every state organisation. 

Full time union officials can remain true to the people, but in a soup of numbers’ games and jockeying for position, faced daily with compromises with capitalism, it’s much harder. Unions are part of capitalism. Our party members in the building industry and elsewhere learned to focus both on the big issues and on quiet work, behind the scenes, with no flags flying. 

Leadership comes from the masses to the masses, in a never-ending cycle. Those who separate themselves from everyday people, those with egos, motivated by individualism, can never fully serve the people. (Mao Zedong, “Some questions concerning methods of leadership”) 

When he became NSW BLF President in 1974 Johnny McNamara remained a rank and filer. Others also remained on the job. Their leadership came from listening to and learning from their workmates. 

The state played on divisions which saw the BLF deregistered and destroyed in NSW. 

The key NSW BLF leader overestimated his own capacity and the union’s strength, acting as if it were a revolutionary party capable of taking on the whole state apparatus.   

Through the 80s and early 90s, as organisers were arrested day after day, the Building Workers Industrial union, dominated by the Socialist Party of Australia, poached BLF members.

Everything exists in particular contexts, from the past, within the present and into the future. 

There was and is much more for the party and its members to learn.

Abetz controversy: Fight every attack on democratic rights

 

Written by: Nick G. on 26 October 2020

The recent pressure placed on three Chinese-Australians to condemn China’s Communist Party and Government by Liberal Senator Eric Abetz must be unconditionally condemned.

The three were appearing before a Senate inquiry into the Morrison government’s Foreign Relations Bill, which would give Canberra a veto over state government and university deals with overseas powers. Senator Abetz is chairing the inquiry.

The Foreign Relations Bill is itself a product of the struggle by US imperialism to defend its “king of the castle” status against the “dirty rascals” of the emerging Chinese superpower.  The US wants to keep Australia firmly within its grip and prevent any entry into its loyal fiefdom by the increasingly assertive Chinese capitalism.

The Foreign Relations Bill is a weapon in that struggle and is aimed at Chinese influence in Australia whilst doing nothing about our domination by US imperialism and its agents of influence and interference, or by any other imperialism which is in league with the US.

So, Chinese-Australians are dragged before Abetz’s inquisition, but not the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) which leads the public opinion battle against China and is sponsored by major US weapons manufacturers and financed in part by the US State Department.

Abetz’s reactionary record

Abetz was born in Germany in1958 and came to Australia in 1961 with his parents. His father’s uncle Otto Abetz, an honorary SS-Standartenführer, was present in Adolf Hitler's entourage at the fall of the Polish capital, Warsaw.  He was appointed Nazi Ambassador to the Vichy French and was later convicted as a war criminal for his role in arranging the deportation of French Jews to the death camps.

Senator Abetz has argued, and we agree, that his great-uncle’s record should not be the basis for passing judgment on the Senator. However, his own reactionary record is another matter.

Elected to Parliament as a Tasmanian Senator in 1994, he was appointed Special Minister for State in the Howard Government from 2001 to2006. He was then appointed Minister for Fisheries, Forests and Conservation for a year, until Howard was voted out. He commenced that portfolio by attacking the Australian Greens and environmentalists in general as anti-Australian. He described the campaign against woodchipping as "akin to treason" and branded the Greens an "extreme left" party. His own reactionary extremism was on public display.

Following the defeat of the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd Labor government, Abetz was appointed Minister for Employment in the Abbott Government and oversaw the drafting of legislation to strengthen the coercive powers of the anti-worker Australian Building and Construction Commission. He also was responsible for the establishment of the anti-union Registered Organisations Commission, and the launching of the Royal Commission into trade union governance and corruption and the Fair Work Act Review. Abetz also designed and implemented the Government's Jobactive Employment Services Reforms with their punitive requirement for job seekers to complete 40 job applications a month.

In 2015, Abetz supported Hutchinson Ports’ use of emails in sacking 40 per cent of its workforce and in an exchange with Labor Senator Doug Cameron endorsed the use of balaclava-clad thugs in breaking the maritime strike in the 1998 Patrick dispute.

During Senate debates regarding the Nuclear Fuel Cycle (Facilitation) Bill, presented by Senator Cory Bernardi in November 2017, Abetz strongly endorsed the prospect of nuclear power in Australia. He described nuclear power as "the very best source of energy production that science has to offer the world" and claimed that it offered "affordable and reliable energy, with no emissions at all." 

Echoes of McCarthyism

The notorious anti-Communist US Senator Eugene McCarthy unleashed a wave of persecution against US citizens, demanding to know at public hearings, “Are now, or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party of the United States?” The great harm done to people’s democratic rights gave rise to the term “McCarthyism” to denote unsubstantiated, demagogic attacks on a person’s character or political allegiance.

At the Senate inquiry, Abetz said “…can I ask each of the three witnesses to very briefly tell me whether they are willing to unconditionally condemn the Chinese Communist Party dictatorship?” 

He might just as well have phrased it in McCarthy’s terms: “Are you now, or have you ever been, a sympathiser with or supporter of the Chinese Government?”

To their credit, the three Chinese-Australians took offence at the implied slur and refused to answer the question.

There are 1.2 million Australians of Chinese descent. Their views spread across the spectrum. Some oppose China and support Taiwanese “independence”, Hong Kong “democracy” and other secessionist demands. Others are completely indifferent to international politics and issues involving China. A great many are justifiably proud of the victory, led by the Chinese Communist Party, of the War of Resistance Against Japan. Many acknowledge that with the victory of Liberation in 1949, after more than a century of humiliation by imperialist powers, Mao Zedong spoke directly to their sense of national self-respect when he declared “The Chinese people have stood up”.

Already, Chinese community organisations are responding to Abetz’s attack. The Victorian Chapter of the Chinese Community Council of Australia issued a statement on October 22 expressing opposition to “Senator Abetz’s insinuation of disloyalty of these three distinguished Chinese Australians. We regard this targeted questioning as unfair and racially prejudicial.”

“As ordinary citizens, we should not be forced to take a political position regarding a foreign government, nor should we be required to prove our loyalty. Treating people prejudicially based on their background is against Australian values of respect and equality,” the statement said.

Abetz has no right to demand of any of these Australian citizens whether they are “willing to unconditionally condemn the Chinese Communist Party dictatorship”.

For our part, we do condemn the Chinese Communist Party for having departed from the socialist road and for having allowed the revival and restoration of capitalism. That is entirely different to Abetz’s equation of the current Chinese Government with Communism.

For our part, we oppose Chinese social-imperialism (socialism in appearance, but imperialist in practice), but promote friendship and understanding between the peoples of Australia and China.

For our part, we condemn the real dictatorship in Australia of the capitalist class, the decisive sections of which are US and other imperialisms, and we uphold and fight for the democratic rights of our people, for anti-imperialist independence and for socialism.

Paying Attention To Cultural Diversity Essential In Building A Strong Working Class Movement

 Written by: Ned K. on 24 October 2020

Recently I learned about a struggle of migrant workers in a food processing factory that had some good lessons worth sharing.

About thirty workers in this factory were employed by a contractor to clean machinery each day after production had finished. They had regular work as long as their boss kept the contract with the food processing owner. About twenty of the workers were from the same Asian country. Some had been working the same job since they came to Australia ten years ago. They helped more recent migrant workers from the same home country get jobs with the contractor too. 

All of the workers were part-time with a few working seven hours a day and the majority six hours a day. A minority of the migrant workers were in their union, others not. Those in their union had regular contact with their Organizer off-site as there was little time to meet on site in the half hour meal break time in the noisy factory.

Apart from the occasional issue about pays and leave entitlements, those in their union said that the jobs were ok and their boss not too bad.

Then all of a sudden, the factory owner decided to invite a couple of other contractors to put in quotes for the job. The factory owner called this "testing the market". Not surprisingly, one of these hopeful contractors put in a price that claimed the job could be done by each worker working five and a half hours instead of six or seven hours a shift.

The factory owner thought this was pretty good and gave the existing contractor their marching orders. The factory owner arranged for the new contractor to meet all thirty workers. The factory manager attended the meeting too. He was surprised that some of the migrant workers spoke up and said it was impossible to do the job in five and a half hour shifts. 

The next day, the factory owner reversed his decision to give the work to the new contractor with the cheaper price and told the existing contractor that their contract was extended but on different terms. The contractors' workers would have to do the job in six and a half hours per worker per shift and there would be no seven more seven-hour shifts.

Some of the union members who were on seven-hour shifts contacted their Organizer to ask what could be done. The Organizer said that if the factory owner had altered the terms of the commercial contract with their boss, then the best strategy was for all twenty migrant workers to accept the six and a half hour shifts, but tell their boss they doubted whether all the work could be done without the maintenance of some seven-hour shifts. 

The minority union members all agreed this was the way to go. Keep employed and fight the workload issue over time to get back the seven-hour jobs.

A couple of days later though the union members contacted their Organizer and said all of the twenty migrant workers had signed a letter of resignation to their boss. The Organizer was surprised and asked why. The union members said that the leaders of their community who worked in the factory with them had held a meeting and decided that unless their boss and the factory owner gave seven hours to every worker they would resign on mass. The community leaders thought the factory owner would cave in and give the contractor the go ahead to give every worker seven-hour shifts.

It didn't work!  The factory owner maintained the renewed contract which paid for six and a half hour shifts and the existing contractor had to hire another twenty inexperienced workers!

The Organizer asked the union members why they didn't accept the six and a half hour shifts and keep their jobs? They said that in their community all the workers, whether union or not, follow their community leaders.

This was their democracy. 

The Organizer learned from this experience that within the workers’ movement, it is essential to have detailed analysis of the diversity of workers in any workplace, including who are the natural leaders, especially within migrant communities within those workplaces.   

Bolivian elections: Return of MAS a rebuff to US imperialism

 Written by: (Contributed) on 23 October 2020

The return of the Movement for Socialism (MAS) to office in Bolivia has provided a massive boost for progressive movements and Indigenous peoples across Central and Latin America and elsewhere.

The previous MAS presidential administration successfully challenged US-led neo-liberal economic agendas and directives issued through international financial institutions under their control.

They also withstood a massive US-led destabilisation campaign.

The recent Bolivian elections, furthermore, followed a year of political uncertainty and instability following the removal of President Evo Morales last November.

While strongly localised issues proved politically popular with MAS supporters, the recent election victory rested upon a reaction to US-led repression in previous decades which has left a lasting legacy on popular Bolivian political allegiances.

The Bolivian people went to the polls on 18 October to vote for a new president, vice-president and members of both houses following a year of political uncertainty and instability. They overwhelmingly voted to support the MAS candidate Luis Arce, a former Finance Minister in previous MAS administrations, who received 52.62 per cent of the mandate and won the presidency on the first round. He had been expected to win although by not such a conclusive margin.

Incoming President Arce used the announcement of his election victory to state, 'we have recovered democracy and will regain stability and social-peace'. (1)

Bolivia, however, is a bitterly divided society with a long and tumultuous history; a large Indigenous section of the general population have historically lived on the margins of society, subject to exploitation and racial discrimination at the hands of those whose lineage lay in oligarchies and Spanish ancestry.

It is, therefore, not surprising to note the strong diplomatic links between previous Bolivian presidential administrations backed by the US and the Apartheid regime in South Africa, although the matter was not well-publicised.

Bolivia was one of the Latin American countries targeted by the Nazi regime in Germany as rat-lines for fleeing war-criminals who then assumed other identities and continued their political activities inside regimes backed by the US. (2) Many of the right-wing Latin American regimes which governed through the previous Cold War developed political systems based on a common Nazi heritage.

Bolivia was no exception to the general plan; it was also a major US-led theatre of war against the civilian population.

In the late-1970s, for example, Dr. Guido Strauss, then Bolivian under-secretary for Immigration, announced a plan to settle 150,000 whites from supremacist regimes in Southern Africa, 'financed by a $150 million credit to Bolivia offered by the Federal Republic of Germany'. (3)  

The involvement of Germany as a broker in the transaction can be easily explained through the role of their intelligence services which were re-established immediately after 1945 by Reinhard Gehlen, a former General under Hitler who was backed by the US. (4) While Germany had been militarily defeated, Gehlen merely returned large numbers of Nazi supporters back on official pay-rolls in order to comply with Pentagon planning for the Cold War. Those in Latin America were regarded as a particularly important component part of the master plan.

The development coincided with similar diplomatic initiatives by the Apartheid regime to foster stronger links with right-wing Latin American counterparts to break sanctions imposed by the UN. (5)

Following the July 1980 coup in Bolivia, which subsequently installed Garcia Mesa as president, the incoming administration was quickly recognised diplomatically by South Africa. (6) A later military report threw even further light upon some of the major players behind the coup and their neo-Nazi political positions, with the statement:

          concern is being caused by the continued presence in the country of South African and German mercenaries, all of whom have credentials from the Ministry of the Interior and Department 2 … their high remuneration and their behaviour makes things very uncomfortable for all who have to pay and deal with them. (7)

The developments were also accompanied by Bolivian involvement with the notorious Operation Condor, a US-led regional intelligence network for tracking and eliminating political opposition figures. (8) It was accompanied by US-led regional counter-insurgency and country-intelligence programs including the AR 381-20 training manuals used in the School of the Americas.

In January 2006, after decades of popular struggles against class and state repression, Bolivian peoples voted for Evo Morales as president, beginning a two-term and fourteen-year presidential administration devoted to state intervention and nationalisation together with a redistribution of wealth from the country's vast mineral resources directed toward social programs beneficial for ordinary working people with specific provision for social and cultural inclusion.

The emerging MAS subsequently became a major part of the wave of reaction against US domination which swept the southern half of the Americas during the 1990s and later period in collective opposition to regional trade agreements and the legacies of brutal US-led repression. For most ordinary Bolivian peoples, the 2006-2019 period was a time when the old, traditional order and all that was associated with it, collapsed.

Attempts, by the US, to reassert traditional hegemonic positions throughout Bolivia during the past year, have now been thrown into turmoil. Their chosen candidate in recent elections, Carlos Mesa only received 30.23 per cent of the poll. Official US positions have remained tight-lipped about the election result, hiding behind diplomatic silence; it was not a result they have chosen to celebrate, for obvious reasons. The removal of President Morales and his supporters from office, and replacement by one of their cronies, had been a long-term plan for Washington and the Pentagon.

Bolivia was, historically, regarded by the US as a vital link in the regional intelligence networks due to its central geographical position. It is, therefore, hardly surprising to note throughout the previous fourteen-year Morales presidency the US had funded and supported a long list of destabilisation campaigns including far-right political groupings and seccessionist movements to divide the country into ethnic strongholds amongst other numerous plans.

While Morales was eventually ousted last November after his two terms of office were completed, the hidden hands of the US supported nineteen days of political turmoil and violent protests directed toward MAS supporters. Throughout the past year the destabilisation campaigns have continued, although to avail, revealing a changing balance of forces has taken place inside Bolivia away from the old traditional order favoured by the US toward a new popularist movement with seemingly widespread support.

In conclusion, the recent election results have shown the progressive forces which won power during the 2006-19 period were unwilling to hand it back to their former oppressors in Bolivia.

Their success stands as a massive boost to others in the struggle against exploitation and repression across the southern half of the Americas, from the remote areas of Chile to Honduras, and elsewhere!

1.     Morales' heir wins election, Australian, 20 October 2020 
2.     Ratlines, Mark Aarons and John Loftus, (London, 1991), Chapter 5, pp. 88-119; and, The Borman Brotherhood, A new investigation of the escape and survival of Nazi war criminals, William Stevenson, (New York, 1973).
3.     The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism, Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman, (Boston, 1979), pp. 119-121.
4.     Gehlen: Germany's Master Spy, Charles Whiting, (New York, 1972).
5.     Pretoria opts for Latin America, The military pact project in the South Atlantic, Robert Manning, Le Monde Diplomatique, March 1977.
6.     Klaus Barbie, The Fourth Reich, and their neo-fascist connection, Magnus Linklater, Isabel Hilton and Neal Ascherson, (London, 1984), page 370.  
7.     Ibid., page 375. 
8.     1976, South America: Operation Condor cross border killing, Edward S. Herman, A People's History of the CIA, (Ottawa, 2000), page 31.
        
(The author has had a long involvement with Central and Latin America. He worked in Nicaragua and Cuba during the mid-late 1980s.)