Bob Briton, the Communist Party of Australia (CPA) by-election candidate for the seat of Port Adelaide, launched his campaign at a function on January 21. Below is his speech at the election launch.
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Thank you friends and comrades for turning out in such good numbers at a difficult time of the year given holidays and family commitments. We’ve been encouraged that there appears to be momentum from the campaign we conducted for Lee in 2010.
I’d like to introduce my comments about our current campaign in Port Adelaide with an anecdote relayed to me by a member of my branch of the party.
Her parents-in-law were travelling to the UK recently and they were seated beside a guy from the US. They started chatting and exchanging travel stories as people do. The guy from the US mentioned he had been living in Semaphore for a few years and how much he liked it. Then, out of the blue, he asked “What is it about Adelaide and Communism? While I was in Semaphore there were posters in the street, meetings, a club with all this Communist memorabilia. I tell my friends in the US about it and they can’t believe it!”
Then he added something that, when I heard it, made my heart melt. He said, “You know, I think it’s great! It makes me realise I’ve got options.”
In all our various election campaigns, we have thrown ourselves into them as if we were going to win. We certainly want to win. The fact is, however, at that this stage of the development of the struggle in Australia, we know that an election campaign is an opportunity to get our politics before as many people as possible — certainly more people than is usually the case though we try hard between election campaigns, too.
Video: Respect the Port: its people, its history, its environment. Adelaide Communists.
We’re thrilled that more people than usual hear our message and begin to consider alternatives to the current system. The response from that US traveller is precisely the sort of response we want. But we don’t believe that socialism is simply “an alternative” another “choice” from a box of chocolates. We believe society and the world economy is developing in such a way that working and other exploited people around the world are being confronted with a major decision — socialism or barbarism as it used to be described in the classics of Marxism.
All this might seem a long way from the issues we have been dealing with during our campaign for Port Adelaide but they really aren’t. The whole world is going through a multi-faceted crisis of capitalism — an economic and environmental crisis that it can’t get out of. Some island nations are starting to disappear under water. Some European nations are losing their sovereignty and democratic rights as the International Monetary Fund makes tougher and tougher demands.
You could say that in this disaster about to occur, some of us are at the front of the bus and some of us are at the back. You could also say Australia is lucky in that because of our resources and relatively small population we are seated towards the back but it is well and truly in all our interests to hear what people experiencing the effects of the crisis already have got to say. Developing island nations are pleading with us to take climate change seriously and for governments of the developed countries to stop trying to use the crisis for their own advantage.
We have the ongoing Arab spring. There is the worldwide Occupy movement, which is particularly strong in the US. People in Europe are also suffering form savage “austerity measures” taken by capitalist governments to get working people, students and pensioners to pay for a crisis that was not of their making. The movements are not usually very clear about the way out. Some are becoming more so. In Greece there is a growing belief that the people will not get out of their current predicament by some re-arrangement of political forces in the government of a capitalist Greece. Their belief is demonstrated by the fact that Greece has had 20 general strikes in 18 months and they are getting stronger.
The Greek people are coming to realise that politicians from the traditional parties or points of view can promise all sorts of things but that they can’t deliver because political power doesn’t reside in parliament. Governments have fewer and fewer economic levers to pull to make conditions better for the people.
So OK, if conditions won’t be improved for workers and other exploited people through parliaments without other fundamental change in society, why bother putting a platform of demands or a bunch of policies before the people at election time? We have put a number before the people of Port Adelaide in our election material and we believe if they could be achieved they would reap significant benefit.
- We want cuts made to military spending and the proceeds spent on public health, education and other vital community services.
- We want the state government to stop its assistance to military industries coming to the state and “partnering” our high schools.
- We want sustainable jobs to be fostered by the state government and to slow down the expansion of uranium mining by profit hungry corporations.
- We want the state government to apply tough environmental laws and workplace laws so as to repair some of the damage done in communities like Port Adelaide.
- We want redevelopment of the inner Port to pay proper recognition to the Aboriginal and working class heritage of the Port and to stop planning ghettoes for the rich.
But it is no good wishing and a hoping. On these matters and others we have been campaigning and uniting with others to achieve our aims. We joined with others to fight a good campaign around the land now occupied by Newport Quays. We supported the demands of the Aboriginal people that it not be gifted to developers but used for an aged care facility for the Aboriginal people or a Kaurna cultural centre. We have leafleted on an extensive scale about the pollution issues facing the Port.
We keep raising on the issue of the militarisation of our state. This isn’t necessarily popular but we’re right. It’s gratifying that we’re not alone in this. Last year Left Unity organised a vigil outside the big so-called Defence Industries Expo for its entire opening day. There were two rallies and leafleting of shoppers in Rundle Mall. The media picked up on it. The event was a glimpse of the potential for united front work in SA.
I’d like to conclude my remarks today with a word about left unity. I believe we will not make much headway towards our goals of a more just society unless and until we have a strong Communist Party within a strong and united left. I cannot tell you how impressed and grateful we are for the support shown by the Left Unity organisation in Adelaide. Left Unity is made up of members of the CPA, Socialist Alliance, Organise!, which is an anarchist organisation, the Anti-Capitalist Forum, the Socialist Party, current and former members of the Greens and other progressive individuals.
Members of Left Unity are here today. They have donated to the campaign. They have put up FaceBook pages and events. Next week they will be joining us door knocking the area and attending street corner meetings next weekend and the weekend after. They are organising a party after the close of polls on February 11 to which you are all invited. 7pm at the Masonic Hall in Semaphore. This example of left unity has to be kept going beyond the election campaign and applied to other objectives of a united left. The CPA has supported the Left Unity project from the outset and I make the undertaking today that we will increase our efforts.
I’d like to thank everybody here for their ongoing support. I hope we can deliver a good result in return for your faith in us — not just a good vote but in strengthening the Party and the united left and progressive forces in Adelaide.