Can Australian nationalism be progressive?
By Sue Boland
Patrick Stevedores was described by many trade unionists as "un-Australian" for using security guards and dogs to drive waterside workers from their jobs earlier this year.
"Un-Australian" was the term used by the Howard government and the media to condemn the demonstration against the government's Workplace Relations Bill in Canberra on August 19, 1996.
Many people responded to One Nation by saying that racism is "un-Australian", and Pauline Hanson describes her critics as "un-Australian".
So what is "Australian"?
Equality
Both liberal reformists and racists promote the view that Australia is an egalitarian society based on an ethos of mateship and a fair go for everyone.
Malcolm Fraser described Australia in the Sydney Morning Herald on June 20 as "an egalitarian society". Then he said, "We should aim to be a classless society ... No person should regard a particular achievement as being beyond reach because of background or family circumstances."
Liberal reformists regard Australia as a country where harmony exists between the classes. They assume that what is good for profits is good for the country, and therefore must be good for workers.
They regard the path to social reforms as one of appealing to the "good nature" of government ministers and employers.
In contrast, militant mass demonstrations (and industrial action) threaten to expose the undemocratic nature of our supposedly democratic and impartial institutions and the lack of common interests between workers and employers.
Through organising to defend their rights, workers uncover what nationalism and class harmony are all about — a ruse to lure workers into supporting the rights of big business to make big profits at their expense. Workers throughout Australia were horrified to see the lengths to which the government and Patrick were prepared to go to sack Maritime Union of Australia members.
After the public exposure of the government's role in planning the MUA dispute, Howard's plea for all Australians to support his goods and services tax for the "good of the nation" was not a convincing argument.
By describing militant demonstrations as "un-Australian", Howard, seeks to convince us that any struggles by working-class people (the majority of the population) for their rights are for sectional interests, against the interests of the "Australian nation". Howard, Beazley and the mainstream media equate the interests of the "Australian nation" with the interests of the corporate rich minority.
Democracy
Geoffrey Blainey, academic and promoter of racist views towards Asian migrants, also stated his view in the June 20 SMH on what it means to be Australian.
"A belief in democracy is an Australian hallmark", Blainey said. This is a truly bizarre comment. Australians don't have a monopoly on support for democratic rights.
The huge pro-democracy movement in Indonesia is one of many examples of democratic movements in other countries.
The democratic aspirations of Australian people were not shared by the ruling capitalist class when the Labor government used troops against striking coalminers in 1949.
In 1975 the Whitlam Labor government was thrown out of office by the unelected Governor-General John Kerr because a minority of Australians, the mostly white male owners of Australia's big corporations, thought that the Whitlam government was not capable of restricting wage increases and social reforms.
Australia's history is littered with examples of undemocratic and repressive measures by governments and police forces, including frame-ups, the de-registration of unions, the banning of street marches in Queensland in the late 1970s, the use of tear gas against builders' labourers in Victoria in the mid-1980s and restrictions on distribution of political literature in public space.
Blainey then goes on to say, "There is a fierce disagreement on exactly how far a democracy should extend or what kind of political tactic it should tolerate". (Emphasis added.)
Presumably, Blainey would have agreed with sending troops against the striking miners in 1949 because the miners were taking democracy "too far" by going on strike.
The Australian ruling class is prepared to allow a certain level of democracy, such as the right to vote and some political freedoms, as long as their right to make profits is not restricted in any way.
Universal suffrage has never been a threat to profit-making because big corporations control all the key sectors of the economy, including the media, and they fund the Liberals, Nationals and Labor. All three parties advocate policies which are conducive to ever larger profits.
Culture
One Nation's multicultural policy describes the "unique Australian culture" which it claims is under threat of destruction by multiculturalism. Its definition of "Australian culture" would be accepted by many racists and anti-racists alike, including Blainey and Fraser, Liberal and Labor politicians, and even some who would consider themselves left wing.
The policy defines Australian culture as incorporating "the best features of British culture; a balance of freedom and order, a separation of the public service from politics, conflict solving by debate and not by force, violence or insurrection, a tolerance of minorities, economic opportunity, fortitude in war without militarism and provision of social services".
This statement is completely untrue:
- Not all Australians have the same level of freedom. The small core who own the mass media have more freedom of expression than the rest of us combined. This gives them the ability largely to control the political agenda, especially since they also fund the major political parties .
- The public service is not separate from politics. The unelected heads of government departments are often drawn from private industry and campaign for policies that are supported by big business at the expense of ordinary people, such as privatisation and the GST.
- Conflict in Australia is solved by force or the threat of force. Large numbers of police are sent to break workers' picket lines, sometimes using extreme violence. But employers are never arrested for sacking workers and are never charged with murder when workers die on the job as a result of employer greed and negligence.
During the maritime dispute, all of Australia's major newspapers called for the police to go in harder and arrest picketers, even at the risk of violence.
- The only minority tolerated in Australia is the corporate rich. Other minority groups, such as Aborigines and migrants, still have to deal with racism on a daily basis.
- Australia does pursue a militaristic strategy, especially in the Pacific region. As well as sending troops to fight in the two world wars, Australia has sent troops to China and Malaysia, and the Korean, Vietnam and Gulf wars — always on the side of the oppressors. Australia also supported Papua New Guinea's war against the Bougainville independence movement.
As early as 1883, the Queensland government sent troops to invade the eastern coast of New Guinea. Papua New Guinea later became an Australian colony.
Australia participated in the slave trade in the Pacific, with Australian companies such as Burns Philp acquiring wealth by kidnapping Pacific Islanders to work in Australia as "indentured" (essentially slave) labour. This trade in kidnapped labour lasted from 1847 until 1904.
Reforms
One Nation's immigration policy goes on to claim that Australia's culture "has developed historically on the basis of our common experiences and memories, stories and traditions".
As evidence of the "common experiences", the policy refers to the winning of "the secret ballot, the 8-hour day, votes for women, invalid, widow and old age pensions, strong trade unions, the arbitration system and the basic wage".
However, the winning of these reforms doesn't reflect common experience. The corporate rich saw the eight-hour day, pensions and the basic wage as a defeat because these reforms ate into their profits.
Working-class people, including Asian migrants and Aborigines, saw them as victories. Big social and industrial campaigns had to be fought against the government and the employers in order to win the reforms.
The "common Australian culture" referred to by Hanson, Howard, Blainey, Beazley and Fraser is just Australian nationalism, which is deeply rooted in racism and oppression, and which seeks to dupe Australian workers, especially white workers, into identifying with the interests of Australian capitalists. There is no such thing as a "common Australian culture".
Myth and history
One Nation's immigration policy states that "the policy of multiculturalism attempts to discredit and destroy our shared story and impose upon us a different story. This will produce Australians whose feelings toward the pre-1965 Australia and her heroes will be those of contempt, guilt ..."
Howard endorses this view when he criticises the so-called "black armband" view of Australian history. Neither Hanson nor Howard wants to acknowledge the real history of racism in Australia, because that destroys the myth of egalitarianism.
That myth is vital to Australian nationalism if workers are to be convinced that the rising fortunes of the Australian capitalist class will ultimately trickle down to them.
The absence of an entrenched hereditary ruling class fostered the illusion that Australia was an egalitarian society in which conflict between employers and workers could be resolved harmoniously.
Hanson, Fraser and Howard all claim that it is possible for anyone to get ahead if they work hard. Implied is the idea that poverty is a result of laziness and must be a person's own fault. When Howard and Hanson talk about battlers, they are usually referring to small business people or aspiring business people — not workers or unemployed.
While there are many workers who aspire to escape the working class by setting up a small business, it is not possible for the vast majority of workers to transform themselves into business owners.
Even if a worker on $39,000 a year (and 63% of workers earn less than that) saved a quarter of their income each year, they would have to work for 77 years before they could accumulate $1 million. And even $1 million would not be enough to compete with the big corporations, or even medium-sized ones.
Racist foundations
The Australian nation state was founded on the basis of racism towards both Aborigines and Asians.
The goal of the British colonisers was not to seek coexistence with Aboriginal society but to force Aboriginal people from their land by physically exterminating them, or by herding them into tightly controlled reservations.
The newly emerging capitalist class in Australia was dependent on the protection and prosperity of British imperialism in a region of non-white and colonially oppressed people. Anti-Asian racism helped to justify British colonial conquests in Asia and the trade in indentured (slave) labour in Asia and the Pacific.
The racial oppression of Aborigines has become institutionalised, the acute poverty suffered by the majority of Aboriginal people being passed on to the next generation, just as the wealth of the super-rich ruling families is passed on to their next generation.
While the ideology of racism and nationalism originated with the Australian ruling class, it did sink deep roots amongst the working class and the class of small business owners and petty traders.
Workers saw Chinese migrants and indentured labourers as competitors for jobs, while small businesses saw Chinese migrants as business competitors.
The labour shortage during the 1860 to 1890 economic boom meant that workers were able to win improved wages and conditions more easily than European workers. Australian workers were the first in the world to win the eight-hour day.
Unions
Because the improved working conditions were won partly as a result of a labour shortage, the union movement's strategy to defend living standards was to attempt to control the labour supply by excluding Asian, Pacific Islander, Aboriginal, women and unskilled workers.
Sections of the capitalist class sought to weaken the bargaining position of workers by bringing in indentured labourers from India, China, Japan and the Pacific Islands. Instead of trying to unionise these workers, trade unions excluded them from membership and sought an alliance with other employers to impose racially based immigration controls.
Even when Chinese workers in the furnishing trades in Melbourne attempted to form their own union (because they were excluded from the Furniture Trades Union) to fight for higher wages, they met with hostility from white furniture workers and were refused affiliation to the Trades Hall Council.
Trade union congresses in the 1880s and 1890s repeatedly passed resolutions calling for the exclusion of non-white migrants. There were no similar calls for the exclusion of white European and North American migrants.
The first legislation introduced by the Labor government after federation in 1901 was the white Australia policy, which excluded non-white migrants from Australia.
Because the only demands raised by trade union leaders in the lead-up to federation were for immigration restrictions and compulsory arbitration in industrial disputes, the new federal government was established with a constitution that guaranteed very little in the way of democratic rights for workers.
Aboriginal workers
Aboriginal workers, as well as Asians, were excluded from membership of trade unions. The North Australian Workers' Union's (NAWU) discriminatory membership clause was not removed until 1948, when the Communist Party of Australia won control of the union.
The Northern Territory Workers Union (later called NAWU) and the ALP also called for Aborigines to be excluded from the cattle industry in order to protect working conditions. As with Asian workers, they had no perspective of attempting to unionise Aboriginal workers.
It was not until 1965 that the Arbitration Court ruled in favour of equal wages for Aborigines, but the ruling allowed for "slow workers" to be paid less than the award rate. Aboriginal women working on stations as domestics were excluded from the decision.
Only with the development of the Industrial Workers of the World (the Wobblies) and then the CPA in the 1920s was a consistent anti-capitalist, anti-racist and internationalist current developed in the Australian labour movement.
From the 1930s on, the CPA sought to unionise non-white and unskilled workers and supported the struggle for Aboriginal rights.
As the CPA's influence within the labour movement increased, the ALP came under pressure to drop some of its more racist policies, but not until the 1960s did it do so.
A progressive side?
There are many in the labour movement who seek for "progressive" aspects of Australian nationalism. The aspects of Australian nationalism that they look to are "equality", "mateship" and the concept of "a fair go".
However, these are not characteristics of Australian nationalism. They are characteristic of the solidarity that exists in the struggles of working-class and oppressed people, in Australia and all around the world.
When working-class people feel bowed down and unable to defend their rights, they are more likely to participate in scapegoating the most oppressed — Aborigines, migrants, young people and unemployed.
When workers feel more confident in their ability to defend their rights, class solidarity rather than scapegoating comes to the fore.
Because capitalism is a global system, it makes sense for workers to organise internationally rather than just nationally. How much more powerful would workers be if everyone who worked for Rio Tinto around the world took industrial action each time it threatened to sack workers!
In answer to the question at the beginning of this article, the anti-worker thuggery of Patrick Stevedores and the racism of One Nation are thoroughly "Australian".
That is why working people need to reject Australian nationalism, and instead seek to build working-class solidarity. White workers in Australia have more in common with Aboriginal and migrant workers, and the workers of other countries, than we have with white Australians such as Chris Corrigan and Kerry Packer.