MELBOURNE — In response to other union leaders denouncing so-called "agitators" at the August 19 rally at Parliament House, Martin Kingham, Victorian secretary of the CFMEU construction division, contacted the media to put a contrary point of view, but to no avail. The following is abridged from a leaflet issued by the union branch titled, "Workers defend Aboriginal brothers and sisters — Police provoke workers".
The media has been quick to accept the police version of the violence at the rally in Canberra.
About five or six thousand Aboriginals and CFMEU members were marching peacefully up from the Old Parliament House to join the main body of the rally when they were stopped by the cops who started pushing and shoving the marchers. As the back of the delegation caught up with the front, people started fanning out sideways to see why they had been stopped.
Not only did the police break an agreement to allow protesters to march peacefully towards the main rally, but once they had pulled people up, they panicked and started running towards the front doors of Parliament House. A group of protesters decided to go with them (since they couldn't join the main body of the rally anyway).
There were only a handful of cops at the front doors, so they did what they usually do when they are outnumbered and started bashing the Aboriginals and young people. Union members, still blocked from joining the rest of the rally, went in to defend their brothers and sisters from the violence of the cops.
One CFMEU member was pulled in through the closed doors of the House and assaulted by police.
On top of weeks of bragging by Howard and his ministers about how they would cut the guts out of Aboriginal organisations and smash trade unions, this police assault was throwing petrol on the fire.
In the same way that workers would not stand idly by as others were attacked, so we saw workers rallying to the side of their mates at the ACI Spotswood picket line the week before.
Clearly, as the Liberals introduce policies designed to increase unemployment, while driving people off the dole, to introduce two standards of health care and education, and new laws to prevent workers organising, they will also have to adopt repressive measures as workers fight back.
The police provocation at Parliament House distracted from a hugely successful rally (perhaps that's why they did it) but it also showed we won't cop it sweet.