After two weeks of bluster and evasion, the ACTU Council has officially absolved itself from all responsibility for the actions of angry workers at Parliament House on August 19.
In a cowardly and dishonest statement issued from its September 2-4 annual Council meeting in Lorne, the ACTU leadership declared that it was "not responsible for the actions of a small minority of protesters" and called for the "discipline" of all unionists found guilty of charges laid by the Australian Federal Police as a result of the incident.
On the same day, the AFP began making arrests.
With this statement the ACTU leaders betrayed their own. They sacrificed the rights of workers and the strength of the movement on the alter of "respectable" unionism.
Instead of refusing to be part of the witch hunt, instead of explaining the conditions which generate such anger and actions by workers, Jennie George, Bill Kelty, Stan Sharkey and their cronies publicly endorsed the police, government's and media's lies about what happened in Canberra, and accepted their rotten rules about what is legal and illegal, responsible or irresponsible, and "Australian" or "un-Australian" behaviour by workers under attack.
And they had the gall to proclaim this as the view of the union movement.
The ACTU leaders knew what was coming on August 19, yet they did nothing to stop it, to lead the anger into more effective militant action. Now they say: "Individuals who act outside the collective framework and damage the collective standing of the union movement will receive no support or comfort from the movement." But what is "collective" about bolstering your own "standing" in the eyes of the establishment by throwing your members to the mercy of the cops?
For those union members and leaderships who consider themselves left, the latest treachery by the ACTU poses the question more starkly than before — will they continue to side with the bosses' collaborators in the movement, or will they help to build a new, alternative union politics based on democratic control and the consistent, principled and militant struggle for the rights and interests of all workers?
Today, more than ever, the left in the union movement must break from the false "consensus" politics of the ACTU. Such a break will have to be made at all levels of the movement, from the shop floor to the peak organisation, and it will require a clear break — politically and organisationally — from the ALP.
A new movement will develop — the complete rejection of George and Co's "leadership" by the majority of workers at the rally in Canberra did not happen without reason. Whether it develops quickly and strongly enough to stop Howard's immediate attacks will be determined by which side the left unions choose to stand on.