That Craig Johnston was released from jail on the very day that the Coalition government unveiled its new industrial relations laws warrants special attention by all those millions of Australian working people who will see their wages, job security and working conditions ravaged by this package.
Johnston's fighting speech upon his release has had an inspiring effect and multiplied the call for resistance by prominent Socialist Alliance trade union leaders and others who have declared that they too are keen to fight.
Already the Socialist Alliance-initiated National Trade Union Fightback Conference, to be held in Melbourne on June 11, seems assured of being a success. In the context of the desultory response to the impending Coalition control of the Senate from among ALP parliamentarians, an old adage has suddenly become exceedingly relevant: if you don't fight you lose.
That Johnston stepped from his prison cell unbowed tells us a lot about him. It may seem corny to suggest it, but this is the stuff that makes for working-class heroes. I don't want to get caught up too much in such labels or embarrass Craig, but the very best thing about his example is that maybe, just maybe, such people do exist and for them "struggle" is not a dirty word.
Because if we don't fight, what are our options? A court challenge facilitated by the very same state premiers who have orchestrated any number of measures against working people in their own domains. Or wait and fume until we can re-elect Labor federally — but it will take until the next decade before Labor, in tandem with the Greens perhaps, can get another crack at controlling the Senate.
In the meantime what are we supposed to do? That's the problem. How much it is a problem shared will become very clear over the coming years.
While we will need our working-class heroes and militant speeches, any fight-back has to draw together those who are keen to resist. But where is that coming together going to happen? It's happening now in the Socialist Alliance. Over the past four years the SA has begun to assemble those who are ready to fight. It has drawn together some 1200 members who are proud to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with people like Craig.
Our project may have legs but the political need is much bigger than what we can fulfil.
While that may be our problem, it is also yours. Alliance members like Craig Johnston can't do it by themselves. If the alliance epitomises all the elements of fight-back, resistance and struggle, what we need and what you need is not another cheer squad. We are all going to have to come up with much more in the years ahead.
Perhaps we are at a stage where our options may seem clearer because they are so stark. PM John Howard's arrogant extension of the proposed exemption from unfair dismissal laws means that 60% of already insecure workers will be much worse off. Once in place, these laws crudely and boldly proclaim that class governs all workplaces, and that the struggle the boss was keen to ignore still festers there despite all those years we were told to hose it down or put it to one side.
If that means that we have to proudly and aggressively reclaim our true identity as members of the working class, then that's something to fight for.
Dave Riley
[Dave Riley is a member of the SA/GLW liaison editorial board]
From Green Left Weekly, June 8, 2005.
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