BY DICK NICHOLS
Declaring its federal election campaign a solid success, the Socialist Alliance has decided to work in the coming months to strengthen union resistance to the Coalition government and to seek to improve red-green collaboration.
Meeting by teleconference for the first time since the federal election, the alliance's national executive decided on November 23 on a four-point plan to meet the challenges posed by a re-elected Howard government.
Despite the handicap of not having federal electoral registration in time for the November 10 election, the executive, composed of representives from both the alliance's affiliated organisations and all states and territories, was pleased with the election campaign.
The votes received by the Socialist Alliance in working class and migrant electorates — where it had organised and led community demonstrations against war and racism — were particularly gratifying, according to the executive.
The alliance will now attempt to: strengthen the socialist pole in Australian politics; intervene in the growing debate about trade union strategy and political allegiance; develop collaboration with the Australian Greens; and work with those unions which are prepared to resist the employers' and the Coalition government's attacks on working people.
Socialist Alliance members in particular unions will be encouraged to meet and organise within that union, as is already being done in Victorian education unions. State and territory branches of the alliance will also be asked to organise seminars early next year on "the challenges facing the unions".
The executive also decided to convene a national trade union and labour conference for mid-2002.
Noting that "red-green" collaboration was already well-advanced in many localities, the meeting also decided to make a formal approach to the Australian Greens, as well as to state and territory Green organisations, in order to discuss joint electoral activities and campaigning work.
A similar approach will be made to those left unions, like the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union and the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union, which are looking to consolidate ties between the anti-corporate, anti-war and pro-refugee campaigns and which are likely to be prime targets for industrial relations minister Tony Abbott's union-bashing.
The executive also decided to renew the invitation for left and socialist organisations which have not yet joined the alliance, like the Progressive Labour Party, the Communist Party of Australia, the Socialist Party and the Communist League, to either join or strengthen their collaboration with it. Meeting participants argued this was important "unfinished business" in building left unity in Australia.
As a Socialist Alliance contribution to the fight against Bush's "war on terrorism", the executive also voted to tour Farooq Tariq, general secretary of the Labour Party Pakistan, while he in Australia to attend the Easter 2002 Asia-Pacific Solidarity Conference, and to support a fund for the reconstruction of the Afghan workers' movement.
The executive also voted to formally sponsor the Asia-Pacific Solidarity Conference.
Finally, the executive adopted a set of proposals on the alliance's own functioning in the post-election period. Put forward by national co-convener Ian Rintoul, they include maintaining an alliance presence in campaigns, protests and rallies, making local Socialist Alliance meetings interesting political events, putting out a national newsletter to paid-up members and conducting a membership drive.
This last is a particularly urgent task in New South Wales, where undemocratic electoral registration laws require parties seeking registration to submit 750 membership forms to the State Electoral Office, and parties must be registered a full year before they can run in the state election. A NSW state election is due in March 2003.
It was clear from this meeting that the political value of and need for the Socialist Alliance is now a firmly established reality in Australian politics. The job now is to build on the solid foundation that eight months of intense work by Socialist Alliance members and supporters has laid down.
[Dick Nichols is a national co-convener of the Socialist Alliance and a member of the National Executive of the Democratic Socialist Party.]
From Green Left Weekly, November 28, 2001.
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