Bligh campaign
Well-known lesbian and community activist, Susan Harben, has announced her candidacy for the ALP for the inner Sydney seat of Bligh, the "pinkest" seat in Australia. The seat is currently held by independent, Clover Moore, who has a relatively good record on issues specific to the gay and lesbian communities.
Harben is well known for her work in past years as president of the Sydney Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras and other community activities, and she is drawing on these credentials as well as the fact that she is the first specifically out lesbian candidate to garner support for her candidacy.
Sydney-based magazine Lesbians On The Loose has endorsed Harben. They say they are doing this to "congratulate her on the courage of her lesbian convictions."
While not denying that Harben has been a community activist for a number of years, the primary factor to be taken into consideration when considering whether or not to vote for her is that she is running for the Labor Party.
Harben admits this herself, claiming she will be a progressive, lesbian voice inside a future NSW Labor government. Unfortunately, many progressive voices have attempted in past years to be heard within the Labor party. Most of them have left — out of frustration not only at their inability to be heard, but at the undemocratic practices of a party which makes its decisions at cabinet level and ignores the decisions of its membership at conferences.
Not only is the ALP fundamentally undemocratic, but its record on progressive issues speaks for itself: the introduction of fees for tertiary education; the selling off of old growth forests for woodchips; the cutting of funding to the public hospital system and the resultant long waiting lists and lack of access to up-to-date services, drugs and treatments; the cutting of funding to women's services such as refuges, and so on.
Lesbians would do well to look clearly at the actual policies of all parties and candidates in the elections. Harben's status as a lesbian is not enough to make her the most progressive candidate available.
Kath Gelber
Glebe NSW
Israeli land seizures
Our Party is currently engaged with the Palestinian masses in the struggle against the latest Israeli offensive of confiscating Arab lands in order to extend illegal established settlements. With the help of the occupying military forces, settlers are using bulldozers to prepare Arab-owned lands for building either new settlements or extending existing ones, in various parts of the occupied West Bank.
It has been empirically proven that all of these settlements were built with the specific purpose of preventing the geographical continuity of Palestinian lands and thus preventing the possibility of establishing a Palestinian state.
The Israeli government has not abided by its previous commitment to the freezing of settlements even though precisely because of these commitments, Israel has received United States guarantees on over US$10 billion worth of loans. It is thus somewhat astonishing that neither the US nor the Russian government reacted to this continued settlement action, despite the fact that they are the co-sponsors of the ongoing peace process. It has become blatantly obvious that settlements are now the main obstacle to progress in the peace process which carry, even more disturbingly, the capacity to completely undermine the whole process.
It is for these reasons that our Party, through its commitment to the peace process, calls upon all Parties, governments and international organizations, to use their influence to safeguard the peace process. This can be achieved by pressurizing the Israeli government into ceasing immediately all settlement activity. Furthermore, we believe that negotiations regarding the issue of settlements must commence immediately and should not be postponed until the negotiations on a permanent settlement.
The United States government, along with the Russian government, must be pressurized into fulfilling their roles as sponsors of the peace process. Accordingly, their influence can be used to ensure that the Israeli government implements, in tangible and consistent terms, its commitment to the peace process.
International Affairs Dept
Palestinian People's Party
Jerusalem
Jeff Richards (Write on, GLW #173) claims that Lenin advocated that British Communists, in Richards's words, "should, in a period of political quiescence, join the Labour Party".
Richards implies that Lenin advocated that British Communists join the BLP as individuals. However, Lenin advocated that the British Communists affiliate to the BLP as a party. Lenin noted that the BLP was "a highly original type of party, or rather, it is not at all a party in the ordinary sense of the word. It is made up of members of all trade unions, and has a membership of about four million, and allows sufficient freedom to all affiliated political parties. It thus includes a vast number of British workers who follow the lead of the worst bourgeois elements ... however, the Labour Party has let the British Socialist Party into its ranks, permitting it to have its own press organs, in which members of the selfsame Labour Party can freely and openly declare that the party leaders are social-traitors."
Lenin went on to argue: "Our resolution says that we favour affiliation insofar as the Labour Party permits sufficient freedom of criticism ... the conditions now prevailing in Britain are such that, should it so desire, a political party may remain a revolutionary workers' party even it is connected with a special kind of labour organisation of four million members, which is half trade union and half political and is headed by bourgeois leaders" (emphasis added).
No such conditions exist in Australia today: it is not possible for a political party (such as the DSP) to remain a revolutionary workers' party and be affiliated with the Australian Labor Party. The question then is, should revolutionary socialists dissolve our own political party and join the ALP as individuals (as Roger Clarke advocates)? The experience of those who have done that over the last decade strongly suggests that we would gain little from such a course of action.
Doug Lorimer
Sydney
[Edited for length.]
Anti-woodchipping demo
On January 19 I arrived after an 8 hour drive from Melbourne at the anti-woodchipping demo at Eden woodchip mills in NSW. The action was organised by TWS, Bega Environment Centre and FOE, Sydney and Melbourne, in reaction to the debate over woodchipping licences. There would have been 100 to 150 activists there from Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra.
Your typical scenario emerged, the loggers on one side and the "greenies" on the other.
A tripod was erected on the road and a couple of people straddled the tripod activists locked onto the base. Within two hours they were dragged peacefully into a police van and carried off to Eden lockup. There were 33 arrests.
An embarrassing but predictable verbal conflict emerged between greenies and loggers. The timber workers who seemed to be showing much bravado were yelling insults at the greenies. [There were] equally mundane comments from the greenies side: "fucking beer drinkers, spend all your money on beer, don't you know your jobs will go when the forests are all logged". I was sad to think that we weren't or couldn't liaise with the workers whose very jobs are threatened if the woodchipping licences are revoked.
Does it hurt environmentalists' credibility to have this age old demonstration? Does this type of demonstration, ie greenies confronting loggers in the forest, achieve much? I noticed the media focused on the most feral activists with nose rings and dreadlocks. The public are aware of this issue and I'm just not sure if even politicians take any notice of anti-woodchipping demos like this.
[Name withheld]
Melbourne
[Edited for length.]
CAFE
I welcome Karl Chariker's response (GLW #172) to my article on urban campaigns (GLW 169). In my opinion, the central issue is the question of the relationship of urban campaigns to the ALP. Contrary to Chariker's claims, I do not advocate the exclusion of ALP members.
Anyone who supports the basic demands of a campaign should be encouraged to be involved. However, it is here that ALP members are compromised. For example, the Labor Party opposes the extension of the Eastern Freeway at the Carlton end but supports the extension at the Doncaster end. Surely it must be difficult for any ALP member to reconcile their support for the campaign against the extension of the freeway at the Doncaster end with membership of the ALP. For ALP members supporting CAFE, this problem is not posed.
If local campaigns join together to organise united action, this will put the ALP in a contradictory position. Victorian Labor supports parts of the Kennett super-freeway plan but opposes other parts. Furthermore, the fact that the Kennett freeway plan is just an extension of the pre-existing Cain-Kirner ALP Governments' plan means that we cannot trust Labor.
What is at stake here is the political independence of urban campaigns. What is not decisive is whether the ALP is involved, or even the numbers of its activists that are present, but the role that they play, and the ability of the group to act independently of Labor and labourist politics.
The best way to ensure the movements' independence is to develop greater links between campaigns. Here, I support Chariker's comments on the need for liaison. Kennett's super-freeway proposal is a package deal. A local campaign against just one small part of the freeway won't succeed. What is needed is united action to campaign against the whole freeway proposal. This would involve local actions and large centralised actions involving all the local groups.
Jeremy Smith
Burnley Vic
[Edited for length.]