Write On
Earlier protests
Defining the beginnings of social movements and who started them is fraught with uncertainties. Green Left has published a theory about anti-nuclear movements and the anti-Vietnam War movement in Australia.
Being a poet and public performer, in the Domain, at rallies, on May Days, and in the first coffee shop and folk club, the Troubador in Edgecliff (1960), I can recall writing and publishing about nine anti-nuclear poems and distributing them in the Eastern Suburbs Peace Committee's walk for peace, about 1960 or 1961.
I remember rounding the shoulder of the road into, or out of, Bondi Beach, handing out my poems. One poem was about an accident in a nuclear plant, "Capsule of Radium". I recited them at the Sydney Stadium Peace Rally and the Trocadero peace concerts held after the radial marches into Sydney.
My poem "The Unknown Soldiers" (1960), about the slaughter of World War I, ends with a warning about nuclear war. As soon as I heard that Menzies was going to give Australian bodies to United States imperialism to die in Vietnam, I wrote "Lonely Sentinel" and "The Slouch of Vietnam". This was early 1962.
I said the poem to many meetings and to large numbers of organised, class-conscious industrial workers, including the emerging NSW BLF. This poem was printed then and since, and I said it as recently as the May Day concert in The Works at Katoomba.
Australia had an infant anti-Vietnam War movement long before the United States. Be proud of our struggle. There were soldiers against the war, including serving soldiers, who lost their accrued monies by refusing to fight in Vietnam.
Wentworth Falls NSW
[Abridged.]
Hard-earned savings
The ABC program Four Corners on Monday May 21 revealed the desperate plight of many elderly citizens who put their life savings into "trust accounts" only to find them vanish, no-one knows where.
This of course means ending up with only the bare pension to finish your days with — particularly galling when you've saved with a view to being able to enjoy your well-earned retirement doing the things you've wanted to.
Of course many workers in super schemes find the money gone as the boss has been using the money (not his) to enlarge his business and so ensure a very comfortable retirement for himself.
Taxpayers will of course be funding this and of course it means less for them. Surely the government could solve the problem by establishing a government-guaranteed insurance scheme.
Meanwhile the PM and some former PMs are off on a trip to London estimated to cost $1 million.
Balmain NSW
Reith's attacks
Hip hooray for the ACTU. Not only has it discovered the benefits of communicating through cyberspace, this has become a substitute for real activity.
I read on their web site that Peter Reith's latest proposal to change the Workplace Relations Act will make the laws worse for workers and undermine collective bargaining. It adds that only the Democrats can stop these laws, so protest via the internet!
Frustration, anger and disbelief all scurry around my mind as I ponder the complete lack of an orientation to organising workers to defence our rights. This flies in the face of the ACTU's own proposition that the "Organising Model" is the way to save the union movement.
Here we have an issue that, even on the ACTU's terms is "deeply and widely felt", and that is already being challenged by the AMWU's Campaign 2000 and Victorian workers' willingness to take on the laws.
Since the announcement of the first wave of the WRA we have witnessed this contradiction between workers' willingness to fight and the lame opposition from the official union movement leadership. Tens of thousands rallied in August 1998 against the initial bill. Then, with the next wave in August 1999, thousands more took to the streets, despite little publicity from most unions. This time around we are supposed to send a cyber message!
Where is the plan to educate and organise workers? Where is the strategy to build the widest solidarity against this round of attacks? Where is the appreciation that it is much more useful to unite workers in struggle? This new "left" ACTU leadership seems to be treading the same old path of parliamentary lobbying.
The organising example of Workers First in Victoria must be put on the agenda. Our union leaderships must reject the passive approach. If you don't fight you lose.
Sydney
[Abridged.]
WA CPSU replies
I refer to Anthony Benbow's article "Activist thrown off union body" in Issue 405 (May 17, 2000) of Green Left Weekly. This article contains a number of untrue and inaccurate statements in relation to the failure of CPSU member Sarah Harris to gain a position on the CPSU delegation to the Western Australian Trades and Labor Council (TLC). The WA Branch of the CPSU was not contacted regarding this article by Green Left Weekly. If you had done so we could have assured you of the actual facts of the matters which are as follows:
Sarah Harris was never phoned prior to a TLC meeting and told that she was not needed as a CPSU delegate. All delegates and proxies were contacted by email prior to each meeting. On the basis of advance apologies received from delegates, proxies were nominated for each particular meeting. All proxies have always been encouraged to attend as visitors or in the event that one of our delegates is unexpectedly absent. In the case of an unexpected absence, proxies who are present fill their position.
At the October 1999 TLC meeting, Sarah Harris moved a resolution without informing any CPSU official or delegate that she was doing so. The first that any of our delegation knew of this motion was when we arrived at the meeting where Sarah and another person were handing out leaflets to which the motion referred.
Sarah Harris was not told anything about her failure to be included in our delegation "to her face". Following written notification to all members who had lodged expressions of interest in being part of our delegation, Sarah phoned Assistant Branch Secretary Simon Ward and asked what the criteria was for selection as a TLC delegate.
She was informed that there were no criteria beyond a demonstrated commitment to represent members in accordance with the democratically determined policies of the union. As the Branch Secretary did not have complete faith in Sarah's preparedness to accurately represent the views of CPSU members when the union position conflicts with her own political position, he did not include her in the delegation as recommended to the Branch Executive. The Executive unanimously endorsed the recommendation.
I hope that you will apologise for the inaccuracies in your report which have the effect of bringing into question the integrity of our union processes and that you will print this letter in your next edition as our right of reply.
CPSU WA branch secretary
Perth
[A reply to this letter is printed on page 11.]