Paper minister
After four years or so as the Minister for the NSW Environment, Mr Tim Moore says of Fitzroy Falls, "It's a very spectacular location. It's very different from seeing drawings on paper." (Sydney Morning Herald, 14/5/92)
Well, well. How many decisions has Mr Moore made sitting in his office, based on the evidence of a map flattened out in front of him? Any? None? Some? A lot? If it's taken him four years to see the vast difference between the natural grandeur of the Australian bush and wriggly hachures and carefully doctored maps presented by developers and consultants to Ministers and Environmental Courts, how many such decisions might there be?
Denis Kevans
Wentworth Falls
Mass protests
Phil Shannon argues (GLW 56) that "militant actions (often initiated by minorities) such as draft evasion, industrial action, and occupations" were at least as effective in forcing the US and Australian governments to withdraw their troops from Vietnam as the peaceful mass demonstrations.
The regrettable fact is, there were very few industrial actions against the war while Australian combat troops were in Vietnam. The main such action was a boycott initiated by Seamen's Union members. While important, it was not imitated by other workers, and did not hinder the war machine very much.
Rather, it was the mass antiwar protests of 1970-71 that created a political climate in which masses of workers felt industrial action against the war would win broad public sympathy. One symptom of that changed political climate was the election, on an antiwar platform, of the Whitlam Labor government.
Draft evasion never reached large proportions. While heroic individual acts of refusal to be conscripted played a role in publicising opposition to the war, they were just that — individual acts, which reduced the mass of people opposed to the war to the role of spectators.
These individual acts had far less impact on the morale of the mass of conscripts than the mass protests by civilian opponents of the war.
It was the growth of antiwar sentiment in the US, expressed and promoted by the mass antiwar movement, that undermined the combat effectiveness of the US Army in Vietnam. As Col. Robert Heinl, a US marine corp historian, noted in the June 7, 1971 Armed Forces Journal:
"By every conceivable indicator, our Army that now remains in Vietnam is in a state approaching collapse, with individual units avoiding or having refused combat, murdering their officers and non-commissioned and dispirited where not near mutinous."
Contrary to what Shannon implies, the peaceful mass demonstrations organised by the Vietnam Moratorium were extremely militant: i.e., they were determined displays of antiwar sentiment which uncompromisingly demanded that the Australian and US governments immediately withdraw their troops from Vietnam.
The Palm Sunday demonstrations of the early '80s also certainly had a major impact on world politics and helped to reduce the threat of nuclear war and the nuclear arms build-up.
To denigrate them as a "failure", and to counterpose them to the relatively small events seemingly favoured by Shannon does not at all avoid demoralisation and keep militancy alive but is precisely the result of the demoralisation of some sectors of the left. Such people give up on the key task, which is to win the mass of people to our perspectives and engage them in action.
Any other perspective, whether disguised by the rhetoric, cop-baiting and jargon of the ultraleft, or by the pro-government liberal antics of sections of the NUS leadership, is unfortunately the same old infantile disorder that the coming new wave of radicalism should try not to indulge in again.
John Percy
Chippendale
Pet tactics
Phil Shannon's (Write on, May 20) failure to understand the essence of Doug Lorimer's argument (GLW 55) is not surprising given the limits of the political task he sets himself — "cohere a militant minority."
Doug's argument was based not so much on the storming of the Winter Palace (an analogy chosen by Merry/Gallios in GLW 55), but on the question of the orientation of a (revolutionary) political minority to the majority of society. How, in other words, does a "militant minority" (the Bolshevik party) "cohere" itself and work to achieve its aims?
Doug's article demonstrates quite well how the Bolsheviks went about it — always with a perspective of reaching out to, convincing and involving the masses in political action.
There is more than "rhetorical flourish" (as Phil would have it) in Merry and Gallios' comparison of March 1992 with October 1917. Behind it lies the belief that all that is needed is "militancy" and perseverance in pet tactics divorced from any social context.
At best this approach is a short term fix for a minority with no faith in the majority of people. At worst it leaves the majority wide open for political repression.
Any group aspiring to fundamental social change which does not always strive to involve the mass of people will achieve nothing but obscurity. Phil denigrates mass actions such as the Palm Sunday rallies (because they're not part of his "militant minority"?) as a them to the "concrete results" of AIDEX and March 26. What concrete results do you speak of Phil? I've been involved in many Palm Sundays as well as AIDEX (both years) — both these actions had results. Would the rapid mobilisation of tens of thousands during the Gulf War been possible without the Palm Sunday mobilisations? Would it not have taken longer for people to understand the issues, be convinced and act? Is this not a "concrete result" of Palm Sunday rallies? Boldness? Yes. Recklessness? No. I hope you work out the difference before it's too late.
Ray Fulcher
Melbourne