letterhead = Dishonest reporting
[This letter has been sent to the Melbourne Sunday Age.]
On July 13 Melbourne's Sunday Age ran an article which made some serious allegations, accusing the Campaign Against Racism of being "the group behind Monday's violent demonstration against Pauline Hanson in Dandenong." On July 14, three people from the Dandenong area were charged for the assault of the One Nation Supporter. None of them were members of CAR or any political group involved in CAR.
The article by journalist Mark Forbes did not report the substantiative issues which I explained in an interview. The Campaign Against Racism is opposed to any action that would divert attention away from our aims and objectives. We are not responsible for any of the violence that occurred at Dandenong and we do not support such actions. We are for peaceful protest.
Nowhere in the article does Mr Forbes mention that the aims and objectives of CAR are to mobilise the largest numbers, draw attention to the issues (that migrants and Aborigines are not responsible for Australia's economic problems), draw the links between Hanson's racism and Howard's actions in government, and to build an ongoing campaign of peaceful protest against advocates of racist policies. Our objective has never been to close down One Nation meetings.
Mr Forbes asserts that CAR is "controlled by the Democratic Socialist Party and its youth wing, Resistance". He claims that most of its leaders are members of the DSP and Resistance. Of the six official spokespeople for CAR only one is a member of the DSP. All the spokespeople are elected by general meetings of CAR. The overwhelming majority of participants in CAR are not members of the DSP.
Mr Forbes tries to show that I was trying to conceal my membership of the DSP. As I explained to Mr Forbes, I was there to answer questions on behalf of CAR. I notice that Mr Forbes spoke to Leigh Hubbard but neglected to mention his political affiliations. Is it OK for a member of the ALP to speak on behalf of the Trades Hall, while it is not OK for a member of the DSP to speak on behalf of CAR?
If Mr Forbes wanted to speak to someone from the ALP, surely he would ring up an ALP spokesperson. I am not "the leader" of the DSP nor am I its "main Melbourne organiser" as he claims. I have a job which I have no desire to be witch-hunted out of.
As for organising the rally at Dandenong: Campaign Against Racism was the largest single contingent at the rally. However, we did not organise it. We organised a platform to allow people to express their views. The platform was taken up by Dr Jim Cairns, the Mayor of Maribyrnong and many community and ethnic leaders. It was beyond the scope of an organisation, barely three weeks old, to take full responsibility for organising the rally. Campaign Against Racism attempted to work with the Dandenong City Council and police to facilitate the smooth running of the rally. Neither were willing to recognise the group. The platform we provided was the most positive step taken to focus the rally on the issues and away from any physical confrontation.
It is not the place of Campaign Against Racism to take the law into its own hands and substitute for the police, and we are certainly not going to be drawn into fingering individuals or organisations when we don't know who was responsible. Moreover, I believe that the Sunday Age should leave criminal investigation to the police rather than make outrageous claims about "Shadowy revolutionaries behind the Hanson violence."
Spokesperson, Campaign Against Racism
Brunswick
Deport Howard
If Lorenzo Ervin is to be deported, may I suggest that he take John Howard, Peter Reith and company with him, then hijack the plane to Cuba. John and his friends can then explain the benefits of economic rationalism to Fidel.
Mareeba Queensland
Free speech
Suppression of information and the freedom of speech should be of immediate concern to journalists, but that principle was abandoned by the ABC in its reporting of a recent demonstration in support of arrested anti-racist activist Lorenzo Ervin held outside the Department of Immigration offices in Darwin on July 10.
The ABC had three men filming that demonstration and doing interviews, but not one second of time was given to it on that evening's telecast. Instead we were treated to some seven minutes of conjectural red-bashing from Evan Williams, more immoral justification of the withholding of food aid to the starving North Koreans (it's their fault if they don't bow down to the Americans like all good Australians do) and a short treatise on Shane Warne giving an Ali Alatas to the English crowd.
The ABC producers should get their priorities right.
Alawa NT
Ireland
Sean Healy (GLW #280) equates Ireland's Anglo-Scots (Protestant) minority with super-privileged overlords (whites under apartheid) or a political garrison (people put into East Timor by the Indonesian government). Yet the Protestants have been a majority in north-east Ireland for centuries. Protestant workers are a major part of the Irish working class, only marginally, and on average, better off than Catholics.
Riding roughshod over them is unworkable, undemocratic, and destructive of working-class unity.
The Provisionals recognise that taking the troops out without a political settlement would lead to bloody civil war and repartition in which the Northern Catholics would suffer worst. But instead of talking to Protestant workers about a democratic accommodation, they demand that the British state "persuade" the Protestants.
The Irish Republic is Catholic-sectarian in its constitution, education system and abortion and divorce laws. I oppose any privilege for the Protestants, but to win Protestant workers from communalist politics, socialists must recognise their right to protection against Catholic chauvinism.
Sinn Fein's new member in the Dail has voted for a government of Fianna Fail, Ireland's main Catholic-chauvinist party, and the economic-rationalist Progressive Democrats. Irish workers need a party irreconcilably hostile to Fianna Fail nationalism and committed to working-class unity through consistent democracy.
Martin Thomas
Brisbane
US in the UN
In any civilised society, tenants who do not pay the rent, are evicted. But only as the US in the United Nations is it possible not to pay the rent, yet retain your seat in the house and have the final say in matters of war and peace all over the world, in fact in all international affairs over the heads of nations who do pay the rent! Indeed, would it be right for tenants who do pay the rent to tell the landlord how to conduct affairs that go on in his own office?
Henk Hout
Sydney
Campaigning at Wollongong Uni
There has been vigorous debate at times amongst different groups on the University of Wollongong (including Non-Aligned Left, Young Labor, and Resistance) about the best way forward for the education and anti-racism campaigns.
The Education Action Collective is largely dominated by Student Representative Council members, and there has generally been insufficient effort to involve new and/or non-SRC activists into the campaigns. There have also been problems with the SRC as the representative voice of students in building the anti-racism campaign.
Resistance has argued that education protests should include university students, university staff and high school students. The main conservative argument put against the involvement of high school students at numerous meetings (including two where a representative of High School Students Against the Cuts was present) has been the so-called legal implications of solidarity work with young people.
At one meeting, a member of the SRC commented, "High school students can piss off!", outraging many people at the meeting. Resistance ultimately lost the vote to involve high school students, but organised a successful high school walkout and rally the following week.
Differences also emerged amongst the campus left regarding the support and sponsorship of the "Justice Tour", a national speaking tour against Hanson's racist attacks. The SRC voted against supporting the tour, providing apolitical and unprincipled excuses.
When Resistance published a letter outlining what had occurred and distributed this amongst students, personal attacks followed.
Given the need for united left work in the education campaign and the anti-racist movement, this type of sectarianism is detrimental. The SRC is supposed to be the representative voice of students, and should reflect the overwhelming anti-racist sentiment on campus.
Building a democratic and inclusive mass movement should be the priority of all those involved. Ultra-left, careerist, and conservative views of many in student politics do little more than destroy movements at their inception and make easier the task of the Howard government in implementing racist and anti-youth policies. The left need to unite in struggle, to build large and vocal demonstrations and to ultimately overcome the attacks of capitalist governments.
Wollongong