Perth M1
Grant Coleman ("Police assaults fail to deter blockade", GLW #447) asserts that police attempted to get people through the May 1 Perth stock exchange blockade rather than use a rear entrance that was left open by the protesters. In fact, the police initially encouraged building workers to use the rear entrance because it was left unblocked. When the protesters saw what was happening organisers encouraged a large number of demonstrators to block that entrance as well, suggesting that it was originally left unblocked by accident not design.
The rear entrance is where Coleman alleges "in the day's worst assault, authorities hemmed some 30 blockaders into a six metre wide alley". The blockaders were not "hemmed in", they were blocking the only available entrance to the building and there were no police behind them. Police asked them to move and then attempted to push them back when they refused.
Coleman writes that "riot police with shields then attempted to push them back from behind while six mounted police attacked from the front." This is nothing but a blatant lie — or maybe Coleman, in his excitement, became disoriented. All the police were at the front and, though some police were wearing helmets, no shields were used in actions against the protesters.
One protester though did undo the saddle girth strap of a mounted officer. The horse, losing its rider, panicked and started thrashing about until it was calmed by its dismounted rider. The police then withdrew because the horses were deemed potentially too dangerous to the protesters in such a confined space.
With the final entrance blocked, police in other areas started asking the protesters to move aside for groups of workers to enter the building. Some protesters allowed workers through and they were quickly told off by so-called "marshals". Later, instead of co-operating with this simple request, the protesters bunched up to create a stronger force against the innocent members of the public who were attempting to gain access to their place of work. It was only then that the police began pushing the demonstrators aside.
There were no attempts by the police to stop the protest. On the contrary, special arrangements were made to allow it to proceed. The demonstrators then attempted to prevent workers, not connected with the ASX, from entering their workplaces and offices. What gave the protesters the right to stop innocent people from going about their lawful daily business?
Jon Mayhew
Perth
[Abridged]
Parliament of the working class
"Their parliament" is the WTO and the Australian parliament, "versus ours" which is on the streets (GLW #445). Now decisions are made in corporation boardrooms. The streets are a starting place for the movement against this rule, but the streets are not where the alternative will be made.
The parliament of the working class in revolutionary history has been in councils or committees, conducting a struggle against the owners to assert a workers' alternative for production and society, often arising out of a general strike. In May 1968 in France, first on the streets were students, sparking a general strike. But defeat of the general strike was not because of the "leadership on the streets", but the leaders of the workers in the unions.
Our "parliament on the streets" cannot overthrow capitalism just by staying on the streets, and the Socialist Alliance cannot build a socialist movement either without making its central plank the need for workers' struggle for a working class plan, counterposed to the decisions made in boardrooms. In this we would challenge not only the ruling corporations and parliamentary parties, but also union leaders who refuse to fight for working class interests against capital.
Janet Burstall
Workers Liberty
Canberra
HIH bailout
It would appear that the insurance industry doesn't even like the HIH collapse taxpayer bailout that the federal government is promoting. The Insurance Industry Council is saying that capitalist competitors shouldn't be accountable for the behaviour of one of them, preferring to slug all insurance holders with a levy.
In other words, due to the financial misdemeanours of one set of highly paid executives, other highly paid executives of other insurance companies don't want to foot the bill or blot their profits/bottom lines. They would rather that all insurance holders (i.e., working people) carried the can and wore yet another impost, i.e., socialise the losses of this industry. This attitude is the height of collective irresponsibility by the capitalist captains of this industry.
Of course, the government is also avoiding the real issue here. It is dipping into the collective surplus of mostly PAYE working people (i.e., their taxes) to bail out this industry. No skin off the nose of the insurance companies under this plan!
The real issue here is that the failure of a capitalist insurance company should be bailed out by the other real beneficiaries of this industry, the capitalist owners of the other insurance companies. There should be a levy on the profits of the other insurance companies. Leave working people and their taxes alone!
Paul Oboohov
Canberra
CPA and M1
I feel sorry for the tired old Communist Party of Australia, I really do. Stalinism can certainly be declared dead these days and the CPA is the closest thing we have in Australia to a corpse. Just like their tired old friends in Russia, who still march along with pictures of Joseph "Uncle Joe" Stalin, the CPA (formally the SPA) simply never came to grips with the crimes of Soviet Stalinism — or indeed with its bureaucratic demise.
The was a time when the CPA was still relevant, like in the early 1980's when it railed against the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) for supporting Labor's accord. Unfortunately, that time has passed.
It is the sad truth that in many Australian cities in the last decade May Day marches have been outpaced, in size, and even in youth, by — dare I say it — Anzac Day marches! Of-course, Anzac Day has the full backing of the nationalist Australian state. And now that only a handful of WWI diggers survive the establishment and its propaganda are frantically promoting Anzac Day as a day "that will never die".
And here's where the analogy is easily drawn. The tired old diggers shuffling along in their tired old march to the glory of the British empire — how similar in mood and life (but never in politics) had May Day come to this in many cities around Australia, before this year. Before M1.
What has been the reaction of the CPA when the DSP and others in the M1 Alliances attempted to resuscitate May Day? How did they respond to our successful efforts to revive and transform May Day, 2001, in to M1; a day of S11-style anti-corporate struggle? They blasted it, they slagged it off as "Trotskyist", and "divisive" to the "traditional" May Day — a sell-out. The proof: we got far more attention from the media (and everyone else) than "their" May Day did!
Rohan Gaiswinkler
New Town, Tas