Write on: letters to the editor

Writeon Thuggishness Nothing incenses Rupert Murdoch more than the possibility of reduced profits and he quickly launched an attack on Coles Myer directors who allegedly threatened to withdraw up to $88 million in advertising and printing from News Ltd. Mr Murdoch responded with an accusation of "thuggishness". The American multi-billionaire owner of two-thirds of Australia's newspapers knows all about thuggishness, and so do his print worker victims who will readily recall the events in Wapping in January 1987 when that vile Thatcher, encouraged by an alliance with Murdoch, set police thugs on newspaper workers trying to protect their jobs. Shortly before he died, the late and much lamented British playwright, Dennis Potter, said during a BBC interview in 1994, "I call my cancer Rupert, so I can get close to it. There is no one person who was more responsible for what was already a very polluted press."
Norman Taylor
Adelaide Freedom and responsibility I must register my strong objection to the article "Eros and the Right", by Vivienne Porzsolt [GLW #199]. The last two paragraphs read: "As women we want to be free to run our own lives, including our sexual behaviour. This includes attracting sexual attention, if we wish, so we can decide if we want to take it further. "But women can't be held responsible for sexual intrusion and assaults against us. That responsibility belongs to the perpetrator." What an appalling philosophy to live by! Have you never heard of the eternal truth, "There is no such thing as freedom without responsibility"? You are trying to turn the feminist movement into a copycat society. This is exactly what the men said! It is this dictator attitude that I would have thought we aimed at changing. Men believed they had the right to dictate to women how they should behave, to dominate them in every aspect of their behaviour, including their sexual behaviour. This is now what you are preaching women should do! Do you really want a world filled with bitterness, jealousies and competitiveness? Surely to goodness, the whole point of the feminist movement is to show that there is a better way of living than this? It is our business to demonstrate that there can be ways of living together in harmony, in genuine equality, with responsibility for our own actions and for their consequences, to live with generosity and respect for each other, working towards a better future for our children, for all humanity and for the earth itself. To enjoy life! Let women show the way!
Richendra Martin
Beechworth Vic NUS Lin Elliot ("Write on" GLW #207) argues that the "basis of the DSP's attitude to NUS has seemingly more to do with its political shift during the 1980s — the abandonment of its general support for the ALP at elections — than a concrete analysis of student unionism". Elliot claims that the DSP "started with the idea of needing to build organisations separate from the ALP and then worked back to its analysis of NUS". Elliot is wrong on both counts. 1. In 1984 the DSP recognised that the ALP was not a workers' party with a pro-capitalist program and leadership, but a capitalist party based on an alliance between liberal bourgeois parliamentarians and the middle-class careerists who control the trade union movement (the labour bureaucracy). But this did not mean we abandoned calling for the election of ALP governments. In fact, in every state and federal election since 1984 we have called for the return of an ALP government. Why? Because, "Having the ALP in government is essential to the process of destroying the widely held illusion that the ALP is a working-class or progressive party" (Program of the Democratic Socialist Party, Sydney, 1994). 2. The DSP has always argued that there is a need to "build organisations separate from the ALP". For example, during the movement against the Vietnam War our tendency argued that the best organisational form for building the movement was united-front coalitions inclusive of all those forces opposed to the war. We noted that the involvement of the ALP in these coalitions "has been of enormous benefit in mobilising large numbers at demonstrations", but also warned that "the movement should never become identical with the ALP" and that anti-war activists needed to be "on guard against its tendency to retreat and limit the movement" (Direct Action, No. 1, September 1970). While accusing the DSP of confusing "organisational separation" with political independence, Elliot in fact mixes up these two concepts. We are not opposed to NUS because it isn't organisationally independent of the ALP — formally it is. Nor are we opposed to NUS because it is "dominated" by ALP careerists, i.e., because they are the most influential political current in the leadership of NUS. Nearly every trade union in this country is dominated by ALP careerists. We are opposed to their domination of the unions, but not to the unions as organisations. We opposed NUS as an organisation because it is used by its ALP leadership to block the development of effective student opposition to the government's attacks and because the organisation's structures and rules make it impossible to replace the Laborites' control of NUS.
Doug Lorimer
DSP national organisation secretary
Sydney News and the media Right on John Singer! I fully agree that "weve got a planet to save and a better world to fight for" (GLW #207) rather than immerse ourselves with the ins-and-outs of a racially-biased media campaign against the result of the OJ Simpson trial. In the Sydney media at least, the "story" of the freeing of one black man accused of murder pushed aside the French nuclear bomb blast in the Pacific that was six times the size of the one that demolished Hiroshima. Next to nothing (ie, 30 seconds on one television news bulletin) was reported of the significant anti-nuclear high school student demonstrations in Brisbane. (The only media in which I could get an accurate picture of this was GLW!) The reaction of the thousands of people in Tahiti to French imperialisms nuclear arrogance received barely a mention compared to one Los Angeles jurors thoughts and opinion. The Australian media monopoly has obviously decided that their "news" far outweighs issues that determine whether humanity will survive or perish. It must obviously be fearful of the social unrest that is emerging against injustice around the world to want to distract us with racist pettiness, rather than inform us of ways to involve ourselves in campaigns for a nuclear-free and just planet.
Cameron Parker
Lewisham NSW