By Lisa Macdonald
The taking to the streets of tens of thousands of Australians on July 14 to protest the French government's decision to resume nuclear testing in the Pacific was the first clear signal to the federal ALP government that the population is not going to simply accept their refusal to take serious action on this issue.
Just three days earlier, following the attack on Rainbow Warrior II, the minister for trade, Senator Bob McMullan, said: "I don't think we just want to be knee-jerk in our reaction to nuclear testing". With the July 14 display of public anger, the pressure to change that approach increased significantly.
Campaigning to stop the tests is drawing in increasingly diverse sectors. The imposition of bans last week by the Transport Workers Union, the Melbourne waterside workers and CPSU customs officers added weight to a slowly developing response by organised labour.
On July 9 the Anglican Synod unanimously "deplored" the French government decision and joined Greenpeace and the WA Greens in calling on the Australian government to send an unarmed naval vessel to join Rainbow Warrior II at Moruroa. And that bastion of conservatism, the Royal Australasian College of Physicians, launched an appeal to members to fund a $130,000 advertisement in a French newspaper, with the Australian Medical Association contributing $5000.
Even some sections of big business have joined in; two large advertising agencies, supported by the Westpac bank, initiated fundraising campaigns to place anti-nuclear advertisements in the Australian and French media, and on billboards in both countries.
These initiatives, to the extent that they express and strengthen mass consciousness, should be welcomed. In and of themselves, however, no number of resolutions or advertisements is going to get the desired result. Only the active involvement of large numbers of people, the public mobilisation of this mass consciousness, will bring enough pressure to bear on the Australian government for the campaign to have a chance of succeeding.
The actions of the federal government are decisive. Making the public sentiment in Australia clear to the French people and/or the Chirac government will not change the French establishment's mind. It has so far ignored public opinion in Europe, in the Pacific and even in its own country, so why listen to ordinary Australians? If, however, the Keating government, under public pressure at home, were to take actions which sufficiently damage French trade and military relations with this country, there is a chance that the tests might be called off.
The Australian anti-tests campaign must target our own government as the first priority — force it to end the mining and sale of uranium, to cut all military ties with the nuclear powers, to support the Pacific independence movements and to impose a comprehensive trade and finance blockade on France until the decision to resume testing is reversed. This is what will make the difference in French government policy.
A campaign was launched on July 13 by People for Nuclear Disarmament, Consumer Power (set up after the French tests were announced) and the Greens in NSW, calling for a consumer boycott of French products and services in Australia and internationally. It appears to have some powerful backing, notably from wealthier individuals in this country (whose consumption of premium French wines has declined by 40-50% in the last month) and from the establishment media. As one article in the Sydney Morning Herald on July 12 put it, "the increase in global trade is beginning to make the consumer boycott a potent weapon".
One of the problems with the consumer boycott, however, is that the weight of individual consumers is minimal compared to the weight of corporate trade. Without the support of most big business, finance capital and the government, the impact of a consumer boycott, even an international one, will be negligible.
Consumer boycotts have been successful against particular companies. The recent German consumer boycott of petroleum giant Shell is an example. When such campaigns have been well resourced and organised, and have involved people in united action through picket lines at company sites, for example, they have won their demands and strengthened the progressive movements in the process. A consumer boycott against a whole country is a different matter.
The average Australian in fact buys very little that is produced in France. Where people use services that are owned, or potentially owned, by French multinationals, (such as the soon to be sold Melbourne airport, bidders for which include French company Aeroports de Paris), they often have no choice.
Launching a fundraising appeal for the consumer boycott on July 13, NSW Greens MP Ian Cohen said that the aim is "to send a clear message to the people of France that their government's decision is not acceptable and that we will continue to boycott anything French until that decision is reversed".
This message would be better directed at the federal ALP government, which, unlike the majority of French people who, has the power to implement a comprehensive trade boycott and thereby have a real impact on French government policy.
To that end, all campaign initiatives should be accompanied by increased mass pressure, an escalation of high profile, collective actions which mobilise such large numbers of people that the federal government cannot afford to ignore our demands for serious official action, now.