Lisa Macdonald, Sydney
Delegates to the Democratic Socialist Perspective (DSP) Congress adopted a resolution which commits the DSP to continuing to find the ways of uniting the left in campaigns to defend working people. The DSP and the Socialist Alliance resolution reviews the experience of building the Socialist Alliance (SA) as a united, multi-tendency socialist party.
While there have been retreats, in particular the anti-war movement and the demoralising reelection of the Howard government in 2004, the resolution states that the slower than hoped for development of SA does not mean that the political space for SA to grow has been closed off.
The resolution identifies the success with which "the Socialist Alliance has gradually advanced the organisation of its members and supporters in the trade unions and has built campaigns around the demands of its action platform. Its united campaigning, while limited ... continues to be more effective than the individual efforts of any single socialist group".
It notes that the network of militant unionists who participated in the June 2005 National Trade Union Fightback Conference and who have continued to collaborate since has increased the potential to organise unionists for the fight against the federal government's industrial relations legislation.
"The 350,000 workers who mobilised on June 30/July 1 put the Howard government on the defensive ... The second round of mass protests (on November 15) in which more than 600,000 workers participated, took the struggle to a new stage."
The resolution states that while the Labor Party and the ACTU have tried to funnel the mass opposition to Howard's new IR laws into a campaign to re-elect Labor, "there has been mass working class support for a serious industrial and political campaign to resist these laws, which is producing contradictions within the ALP ... Even after these laws are adopted, we can anticipate a series of struggles around their enforcement."
Having noted that a growing section of the working class continues "to look for a political alternative to the major parties", the resolution assesses that while "the Greens have filled most of the opening electoral space" they "have not filled the space opened up by the crisis of leadership in the trade unions and the broader labour movement, especially given the vital challenges of the struggle against Howard's anti-union laws".
As a result of the left unity steps taken with the formation of the Socialist Alliance, the resolution notes that "socialist politics occupies a greater portion of its potential political space than would otherwise be the case and has won a stronger hearing in the working class than it has enjoyed for decades".
The resolution also marks the critical role of Green Left Weekly in the ongoing process of broader left regroupment in Australia and commits the DSP to "encouraging and securing greater access and input by the Socialist Alliance, its members and affiliates into Green Left Weekly".
[The DSP and the Socialist Alliance can be found at <http://www.dsp.org.au/2006resolution.htm>.]
From Green Left Weekly, January 25, 2006.
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