If State Greens back Libs in Victoria is class the issue?

In a later comment on his attack on the Greens for being middle class, SAlt's Ben Hillier's final straw proof that the Greens crossed the class line was their support for Liberal governments .

I think Hillier's exposition  in this post is very useful.

He maps out a sort of standard far left argument against the Greens. Despite their platform -- according to this POV the Greens are not 'of the left' certainly not of the left to the left of the ALP.

In the sense that the Democrats were also never supposedly 'of the left'...

The ALP -- because it has that old warhorse, "a trade union base" in its corner -- is supposedly, unlike the Greens, working class aligned (or is it contained?). 

But is the ALP class aligned that way? Aligned that way at all in the sense that the Liberals supposedly aren't -- being avowedly with the bosses? And if the ALP doesn't support Liberal governments what has it been doing for over the past 100 years in parliament after parliament, state and federal , in peaceful coexistence, taking turns running the state apparatii so that the shift from one administration to another is seamless?

Maybe the class question is ruled by the fact that subjectively workers think that the ALP is their party? But the collapse in ALP's primary vote and the growing hostility to the party within the trade unions themselves doesn't suggest that notion rules the collective POV. In fact if you want to ascribe to the perspective that the ALP is a working class party you are keeping company only with some comrade Marxists and maybe a swag of 'true believers' -- and among those would be a loyal layer of trade union bureaucrats who see the ALP primarily as a career resource.Right wing ideologues similarly see the ALP as  working class and thus  held hostage to the trade unions.

The complication is that if you take the class argument up to the Greens -- or at least some Greens (how many we don't know) -- greens people are going to ask," what do you mean, it's Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum. You are trying to tell us that regardless of anything the ALP does we need to support the ALP over the Liberals because one's supposedly got working class connections?"

The complication is that you then fall into the trap of having to argue that a Greens agenda will be better served by supporting Labor rather than the Liberals.

But do we know that to be true? If we think we do , on what basis can anyone say it? 

I think supporting the Liberals would be nonetheless political suicide for the Greens,  primarily , if we want to be concrete and not ideological at all, because 70-80% of their second preferences are usually sheeted to Labor.

That suggests to me that the more the Greens play up their support for the Liberals the less they will be trusted by their progressive electoral base and the more they will be blamed for the rigors of any Liberal/Coalition administration that may ensue and in which they will be complicit (...juist as they will be complicit in any ALP government they support).

The associated complication is that the more the Greens engage in the politics of hung parliaments -- and we are indeed in for a swag of hung parliaments around the country -- the more they leave themselves open for criticism, hostility and distrust for their manoevreing.

Of course, the Greens major problem is not so much whether they are with the Libs or Labor for the sake of cabinet guernsays or whatever -- but that their politics is contained totally by electoralism and -- to be frank -- if you passively accept the parameters of the capitalist state you are sentenced to its class alignment anyway. It wouldn't matter if you were prole rich or your reps were blue collar in origin.

Nonetheless, if the Greens are going to run an election campaign flagged by their determination to enter a coalition type agreement with the Liberals then we all face a major tactical problem -- not so much because we may or may not support the Greens , but because the Greens will take a progressive platform and trade it for a cheap pragmatism -- even before the polling day.

And let's be blunt about this: even if they backed the ALP instead of the Libs they would be indulging in the same realpolitick with the same or similar consequences for the progressive program.

So the main problem with the Greens(at least some Greens) it seems to me, is not so much their class demographic but their overriding pro-capitalist perspective wedded to parliamentarianism regardless of any other consideration.

The mistake that some Marxists are making in regard to the Greens is to try and rule their POV by schemata as though history doesn't move and the imperialist state and (what we called ) social democracy are static entities. These same Marxists may also be victim to the mistaken view that there has been a historical working class presence in parliament which in itself -- independent of the vagaries of struggle outside parliament -- has been significant enough to impact on the day to day business of the capitalist state.

I think it ironic that if the we seek to be ruled by which of either of the two major parties should be supported then we have two rural and regional independents who are more class aligned, albeit by default, than the Greens seem now willing to be in Victoria.

Challenging the "Two-Party System"

Challenging the "Two-Party System"
How far can we go?

A public forum to discuss the Fremantle election result and the prospects for building a workers' alternative to Labor.

Speakers:
Adele Carles (Greens member for Fremantle)
Les McLaughlin (CEPU Electrical division state secretary)
Sam Wainwright (Socialist Alliance state co-convenor)

Tues 30 June
6.30pm, Fremantle Education Centre
(cnr Cantonment & Parry Sts, Fremantle - next to Clancy's)

Entry by donation. Ph 9218 9608, 0412 751 508.
www.socialist-alliance.org

"Our" democracy -- the QLD example

200 000 Queenslanders with no political representation

Media Release Friday 3 April 2009

As counting for the Queensland elections is being finalised the Queensland Greens are set to receive a record number of almost 200,000 primary votes.

The Queensland Greens say that the result proves that they are clearly the third force in Queensland politics and that it is a travesty that the Queensland electoral system has denied them any representation in the parliament.

‘Any fair system would have given representation to such a large body of voters. It is time the state considered electoral reform to bring it in line with the other states and territories,’ Queensland Greens spokesperson Libby Connors said today.

Under Queensland’s unicameral, single-member electoral system, the ALP which has won 42.28% of the vote is going to take more than half the seats in the new parliament. Under a proportional system they would be entitled to 38 seats but are set to take 51 seats.

The LNP with 41.57% of the vote is expected to win only 34 seats, whereas under a proportional system they would be entitled to 38. Independents, who are likely to take 4 seats, would be entitled to 5.

‘The Queensland Greens on 8.37% would have won 8 seats if Queensland had a proportional system along the lines of every other state and the Australian Capital Territory,’ according to spokesperson Libby Connors.

‘The unfairness of the system is further highlighted if we look at the figures for Brisbane. In the five inner city electorates of Brisbane Central, South Brisbane, Mt Coot-tha, Indooroopilly and Yeerongpilly, 25 526 people voted for the Greens, equivalent to one whole electorate, but they will have no Greens to represent their interests in the Queensland Parliament.’

Very green left blogging

By Dave Riley

Ben Courtice who has posted here on a occasion has begun a blog ( or at least is running one I only just now discovered!)

[BCC: Words]:Eco-socialist political commentary by BCC (Ben Courtice) ...plus a few food articles and music reviews

Ben's an activist in the Socialist Alliance's environment group and has notched up quite a CV building the campaign against global warming in Victoria.

But it's the recipe bit that gets me.I'm all for it as so much good politics has been created over good food, and so much campaign funding has been generated by selling access to good food cooked up for the sake of good politics.

Maybe LeftClick could start a recipe of the month feature?

However, like all the environment work the Alliance does,you'll find Ben's commentaries on issues to do with the environment movement very much to the point since he also writes on that topic for Green Left Weekly.

As Derek Wall, a leading figure and founder of the English Greens wrote on the Socialist Unity blog yesterday,

from my amigos in Australia….a country with a radical Green Party, a Socialist Alliance that values ecology and the excellent Green Left Weeekly…..what with the indigenous revolution and a tradition of working class ecosocialism, it could be the new Latin America…lets not mention the Labour government and spoil things.

We must be living in political heaven down here down under.

But Derek's comment does suggest a certain political uniqueness -- despite the fact that positiveness isn't quite on the mark in terms of immediate prospects [for one thing the Greens may indeed back the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS)]. But Ben Courtice and Green Left Weekly and the Socialist Alliance are all products of a process that goes back now almost 25 years -- to a time that coincides with the great victory against the damming of the Franklin River.

That particular political convergence was the catalyst that began the alternative party dynamic to the left of the ALP. The immediate registration of the potency of the campaign against the Franklin Dam outside Tasmania was the "No Dams" slogan that 42% of voters wrote across their ballot papers for the 1982 Flinders By Election in Victoria. Then the rise of the "Tasmanian Independents" was followed, in 1984, by the formation of the Nuclear Disarmament Party. Driving this was split in the ALP's support base after the party's federal conference dropped the party's long standing opposition to uranium mining.

With the inspiration of the German Greens at the time, the rest, as they say, is history.

The DSP actively responded to these break out issues and along with an aggressive orientation to environment politics ( examples of which are too many to review here), in 1991 Green Left Weekly was launched. This greening up on the left -- at least a section of it -- has been a very conscious approach engineered by the DSP and the fact that Ben can be just as comfortable blogging about the union movement as he is about the environment suggests a perspective that has been worn with a lot of comfort for some time.

• My own Cook Book Blog full of occasional preferred recipes, designed for catering purposes (like for 50-200 diners) lives here.*
  

* I don't archive recipes anymore or rely on hard copy recipe books, because there are so many recipes online that I simply Google my requirements and sift through the options.

Queensland state election 2009 : my provisional post mortem

By Dave Riley

I can't read the ALP result in terms of making a conclusion about how they managed to hold onto enough seats to keep government almost comfortably, albeit with a reduced margin.This was the flattest and most boring election imaginable and I doubt anyone got excited about any aspect of it.

The boredom impacted on the Socialist Alliance campaign too but we still managed to mobilise comrades and supporters to staff the booths in the two electorates 16 kilometres apart. There was an actual blackout of coverage for alternate parties as there was too much money to be made from the massive LNP and ALP investment in newspaper and other media advertising. This extended to the local 'community' press.

While this neglect helps to explain the weak alternate vote a more potent factor was probably the way the vote for Labor was shored up in the last week of the campaign because of the general fear that the ALP could lose government. Because of that protest voting was stifled to some degree.

The Greens probably will not get Ronan Lee up in Indooroopilly -- their big chance to enter state parliament in their own right. Lee , a MP, left the ALP in October last year and joined the Greens. His final vote hangs on postal votes. The Greens had preferenced the ALP in 14 seats so that they' could secure ALP preferences for Lee. However the Greens stood in all 89 seats for the first time (there in no upper house in QLD) by , in most cases, parachuting names onto the ballot across the state.

So how did the Alliance candidates fair?

SANDGATE: Mike Crook (SA)

• STILLER, Kevin 396 1.85%
• SKELTON, Keith GRN 1,756 8.19%
• CROOK, Mike 313 1.46%
• GAFFEL, Lenard LNP 6,981 32.55%
• GRUNDY, Mark FFP 455 2.12%
• DARLING, Vicky ALP 11,549 53.84%
  

We had not stood in this seat before and will be following the campaign up by forming a local Socialist Alliance branch. We were in fact aiming for 1% result. There is a Greens branch in the area but we had more booth workers mobilised than they.

SOUTH BRISBANE : Sam Watson (SA)

• ROSBOROUGH, Derek 102 0.56%
• BLIGH, Anna ALP 8,849 48.41%
• RENDELL, David DSQ 225 1.23%
• HAINES, Merilyn 337 1.84%
• WATSON, Sam 276 1.51%
• KANE, Gary GRN 3,181 17.40%
• CARROLL, Mary LNP 5,055 27.66%
• COATES, Matt 28 0.15%
• MARTIN, Greg 225 1.23%
  

We've usually stood across the river in Brisbane Central. Initial figures suggest that in South Brisbane the Greens result fell from their last share of 21.49% probably due in part to the number of candidates
standing rather and that it was the premier's seat.

Its' also clear that Sam Watson's profile as an indigenous rights activist wasn't enough in South Brisbane to separate him more from the pack, especially the other 5 Independents .

The Socialist Alliance vote -- still small -- is nonetheless holding as ours has to be a very conscious choice by these hundreds who Vote 1 for us as we aren't listed as Socialist Alliance on the ballot paper because we are not registered in Queensland. Since we didn't scrutineer we don't know what sort of second preference trend we may have received.

While I was mainly involved in the Sandgate campaign I think we did a lot of exciting and creative stuff there in the very short campaign period that was open to us. When you only have your own resources of money, tools and labour it's a challenge of how you decide to deploy them. I think the highlights for me have been:

1. Sunday markets-- wonderful opportunity to place our politics in front of an audience in an atmosphere that is conducive to two way chat. Our weekly stall (from 6am) has been a great way to begin to connect with the community in a way no other local party has tied to do.
2. Leafletting railway stations. We did each of the five stations twice (in two weeks) capturing the morning peak traffic from 6am. No opportunity to chat of course in that situation but our literature boarded the trains.
3. Corflute pickets. This is an absolute corker. Parking yourself with corflute signs on the road side at a high profile location during peak rush hour times. Very effective technique honed by the local YRatW campaign.
4. Letter boxing is always hard to monitor. I think that we needed to put in something like 40 hours to leaflet the whole electorate and in the end we ran out of our flyer print run.

And in one very self conscious sense we see our methods of engaging people as a continuation of the Your Rights at Work campaign in the area.

Total Formal First Preference Vote by Party (As of close of counting):

• Australian Labor Party ALP 779,427 42.69% [ALP final vote in2006: 1,032,617 46.92% ]
• Liberal National Party 749,970 41.07%
• The Greens GRN 150,359 8.23% [Greens final vote in 2006: 175,798 7.99 %]
• Daylight Saving Party 18,410 1.01%
• Family First Party FFP 14,877 0.81 %
• One Nation ONP 7,298 0.40 %
• Other Candidates 105,519 5.78%
  

With the formation of the LNP in July and the fall of the Howard government in 2007 there was much less ideological traction for a One Nation reincarnation. One Nation's peak was the 1998 Queensland state election, at which the party won 22.7% of the vote and 11 of the 89 seats. Inasmuch as that reflected a rejection of Labor as well as the Coalition parties, maybe the election of the Rudd government federally and the shallow options on offer at this poll has kept that ALP's soft edge from being so mercurial as it was in 1998 and deserting the party for racist populism.

Party	Seats Contested (2009)	Seats Contested (2006)
Australian Labor Party	89	89
Liberal National Party	88	89†
The Greens	89	75
DS4SEQ	32	N/A
Family First	25	26
One Nation	2	4
Independents & Others	72	46

Note the number of "Independents & Others".

What changed for the main parties?

Party		Labor	Liberal National
Last election		59 seats	25 seats
Seats won		53	32
Seat change		–6	+7

See also:Related posts

• Election diary: on the hustings in the Queensland state election
• The Queensland Election: the prospect of a Labor loss surprizes no one
• The Queensland state election

The Queensland Election: the prospect of a Labor loss surprizes no one

by Dave Riley

Except for a two year blip in 1996/1998, the Australian Labor Party has ruled Queensland for the past twenty years. After thirty two years of successive conservative Coalition governments, Labor was elected in the landslide of 1989.

But at the state election on March 21st Labor may again find itself in opposition.

This prospect surprises no one. While the merger between the Liberal and National Parties in July last year has given the opposition the appearance of a united front, the newly formed Liberal National Party is offering the electorate budget cuts and job shedding. That the LNP could win government with such a platform promise, suggests the level of cynicism Labor has earnt over the past 20 years.

Arrogant, committed to doing as little as possible, and allowing state infrastructure to run down in the name of balanced budgets, Labor’s collapsing fortunes were registered by the broad opposition to the Traveston Crossing Dam.

One of its parliamentarians, Ronan Lee, even left the party over the issue and is now standing as a Greens candidate.

But Traviston -- on the Mary River near Maryborough, south of Fraser Island -- was one issue of a broader crisis that was engulfing the state. Labor’s twenty years in government coincided with a massive rise in Queensland’s population, driven primarily by interstate migration. While the flow north is currently running at around 25,000 a year, it has been 50,000 and higher some years with most of this migration settling in the South East corner.

Labor’s complaint has always been that this ‘invasion’ was over-stressing state resources, but seldom were there concerted efforts made to plan for or fund the restructuring required. Private development was always encouraged in preference to government run projects . The real estate market and building industry boomed. A corporate agenda was pursued as successive government sectors primed their activities for privatisation. In 2007 retail of electricity and gas in south-east Queensland was opened up to free market competition. Even major road building projects such as the Gateway Bridge across the mouth of the Brisbane River, the Gateway and the Logan Motorways are owned and managed by a public company, Queensland Motorways, set up by the state government.

But when the 2003 drought failed to lift and urban areas in the south east began to run out of water , building a shallow dam on the Mary River and water recycling were the government’s preferred quick fixes.

While Labor’s neoliberal preferences in Queensland match the ALP’s agenda in other states, electoral opposition from the left has always been muted. Partly because there is only one chamber in state parliament, the Queensland Greens did not gain representation there until Lee joined them in October last year.

Nonetheless, One Nation -- the right wing populist party formed around Pauline Hansen -- won 22.7% of the vote and 11 of the 89 seats at the 1998 state election. One Nation’s phenomenal growth reflected not only a distaste for Labor in the regions, but a general dissatisfaction with the National and Liberal parties as well. The recent formation of the LNP is an indication that the dissipated One Nation vote which had later gone to Labor, may now be harnessed to sponsor a conservative resurgence buoyed up by a general backlash against the ALP.

This is why Anna Bligh, the state premier, has called the election early. The driving force behind the Queensland economy has for decades been the mining sector. The state is the largest exporter of coal in the world and the crash in global steel production is punishing Queensland hard as it flows on to components such as metallurgical coal, nickel and zinc.

But since 3,000 Queensland based mining jobs have been axed already in 2009 it was clear that the world wide recession had descended on the state and the longer Bligh waited to go to the polls the worse the news would become. Two weeks after the election was called the Bank of Queensland announced it was sacking 10 percent of its workforce.

While the Greens are fielding over eighty candidates, their overwhelming focus is on the seat of Indooroopilly which is currently held by Ronan Lee. They have agreed to give preferences to Labor in 14 seats, in return for support for Lee. The Socialist Alliance is standing in two seats. Mike Crook in Sandgate and Sam Watson in South Brisbane. In both seats the Alliance is preferencing the Greens ahead of the ALP. You can volunteer to help the Socialist Alliance campaign by phoning 3831 2644/ 0401 234610 or by visiting www.socialist-alliance.org/queensland.

• See also The Queensland state election
  

The Queensland state election

Click on image to go to candidate's blog

By Dave Riley

The Queensland state election may not be the most exciting phenomenon on the planet at the moment but it's been keeping me busy.

So far it has been very buoyant and has been indicative of some very interesting features -- the general enthusiasm for our politics on the street being one of them. How that will translate to votes on polling day I have no idea, but the fact that Murri activist Sam Watson is standing in the inner left ghetto region of South Brisbane and Mike Crook is standing in Sandgate aftet spending years in the ALP there gives this campaign a certain potential traction we haven't always had.

But since this won't be a polarised election -- as Labor could lose -- it's hard to call. Labor deserves to lose as it is hard to find a reason to vote for them. Then Queensland will, after 15 years return to Coalition control -- in this case the newly fused formation , the Liberal National Party .

The primary question is what sort of political alternative could be built outside this terrible option of these two main corporate parties?

The Queensland Greens have continued to pitch toward the centre and withdraw more from any non parliamentary orientation. While the party achieved its first parliamentary representative on October 5th 2008 when Ronan Lee defected to the Greens from the Australian Labor Party this has become an excuse for further skewing of the party's activities as Lee's re-election has ruled the Greens focus.

In the past two decades I've seen the Qld Greens move from a sort of essentialist environmentalism to a dedicated pragmatism despite the fact that they have never won elected office in their own right. By default to Redcliffe Council once and on Palm Island when local Murris established a Greens branch there.

This drift has been a tragedy as over the years the Greens have proven to be unreliable political partners.

So re-electing Lee and making the best out of their prospects in the seat of Mt Cootha are the Greens main pitch for the moment. We wish them well as they are preferable to the main party options but the Greens won't be laying siege to parliament as One Nation did in 1998 when the populist right wing party secured 11 seats in Queensland's one tier parliament.

The Greens also don't take the amorphous progressive vote in the electorate anywhere special other than onto the parliamentary cross benches -- if lucky that is. That may however be enough for a good proportion of the far left to advocate a first preference the Greens ahead of these activists on offer from the Socialist Alliance. Likely as not, the same far left may simply ignore the Alliance campaign completely.

I kid you not.

While the Qld Greens may have about 650 members ( as insider sources tell me) they don't aggregate a membership that is significantly larger than the far left has been able to pull together. The Socialist Alliance will maybe have a third of that when we do our mid year sums . Some of these are in fact Greens members so we aren't separate and apart from Greens debates and issues.

So it comes down to what sort of respect you've earnt among a much broader periphery. In the case of the Alliance, have we earnt enough respect as activists so that they can see through the voting card confusion and vote SA [1] ahead of the Greens[2]? Since we aren't registered as a political party in Queensland 'name identification' has to be something earnt away from the polling booths and a voter has to work out that Crook, M and Watson, S means Socialist Alliance and not some independent ratbag.

On top of that we face the double blind complication that you have to be known to be known -- and to be known for your activity presumes that activism is happening. In Queensland that's been a bit light on recently.

So I guess we can but run our election campaign and see what figures get thrown up on polling day March 21st.

• Mike Crook's flyer for Sandgate
• Sam Watson's Flyer for South Brisbane

POSTSCRIPT[10/2/09] I checked this out further but it appears that after so long in office here and whatever federal fortunes have come its way, the ALP has only about 6000 members in Queensland. This is a massive fall -- especially when you start to estimate what may be the political weight -- ie: the "numbers" -- garnered by each of the party's permanent factions. The Socialist Left is no longer called that. It's called "The Left" and even Artilla the Hun's army had a "left" flank. Of course in the ALP members are a liability.There's no democracy to speak of, no pre -selection process open to the rank and file -- just reigning tribes ...and chieftains all competing for a place at the pigs trough in George Street.

Mike Crook was expelled from "The Left" for standing for pre-selection thereby upsetting factional protocols. In the seat of Sandgate the present member of Parliament (third generation in the family business of owning a parliamentary fiefdom) was simply imposed on the branches after the previous member resigned-- Gordan Nuttal, reknowned locally for doing nothing much for the electrorate-- and is now facing corruption charges.

Its' pretty sick when you think about it -- how shallow is the layer that rules us for the bourgeoisie and how cynical is the means they deploy to do so.

Ironically, the newly formed Liberal National Party has established its campaign headquarters at the old DSS office in my local suburb , Nundah. The street , Station Street, is nicknamed "Welfare Alley" because of the number of welfare orgs that are located along it. Over the road from the corflute signs that say "Go the Borg!" -- Lawrence Springborg being the LNP leader -- is a coffee shop run by local invalid pensioners. Around the corner is Swanee's office -- our very own national federal treasurer Wayne Swann holds the seat -- Lillee.

So if I want to grab a coffee or a sandwich snack my guess is that the LNPers -- like the ALP staffers -- will be hanging out the expensively pretentious, Jam on Sandgate Rd where all the local real estate agents do lunch. I'm down the road because a lot of the folk with disabilities are enamored with my two terriers -- so they amuse them while I read the Curious Mail...

But if i go too far down the road I have to walk up to one of maybe five massive signs that are in the state electorate there promoting the candidacy of Michael Palmer, the 18 year old son of the LNP's main billionaire backer -- Clive Palmer, Queensland's richest man

Exciting huh? just the type you want batting for you or the rest of the stuggletowners along Welfare Alley in the big house on George Street.

Not to be outdone with the billboard presence Labor runs similar size signage with a generic push along the main drag, Sandgate Rd: a photo of premier Anna Bligh and the slogan: "Keep Queensland strong".

Strong? What does that mean? Is the state under terrorist attack? Is this some sort of feminist deconstruction we should be voting for? Is she secretly Laura Croft?

Both electorates -- mine,(Nudgee) and the next one to the north where we're standing Mike -- Sandgate -- are ruled by massive ALP margins but quirkily the Nundah/Clayfield branch of the (old) Liberal Party was one of the most active Liberal branches in the state. Guess who owns the real estate in the area? Guess whose party the local big landlords subscribe to? So it was no coincidence that Nundah is now blessed with "Go the Borg"/enter here -- on an office building that has been empty for six months.

Yes indeed. It's all happening here in Queensland: social security offices morph into party HQs and billboards speak in riddles. Is this Purgatory perhaps?

Ralph Nader endorsed by Peter Camejo

2008 Presidential Candidate, Ralph Nader receives a resounding endorsement by legendary social activist Peter Camejo at the Peace and Freedom Delegate Convention in Sacramento, CA on Aug 2nd, 2008:

More: http://www.votenader.org/

If the video cannot be viewed try to access it here.

How green are you prepared to go?

Nudity as a political tactic? It's been done before. But as excuse for party building this is a new naked edge.

Being Green means throwing off the old assumptions, casting out old ways, being prepared to be radical - out and proud in the public glare. We live in a world that wants us to consume. To keep up with the way we’re meant to be - look the right way, buy the right clothes, buy into a way of life that’s totally unsustainable.Greens want to strip the consumption society bare and get back to basics. It’s the best, no, the only way to have fun!
Green Party of England & Wales new fundraising Calendar

The party that is needed...

by Dave Riley

Some thoughts I had shared about the results of the Brisbane City Council election held here on March 9th have prompted me to think a bit more about the sort of party package that may suit the present political context.

As I read through material on the Dutch Socialist Party the main game is indeed "getting the package right" rather than simply clubbing one together to place before the punters -- aka "working people" of Australia.

One of the main handicaps with a regroupment agenda is that it can so easily fall hostage to the ready hesitancy of waiting for an 'independent left' to catch up with its dynamic. This in part is what is bearing down on the Socialist Alliance -- it's waiting for passengers before leaving for the next station. It needs a load of movement generated coal to fire up its engine before departing the platform.

In many ways the SA has embraced this paradigm which has been orchestrated for it by others. Seemingly the only momentum the SA is allowed is determined by this constraint -- a template imposed on it by what we so readily referred to as the ( already existing) left: regroup what's already there or die.

While the Alliance has consolidated and has initiated a range of important working partnership within the trade unions, among ethnic groups and with radical sections of the indigenous community -- its future progress depends on generating more of the same by dint of hard work and winning campaign credentials.

Read More...

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THE BCC election

This is why the Brisbane City Council election was so interesting to me. I think the Alliance managed this time around to move into green political ecology in its own right by applying a sort of programatic logic that flowed directly from living potentials rather than from a position formatted so readily by ideology. Some times being keenly programmatic can also mean that you generate your advocacy by the numbers and it can easily become so readily sloganistic.

I pointed out that the ALP lost council through its own corporate toadyism and incompetence. The Greens also suffered at the poll -- recording a result below that in 2004 and historically their poll return was not that much above the results registered in the 1991 Green Alliance Brisbane City Council election campaign*. The 1991 campaign in effect kick started the Greens in Queensland.

The Greens no doubt suffered because there wasn't much extra electoral campaigning to generate political traction that could buoy up an electoral result. There wasn't a bridge issue and precious little activity against tunnels, over traffic. water supplies or soforth.

But if I had been going 17 years and had no elected office (anywhere in QLD) to show for it and my core strategy was winning elections -- I'd be a bit despondent.

THINKS:Of course, the Socialist Alliance isn't constrained by such thoughts! Not us. The SA's poll returns are consistently very low so you'd have to conclude that any pretense to electoral traction would be dreaming...

But is that actually the the case....?

That the Greens haven't advanced strongly at the local level in Brisbane relative to sister parties in other capital city centres --although it should be pointed out they did pick up over 8 % of the mayoral vote and almost 26% in one ward while the SA is recording returns of less than 2% -- suggests that patenting a colour and claiming the environmental domain can only get you so far in political life-- even when the mainstream talk these last few years has been so much of global warming and its consequences and fix ups.

Thinking outside the box

This is where I think it is worthwhile to start to think outside the box and begin to ask not so much what you bring to the table but what should be on the menu.

I began to ask myself that question and while I can give you all the gab about the crying need for socialism that's hardly going to be the discourse on everyone's lips. The continuity of the culture of socialism is very shallow in Australia and while it needs to be sustained and enriched we also have to apply that advocacy transitionally to the noggins of Joe and Mary Average and make it relevant to their own everyday personal struggles.

So how are we gonna do that?

That's not a new question of course but you have to ask it over and over again, each time adjusting any answers to suit contemporary options.

So the question isn't so much an ideological requisite but what sort of party you hope to engineer.

The advantage is that the generic form of socialism that the Alliance adheres to is very flexible when you come down to tin tacks.So while a party can be many things to many different people -- locally there's a potential ambit that, I think, warrants addressing.

What horse for the course?

So let's look at the local urban context under an environmental umbrella and consider what sort of party 'suits'. In effect what horse for the course?

• A sustainable transport party. In effect that covers a very wide margin of political options in regard to transport issues but the primary marker is public transport rather than something that is built upon private vehicular transit. But it has to be an advocacy for a total package that considers the problems of the transition -- of how to get millions of commuters out of their cars and into public and carbon reducing means.The SA advocacy for free public transport is a key element in that transition.
  
• An anti-privatization party. Just as we aren't simply calling for contracts to be divvied out to the local bourgeois to move freight and humanity for profit -- the same approach applies right across the board.The SA is actively engaged in the campaign opposing electricity privatisation in NSW as part of this core position.But that's the core argument: that we advance without recourse to the profit motive.
  
• A party that says: enough! I'll explore this in later posts but I think the cutting edge advanced by the Dutch Socialist Party of boldly arguing that we've had enough of restructuring and the ideology of neo-liberalist economics is a crucial articulation that can take many forms. In the hands of the Dutch -- many creative forms...
• A permaculture party. Again I'll explore this label in greater detail in later posts but essentially we need an advocacy that articulates the sort of urban and rural ecology and stewardship we need to strive for. I know that a few permaculture trainors have discussed a party option in the past but the fact remains that permaculture is not so much a political as an environment design doctrine. (Check out the "permaculture " label on this site for back ground on this hefty topic.) "Permaculture" encapsulates a lot of the core restructuring principles we need to move quickly towards and has enough content that makes usage of the word preferable to more generic buzz words like "sustainable" or "organic".
• A community empowerment party. Talk is cheap and when advocating "power to the people" you have to get concrete and promote a very clear agenda so that people know what you mean(assuming that you do too). The Dutch SP went way out on a limb I thought on this point and argued a radical, doctrine neutral course:

Instead of telling the electorate to vote SP for a better society – worthy ideals for a distant future – the party chose a more rational and better thought out position: that of radical and effective opposition.“Vote against, vote SP” became the provocative slogan. The message being: if you don't agree with current politics, vote for us. Then we can voice your dissent in Parliament. You don't need a majority for that, even one person would do. The new strategy is symbolized by a tomato. Full of healthy vitamins, but also a feared weapon against bad political theatre.

• A justice party. I'm not sure how to label this -- so "justice" will have to suffice for now --but we need to generate a core and very generic advocacy around such key issues as indigenous rights, racism,access and migration. The SA explored this in its initial federal election advocacy when it called for a "new vision" for Australia.The pitfall was that we did not generate the traction we sought to foster during that particular campaign partly because many comrades didn't quite relate to it as an electoral 'tool'. Issues of justice and rights merge with a plethora of possibilities that engage with housing, opportunities for education and employment, health care, etc.So while mine is a generic term theres' enough flex in it to suit any local application
  

As for other issues that are standardly taken up -- international solidarity, peace, workers struggles, etc -- I think they're self evident and already there in the mix. But I'm trying to address the core question of the party that's needed (as distinct from the one in hand)-- which isn't so much floating on "worthy ideals" but is rigorously concrete and everyday accessible. In that regard I guess the party that is needed is a party that struggles across a very broad spectrum of campaigns and, in effect, takes on the responsibility of initiating and building and sustaining those campaigns while carefully articulating what it sets out to do and the way it does it.

You then also work on the packaging....

*1991 Green Alliance Brisbane City Council election campaign was a broad coalition comprising the Rainbow Alliance (later the Qld Greens), the Democratic Socialist Perspective (from which the Green Alliance coordinator was drawn), the Democrats, the SPA (later the Communist Party of Australia) and independents which stood a swag of ward candidates and for mayor at the 1991 Brisbane council election.

Labor loses its Brisbane stronghold

Greens ascendancy stifled
by Dave Riley

I doubt that you've missed the news or its relevance to the punch drunk Coalition but the ALP has lost its once dominant position as long time rulers of the Brisbane City Council. The Liberal Party and the incumbent mayor -- Campbell Newman -- won a landslide victory at the poll on March 9th.

Former deputy mayor and ALP leader in the last council, David Hinchliffe, is still waiting to see if he will be representing Central ward as this is the only seat yet to be decided.

While the last council was an odd mix -- a Liberal mayor and a ALP majority in council -- this resolution certainly pronounces electorate judgement on the ALP's dream run in Queensland since the early nineties. Labor had regained council and the mayorship in 1991 after a Liberal ascendancy of one term under Sally Anne Atkinson-- but no sweep has been as savage and as brutal as this.

This loss is sure to impact on the ALP's capacity to deliver selective largess at the grassroots level and shake up the party's ability to sustain a community profile across Brisbane suburbs.

While it can be read as a shot in the arm for the fortunes of the Liberals -- now seemingly in the toilet after the recent federal loss -- no one is actually saying that this result was a vote for Newman's Liberals. In effect very little separated the two opposing parties and the campaign for City Hall was very much a me too affair.

Nonetheless the result is a shade indicative of a break down in the rigid consensus that has ruled Brisbane local government for so long as Queensland is way out of step with other states in that no third party has achieved electoral office at the local level despite the massive support for the One Nation at the state polls during the mid nineties.

The Greens failed to win any ward and the poll figures are, what you'll have to conclude as, disappointing:

Jo Bragg - Lord Mayor - 8.11% (40,542 votes, 9 candidates)
Indicative ward results:
Anne Boccabella - Central - 16.31%
Angela Dean - Holland Park - 13.65%
Sean McConnell - Tennyson - 14.20%
Drew Hutton - The Gabba - 26.08
Robert Hogg - The Gap - 16.21%
Stuart Skabo - Toowong - 21.24%
Daniel Crute - Walter Taylor - 14.58%

The Socialist Alliance stood against Hinchliffe and garnered 1.82% of the vote.

The poll result also marks off more clearly than last time the end of the era of Jim Soorley -- the ALP mayor who was elected in 1991 and who's administration ( until his retirement in 2003) engineered a savvy mix of neo liberal corporate restructuring and green washing (although more effectively green washed than most other ALP fiefdoms) .

So while the Soorley's green credentialing effectively kept the Greens at bay --green rhetoric at this most recent poll was mild indeed and very consensually adhered to between the two main parties so that the green jeni didn't get out of the bottle.

An indication of this was the race in the Gabba where high profile Greens member, party leader and founder, Drew Hutton tried to push his party's envelope by harnessing support from the inner urban left community based on suburbs like West End and Dutton Park.

HUTTON, Drew	GRN	4,614		25.44
MYERS, Matthew	LIB	6,686		36.86
ABRAHAMS, Helen	ALP	6,591		36.34

While Hutton challenged the support base of the major parties what was surely the Greens best chance of winning enough electoral support to take office failed to occur and only entrenches further the electoral impasse the greens have faced in Queensland.

In 2004 the Greens polled 42,243 votes 8.14 % in the wards and received 52,995 votes 10.13% for mayor. I haven't got the final ward figures for the recent poll but for mayor this time around the Greens Jo Bragg pulled in 8.11% (40,542 votes, 9 candidates).

Options for ecosocialists in 2008

Sean Thompson is an activist in the Green Left ecosocialist current in the English Green Party. He is a long term socialist activist, ex-Respect and Socialist Alliance. This piece was published on Derek Wall's blog.
His argument is of course very relevant to green left here in Australia no matter where they locate themselves.

by Sean Thompson

I woke up on New Years Day with mixed feelings. On the one hand, I had just survived an medical emergency, so I was mightily pleased to be waking up at all. On the other, the situation facing the Left in Britain has seldom seemed bleaker. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan continue, the erosion of civil liberties grinds on relentlessly, the privatisation of our education and health services gathers pace, as does the rate of global warming - and as I write, the government has announced a new nuclear power programme. I have been politically engaged since the early sixties, and during that time the left has never been weaker or more fragmented than it is today.

Given that Rosa Luxemburg’s description of the choice before us being socialism or barbarism has never been more stark it would be easy to surmise from the above that my view is that that there is no future for the left nor possibility of humanity’s self emancipation – in short that we are all fucked. I admit that any sober assessment of our situation must lead to the conclusion that at the moment the odds seem to be heavily on barbarism (but then, when weren’t they?), but there are a few glimmers of hope to be seen and there remains no alternative for us to but continue to work against the odds. So in the short dark days of January 2008, we ecosocialists (or green socialists or socialist greens or whatever) need to plan a course of action for the coming year.

Vacuum on the left

Ever since the mid seventies I have believed that a regroupment and refoundation of the left in Britain was a necessary precondition for the building of a mass party of humanist and environmentally aware socialism based within the working class and its institutions. I remain convinced that such a project must remain the central task for us today, in parallel with and informed by our activities as trade unionists, anti war activists or in whatever areas of day to day resistance to capitalism we are jointly and severally able to engage.

The leverage for such a refoundation could conceivably be based on one (at least) of three main agencies; the Left in the Labour Party and the Trade Unions, a regroupment of the far left sects or the developing social movements, in particular the green movement. 2007 wasn’t a good year for any of those three potential routes to progress.

Despite the trajectory of the Labour Party since the mid eighties, from a notionally social democratic party to Blair’s corrupt, neo liberal election machine, there was always a residual organised left within it, with a real, if declining, base within the trade union movement and among elements of the trade unions bureaucracies. Socialists within the Labour Party had a good(ish) case when they argued that all attempts to build an alternative to Labour to its left by small groups recruiting in ones and twos had failed in the past and that the natural home for socialists was within the Party in order to fight for its rebirth. However, last summer, the remnants of the Left in the Labour Party failed even to get to the starting line in NuLab’s leadership race and at its conference in September the Trade Union bureaucracy gave away the last tenuous ribbons of democratic control by party members. NuLab is now explicitly and irreversibly a party of the right.

However, while the vast majority of the Trade Union bureaucracy appears to be welded immovably to the apparatus of NuLab, there is growing dissent and disillusionment with the whole Blairite/Brownite project on the part of growing numbers of trade union activists, including a minority of the bureaucracy. Thus, despite the steady erosion of membership, the traditional ‘official’ sections of the Labour Movement remain a key battle ground for socialist ideas.

In a touching, if slightly embarrassing, example of the triumph of hope over experience, I have been involved in many of the attempts at regroupment of the left, from the Socialist Movement and the Chesterfield Conferences, through the SLP and the Socialist Alliance to Respect. All of these initiatives have failed, most recently last autumn, when the SWP leadership’s hysterical reaction to their erstwhile greatest ally, George Galloway’s, rather modest criticisms of their incompetence and autocracy led to the implosion of Respect. So now we have the absurd spectacle of two ‘Respects’. The SWP’s version of Respect now effectively consists just of the SWP – a ‘united front of a special type’ indeed. Respect Renewal contains the best elements of the original initiative, including Ken Loach, the impressive Salma Yaqoob and the ISG/Socialist Resistance group (and, for better and/or worse, the Gorgeous One). Sadly however, it seems unlikely that RR will be able to become a viable national organisation with a real popular base.

Finally, and most ludicrously, in November the Green Party’s electoral obsessives’ wing overwhelmingly won the day in a referendum aimed at making the Green Party look like a miniscule copy of the three ‘grown-up parties’ for PR purposes. On first sight, the modest growth of the Green Party seems like good news for the left. With over seven thousand members, over a hundred local councillors and two MEPs, and with policy positions that place it well to the left of the three neo-liberal parties, the Green Party would seem to be naturally a major player in the development of a mass movement of the left. However, in reality it has an active membership of probably less than 1500, its political composition is an extraordinarily eclectic (and incompatible) mish-mash ranging from reactionary Neo Malthusians, through hippy lifestylists to socialists trying to develop a modern environmentally aware praxis. The dominant politics of the organisation is a narrow obsession with ‘environmental’ issues largely divorced from their social and political context, married to an exclusively electoralist practice with not one whit of analysis of the nature of the state or structure of society.

As it currently operates, the Green Party is likely to remain within the comfortable minority niche it has established for itself, unable – and to a large extent unwilling – to develop a base among working class communities and organisations.

So there is a vacuum on the left and, with the exception of activism within the trade unions, no consensus among socialists on which way to move forwards organisationally.

This situation cannot just be willed away, it is only through activity and over a period of time, that the issues willed be clarified. It is possible that our comrades in Socialist Resistance might be right and there is a realistic chance for Respect Renewal to consolidate and begin to grow as a core of a genuinely broad based socialist party. It is possible that a significant group of left trade unions and trade union bureaucrats will definitively break from NuLab and form the basis for a new party of labour. It is even possible that we in Green Left will succeed in moving the Green Party away from the electoralist anoraks and towards a more explicit understanding of the socialist implications of its egalitarian, environmentalist and fuzzily anti-capitalist program and recognition of the role it could play in rebuilding the left. All of the above are possible, but unfortunately I don’t think any of them are likely.

What next for Green Left

We have to move Green Left on from being little more than an internal email discussion group to being an activist group that has clear (if minimal) strategic objectives. As socialists who recognise the scale and urgency of the crises that capitalism brought upon mankind, our aims and objectives have to be more ambitious than maintaining a left discussion group in the Green party. Ian Angus has written that ‘It is far easier to write socialist essays about climate change than to actively build movements against it. But, as Marx wrote, interpreting the world is not enough — the point is to change it. The time is ripe for ecosocialists to move beyond criticizing capitalism, into supporting, building, and learning from real movements for change. If we don’t do so, all of our words and theories will be irrelevant.’ He has also described the role of ecosocialists as ‘making the greens redder and the reds greener’. I think that what this all means for us in Green Left is that we need to have a twin track strategy over the next year.

Our internal strategy

We have to work within the Green Party to spread a wider understanding that, as Ian says ‘ecological destruction is not an accidental feature of capitalism, it is built into the system’s DNA.’ We need to be developing an understanding among fellow party members that the system’s insatiable need to increase profits – ‘the ecological tyranny of the bottom line’ - cannot be reformed away.
We are not going to do that by endless abstract discussions – although formal debate does have its place. And we are certainly not going to do it by getting bogged down in endless navel gazing and inward looking arguments about abstruse points of internal organisation.

Firstly, we need to do it by involving Green Party members in real world campaigns and day-to-day agitational, rather than simply propaganda activity in the wider movement; for example getting our local parties working with local CND or StWC branches, with tenants involved in DCH, with local community groups and civil rights activists in the defence of refugees and with trade unionists in local campaigns to organize low paid workers – and continually explaining the commonality of these and the environmental concerns of the membership.

Secondly, we need to be making proposals within the Party for action that promote debate and raise awareness among rank and file party members that chime with their level of consciousness but which move them to begin to question some of the fundamental assumptions of bourgeois ideology and which raise demands that cannot be met within the limitations of a capitalist state. In other words, we should be developing transitional demands.
For example, the Justice for Palestinians motion at our Spring Conference in a few weeks (modesty forbids me from mentioning its author) is not dramatically different from the rather anodyne motion on Israel and Palestine from Richard Lawson – except that while the latter merely states opinions that I broadly share (except for the issue of the Two State Solution) the former commits the party to campaigning for the release of Hamas MPs and to supporting the boycott campaign against Israel. In other words it challenges Greens to move from sentiment to action on the side of the oppressed. Similarly, the proposed amendment to the MfSS section on Income and Economic Security (oh dear, I’m blushing) doesn’t make a stirring – and to most GP members incomprehensible – call to ‘expropriate the expropriators’. Instead it calls for a minimum wage to be based on a widely recognized benchmark of decency – and calls for a maximum wage tied to it. Such a call widely resonates with Greens’ (and very many non Greens’) sense of justice, but at the same time it challenges the structure of capitalism and the state. If the Old Man was with us today he would probably agree that this was an example of transitional politics (although obviously he would condemn it as he hadn’t thought of it himself).

As a continuation of this strategy I suggest that at the Autumn Conference we should press for the GP to affiliate to the Cuba Solidarity Campaign and the Cuba Organic Support Group (COSG is an organisation which supports the organic movement in Cuba through speakers, publicity and the promotion of Gardening Brigades to Cuba). In addition, if the vote goes with us at Reading, we should perhaps move for affiliation to the Palestine Solidarity Campaign.

Thirdly, as a continuation of the approach described above, we should be making a consistent attempt to develop the consciousness of our activists by organising debates and discussions, whether within the context of ‘official’ political education programmes as we are starting to do in London, or independently as Green Left.

Fourthly, we should be seeking to challenge the electoralist anoraks and amateur bonapartists within the structure of the party at every opportunity. We should try to ensure that we have as many left candidates as possible for GPEX in the Autumn – to let posts on our leading committee go uncontested is unforgivable.

Our external strategy

But working within the Green Party is not enough. The second track of our strategy must be to work, as an organised group of independent ecosocialists, within the broader movement. In other words, if our work within the Green Party is fundamentally about ‘making greens redder’, then our external work must be about ‘making reds greener’. Central to this, I think, is the establishment of a network of green socialists (or whatever) in Britain.

One of the high points of 2007 for me was the meeting in Paris which established the fledgling Ecosocialist International Network. At that meeting were twenty comrades from Britain, including members of Green Left, the Red-Green Study Group, Socialist Resistance and the Alliance for Green Socialism, along with two SWP members who play a leading part in the Campaign Against Climate Change. While it was heartening to see that among the thirteen countries represented at the meeting, the largest contingent was from Britain, but it was salutary to note that among the British groups there had previously been an absolute minimum of contact and even less collaboration.

Consequently, on leaving hospital just before Christmas, I wrote on behalf of Green Left to all the British participant in the Paris ecosocialist meeting, to suggest that all the groups and/or individuals who were at the Paris event have an initial meeting to exchange experiences and to explore potential areas of practical joint activity. I immediately received a positive response from Edward Maltby, a Paris based AWL member who was at the initial meeting and in the last day or two have received expressions of support from Alan Thornett of Socialist Resistance and Richard Kuper of the Red-Green Study Group. I propose that we should now get moving on organising the meeting as soon as possible, but leaving ourselves with a bit of space in order to give us time to cast the net wider than the original participants. If we can establish a formal (though necessarily loose) network by late Spring I believe that it should be the focus of Green Left’s external orientation in the coming year.

While we obviously shouldn’t approach the initial meeting in a prescriptive way, I think that we should have a couple of modest proposals for practical joint activity by members of the network. At the same time I think that we should be very open to any suggestions from any of the other participants.

In addition a modest programme of activity aimed, I would have thought, at providing a socialist alternative to SERA, we should consider two slightly longer term projects. The first is to either assist the Greeks in setting up a European network meeting in the summer or early autumn or to do it ourselves. I think it very important that at this stage we, either as Green Left alone or a wider British ecosocialist network, make contact with the constituent members of the Nordic Green Left, Groen Links and perhaps the Dutch Socialist Party with a view to involving them in a European meeting.

The second project is that we (as part of a wider network) should organise an ecosocialist delegation to Cuba next winter. Such an initiative could support and promote our work within the Green Party and be a useful promotional gambit in spreading the key concepts of ecosocialism with the wider labour movement.

While there may or may not be a long term possibility for socialists to transform the Green Party, or for Respect Renewal to develop a real popular base, or for socialist to build any meaningful opposition in NuLab, or for the AGS to achieve whatever it is trying to achieve, I believe that the establishment of an ecosocialist network will make a positive – and, I believe essential, contribution to the rebuilding of our movement. An emphasis on the fact that our joint commitment to developing a dynamic ecosocialist praxis is far more significant than the varying tactical choices we have individually made about membership of this or that organisation is vital for building the network. And our explicit recognition that none of us hold sole copyright on the Way, the Truth and the Correct Line can help us to start to develop new ways and areas of joint work that can prefigure not just a renewed socialist politics but a renewed socialist movement.

US Greens in trouble because of the wrong kind of conservatism

via Andy Newman

The conservatism in the American Greens has now provoked another break point with the high profile resignation of former Black Panther Elaine Brown, who had been contending to be the Green Party’s presidential candidate. Elaine Brown is a very high profile figure, with forty years of radical activism behind her, she was national Chairperson of the Black Panther Party between 1974 and 1977, and was editor of the Black Panther’s newspaper.

Her press release is a devastating attack on the right wing clique in charge of the Green party:

As of today, I am no longer a candidate for the Green Party nomination for president of the United States, and I hereby resign from all affiliation with the Green Party. I believe the leadership of the Green Party of the United States has been seized by neo-liberal men who entrench the Party in internecine antagonisms so as to compromise its stated principles and frustrate its electoral and other goals. They have made it impossible to advance any truly progressive ideals or objectives under the umbrella of the Green Party, and, thus, rendered it counterproductive for me to go forward as a Green Party candidate or member.

I believe this small clique that has captured control of the Party has transformed it into a repository for erstwhile, disgruntled Democrats, who would violate the Party’s own vision and sabotage the good will and genuine commitment of the general membership. Indeed, these usurpers foster a reactionary agenda, supporting partisans in and backers of the Bush wars and disavowing the Party’s more progressive tenets in favor of promoting high-profile participation in the politics of the establishment.

This became clear to me almost from the moment I announced my candidacy in February of 2007. I intended using my campaign to bring large numbers of blacks and browns into the Party, particularly from the hood and the barrio—as would come to be reflected in the lists of supporters and delegates I’ve submitted in connection with my candidacy. As I asserted I would use the respect I enjoyed as a former leader of the Black Panther Party to do so, some in the hierarchy seemed utterly fearful of the prospect of a massive influx of blacks and browns into the Green Party. Soon, there was wide circulation of false rumors that I was a one-time “government agent,” which was intended to discredit my history in the Black Panther Party so as to undermine my potential influence.—And, since then, I have had to devote significant time and energy to addressing these lies.—What this effort revealed, though, was how the Green Party, while advocating “diversity,” remains dominated by whites. Indeed, the Party is able to count less blacks, browns and natives in its membership than our national population percentages and certainly less than the Democrats themselves.

In effect, the present Green Party leadership promotes a kinder, gentler capitalism, a moderated racism, an environmentally-sustainable globalism, which I cannot support. They are dedicated to the underside of the Party’s platform, which falls short of repudiating the capitalist state, source of all the social ills the Party would address. They equivocate by promoting “an economic alternative to corporate capitalism and a socialist state,” advocate a “re-formulation” of the IMF, NAFTA, so forth, and advance the institution of “stakeholder capitalism.”

On the other hand, they demonstrate a willingness to override the best of the Party’s platform. My sharp criticism of high-profile Party members’ support for the “three-strikes” crime laws, the sole basis for the inhumane mass incarceration of people in the United States, particularly blacks—the repeal of which the Party’s platform advocates—has been met with outright enmity. And, to divert attention from this and other critical issues, the leadership has employed chicanery in their promulgation of defamatory lies about me—which they finally extended to character assaults on my supporters and critics of their unscrupulousness.

It is my sincere belief that the Green Party as it now exists has no intention of using the ballot to actualize real social progress, and will aggressively repel attempts to do so. To remain in the fray or in the Party, then, would require a betrayal of my lifelong and ongoing commitment to serving the interests of black and other oppressed people by advancing revolutionary change in America.

Peter Garrett: From ratbag to suit

By Nick Fredman

In a discussion on the Green Left list of the conflict within Respect between George Galloway and the UK SWP Alan Bradley recalled the conflict in the mid-80s between apparently radical rock star Peter Garret and the Australian SWP within the Nuclear Disarmament Party. Garrett of course now looks set to became a Labor Environment and Arts minister after the November 24 election here. While not claiming the issues and line-up are the same Garret's dubious history raises some general issues of social democracy and a broad left alternative today.

On 25/10/07 3:58 AM, "alanb1000" wrote:

Was it entirely the fault of Garrett et al, or did we do stuff we might have been better off avoiding?

I'm not sure, but Garrett's subsequent evolution suggests that his egoism, opportunism and social conservatism would have been bad news for the NDP whatever the (then Australian) SWP did. Of course that's not how it appeared to most people interested in the NDP at the time, which might be emblematic of the potential problems for the far left in working with a popular reformist figure.

[Switches to old geezer mode]. I can still vividly recall one of the first gigs I went to, must have been before they checked IDs much as I would have been 16. Midnight Oil, Newcastle Workers Club, 1985. The Oils blistering sonic attack was only interrupted by Garret's strident attacks against the Hawke Labor government. At the time the government had announced some initiative to address massive youth unemployment, to which some of the now forgotten pop idols of the day had been signed up to sell, called "Priority One". I can still hear Garrett lacerating this for the bullshit it was, and snarling "You're Priority Zero!!". The assembled working class youth of a union town then well into industrial decline, where as I learned later 2000 people had joined the NDP for the 1984 campaign, roared in approval.

It's not surprising then that someone like me was very disapproving when reading bourgeois media reports around the same time of how a sinister group called the SWP had wrecked the NDP. It was one reason why I was wary when encountering Resistance on campus later in the decade, despite thinking its stands on the Labor-union Accord, Nicaragua, South Africa, the Soviet Union etc made much more sense than the rest of the left. One of the first things I did after finally joining the party in 1990 was check out the Direct Action archives for the SWP side of the split story, and was pretty satisfied that Garrett and Jo Valentine were, quite consciously, wreckers (which doesn't mean the SWP played it perfectly).

On a related note, former well-known Laborite Canberra press gallery hack Mungo MacCullum, now in genteel retirement on the North Coast from where he writes a column for two local weeklies, praised Garrett's trajectory a couple of weeks ago (article not online). This column was answered both by myself and a local Greens candidate. The similarities and differences between these two critiques of Laborite betrayals might be of interest.

A poor excuse for compromising principles

Mungo McCallum (Echo, October 11) defends Garrett's desertion of his principles with a classic tool of the demagogue, sleight of tongue. He takes a cute rhetorical flourish – "The impotent are pure" – and then argues the converse; Garrett can only wield power by sacrificing his beliefs.

Voters are not fools, Mungo. They are angry that Garrett deserted his principles, not because the "real politik" eludes them but because he has squandered the lessons of history. Visionary leaders who stick to their principles are the ones who change the world.

One hundred and fifteen years ago the Australian labour movement was a bunch of shearers in a paddock saying, "We can’t take this any more." It took decades for those idealists to mature into government, but their core principles remained in place until the 1980s.

Mungo's defence of Garrett, as much as Garrett's desertion of principle itself, proves that the Alternative Liberal Party is now a creature of the establishment. The ALP must, according to Mungo, compromise its principles to gain power. If that means selling workers down the drain, uranium to warring states, or our hospitals, schools and water to international corporations, then so be it.

When the Liberal Party self destructs after this election, Mungo and other apparatchiks of the establishment will find themselves facing a far more formidable opposition; a passionate and principled movement that is ready to govern on behalf of the people and the environment that supports us.

The choice for the future is stark. We either vote for the establishment parties that will sacrifice us all on the altar of economic growth or for the emerging parties that recognise we must learn to live better to survive.

Giovanni Ebono
Greens candidate for Richmond

Ratbags effect social change better than suits

If more progressives and greens had heeded Mungo MacCallum’s advice to take the Peter Garrett road and stick to Labor and parliamentary channels (Echo, October 11), then Nightcap National Park would be woodchips, the Gordon and Franklin valleys would be under water, and Howard would not have been forced to reverse 24 years of bipartisan support for the Indonesian brutalisation of East Timor.

If more leftists overseas had stuck to the tame social democratic option then the Vietnam War would have lasted longer, French workers would not have stopped their government's version of WorkChoices in 2005 and indeed Cuba would still be a US brothel and Venezuela a US oil rig.

Labor has sometimes supported progressive change, but the extent it has done so has been determined by how much pressure it feels from independent mass movements and political forces to its left. More importantly, Labor has often co-opted and demoralised progressive forces, as in the Accord that decimated the union movement and Hawke-Keating neo-liberalism that paved the way for Howard.

A recent case in point: the ACTU leadership had initially planned a mild, TV ad-oriented campaign against WorkChoices, until pressured by militants, not least those aligned or allied with Socialist Alliance. The ensuing mass actions have been a key factor in swinging the public against the laws, although Rudd now wants to implement WorkChoices Lite.

MacCallum's point about forest policy in the last election is disingenuous: if Latham had emulated Hawke's clear cut opposition to the Franklin dam (a product of the mass anti-dam campaign), rather than dish up a confused mess at the last minute, he would have won much more support.

Garret will be better than Turnbull, but he could have achieved more continuing on as a ratbag rejecting sordid lesser-evilism. Ratbags have been effective at stopping the excesses of corporate rule, and when the times are right have won majority support and achieved much more than any meek social democrat in a nice suit.

Nick Fredman
Lismore