BY PETER BOYLE
The decision of the Sydney Palm Sunday 2002 peace rally organising committee to exclude participation by members of the Democratic Socialist Party has provoked widespread protest, including from the NSW Greens.
Dave Bell, secretary of the NSW Greens, has written to the Sydney Palm Sunday 2002 committee strongly protesting the political exclusion of the DSP.
In the latest act of exclusion, well-respected anti-nuclear activist and researcher Dr Jim Green was barred from attending the "invitation-only" Sydney committee meeting on February 25 because of his membership of the DSP.
About eight people voted for the motion to exclude Green, one against, with about 12 abstentions. Green was not allowed to speak against the exclusion motion, nor was he able to put a counter-motion that the committee be open to all those supporting the Palm Sunday peace rally.
Those voting for the motion to exclude Green included Peter Murphy from the Search Foundation (the rump of the old Communist Party), Bruce Cornwall from the pro-Beijing Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist), Pat Toms from the Progressive Labour Party and John Hallam from Friends of the Earth (Sydney). It's anyone's guess how the abstainers would have voted if a proper debate had been allowed.
Given the prominence of nuclear issues in previous Palm Sunday actions, the exclusion of Green is extraordinary given his extensive involvement in anti-nuclear campaigns. He has been a leading campaigner against a new nuclear reactor at Lucas Heights as a member of Sutherland Shire Council's Anti-Reactor Taskforce and a founding member of Sydney People Against a New Nuclear Reactor. He was a member of the Sydney Jabiluka Action Group and has facilitated the fortnightly national anti-nuclear phone link-ups since late-1998.
Green has written a PhD thesis, several journal articles, and hundreds of newspaper articles on nuclear issues; he has carried out research on nuclear issues for the Medical Association for the Prevention of War, the Sutherland Shire Environment Centre, and the Sutherland Shire Council; he has spoken at countless public meetings, inquiries and debates on nuclear issues; he is on the Greenpeace web site as the "Ask a Nuclear Expert" contact person; and he responds to a steady stream of requests for information on nuclear issues from campaigners in Australia and overseas.
Other activists who have been excluded from previous meetings of the Sydney Palm Sunday committee include Nick Everett, a central activist in the Sydney Network Organising Against War and Racism (NOWAR) and Free the Refugees Campaign and Pip Hinman, national secretary of Action in Solidarity with Asia and the Pacific and initiator of the call for a royal commission into the Australian government's treatment of asylum seekers.
Tara Povey, a member of NOWAR, who is not a member of any left group, was turned away simply because she was associated with the NOWAR committee, yet some of the core excluders (Cornwall and Hallam) participated in NOWAR. Another activist who is not a member of any left party but works with the left in Free the Refugee Campaign was also turned away.
This is the most outrageous case of political exclusion to occur in the progressive movement in recent years. Opponents of this very dangerous precedent are being asked to support the following call for a politically inclusive Sydney Palm Sunday rally committee.
Among the prominent movement activists who have supported this call are: Victorian Greens secretary Chris Chaplin; Wendy Bacon; Cam Walker, Friends Of the Earth national liaison officer; Victorian AMWU secretary Craig Johnston; Georgina Abrahams; Australia-East Timor Association (Sydney); Margaret Bradford, member of People Against a Nuclear Reactor; Naomi Arrowsmith, CPSU organiser; Dr Michael Denborough, Nuclear Disarmament Party and Peter McGregor.
To obtain a copy of the call and add your name to it, email me at <peterb@dsp.org.au> or phone (02) 9690 1230.
From Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly, March 6, 2002.
Visit the