BY
ALISON DELLIT
The February 14-16 world-wide peace protests starkly exposed the gulf between the warmongering governments and media of Australia, the United States and Britain on the one hand, and the populations of those countries on the other.
In Australia, this deep divide is tearing into the Australian Labor Party. While the party leadership maintains that the ALP would support a UN Security Council-endorsed war on Iraq, federal MP Harry Quick told a February 19 Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly public forum in Sydney that at least 16 of his colleagues, from different Labor factions, will cross the floor rather than vote for any war on Iraq.
Fifteen federal ALP MPs recently signed a statement opposing any war on Iraq, whether UN-endorsed or not. They included Quick, Carmen Lawrence, Nick Bolkus and Jennie George. Several Labor Party branches have also adopted this position.
“'No war, no way’, that’s what the people in my electorate, a conservative electorate, are telling me”, Quick told GLW. He has surveyed his electorate, Franklin in Tasmania, and found that the majority of respondents did not believe Iraq should be attacked.
Labor federal leader Simon Crean has previously indicated that the party leadership will not tolerate this. “At the end of the day, Labor will make a decision, and it will be a decision that will be required to be adhered to by the members of the Labor Party. That’s what people elect the Labor Party for”, he told Channel 10's Meet the Press on February 9.
Asked if the anti-war MPs would be prepared to cross the floor in the face of penalties, Quick explained that he believed Crean was unlikely to follow through on these comments. “There’s a huge groundswell after the marches on the weekend [February 14-16]”, he said. “This is an enormous question now. Everyone knows that it is bigger than party politics.
“People are saying that politicians should have the guts to stand up. Not just Labor Party members, but Labor supporters, and even Liberal Party supporters. Fair dinkum, we are about to destroy a whole civilization. We can’t justify that.”
Crean is not just under pressure from within his own party. Unions WA and the Victorian branch of the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union have decided to call protests the day after any war on Iraq begins. To have unions taking industrial action to stop a war the ALP is supporting could be acutely embarrassing for the Labor leadership.
Crean told 2UE's John Laws on February 19: “There are people who take the view that there should be no war under any circumstances — I'm not in that cart. But I believe I'm in the second cart that says 'Do it through the United Nations', but, importantly, the United Nations is the vehicle by which we can achieve a peaceful outcome. John Howard is signed up to the cart as part of the 'coalition of the willing' that says, ‘Regardless of what the United Nations does, we're going to war'.”
Crean and the rest of the ALP leadership have also been under pressure from pro-war supporters. CreanÂ’s recent spat with US Ambassador Tom Schieffer, while handled very crudely by Schieffer, indicates the unease with which many in the establishment would greet an ALP decision not to support a war on Iraq. Crean is aware that most of the ALPÂ’s big business mates support the US conquest of Iraq and its lucrative oil fields.
Nevertheless, it is clear that Crean is being rattled by the anti-war sentiment, especially since the big weekend of protests. Obviously shocked by the size of the February 14 Melbourne protest, Crean wasted no time on the following morning telling the press that he “welcomed the rallies”, which would demonstrate people’s support for “peaceful disarmament through the United Nations process”.
CreanÂ’s main problem was that the protesters do not support the ALPÂ’s position. The big majority donÂ’t want a war, period.
Crean found this out to his discomfort when he barged his way onto the platform of the Brisbane peace protest on February 16 and attempted to justify the ALP position of calling for a second UN Security Council resolution, which is what the warmongers in Washington want to give a UN fig-leaf to their imperial aggression. As Crean struggled to reply to hecklers in the crowd, the cries of “No war” led him to make an early exit from the platform.
Unsurprisingly, a Newspoll published on February 18 shows CreanÂ’s popularity, like that of the prime ministerÂ’s, has fallen.
One of the most outspoken anti-war MPs has been Carmen Lawrence, the member for Fremantle who resigned from the shadow ministry late last year after the release of the ALPÂ’s appalling refugee policy.
Lawrence has been speaking at rallies and public meetings across Australia in favour of refugees’ rights and opposing any war on Iraq. At one such meeting, in Canberra on February 13, she bluntly disagreed with ALP policy: “In my opinion, it doesn’t matter if the UN is arm-twisted into a war with Iraq. It’s still immoral.”
Lawrence also told the meeting that she was hopeful about a change in ALP policy, if it came to a UN-endorsed war. “The real test is in the party room. I am not convinced that the ALP will say okay [to a UN-supported attack].”
A more cautious critic is right-wing ALP heavyweight Laurie Brereton, who spoke at the Sydney February 16 protest. Describing war on Iraq as the “most horrific of prospects”, Brereton added that it will “indelibly stain our nation’s reputation” and “incite more violence”.
Stopping short of directly criticising ALP policy on a UN-endorsed war, he finished his speech with an oblique reference to US bullying of the UN: “Let the weapons inspectors do their jobs, let the UN show the way forward, let the UN find the peaceful solution. And let it do so without intimidation from those determined to undertake this war.”
The outright opposition to a war taken by Lawrence and Quick reflect the deep disquiet within the ALP at Crean's stance of supporting a UN-approved US-led invasion of Iraq. After Labor's betrayal of the refugees' rights movement, support for carpet bombing of Baghdad may just be, for hundreds of ALP members and supporters, the last straw.
From Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly, February 26, 2003.
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