By Scott MacWilliam
The need to rewrite the history of the last 10 years is becoming ever
more urgent for Â鶹´«Ã½ of the Australian trade union movement. The need increasingly is being expressed in printed versions of "What's Wrong with the Accord".
Two years after a "right-wing" critique of the Accord appeared, a "left-wing" one is about to be published, written by six authors (Meg Smith, Peter Ewer, Chris Lloyd, John Rainford, Steve Rix and Ian Hampson), titled Surviving the Accord: From Restraint to Renewal.
So far, the most prominent critics are people of a generation who can see themselves in the future as having prominent and important roles in the ALP and unions. The "left" objections have been summarised recently in the Australian Left Review (No. 134, November) in an interview with six authors, as well as 16 months ago in another interview with Lloyd (ALR 119, July 1990).
Their critique will let the authors, and others like them, disembark from the leaking Social Democratic ship but be in position to jump back on board if the vessel is patched so that it can stay afloat. Accordism in general is not to be abandoned. As Lloyd put it in the most recent interview, "I'm not opposed to an Accord process, but it's got to change".
Presumably this means that the current critics are not opposed to what was a central feature of the Accord, specifically the politics of defeating labour movement opponents. Given the direction the nouvelle critics want to move politically, it is easy to understand why they do not draw attention to this feature.
It needs to be recalled, for those who want mere change of the Accord, that it had three principal pillars. The pillars were substantial real wage cuts, increased profits and a reduction in labour militancy. The Accord was formulated at the time of another major international recession, when the ruling class and its allies in Australia were in disarray. A Social Democratic response was framed in this country, at a time when radical neo-liberal regimes were in power elsewhere.
In all stages of the "process", blocking opposition to the Accord within the labour movement has been central to the ALP-ACTU alliance. The revisionist history does not wish to draw attention to this and so says nothing about how their opponents were crushed.
Instead there is pretence that the "would-be's" are now in the vanguard of an almost non-existent, if growing, opposition. Ewer, for instance, expresses dissatisfaction (ALR No. 134) with the fact that "there is a very pervasive orthodoxy inside the union movement which is stultifying debate". Lloyd also comments unfavourably on the weakness of the current protests against the Accord.
Neither they nor ALR interviewer Clare Curran ask why there is such a condition. Thus a deep silence about how the orthodoxy was entral feature of the "left" revisionist history. Specifically, the history is reconstructed without any reference to the verbal abuse, censorship, scheming and thuggery exercised since the early 1980s against opponents.
Why is it important to pretend that there has been no continuing opposition to the Accord, and that the nouvelle critics are path-breakers? Apart from whatever personal kudos there might be for being in the vanguard, there is a more important reason than simply the desire to be able to say "We were first". The reason is that throughout the last decade there has been a significant section of the labour movement which has continued to retain a deep-seated class antagonism to capitalism and Accordism.
Since the left "would-be's" are now advocating "a more grassroots approach towards how the labour movement organises", their project will inevitably mean trying to forge links with the parts of the working class where the antagonism remains deepest. It will be easier to develop such links if a revisionist history of the Accord can be constructed which reads as if once upon a time there was complete agreement on the necessity for an ALP-ACTU alliance. Such a history will make it possible to say, simply: "Sorry, comrades, we are guilty only of naivety: our hearts were in the proper place, but we did not count on the duplicity of the capitalists, We really are with you. Believe in us this time."
While it is important that the lessons of the past be drawn from the labour movement, it is definitely time to be wary of the increasing number of people who are seeking to reconstruct the Accord, in history and political practice.
Scott MacWilliam is a lecturer in the School of Social Sciences at Curtin University.