Sectarians help Howard
By Dick Nichols
Over the recent round of CPSU mass meetings, militant opposition to the losing approach of the Wendy Caird leadership would have acquired more authority in the minds of disillusioned and angry CPSU members if the left had been united behind single resolutions.
This has been the case for all left militants (politically aligned or not) with the exception of International Socialist Organisation supporters in the CPSU. The latter's radical posturing has supplied the Caird leadership with heaven-sent opportunities to divide, confuse and demoralise mass meetings.
The method of the ISO is to participate in the opposition purely and simply with a perspective of building their own organisation. The idea that the struggle against Howard (like any struggle) has its own needs, and that it's the duty of all sincere and serious militants to strive to uncover these and fight together for them, is a sealed book to the ISO leaders.
With them, the name of the game is to raise demands and slogans that will put the ISO on show as the most "radical" of the forces in the field — regardless of what impact this has on the willingness of workers to struggle and the hold of the Caird leadership. This method is just what the term "sectarianism" means.
In the early 1990s, ISO tomfoolery helped the Caird leadership to overcome a majority opposition in the union to agency bargaining. As if to show that they've learned nothing from such experiences, at the last round of CPSU mass meetings (on August 23), the ISO again presented their own separate motion (for a 48-hour strike). And this after the ISO had participated in the elaboration of the CPSU National Challenge motion (calling for the CPSU to strike along with students on August 29) and given no sign of their intention to move a separate motion.
This deception produced the following very instructive result:
In Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra, after the official motions had been passed, the ISO motion was selected for debate first. In Melbourne and Canberra, ISO supporters amended their 48-hour strike call in different ways in mid-debate!
Running three different motions in three different states, the ISO achieved the following result: overwhelming loss in Canberra and Sydney and adoption (in the very diluted form of a call on the Victorian state executive) in Melbourne. The National Challenge motion, shoved by the chair to the very end of dwindling, flat meetings, lost in all three centres.
By contrast, at the Brisbane mass meeting ISO supporters were prevailed upon not to put their motion and to support the National Challenge motion (which had already been supported by Queensland CPSU leader Paul Murdoch). The result was overwhelming support (308-16) for the National Challenge proposal of a joint stoppage of public servants and students — a clear indication of what could have been achieved nationally with a single united left position.
With "friends" like these...