By John Baker The 1980s were a time of change and a reaching out for unity on the Australian Left. This often led to strange and tortured alliances and inevitably acrimonious separations, but it also held out great hopes for a resurgence. The period offered the greatest, possibly the last, opportunity for the forces of the left to build a party and movement that could seriously challenge the hegemony of the two-party system in Australian politics. This ferment came about because of the serious decline in the strength and membership of the Communist Party of Australia; the vacuum created on the left by the lurch to the right by the Hawke Labor government; and the seemingly positive developments in the Soviet Union, through glasnost and perestroika. Following the 1975 electoral rebuff to the Whitlam government and the entrenching of the Fraser Liberal government, the CPA began to review what came to be seen as its sectarian opposition to a Labor government that, in hindsight, was progressive and reformist. During the Fraser years, the CPA moved closer to the left and centre of the ALP, producing a series of booklets analysing the social and economic conditions of working people under Fraser. These booklets, such as Australia Uprooted, came with endorsements by ACTU, ALP and CPA leaders, and reflected the moves by the CPA to collaborate with the ALP against Frasers wage freeze and attacks on Medicare. The CPAs move towards "pluralism" required the eradication of any remaining vestiges of a "vanguardist" party seeking to establish a "dictatorship of the proletariat". It then required the remaining concept of a Marxist party to give way to one that was based as much on the demands of the new social movements, especially the women's and environmental movements, as one informed by any Marxist analysis of economic relations.
Divisions
This shift took place gradually and not without internal dispute. A group formed around Bernie Taft in Melbourne led the charge for a broad alliance with the ALP. The Aarons group, based around the Aarons family in Sydney, sought greater confrontation with the ALP and more unity with the other left parties, such as the Trotskyists, and with trade union militants and other social activists. Taft and Sendy from Melbourne were excited by the development of Euro-Communism and also wished to re-establish links with the Soviet bloc, soured since the CPA's rejection of Soviet intervention in Czechoslovakia in 1968. Accordingly, the "Taftites" opposed the expulsion of the Clancy group over its pro-Soviet stance. Initially the Aarons group used its numbers ruthlessly to crush the Taftites, leaving them just one Victorian on the National Executive after the CPA's 1974 congress. But by 1979, the Aarons leadership had moved to soften its position and, in a gesture of unity, established two national secretary positions, enabling each of the groups to share power to some extent. At the 1982 congress, the party moved to open up a "prospects debate" on the future of socialism in Australia and directions for the party, prompted by the failure of the Euro-Communist experiments in France, Italy and Spain and the continuing decline in CPA membership. The Taftites argued for the dissolution of the party and the setting up of a Socialist Forum, involving activists from the social movements, trade unions and ALP left, to prove a catalyst for political action and consciousness raising, and to influence ALP policies. The Aarons leadership argued for building a new broad left party of "radical reform". It hoped to involve non-aligned activists from the social movements and other left parties and groups. A third, initially less organised group, emerged arguing for a continued commitment to a socialist objective, based on a Marxist analysis of economic relations, while not ruling out a broadening out of the party as such — what Taft described as a "tighten up, toughen up" approach.
Accord
Meanwhile, the close ties between the ALP and the CPA at the trade union level had enabled Bob Hawke to secure a deal with the unions, known as the Prices and Wages Accord. The Accord was procured by Laurie Carmichael, the assistant national secretary of the Metalworkers Union and a prominent CPA figure. It sought to buy industrial peace by getting workers to agree to wage restraint in return for improvements in tax structures and in social welfare initiatives that would compensate for their wage losses. The 1984 congress of the CPA declared that the Accord must be judged on how it maintained and improved living standards and allowed for union intervention in the economy at all levels to stimulate employment, and how it mobilised and educated all union members to achieve these goals. Writing in
Arena in 1988, a prominent CPA figure, Adam Farrar, was to cite the failure of the Accord as one reason why the CPA was now able to engage in unity talks with parties to its left. Attempts to break out of the Accord by individual unions, such as the Food Preservers, the BLF and, later, the plumbers, were crushed with ACTU support. By the 1984 party congress, the Taftites decided that the prospects debate had dragged on long enough. They announced that they were leaving the party, taking seven of the eight State Executive members with them, virtually gutting the Victorian branch of the CPA. They went on to form the Socialist Forum they had been arguing for and, after beating off an attempt by Bill Hartley to proscribe membership of their forum by ALP members, they joined the ALP and, combining with the centre faction, forced Hartleys Socialist Left faction from power in Victoria.
Broad Left Conference
Against this background, in 1986 the CPA and a group of non-aligned people, including Ken McLeod (an activist from the anti-Vietnam War days), moved to convene the Broad Left Conference. This conference was to be presented with a charter, widely circulated beforehand, stating broad leftist principles for consideration as the basis for the eventual formation of a new party. It was to be addressed by leading ALP and CPA figures and other left academics and activists. To combat perceived weaknesses in the Broad Left Charter, a group of people from diverse backgrounds came together to draw up an alternative set of principles for the conference. This group consisted of left CPA members, called by now the Rank and File Group, Socialist Workers Party (SWP, later changed its name to Democratic Socialist Party), the Socialist Party of Australia, the Builders Labourers Federation, Bob Gould, Frank Hardy and others. Jim McIlroy (SWP), Bob Gould and myself drew up the alternative statement endorsed by this group. It was agreed that the group would seek to participate in, rather than intervene in or disrupt, the conference and that no partisan or ideological point scoring would be engaged in, nor was the debate to be hijacked or dominated by our group. The organisers decided to limit the number of SWP/Gould supporters to 50, which didn't augur well for the "broadness" aspect of the conference. Nonetheless, the group took its arguments to the floor of the conference's various sessions. On the major points, such as opposition to the Accord, opposition to the deregistration of the BLF and rejection of the right-wing policies of the Hawke government, the group won hands down. This was a serious setback for the leadership of the CPA and created a challenge that it eventually proved unable to meet. This was a time of great ferment. While the Broad Left Conference was being held, another conference of green and "alternative" activists was also being held to look at the formation of a new political grouping. The decade saw the emergence of the Rainbow Alliance; unity discussions between the CPA, SWP, SPA and Association for Communist Unity (Clancys group); the formation of the Nuclear Disarmament Party and involvement of the SWP; attempts to form Green parties, which included discussion with the Australian Democrats, the SWP and leading environmental organisations and individuals such as Bob Brown and Senator Jo Vallentine. Ex-ALP figures such as Senator George Georges, Bill Hartley and George Petersen attempted to form new groups/parties. The International Socialists split into two groups (as they have again recently), as the SPA had earlier; and a Green Labor group was set up by Dr Helen Caldicott. Everyone was aware of the vacuum on the left created by Hawke's lurch to the right and was seeking to use the opportunity to develop an alternative that would make Labor the natural party of the right and marginalise the Liberal Party in the process.
Lack of democracy
These projects all foundered ultimately because of a lack of commitment to democratic principles by the key organisers, leading to proscription of members of political parties or particular parties. A willingness to bury past differences and to debate existing differences and to put them to the test of a vote amongst all those willing to take part was just not to found. There was always a fear of stacking, never a preparedness to accept a political defeat as a normal part of the political process. This happened in the NDP debacle with the SWP, when Peter Garrett stagged a walkout after losing a vote on the floor of his conference! The Greens people, particularly the leading figures of the mainstream environmental organisations, and Bob Browns people all feared the idea of open voting on issues. They were too used to operating as an elite core, not subject to broad democratic control in their day to day operations, and were a little lost in a political arena. Within the CPA, the Rank and File Group was kept in a marginal position, just as the Taft group had been years earlier, by the use of a collegiate voting system that delivered the lions share of positions to the dominant group. Following the Broad Left Conference, the SWP threw its weight behind the new left party project. This sounded warning bells for many in the CPA who had locked horns with the SWP in various forums over the years. They were widely regarded as "Trotskyist entrists" with opportunist motives. Having worked with key SWP people on the Broad Left Conference and gotten to know and warmly regard the integrity of several of their members, I took the view that their involvement was positive as they were a vigorous, reasonably large, well-resourced group with strong links amongst young people, especially through Resistance. Also, their involvement would strengthen the position of the Rank and File Group, as we shared similar political positions, particularly on the socialist objective. The Rank and File group was largely Sydney based, so at this time I travelled to Melbourne and Adelaide to speak with small groups of CPA supporters to urge them to view the SWP's involvement as positive and to work with them to try to break down sectarianism within the CPA. In 1987, SWP national secretary Jim Percy wrote a booklet,
What Politics for a new Party?, in which he argued strongly for the SWPs inclusion in the new party process, pointing out the partys new flexibility since the dropping of its formal Trotskyist position, and its experience in building a new political party over the past 20 years. He declared: "... a project that attempts to exclude part of the constituency is very unlikely to succeed. No one will ever build a successful party that attempts to be simply a collection of compatible souls."
Melbourne conference
Within a short time, SWP people were working alongside the CPA and non-aligned members of the Charter Groups that had sprung up all around the country. At the regional level, things were running smoothly as the project geared up for a major conference to be held in November '87 in Melbourne. This conference was intended to adopt a Statement of Intent and declare the aim of forming a new party of the left in 1988. Towards this end, a drafting committee of two CPA, two SWP and one non-aligned representatives drew up a draft statement and circulated it to the locality groups for feedback and consideration at the conference. This was when things started to go wrong. Ken McLeods independents decided that they were so unhappy with the statement that they couldn't amend it but instead drew up another. They did this without telling the SWP, which thought it was going to Melbourne with an agreed position. It came as a shock at the conference when Ken McLeod introduced a new statement, insisting that it receive equal status with the original, and received support from the CPA. Just prior to the conference the National Executive of the CPA had met to declare its intention to support a declaration of intent setting out a list of conditions, tasks and objectives to be worked around before a new party could be formed. These conditions were, of course, those embodied in the McLeod statement. The SWP smelled a rat. It decided to stick with the original statement, and a bun fight ensued. The SWP members were outnumbered, with only a few CPA and non-aligned supporting the original statement. Later, they were charged with "bloc voting", yet the CPA and McLeod group also voted as a bloc. Despite the CPA's role in drawing up the original statement, it left the SWP "holding the baby". Two CPA delegates who did vote with the SWP were shown a copy of the National Executive's decision, with the clear implication that they should be following party policy. One member, then secretary of the Canberra branch of the CPA, later resigned in disgust. His letter of resignation stated: "I am unable to remain in a party when its leading representatives engage in gross dishonesty, sectarianism and attempted sabotage as displayed at the new party conference". The conference failed to get the 2/3 majority required to endorse either statement of intent, and most delegates left feeling frustrated and demoralised. The McLeod group used it as an excuse to refuse to work with the SWP further and was soon joined by the CPA National Committee (surprise, surprise!) in this resolve. Jim Percy later said to me that perhaps they should have supported the new amended document, but that they felt so betrayed and deceived at the time that they couldn't bring themselves to do it. This spelled the end for the whole new party project.
Aftermath
In the wake of the conference, I wrote a paper entitled "Who are the real wreckers?", in which I attacked the McLeod and CPA leadership, concluding with the following statement: "A mature and realistic assessment would recognise the inevitability of blocks forming and accept that established parties are not going to throw away their traditions, assets and membership lightly. Indeed, a responsible leadership, elected democratically, has an obligation to its members to securely safeguard its position until it is fully sure of its new 'habitat' ... one can only wonder at the degree of commitment to broad-based consultation and decision making by a group of people who preach pluralism, yet practice proscription; who demand democracy, yet deliver deception on a grand scale." The opportunity was now beginning to close. The challenge for the leadership of the CPA, in particular, proved too great — the need to truly open up to broad forces, to their left as well as their right, and to be able to accept possible defeats along the way and to bury past differences and prejudices: in short, to seize the moment. Very soon that moment was to pass. The Gorbachev experiment had failed, leaving a devastating collapse of "socialism" and peoples faith in its ability to provide the answers to the perennial quest for human liberation, prosperity and social justice. Following the fiasco of Melbourne, the CPA began to pin some hopes on discussions it had been having with the Association for Communist Unity (ACU), which had split from the SPA over differences around the Accord. This alienated the McLeod group — if they were uncomfortable with the reconstructed "Trots" of the SWP, they were certainly going to feel uneasy with the un-reconstructed "Stalinists" of the ACU! Another strange alliance began to emerge between the SWP and the SPA. Talks towards unity were held. The president of the SPA, Jack McPhillips, was particularly keen and was attracted by the youthful enthusiasm that the SWP promised to inject into a stagnating and aging SPA membership. In turn, the SPA could offer the SWP increased resources, membership, experience and, crucially at a time when the Soviet bloc was improving its image in the west, close ties with Eastern Europe. Unfortunately, an SPA faction, centred on Peter Symon and Eddie Clyne in Sydney, opposed the merger and worked effectively behind the scenes to dampen the enthusiasm of the McPhillips group; it eventually succeeded in aborting this project too. Things didn't fare any better for the CPA, with the new party project never bearing fruit and when the Communist Party finally dissolved in 1991, it was not to make way for the Broad Left Party, but for a small organisation of left leaning individuals still loyal to the Aarons group and the memories of all the positive things that the CPA had achieved in its long years of activism, as the mainstream of the left in Australian politics. All that remains now is a group called Left Connections and a Search Foundation to "hold the fort" and oversee the remaining assets of "the party".