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Write on: letters to the editorNUS and ISO
Colm Bryce (ISO Chippendale) was correct that he has more in common with NUS bureaucrats than with Resistance and the DSP (GLW #203). In Brisbane the ISO have entered an alliance with the ALP left in the Free Education Network meetings which has served the ALP more than it has the fight for free education.
Days before the March 23 National Day of Action the ISO aligned with the ALP to roll a free education activist from the University of Queensland and replace her with an NUS representative as chair of the rally. Days before the May 3 National Day of Action the ISO in alliance with the ALP rolled an international guest speaker who had been invited from the largest trade union federation in the Philippines off the platform so that it could focus more on "Australian" issues. Days before the August 24 National Day of action the ISO aligned with the ALP to roll a free education activist from QUT off the platform to replace him with an NUS representative.
The result was that the political platform of all three rallies was dominated by members of the ALP. It was 100% dominated by people who supported NUS.
Contrary to Bryce's assertion, Resistance's criticisms of NUS do not rest on a few "late posters", but on the role NUS has played in demobilising the student movement. During the last NDA, NUS Queensland attempted to hold a forum at QUT with the state education minister at the same time as the rally to discourage students from attending. During the March 23 NDA NUS representatives went to the media claiming that the rally had been hijacked by socialists when students democratically decided to hold a sit-in in the Mall. In Brisbane we would have been pleased to receive late posters publicising the date of the most recent NDA; as it is we did not receive any posters at all.
Far from challenging the leadership of reformists, the ISO has tried to hand the leadership of the free education movement on a platter to the ALP.
Zanny Begg
Brisbane Resistance
[Edited for length.]
Sectarian hypocrisy
ISO member Colm Bryce (GLW #203) bemoans "the sectarian DSP/Resistance approach to the NUS affiliation campaigns in Canberra." This hypocrisy, the ISO's untenable position on NUS and a number of other issues are why I left that organisation.
I say hypocrisy because of the ISO's sectarianism on the No Fees issue. At the No Fees Conference in Melbourne in December 1994, the ISO used their numbers at a pre-conference organisational meeting to ban a Resistance member from the ANU No Fees Campaign from speaking at the conference and also attempted to silence the speaker from the Canberra trade unions (a DSP member).
During the NUS referendum at ANU, the ISO accused people who voted against affiliation of siding with the Liberals. Such simplistic nonsense is certainly not why I, or other people I've spoken with who were active in the No Fees Campaign, voted No. Rather we see no point in affiliating with an organisation that has always been dominated by the ALP and which does not support student activism — as they demonstrated by their lack of support for the ANU occupation.
As for "state capitalism," it is my experience that such issues are irrelevant to the ISO. This is hardly surprising from an organisation whose recruitment techniques revolve around getting people to sign a red card at demos, meetings, etc., on the simplistic premise that the ISO is a revolutionary organisation of "workers" fighting the "bosses" and the capitalist system.
I found myself a delegate at the last ISO National Conference simply because I would go! On the bus to Sydney it became obvious that not all delegates had read or understood the internal documents. And so the scene was set for a conference that fudged any discussion or analysis of the Organisation, Australia, the world, socialism, etc., and merely passed resolutions that amounted to nothing more than (bad) organisational strategies.
Martin Iltis
Canberra
[Edited for length.]
No surprise to some
As an ETU member and Shop Steward of many years I read with interest Dave Mizon's report on the recent Victorian Branch ETU election (GLW #201). It was stated that the rank and file will feel that their interests are not being represented so long as union leaderships are straitjacketed by the accord and loyalty to the ALP (Point taken!).
However the reason the Recharge Team was formed and have now been elected by the rank and file to office can be summed up by the words — the incumbents lost the plot. The union had engaged its resources in many a divers field ranging from inter-ALP factional deal-broker to employer competing in the private sector. Those issues of major concern to the membership including the introduction and spread of "S" class permits to non-electrically trained people were tackled in a piecemeal approach, rarely co-ordinating combined efforts to achieve the goal.
The ETU has an on-going commitment to involve itself in issues that threaten all working men and women in the broadest sense; this notwithstanding, the effective running of the union, if not its survival, will depend upon a greater relevance to the workforce it represents.
Damien Riggs
Melbourne
State capitalism
In an effort at a "stocktake" of the British SWP, Roger Clarke (GLW #203) endorses a key aspect of the "IS-SWP tradition": sect-building. While the Alliance for Workers Liberty's symposium on the SWP provides interesting "dirt", it offers little analysis of the development of the SWP, attributing its political degeneration to the personalities of Tony Cliff et al.
Any attempt to discuss the traditions, mistakes and lessons of the Trotskyist and anti-Stalinist left should start with a genuine dialogue between its participants. The only "solution" that Workers Liberty offers ex-SWP members is to join another "vanguard" sect in the Cliff/Healy/Robertson tradition.
Clarke is in a certain sense correct that the theory of state capitalism is not the key problem underlying the current IS/SWP splits, divisions and expulsions. Cliff's theory is of no relevance to IS members in their day to day work (let alone anyone else). However, it was the state capitalist shibboleth that set the SWP a world apart from the rest of the left (and political reality).
The quest began to establish SWP missions outside Britain. This evangelical framework still governs the ISO leadership's political outlook. Unfortunately, the International Socialists' "internationalism" amounts to little other than the ability to shout "Socialist Worker" in try-hard cockney accents. We need to dump the whole sectarian mentality that has characterised the IS/SWP tradition. Quibbling over the finer details of state capitalist theory won't achieve that.
Andrew Watson
Brisbane
[Edited for length.]