Write on
CEPU elections
I am writing in regard to a few of the points raised by W.E. (Bill) Game in a letter in GLW #201.
In thinking back over the WA CEPU election campaign, and reading the article by fellow CEPU member Michael Bramwell (GLW #198), I remain puzzled as to what has threatened GLW's credibility and cast doubt on mine.
Bill is correct to state that the individuals on his team have had a good track record in the Union and progressive movements, and that their activities have been reported in past issues of GLW. However, it should also be stated that individuals on the team I supported have a similar record, and also featured in articles in this paper.
The fact that all these individuals ran in the elections as two opposing teams reflects real differences and divisions in the union. People from both sides discussed their concerns with me, and I decided who to support on the basis of these discussions. How the Union can best fight Government and employer attacks on workers, and counter the divisive and negative effects of the push for workplace agreements and enterprise bargaining were things of concern to me.
I felt that the George, Wood and Richards team raised these issues most openly. In my opinion Bill's team did not raise the issues as openly and seemed to focus more on individual candidates rather than the issues they stood for.
As far as the "principle ... of both sides having a fair go" is concerned, was it in operation when Bill's team sneaked an advertisement into a WA TLC-sponsored supplement in a local newspaper that distributes thousands of copies free in Perth's southern suburbs? The TLC didn't even know of that until after the event, never mind ourselves.
I understand that several WA unions have expressed their concern at an election advertisement appearing in a TLC broadsheet.
Bill and several others on his team have been reading and supporting Â鶹´«Ã½ for some years, and could surely have submitted a report in the way Michael Bramwell did — a summary of election material.
Bill seems to be of the opinion that I have damaged my credibility. I feel that in the course of the election he has also damaged his.However, what we all think of each other is far less important than the situation facing workers in WA. This election is over and members of both teams have been elected to key positions on the union's State Council. Our priority now is to work as a responsible and accountable leadership.
Anthony Benbow
Mt Lawley WA
Cuba
I very much enjoyed reading the exchange between John Smith and Allen Myers on Cuba, in particular on the nature of the economic reforms being carried out.
In particular, I appreciated it because there is still an enormous amount of ignorance on the Australian left about the real situation in Cuba.
A case in point was one attitude displayed at a recent social justice forum at Melbourne University. One speaker, a National Committee member of the International Socialist Organisation, described Cuba as "hell". After the meeting, when questioned, he went on to say "if the Americans got in there and invested, it'd probably be better for the people". "There's no revolution left there to defend", he went on to say.
Cuba is under attack from the most powerful nation on earth, the United States, which constantly seeks to spread all sorts of lies about "totalitarianism" as justification for these attacks. Faced with this, one bunch of comfortable leftists in the first world publicly attack not the US, but Cuba itself. Further, they go so far as to solidarise with the aggressor.
Cuba is by no means a "workers' paradise", but how could we expect a poor third world country under blockade to be? But to go from that to say it's "hell" seems to me just a cowardly way of getting out of the tough job of building solidarity.
And if free education, free health care and universal access to work, shelter and food is hell, then send me there!
By all means, Â鶹´«Ã½, continue to publish the truth about Cuba.
Sean Healy
Richmond, Vic
Elections
Issue 200 was well up to your usual standard. Congratulations, and on to #500.
I was particularly interested in Gerry Harant's "The Bastards have somewhere to go". A long-time friend is also embroiled in the same legal hoo ha over advice to voters as Albert Langer.
For the last couple of elections I have used limited preferences on the Senate ballot. However, I used "first past the post" in marking my Reps ballot. This was because I understood (apparently wrongly, according to Gerry — please confirm) that you can't use limited preferences for the Reps.
Despite the legal difficulties, it would still be great if Gerry's advice could be given, with specific reference to each electorate, during elections. If Albert Langer's High Court challenge turns out the right way, it would presumably overturn the "Not to be used as a strategy" clause in the Act, because the clause would become unenforceable.
Granted, you need Electoral Commission permission for How to Vote cards. However, is it nonetheless possible to take a leaf from the Democrats? Instead of a 2-sided "How to vote Dem/Lab" and "How to vote Dem/Lib" card, could we not have a two-sided "How to vote us/Lab" and "How to vote for us and keep Laboral out" card? The latter would go well with a slogan such as "You can't keep the bastards honest, but you can kick them out".
It would be worth exploring mutual exchanges of preferences with other Left/progressive/Green parties in various electorates, where each agrees to a double-sided HTV card which on one side limits preferences to only those parties.
If that type of HTV card becomes legal, we would need a very strong campaign starting from that moment, to get the idea over to all the disenchanted voters that they need not remain that way.
Ron Guignard
Stepney SA
Nuclear tests
The debate on testing nuclear weapons has been side-tracked into an argument about whether underground testing is releasing dangerous radioactivity into the adjacent above-ground environment, including the sea.
That is not the point. Nor is it relevant that France intends testing in the Pacific and China is testing in China.
What is relevant is that dangerous radioactivity will be released when these weapons are used in war. That was demonstrated at Nagasaki and Hiroshima with results that should never be repeated.
If there is no intention of using them why bother to test them?
That is where the emphasis of protest should be placed, on preventing testing, on preventing proliferation, on reduction and finally, abolition, of nuclear weapons' stocks world-wide.Col Friel
Alawa NT
ISO
I write to voice criticism over a recent Â鶹´«Ã½ article covering expulsion within the ISO.
Your article talked of "purges" and a lack of consultation in the ISO. The article referred to a lack of democracy within the organisation. Whilst I agree that significant issues of organisation on the left are worth news coverage I think you sensationalised the coverage.
Firstly, expulsions are necessary within political party activity to define leadership and activity. Lack of clarity equals lack of strength. Your article should have stuck to the word expulsions. "Purges" in the 20th century means far more. It means political persecution eg Stalin's murder of the Bolsheviks, notably Trotsky and Siberian death camps, and Pol Pot's murderous Cambodia regime. It was especially sensationalist, even "a good kick when he's down", to use "ISO Purges" as your leader on the contents page.
If anything in hindsight, the expulsions from the ISO have produced a positive benefit. Many comrades who were expelled have formed a group called Socialist Action, and others have voluntarily left the ISO to join this group.
Who knows. Perhaps time will define both the ISO and Socialist Action to a point where both will rejoin. Or perhaps both will act towards socialism, Perhaps even, the sectarianism of the left may disappear, and just as the ISO dropped its "seeing red" down which bagged the left 5 years ago, perhaps Â鶹´«Ã½ may play a more constructive role.
John Morris
ISO Wollongong