BY
ALISON DELLIT
The February 14-16 world-wide peace protests starkly exposed the
gulf between the warmongering governments and media of Australia, the United
States and Britain on the one hand, and the populations of those countries
on the other.
In Australia, this deep divide is tearing into the Australian Labor
Party. While the party leadership maintains that the ALP would support
a UN Security Council-endorsed war on Iraq, federal MP Harry Quick told
a February 19 Green Left Weekly public forum in Sydney that at least
16 of his colleagues, from different Labor factions, will cross the floor
rather than vote for any war on Iraq.
Fifteen federal ALP MPs recently signed a statement opposing any war
on Iraq, whether UN-endorsed or not. They included Quick, Carmen Lawrence,
Nick Bolkus and Jennie George. Several Labor Party branches have also adopted
this position.
“`No war, no way’, that’s what the people in my electorate, a conservative
electorate, are telling me”, Quick told GLW. He has surveyed his
electorate, Franklin in Tasmania, and found that the majority of respondents
did not believe Iraq should be attacked.
Labor federal leader Simon Crean has previously indicated that the party
leadership will not tolerate this. “At the end of the day, Labor will make
a decision, and it will be a decision that will be required to be adhered
to by the members of the Labor Party. That’s what people elect the Labor
Party for”, he told Channel 10's Meet the Press on February 9.
Asked if the anti-war MPs would be prepared to cross the floor in the
face of penalties, Quick explained that he believed Crean was unlikely
to follow through on these comments. “There’s a huge groundswell after
the marches on the weekend [February 14-16]”, he said. “This is an enormous
question now. Everyone knows that it is bigger than party politics.
“People are saying that politicians should have the guts to stand up.
Not just Labor Party members, but Labor supporters, and even Liberal Party
supporters. Fair dinkum, we are about to destroy a whole civilization.
We can’t justify that.”
Crean is not just under pressure from within his own party. Unions WA
and the Victorian branch of the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy
Union have decided to call protests the day after any war on Iraq begins.
To have unions taking industrial action to stop a war the ALP is supporting
could be acutely embarrassing for the Labor leadership.
Crean told 2UE's John Laws on February 19: “There are people who take
the view that there should be no war under any circumstances — I'm not
in that cart. But I believe I'm in the second cart that says `Do it through
the United Nations', but, importantly, the United Nations is the vehicle
by which we can achieve a peaceful outcome. John Howard is signed up to
the cart as part of the `coalition of the willing' that says, ‘Regardless
of what the United Nations does, we're going to war'.”
Crean and the rest of the ALP leadership have also been under pressure
from pro-war supporters. Crean’s recent spat with US Ambassador Tom Schieffer,
while handled very crudely by Schieffer, indicates the unease with which
many in the establishment would greet an ALP decision not to support a
war on Iraq. Crean is aware that most of the ALP’s big business mates support
the US conquest of Iraq and its lucrative oil fields.
Nevertheless, it is clear that Crean is being rattled by the anti-war
sentiment, especially since the big weekend of protests. Obviously shocked
by the size of the February 14 Melbourne protest, Crean wasted no time
on the following morning telling the press that he “welcomed the rallies”,
which would demonstrate people’s support for “peaceful disarmament through
the United Nations process”.
Crean’s main problem was that the protesters do not support the ALP’s
position. The big majority don’t want a war, period.
Crean found this out to his discomfort when he barged his way onto the
platform of the Brisbane peace protest on February 16 and attempted to
justify the ALP position of calling for a second UN Security Council resolution,
which is what the warmongers in Washington want to give a UN fig-leaf to
their imperial aggression. As Crean struggled to reply to hecklers in the
crowd, the cries of “No war” led him to make an early exit from the platform.
Unsurprisingly, a Newspoll published on February 18 shows Crean’s popularity,
like that of the prime minister’s, has fallen.
One of the most outspoken anti-war MPs has been Carmen Lawrence, the
member for Fremantle who resigned from the shadow ministry late last year
after the release of the ALP’s appalling refugee policy.
Lawrence has been speaking at rallies and public meetings across Australia
in favour of refugees’ rights and opposing any war on Iraq. At one such
meeting, in Canberra on February 13, she bluntly disagreed with ALP policy:
“In my opinion, it doesn’t matter if the UN is arm-twisted into a war with
Iraq. It’s still immoral.”
Lawrence also told the meeting that she was hopeful about a change in
ALP policy, if it came to a UN-endorsed war. “The real test is in the party
room. I am not convinced that the ALP will say okay [to a UN-supported
attack].”
A more cautious critic is right-wing ALP heavyweight Laurie Brereton,
who spoke at the Sydney February 16 protest. Describing war on Iraq as
the “most horrific of prospects”, Brereton added that it will “indelibly
stain our nation’s reputation” and “incite more violence”.
Stopping short of directly criticising ALP policy on a UN-endorsed war,
he finished his speech with an oblique reference to US bullying of the
UN: “Let the weapons inspectors do their jobs, let the UN show the way
forward, let the UN find the peaceful solution. And let it do so without
intimidation from those determined to undertake this war.”
The outright opposition to a war taken by Lawrence and Quick reflect
the deep disquiet within the ALP at Crean's stance of supporting a UN-approved
US-led invasion of Iraq. After Labor's betrayal of the refugees' rights
movement, support for carpet bombing of Baghdad may just be, for hundreds
of ALP members and supporters, the last straw.
From Green Left Weekly, February 26, 2003.
Visit the Green Left Weekly
home page.
