Militant's anti-racist student 'united' front

Militant's anti-racist student 'united' front

Comment by Kerryn Williams
and Jorge Jorquera

MELBOURNE — The recent growth in anti-racist organisation among high school students has been set back here by the sectarian political intervention of the Militant group. Their attempted sabotage of the August 28 national high school walkout has stalled the development of a united high school anti-racist movement.

According to Militant, it has sought to promote a "broadly based anti-racist student campaign". However, the organisation Students Against Racism (SAR), which Militant formed, includes only the conservative wing of the movement. It consciously refuses to build a broad anti-racist student movement.

From the outset, Militant has argued against more student mobilisations. It's priority is "educational" activity. Militant consistently argues that large mobilisations will alienate conservative students.

Militant and SAR reinforce this conservatism by refusing to support actions that can potentially draw thousands of high school students into the anti-racist struggle. The result is that SAR has become a right-wing "ideas" group.

To ensure that a conservative political agenda prevails, Militant has established a thoroughly bureaucratic and centralised organisational structure for SAR. The most recent addition to the SAR constitution is the right of the SAR meeting chairperson to decide whether new people attending meetings can be SAR members.

This, and other bureaucratic clauses, are being defended on the basis of the group's need to maintain its "independence". Instead, it serves to block the inclusion and involvement of large numbers of high school students wishing to actively fight racism.

The course pursued by Militant has been justified in the name of the "united front". In fact, it resembles old-fashioned "popular front" politics of the Stalinist left — tone down the radicalism and exclude working-class political demands so as not to "frighten" away conservative elements.

[Kerryn Williams is Melbourne Resistance organiser. Jorge Jorquera is Melbourne branch secretary of the Democratic Socialist Party.]

From GLW issue 332