M1 Canberra to blockade Mining Industry House

BY STUART MUNCKTON

CANBERRA — After much debate over some months, the M1 Alliance here has decided to organise a peaceful blockade outside Mining Industry House, rather than join the blockade at the Sydney stock exchange.

The decision was taken by a March 3 teach-in, "People and Planet", held at the Australian National University. More than 55 people attended the teach-in, including activists from the Democratic Socialist Party and Resistance, the International Socialist Organisation, the ANU ALP Left Club, Love and Rage, community radio station 2XX and elsewhere.

In the first panel, "Who will control the 21st century?", Deb Foskey from World Trade Organisation Watch talked about the four M's — the market, the media, the military and the masses — while DSP national secretary John Percy concluded that, ultimately, the choice was between socialism or barbarism.

The final session, to decide the long-delayed issue of what M1 action would be taken by the group, provoked considerable debate, before a narrow 23:21 majority voted in favour of a Canberra action.

The DSP's James Vassilopoulos argued in favour of joining the Sydney blockade, arguing it would be inspiring for Canberrans to join the thousands in Sydney, while the ISO's Ben Halliday said Mining Industry House was a good local Canberra target whose members included BHP and Rio Tinto, and that activists could get people to come on the basis of mining companies' destruction of the environment, attacks on Aboriginal people, and exploitation of workers.

At one stage it seemed that M1 Canberra Alliance could split down the middle, with an action in Canberra and others organising people to go up to Sydney, but Vassilopoulos stepped in to say that those who had lost the vote were accountable to the movement, would respect the rights of the majority and would build towards the blockade in Canberra.

From GLW issue 440