'If you do't fight, you lose'

Ian 'Jammo' Jamieson, the Socialist Alliance candidate for Fremantle, explains why he is contesting the federal election.

I have been involved in the socialist movement for 35 years. Currently I'm working as a wharfie down in Fremantle. Since the early 1970s, I have been an active unionist, working in the steel and mining industries. I previously represented all Tasmanian miners as president of the Tasmanian Mining Industry Union Council and the people of Tasmania's west coast as a local councillor.

As father of a six-year-old daughter, I am only too aware of the difficulties working people and their families suffer under neoliberal economic policies.

If you don't fight, you lose! This old saying has never been so true. Workers in Australia urgently need to build fighting, democratic unionism to reclaim what we have lost.

The Socialist Alliance is an alternative to war, poverty and insecurity. A better future is not a privilege of the rich; it is a right all working people should expect.

From Green Left Weekly, September 15, 2004.

Visit the Green Left Weekly home page.

From GLW issue 598