BY NIKKI ULASOWSKI
The December 2000 National Union of Students (NUS) conference held at Ballarat endorsed a motion to support the upcoming May 1 blockades of stock exchanges being built by M1 alliances around the country. The conference also voted to call a national student strike to coincide with the M1 actions and to produce 10,000 A2 coloured posters advertising the strike.
However, the ALP "left" student faction — the National Organisation of Labor Students (NOLS) — moved an amendment to the M1 motion deleting any reference to S11, Seattle and demands for the cancellation of the Third World debt, and the abolition of the imperialist-controlled international financial institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
These amendments gained majority support from the conference including from the National Broad Left (NBL). Members of Resistance were the only delegates at the conference who opposed the amendments. Most of the left delegates at the NUS conference were taken in by NOLS' arguments in support of the amendments.
NOLS students argued that the M1 organising committees are "dominated" by the radical left and this is an obstacle to involving "broader" forces, i.e., ALP-aligned trade union officials.
The M1 organising committees are open to participation by anyone who wants to help build the largest possible participation in the M1 protest actions against global corporate tyranny. The reason why these committees are "dominated" by the radical left is simply because most of the radical left supports the M1 actions, and the ALP doesn't.
The idea for the M1 blockade of stock exchanges came out of the September 11-13 blockade of the World Economic Forum in Melbourne, in which at least 20,000 people participated. This action was led and organised by the radical left through the Melbourne S11 Alliance, which took its inspiration from the blockade of the World Trade Organisation meeting in Seattle in November 1999 organised by the US radical left.
The Labor Party has traditionally played a crucial role for the corporate rulers of this country in taming the radicalising potential of social protest movements by using its control over trade unions and student organisations like NUS to dominate the organising committees of such movements. However, the Laborite trade union officials and the leaders of the ALP student organisations — including NOLS — boycotted the S11 organising committee. They opposed the whole idea of a blockade of the WEF and presumably believed that without their involvement the radical left forces comprising the S11 Alliance would be unable to mobilise large numbers of people against the WEF.
The ability of the radical left to lead and organise a mass anti-corporate protest action like S11 poses a big problem for the ALP. S11 demonstrated that there is a large constituency of people that are prepared to defy the ALP and participate in a mass anti-corporate action organised by the radical left. As Paul Kelly, the political editor of Rupert Murdoch s Australian observed, "S11 was to the ALP what Pauline Hanson was to the Liberals".
By seeking to sever any association between the M1 actions, on the one hand, and S11 and the radical Seattle anti-WTO protest action, on the other, and to remove from M1 actions any demands that explicitly challenge the major instruments through which corporate rulers of imperialist powers like Australia exploit the Third World, NOLS delegates sought to make M1 as "respectable" to participate in for its political masters — and future employers — in the ALP parliamentary caucus and trade union officialdom as the dreary, annual Sunday May Day parades.
Unfortunately, some on the radical left are also seeking to tailor the M1 actions to fit in with the ALP's aims. Student members of the International Socialist Organisation (ISO) argued at the NUS conference that "S11 style actions won't challenge global capital and that the forces that were mobilised at S11 should be channelled into a "Kick the Liberals out" campaign. Such a perspective meshes perfectly with Laborite students underlying political message to those opposed to corporate tyranny — "don't be too radical, just vote the ALP back into government".
While a federal Labor government might be a little less brutal than the Liberals in its implementation of the "economic rationalist" agenda of boosting corporate profits by slashing the living standards of workers and students, it will still implement this agenda — as the experience of the Hawke and Keating Labor governments amply demonstrated.
S11 showed there are large numbers of people willing to mobilise on the streets in radical protest action against the global neo-liberal economic agenda of the corporate rulers — an agenda that is supported by both the ALP and the Liberal Party. Instead of seeking to develop the radical, anti-capitalist dynamic of this new movement, a dynamic that poses a political challenge to both the ALP and the Liberals, the ISO's perspective would turn this movement into just another cog in the ALP's parliamentary electoral machine.
If we want to build a movement that can bring about radical social change, we have to convince large numbers of people to act outside the capitalist two-party system. After S11, M1 can be a further significant step in that direction.
The challenging task ahead for the organised student left is to build towards a national student strike, shutting universities down on May 1 across the country and inspiring students to unite with workers throughout the world in a fight for global justice.
[Nikki Ulasowski is a member of the national executive of Resistance.]