BY LISA MACDONALD
SYDNEY — Over the last two weeks, Socialist Alliance branches in Sydney have been attempting, without success, to get clarification from the Palm Sunday 2002 committee of why alliance members have been banned from attending Palm Sunday organising meetings.
After hearing about the eviction of Democratic Socialist Party members from the Palm Sunday committee meetings, the Socialist Alliance — which unites eight socialist parties, including the DSP, and has more than 1000 members in Sydney — requested a meeting with the committee to clarify the extent of the ban, argue for the ban to be lifted and offer to support the Palm Sunday march in whatever way it could.
During a meeting between Peter Murphy from the Palm Sunday committee and Socialist Alliance members Michael Morphett, Leon Parissi and Phil Sandford on March 8, Murphy stated that the ban extended to all members of the Socialist Alliance, as well as (unnamed) others who had been active in the Network Opposing War and Racism (NOWAR) last year.
Murphy said that he had proposed the ban because some Palm Sunday committee members — specifically Denis Doherty (a leader of the Communist Party of Australia), John Hallam (Friends of the Earth) and Bruce Cornwall (CPA-Marxist Leninist) — had complained to him that they had been "ignored" in NOWAR meetings, did not agree with NOWAR's decision to allow party speakers on platforms, and did not agree with the number of marches that NOWAR called, or with the number of speakers at the rallies. They also said they did not agree with the position supposedly adopted by NOWAR of condemning the US war without condemning the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, adding that one speaker at a NOWAR rally had supported the attacks.
These claims do reflect, in part, some of the debates that took place in the broad NOWAR meetings about how best to build the anti-war movement in Sydney. Socialist Alliance members did argue, along with many other activists, that any political party which opposed the US bombing of the Afghan people should be allowed onto NOWAR rally platforms, and that organising large public rallies, which were increasing in size as the war escalated, was an essential part of building public opposition to the US war and Australian government support for it.
However, Doherty, Hallam and Cornwall's accusation that the Socialist Alliance did not strongly condemn the September 11 attacks is a complete misrepresentation of the facts, as can be seen in all the alliance leaflets, broadsheets and statements issued at the time.
Murphy also told the alliance delegation that it was not possible to involve people in the organising of Palm Sunday who called for opening the borders to refugees and who "attacked the ALP and trade union leadership in a blanket way". He added that the political differences went back to the Vietnam Moratorium of the 1970s.
Murphy rejected all of the alliance's proposals for participation in the committee, including as observers, and threatened that the exclusion might be continued next year, "depending on how groups behaved".
The Socialist Alliance subsequently sent a letter to the Palm Sunday committee making it clear that it disagrees with the ban, whether on the DSP alone or the alliance as a whole, and noting that organising the Palm Sunday march was traditionally an activity open to all of the left.
The letter, however, was not presented to the subsequent Palm Sunday committee meeting, and Murphy did not report on the meeting he had had with alliance members. The Socialist Alliance has now re-sent its letter to other Palm Sunday committee members in the hope that this important issue for the movements will be taken seriously, and a dangerous precedent avoided.
In the meantime, the alliance has been publicising the Palm Sunday march from its information stalls, in membership mailouts and through train station leafleting.
From Green Left Weekly, March 20, 2002.
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