Socialist Alliance 'will make a mark'

April 25, 2001
Issue 

BY JORGE JORQUERA Picture

MELBOURNE — “It is exciting to hear of the newly established Socialist Alliance. Australia has for some time now had a great need for a left alliance. The Labor Party appears to have moved to the right, finding itself where, I believe, the Liberal Party was in the late 1970s. It is therefore not surprising that there is no need for a Liberal Party anymore (as voters have recently indicated in a couple of states).”

Ellen Kleimaker may have had tongue firmly in cheek, but the sentiments of the Victorian Trades Hall Council's women's and equity officer were also those of the more than 270 people who packed into the Brunswick Town Hall to launch the Socialist Alliance on April 10: the time has come for a real left alternative to the Labor and Liberal parties.

The Socialist Alliance brings together, for the first time, nine different socialist groups in a common electoral front: the Democratic Socialist Party, the International Socialist Organisation, the Freedom Socialist Party, Workers Power, Workers Liberty, the Workers League, the Worker Communist Party of Iraq, Socialist Democracy and Socialist Alternative.

“The Socialist Alliance will make a mark at the federal elections. And if Howard is defeated, the Socialist Alliance should swell under a new federal Labor government”, the Democratic Socialist Party's Jackie Lynch told the meeting.

Lynch announced that the DSP was putting all of its resources into supporting the alliance, including its four offices in Victoria.

The International Socialist Organisation's David Glanz spoke of the urgency of constructing an alternative. “If the ALP would offer its supporters what they wanted, this meeting would not exist”, said Glanz, pointing out that in the Latrobe Valley only eight people asked for food parcels during the holiday season in 1991, but 239 people did last year.

Glanz also argued that the Socialist Alliance was a crucial alternative not just to the major parties' economic rationalist policies, but also to the anti-government, anti-globalisation rhetoric of Pauline Hanson.

Melbourne University queer officer Darren Kane, speaking for Queers United to Eradicate Economic Rationalism, also argued for the Socialist Alliance to build on activism and be part of the movements.

While many of those speaking from the floor were enthusiastic about the alliance, the Socialist Party's Steve Jolly said he was wary of the alliance being dominated by its two largest organisations, the ISO and the DSP, and announced that his group has already decided to run its own seperate candidate in the seat of Melbourne.

Ricky Lane from Workers Liberty argued that no such domination existed and that all nine member-parties were committed to make the alliance an inclusive organisation.

Endorsements from Monica Morgan of the Yorta Yorta people, comedian Rod Quantock, Luke van der Meulen of the Latrobe Valley district of the construction, mining and energy union, author Verity Burgmann, textiles union organiser Annie Delaney and manufacturing workers union state secretary Craig Johnston were also read out by the meeting's chair, the Freedom Socialist Party's Alison Thorne.

Visit the Socialist Alliance web site at <http://www.socialist-alliance.org>

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