The lost generation
In looking at the struggle for women's rights, we shouldn't forget our great grandmothers, who fought for the right to vote in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century.
The current generation of grandmothers, of which I am one, unfortunately were unable to continue the fight for women's rights, although some of us were aware of endemic injustices in our daily lives. We were brought up during a depression when survival was the main objective. The western world only came out of depression when the second world war started, when women did take a major step regarding entry into what had been male employment.
We all know of the return to the home after 1945. This was not a deliberate strategy, but an inevitable consequence, that after the trauma of war, both sexes saw the antidote as haven of home.
Your mothers and fathers are part of the baby boom of the forties and fifties. We, the mothers of that generation, struggled to gain the security of a home and family and were determined that our children would have better lives than we had.
These were years of growth in the western economies. Childcare was scarce. The print media time and time again bemoaned the number of "latchkey children" whose mothers were at work when they came home from school. There was pressure for women to stay at home but also pressure for women to go to work and the associated guilt which went with both options. Conditions were poor and there was nothing like equal pay. Not many working class women had access to further education.
Lots of us were simmering with perceived injustice but there appeared no forum to voice our discontent.
Don't discount or ignore us. Your liberation is based on our efforts to achieve financial stability so that our daughters, your mothers, could lift their heads above the sewing machines or typewriters and see the need and have the energy and aspirations to demonstrate against the inequities and attempt to redress the imbalance.
Third wave feminists, don't wait until your grandmothers are eighty before you listen to their herstories.
Molly Brannigan
Plympton Park SA
[Edited for length.]
Brandon Astor Jones
The mail restrictions on Brandon Astor Jones appear to have been lifted. This will be good news to all his Green Left Weekly friends — he has missed hearing from you all and hopes you will start to write to him again at the prison.
Whilst writing, I should like to thank the kind lady who came up to me at the Peace March rally last week and told me she reads Brandon's column Looking Out in Green Left Weekly every week — and gave me $20 for his family fund! I was really surprised and it just goes to show what a great bunch of people read Green Left Weekly! A big thank you to all those kind readers who have donated to this fund — we nearly have enough to enable his daughter, her husband and four children to visit Brandon!
He is getting very excited about the prospect of seeing his grandchildren for the first time — his daughter is excited, too, at the prospect of seeing her father after 15 years. Thank you to everyone who is helping to make this possible.
Stephanie Wilkinson
Co-ordinator, Australians Against Executions
Seven Hills NSW
Population
Allen Myers has argued that poverty causes overpopulation and therefore those who argue that overpopulation causes poverty are scrambling cause and effect. Allen doesn't seem to realise that cause and effect can work both ways forming a vicious cycle. In many places it is clear that poverty causes overpopulation but it equally remains true that overpopulation causes poverty. However population growth also occurs amongst rich people in rich counties, so measures to relieve poverty whilst necessary in their own right, may be insufficient to relieve overpopulation.
Allen Myers also labels AESP as "right wing environmentalists". The right-left scale refers to where one believes the balance should lie between individual freedom and social responsibility. The far right claims there is no need for a balance as maximizing individual civil and economic freedoms maximizes outcomes for a society as a whole. Those who argue that population size should be determined solely by a multitude of individual decisions, totally uninfluenced by long term planning for the benefit of future generations and the environment, are by definition on the far right on this issue.
Emma Webb argues that it is only the capitalists, not ordinary people who squander environmental resources, witness Alcoa's electricity usage in their Victorian domestic electricity consumption. No doubt a hugely disproportionate share of the benefits end up in the hands of a few capitalists. Nevertheless much of the economic activity generated by Alcoa would go towards supporting the general Victorian community via employment in Alcoa, in the coalfields and elsewhere, and via community consumption of aluminium products. The capitalist are insanely greedy, but they don't hog all the aluminium. It is the desire of a billion people for consumer items from cars to soft drink cans that supports this industry. Environmentally destructive industries will continue to grow whilst the numbers of ordinary people in the affluent world and their desires grow.
David Kault
Townsville
Wobblies
The write up about the "History of the I.W.W. and the Great War" by Frank Cain reviewed by Phil Shannon in Green Left 16th March issue brings back old memories. I knew Bob Besont and Bill Beatie , two of the I.W.W. leaders jailed for 15 years during World War I, their only crime being they led the workers against poverty, misery, conscription and the master class.
I do sincerely hope that the struggle of these two great fighters and their comrades will not be forgotten. There is a lot to be learned from them.
I have an original copy of the old I.W.W. song book, probably the only one of its kind in existence. If the young people of today could only capture the spirit of the songs in this book, I'm sure they would rekindle the fires of revolt in the hearts of all those who desire a change in the social system that is responsible for so much suffering and desperation and give inspiration to others.
It is a song book that reflects the struggle of the working class against tyranny and oppression of a past era. I would like to see it reproduced in its original form
I have a poem I composed on the 50th anniversary of the I.W.W.'s last stand against reaction. Also a letter from Bill Beatie, probably one of the last he wrote. He died here in Brisbane in the latter part of the 1970s.
I take my hat off to Bill Beatie, Bob Besont and the 10 other great I.W.W. fighters who fought conscription during World War I and sacrificed their freedom for humanity, and to all the fighters of today who are carrying on the struggle in the true spirit of the past.
W.G. Fox
Brisbane
Spuds
Thanks Tom Kelly for the spud story [GLW, March 30]. Here's one of mine -
SPUD FARMERS
A 50 milligram bag of potato crisps,
Costs about one dollar,old son.
That should mean a return to spud farmers
Of around ten thousand dollars a tonne.
Denis Kevans
Wentworth Falls NSW
Fred Nile
I've just sat out on my front verandah and had a read of Kath Gelber's excellent article about Fred Nile [GLW, March 23]. I got a chuckle out of the headline — "Fred is a loser" — typical of Green Left to tell it like it is! Unfortunately Kath is right when she says "it would be laughable if it weren't so serious". The fact that dinosaurs like Fred Nile are still taken seriously is a big problem. Hopefully Kath is right when she says "reality catches up with most people sooner than moralist rhetoric". Not soon enough for some evidently.
Keep it up GLW. It's articles like this which are why I read every copy straight through every week. To all the journalists, staff, and especially the sellers — keep up the good work and more importantly — keep telling it like it is.
Robert Graham
Katanning WA
Growth economy
I thought the Green Left Conference revealed encouraging
progress towards a more unified view on the part of greens and socialists. However many from both origins still fail to grasp the essentials for any discussion of a sustainable society, i.e., a sustainable society cannot be affluent and it cannot have a growth economy.
Most green people, especially those in the peak organisations such as the ACF, proceed as if all we need is more pollution control and recycling, without any need to rethink high living standards or the growth economy. Many people from the left proceed as if the environmental problem will be solved when capitalism is overthrown also without questioning growth and affluence.
But if we scrap capitalism yet remain determined to have anything like the levels of production and consumption typical of rich countries today, let alone constant increase in these, then we will have just about the same range of catastrophic global problems we have now. Most mineral, energy and biological resources will still be depleted in a few decades, the environment will still suffer intolerable rates of damage and the Third World will still have to be looted to supply rich world supermarkets — because the amount of production and consumption going on in rich countries is far beyond any sustainable level regardless of whether the economy is capitalist or socialist.
Of course the big problems cannot be solved in a capitalist economy, but the ultimate solution must be conceived in terms of simpler lifestyles, highly self- sufficient local economies and zero economic growth.
Ted Trainer
Sydney
Port Macquarie Hospital
The NSW Government's Port Macquarie Hospital Privatisation Contracts will be dealt with under the Freedom of Information Act, in the Sydney District Court on 18th & 19th April.
This case will be a test for the people of NSW to see just where the NSW Government's loyalty and responsibility lie. Is it with the concerned community of Port Macquarie and the Hastings, or with Mayne Nickless and the two international financiers, Natwest and Hambros banks? To date the State Government has shown by its refusal to make these 18 Privatisation Contracts available to the community group making the request, that the commercial interests of the huge companies involved are far more important, than the rights of the community to know.
The people of Port Macquarie and the Hastings are to be the victims of a profit driven monopoly in health care. A private monopoly is the worst system for the people dependent on that monopoly to deliver the services that used to be the NSW Government's core responsibility.
The State Government clings leech-like to these contracts, protesting that the "controls" are in place. The small portion of one contract that we have seen belies these claims. Hospital Action Management Committee members were subjected to direct intimidation by a senior Health Department official, in order to force them to drop this FOI claim. The Health Minister Ron Phillips backed this official to the hilt when questioned by John Hatton in Parliament last year. The NSW Government's sheer determination not to release these documents has set off alarm bells in many places.
Therese Mackay
Port Macquarie NSW
[Edited for length.]
Ecology
Ecology is perhaps the most complex science known; a large number of parameters interact in ways more adequately described by chaos theory than by simplistic equations. Generalised predictions about human impact on nature are therefore likely to be wildly wrong. For this reason it seems unfortunate that the current GLW discussion has drifted away from Australian immigration to the hoary old "universal" non-formula of I=PAT which wrongly assumes linear relationships between airy-fairy parameters which can't be meaningfully defined.
There may be good arguments for restricting immigration into Australia, but environmental impact does not appear to be one. Some advocates of immigration restrictions who subscribe to the notion that impact is proportional to population numbers appear to assume that our local population consumes all or most commodities. This is far from true.
Our most serious greenhouse gas emissions come from electricity production; yet only one third of this goes to individual consumers. Much of the rest goes into production of aluminium for export or into gross waste by organisations. Most of our coal production not used for electricity generation goes overseas.
Our old-growth forests are being depleted not mainly for locally and privately consumed timber products; some nine-tenths of the destruction goes into export wood chips (and into profits for multi-nationals).
Our soil degradation is chiefly caused by the production of wool, wheat and meat for overseas consumption.
Under these circumstances, to talk about consumption and environmental impact "per capita" is meaningless. While extra Australian mouths to feed and Australian bodies to house and clothe have some impact, this impact is in no way proportional to population numbers.
However, well-meaning people who use this argument to suggest that large-scale immigration to Australia could assist in solving the problem of world over-population should also have another think. If every plane and ship in the world were engaged in non-stop trips to bring surplus populations to this country, it would not make much of a dent in current world over-population.
Of course, political refugees should be admitted. Unfortunately, never at any time was Australian immigration policy concerned with humanitarian aid; it was always dictated by the establishment's perceived need either for investment capital or compliant (i.e. anti-communist) cheap labour or both.
To accommodate political refugees equitably would require more than a completely free admission policy, which would flood this country with the most affluent members of over-crowded societies. It would need an assisted passage policy based on the needs of persecuted people everywhere; it would mean deliberately ignoring the requirements of Australia's ruling class. The best we can do is to campaign for such a policy, however unlikely success for such a campaign may be in the current political circumstances.
Gerry Harant
Blackburn Vic
[Edited for length.]
Neo-nazis
David Horton (Write on, March 30) takes exception to my coverage of an anti-nazi protest in Brunswick (GLW, March 16).
Horton claims, "Dave Holmes writes with apparent approval of the harassment of a political group of which he disapproves." This stands on its head the actual state of affairs.
It is the neo-nazi racists who have been responsible for a string of incidents of physical and verbal harassment of migrants in Brunswick and other Melbourne suburbs over the past six months. Then they announced their intention to hold an action right in the heart of multicultural Brunswick. This was widely regarded as a provocation, an attempt to stir up anti-migrant prejudice and hatred.
The well-attended counterdemonstration was aimed at defending the democratic rights of migrants and other targets of fascist harassment. And if the neo-nazis were humiliated and forced to leave under police escort, then that was a victory for the democratic rights of migrants, workers and other groups who are actual or potential targets of these thugs.
The neo-nazis are not just one side in a polite debate about new directions in social policy. They are trying to build up a cadre of right-wing activists to carry out physical assaults on migrants, workers, leftists and so on.
Are the democratic rights of neo-nazis under attack? Posing the question in this way simply confuses the issue.
The real question is what is the best strategy to defend the democratic rights of the mass of workers and ordinary people in this society from attacks by the state, neo-nazis or anyone else. As the crisis of the capitalist system deepens, this issue will only become more acute.
However, we should oppose any calls to have the state ban neo-nazi rallies or meetings. Such bans can just as well be used against the left and, moreover, they encourage the dangerous illusion that the capitalist state can be relied upon to stop the growth of racist and neo-nazi forces.
Dave Holmes
Melbourne
Vasili Manikakis
Who was Vasili Manikakis to me? One of the warmest and yet most serious people I will ever know. When I first met Vasili it was back when he was playing with Women and Boys and I was still in high school, he was the talkative, moody, easily amused, earnest friend who lived next door to me on Copeland Avenue.
Vasili stood at one of the early doors by which I and many others entered the strange community of the left, and through the years he remained one of our points of orientation within it. But he was a constantly mobile point, always it seemed shifting from this party to that and back again, only momentarily fitting easily into this or that position, consistent only in always being there — at rallies, demonstrations, occupations — usually with his tape recorder in one hand and some leaflets in the other, always with his smile.
But despite that smile, my impression is that the left was always breaking Vasili's heart. He met his political commitments with a passion which was periodically matched by his disillusion. Or almost. The crucial difference between these phases was that the disillusion was invariably in something particular — some group, some strategy, some analysis — the enthusiasm invariably not only particular but also general, encompassing. No matter how bruised, he retained a deep reserve of conviction to which he could return for orientation, for sustenance.
When I last met Vasili it was three years ago. He was working at SBS. He took his lunch break and we sat in a sunny park in North Sydney and argued about imperialism, Stalinism, and the meaning of the revolutions of 1989. As usual he spoke energetically but thoughtfully; as usual he had a chuckle ready for drawing us back from the edge of opposing certainties. I didn't speak to him again. There was secondhand talk about meeting in London. I heard not long ago that he was threatening to buy a car in which to drive up from Greece to "save" me from the Russian winter.
Yesterday morning I learnt in Green Left that Vasili died three weeks ago. In the evening I collected a card from a mutual friend which confirmed what I'd read. I want to run from this news, protest that it cannot be true.
I write these few words now because I feel that I too must honour this person. And because I am so sad. Vasili was a beautiful man. He shone with love and respect for other people.
Sebastian Job
Moscow