NUS factionalism
My article, titled "Why Resistance left the National Broad Left" in Green Left Weekly #435, unintentionally omitted some important details.
Controversy about the carve-up of official positions brokered between the "left" Labor faction NOLS and the right Labor faction Student Unity at December's National Union of Students conference centered on whether the left should support the Student Unity candidate for general secretary, Lizzie Blanthorn, due to her anti-abortion and anti-union politics.
During the pre-conference caucus of the NBL, Resistance put forward a motion stating that the NBL was not interested in participating in a deal that saw Student Unity or other right-wing factions getting into office.
Within the NBL there was agreement to oppose Lizzie Blanthorn winning the general secretary position and to put pressure on NOLS to do the same. The majority of the NBL, except the International Socialist Organisation and some Love and Rage members, voted in favour of the Resistance motion.
Following this vote there was a successful attempt by the ISO and Love and Rage to reinterpret the meaning of this motion to mean simply that the NBL would not deal "directly" with right-wing factions.
To clarify discussion Resistance moved another motion which concluded that if factions such as NOLS were doing deals with Unity, then the NBL would not deal with NOLS.
The aim of this was to put forward a political challenge to NOLS to support the formation of a left office in 2001. This was entirely possible based on the percentage numbers of the left on conference floor.
The most bureaucratic elements in NBL panicked at the prospect of potentially losing an office-bearer if NOLS refused the NBL's demand. Unfortunately, the ISO and Socialist Alternative voted with them because they thought that it would be "sectarian" to put this challenge to NOLS. It was after this vote was lost that Resistance decided to leave the NBL.
During the NUS conference the NBL attempted to cover its capitulation to the Unity-NOLS deal by berating NOLS delegates to form a left block. However, in the end the NBL was still willing to continue with its deal with NOLS to support their candidates in return for the NBL candidate winning the education officer's position.
Grant Coleman
Fremantle
[Abridged.]
ALP industrial relations
The Western Australian ALP's recent direction statement on industrial relations is overall a relatively good document, which does deserve and is likely to get public support. The ALP would actually have to put them into effect, of course.
It proposes: support for collective bargaining; repeal of the Coalition's "Third Wave" measures; improving Minimum Conditions of Employment Act; improving job security; reducing wage disparities; better support for workplace safety; replacing workplace agreements with employer-employee agreements; and substantial "reform" of the workers' compensation system.
In contrast, the Coalition's policy on industrial relations is a good example of the politics of social hatred.
Both approaches nevertheless treat working people as an exploitable commodity. The Coalition's 1996 IR policy promoted "world's best" work practices, through "continuous improvement". Labor's IR directions statement says it aims for "flexibility, efficiency and innovation" — which is much the same thing said differently.
Labor's "new" employer-employee agreements are much the same as those pushed by Coalition IR minister Graham Kierath, albiet with more protections.
Another bipartisan practice is to get a contractor to produce a report before making big decisions. In 1995, one of the more conservative commissioners (Fielding) in the WA Industrial Relations Commission produced a report recommending various changes to the current system. Labor has undertaken to introduce those parts that have bipartisan support.
Although the Fielding Report contains a good deal of value, it doesn't seem to show any awareness that workers were in fact people, or that work is one part of a larger social context. On the contrary, he seemed to take the view that workers were a problem that had to be managed.
Coalition interests are quite happy to have unions, as long as they are bosses' unions. In the ALP directions statement, the only direct reference to unions is in one paragraph on page 14 that implied unions have performed quite poorly. It is quite clear that the ALP powerbrokers see no point in being closely tied to a group of organisations that appear to represent only a small minority of the workforce.
Roger Raven
Maylands WA
{Abridged.]
Hitler's Pope
Phil Shannon does his usual excellent job on Hitler's Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII by John Cornwell. Phil also says that "the Catholic Church in the capitalist democracies took a more forthright stand against the Nazis" (GLW #433). This is the kind of apologist statement made about Pius XII only three years ago, in newspapers in "the capitalist democracies" like the USA.
Where is the evidence for this statement?
Not in Portugal (Dictator Salazar); not in Spain (Dictator Franco, who murdered about a million and a half Spaniards and sent a Spanish division to fight alongside the Nazis in the USSR); not France (sold out to the Nazis by the Catholic hierarchy and "Catholic Action" and sent troops to the USSR); not Belgium, (Degrelle, leader of Anti-Communist National Catholic Federation, the "Rexists", Christus Rex, sold out to the Nazis); not in Slovakia, (a Nazi puppet state led by Monsignor Tiso who sent the first Jews to Auschwitz); not in Croatia (a Nazi state led by the mass murderer Pavelic, well-known to Pius XII who blessed his men); not in Italy, (sold out to the fascists and the Nazis).
We won't start on the Central and South American "democracies". In the US a 1930s radio audience of 20 million supporters of the "Christian Front" drank in the pro-Nazi talks of Father Coughlin.
In World War II, the US lost (total) 272,000 men in combat. In 1951-52 a violent right-wing purge of leftists and Communists, occurred in the US, six years after the end of the war, which drove the Communist Party underground and included murder, maiming and assasination (outside the usual racist terror against blacks).
Can more be found about this "forthright" stand, of the Catholic church against Nazism, in other "western democracies"?
Denis Kevans
Wentworth Falls NSW
Timor's oil
We congratulate Jon Land on his "Digging in for East Timor's oil" article (GLW #433).
We also endorse ASIET's call for all the oil revenue that may come to Australia from a new Timor Sea settlement to be given to East Timor, as compensation for the support this country gave its illegal occupation.
The more public and loud our support for the East Timor stand on the oil, the stronger will be its position. It is worth remembering that the reason the Howard government is adopting such a ruthless and unfair position on Timor's oil is because it is afraid the Indonesian regime will demand renegotiation of its sea boundary.
We support that also: Indonesia should be able to renegotiate a midline boundary consistent with international maritime law.
Stephen Langford, Jean Lopez, Gareth Smith, B. Doyle
Australia-East Timor Association NSW
Bob Dylan
I reject Phil Shannon's description of Bob Dylan as a "shell of his former self". I would argue that Dylan's 1997 Time Out of Mind is among his finest works, at least as good as 1989's Oh Mercy.
Dylan's "degeneration" into the "apolitical" in the 1970s mirrors the degeneration of the 1960s counterculture into a drug-induced stupor (a stupor that was , incidentally, sponsored in part by the US State Department).
Moreover, the radical impulse of 1968, which gave the far left an unparalleled opportunity to become a significant political force, was dissipated in an orgy of political cults and idiotic sectarianism. So can anyone blame Bob Dylan for turning his back on the music of hope?
Moving out of the '60s counterculture probably saved Dylan from the same fate as the musical genius Jimi Hendrix or the magical and introspective songwriter Nick Drake, who committed suicide in 1973 at the age of 26.
Dylan today is the prophet of darkness and despair, a chronicler of the tragic loneliness, banality and cruelty of an individualised, atomised society. Unlike many Americans he has a sense of irony, a quality which some reviewers seem to miss. He is also able to parody himself.
His use of the Christian religious idiom is not surprising in a country where people often articulate their political interests in the language of faith rather than class. Would you criticise the Temptations, Aretha Franklin, Marvin Gaye or Curtis Mayfield for their use of the religious idiom to express their radical political and philosophical messages?
Jeff Richards
Stepney SA