BY PIP HINMAN
SYDNEY — After trying for months to split the Walk Against the War Coalition (WAWC), the ALP finally managed to get its way on August 18. At a special meeting of the coalition, attended by close to 100 people, the ALP mustered the numbers to force it to wind up. A key factor in the split was the conservatives' reluctance to oppose the US-led occupation in Iraq, preferring to support a greater role for the United Nations.
The vote was 56 in favour of closing down the WAWC and dispersing its funds, with 31 voting for it to continue. The NSW Greens and the Australia-East Timor Association abstained.
The special general meeting was called after WAWC co-convener Nick Everett alerted the 70 WAWC affiliates of the move by the two other co-convenors, Bruce Childs (former ALP senator) and Hannah Middleton (leader of the Communist Party of Australia), to dissolve the WAWC without consultation.
Childs and Middleton, with others, had formed a new organisation — the Sydney Peace and Justice Coalition (SPJC) — in secret. They believed that this gave them grounds to disband the WAWC. As Childs put it at the August 18 meeting: "We [the ALP] run the show".
Everett, local peace groups and a number of other WAWC affiliates were neither notified of, nor invited to SPJC meetings. They made it clear they had no argument with the right of affiliates to set up whatever organisation they wished, but that this did not make the WAWC redundant, especially given the ongoing war of occupation in Iraq.
Childs argued there was a need for "a change in the arrangements", and that Everett had been offered a "principled settlement" to close WAWC down.
In July, Everett and Luke Deer from the International Socialist Organisation and the Sydney Network for Peace, had refused a third of WAWC's funds offered by Peter Murphy of the Search Foundation. They argued that neither he, nor anyone else, had the right to disperse funds collected from the movement for the coalition.
New situation?
Childs, Middleton and the splitters argued that the "new situation", offered a "complex set of challenges", and that the WAWC wasn't up to it. Some argued that the WAWC had "done nothing" for the last three months (its main project was the Hiroshima Day protest which turned out to be smaller than in previous years). The WAWC had refused to support a protest on July 4, US independence day, an initiative of local peace groups.
Childs and others made out that the WAWC had been racked with insoluble divisions. Yet, as others pointed out, it was the most successful anti-war coalition in the history of the movement, mobilising the biggest numbers ever in Sydney before a war had even started.
There was a difference over the coalition's approach to the occupation of Iraq. The conservatives wanted to shift to calling for a "stronger UN oversight" of the occupation. Childs called those questioning the UN's role in Iraq, "people who would leave the Iraqi people in isolation".
Middleton seconded the motion to disperse two-thirds of WAWC's funds to SPJC. "We're now in a different stage", she said, later arguing that the movement had to refocus from the occupation of Iraq to the US threat to other countries, and domestic issues.
The time for organising mass demonstrations was over, Middleton stated. "Large and complex questions have now replaced simple sloganeering", she said, claiming this required "analysis and information", which WAWC wasn't up to because of the "considerable differences".
Middleton and others kept claiming WAWC had difficulty producing a single leaflet, something that is disproved by checking the WAWC website at .
Unity needed
Everett's unity motion, seconded by Deer, received strong support from unionists and activists from local peace and solidarity groups. They argued the need to campaign against Australia's role in the occupation, and to build support for Iraqi self-determination.
"If we're to win, we need more unity", Everett said, adding that the three groups that originally came together to form WAWC were "only a small nucleus" of the movement. He said that the coalition's funds should not be dispersed, and that the "Socialist Alliance-No War group", which had been nominated by Childs and Middleton to receive a third of the funds, did not exist.
Deer reminded people that the unity established in 2002 between the different peace groups — the Palm Sunday Committee, the Sydney Network for Peace and NoWar — had resulted in a diversity that had become its strength. Splitting the coalition would damage the movement, he said.
In the ensuing discussion, in which nine spoke for the split and nine against, some revealing comments were made.
Martha Ansara, for the Search Foundation, spoke of a secret meeting of a handful of people at the Wayside Chapel in 2001, discussing reviving the Palm Sunday Committee. She said that the group "just couldn't work with the NoWar group". (The Palm Sunday committee refused to allow a number of radicals to join, including Nick Everett and myself, who were twice ejected.) Ansara said the decision last year to work with the other peace groups was made under sufferance. "It just hasn't worked", she claimed.
Tim Ayres, president of the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union, criticised the WAWC for its reliance on "sloganeering" and "peace haiku". He also accused "Socialist Alliance-No War" members of "attacking our delegates on the job". As Everett emphasised in his summary, this was completely untrue.
Anna York from the National Union of Students blamed Books not Bombs for demoralising the student anti-war networks on campus which, she said, were getting smaller and smaller.
The Democrats' Arthur Chesterfield-Evans argued that the movement had to have "realistic policies" if it was to get "mainstream support". "Small groups can tolerate differences", he said, "but big coalitions do not have that luxury".
Peter Murphy, also from the Search Foundation, said that "to oppose motion [to close down WAWC] was to slow down the movement". He said the debate was "not about left versus right, but about how to work with the ALP and the labour movement". "We will have to co-operate", he conceded, "but at arm's length".
Lindy Nolan, representing the NSW Teachers Federation, said those calling for unity were not "self-critical". Bruce Cornwall, representing the Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist), said that the split would allow the SPJC "to get on with the job of building the peace movement".
Diversity
Those arguing for unity included Bruce Knobloch from the Refugee Action Coalition, who argued that the strength of any campaign relies on the number of diverse groups involved.
He reported on an ALP steering committee meeting where Childs had put forward his argument as to why the SPJC had to split the anti-war movement, had said that it would be damaging and that this information should not leave the room.
Sally Quilter, from the Darlington-Chippendale peace group, talked up the need for diversity and unity, and pointed to some successful local activities the group had organised.
Bob Gould, representing the Erskinville ALP, said the "striking success" of the WAWC could be likened to the broad unity that had only been achieved after a number of years in the anti-Vietnam War moratorium movement. He asked why it was that the biggest meetings of WAWC were those where the right mobilised to try and kick the left out.
Brian Webb, from the Socialist Alliance, stressed the need for anti-war coalitions to keep organising, despite the ups and downs of the campaign. He pointed to the success of the British Stop the War Coalition, which has managed to keep a broad range of affiliates together since 2001.
Luke Weyland from the Auburn peace group, Raul Bassi from the Canterbury-Bankstown peace group and Hoana Stachl from the Newtown peace group also spoke in favor of keeping the WAWC together.
Bassi said that if it hadn't been for the WAWC, his union — the Transport Workers Union — wouldn't have been a part of the anti-war protests. "How can you say we're now in 'a new period'", he asked, pointing to the deaths of Iraqis, US soldiers and others in Iraq? "Nothing is so different today", he said, arguing that the movement should adopt the slogan: "Now is the time to begin stopping the next war".
I argued that everyone recognises the circumstances since the end of the bombing war have changed, but that some of unifying themes including "Bring the troops home" are still relevant.
While there are different views on what the UN should, or shouldn't, do in Iraq, this question should not be the cause of a split in the movement, but a subject of debate and discussion. Washington is now keen to pull the UN in to justify its occupation and legitimise its puppet government, and this still has to be played out.
A social movement which aims to affect social change has to be very big. That means it also has to be broad. This inevitably means debates, and it has to have the courage to have the arguments out.
[Pip Hinman is a member of the Democratic Socialist Party and was an Action in Solidarity with Asia and the Pacific delegate to Walk Against War Coalition meetings.]
From 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly, August 27, 2003.
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