BY PETER BOYLE
Progressive movements worldwide are under pressure from the US-led "war on terrorism" (actually a war against the Third World) and the associated ideological offensive against global solidarity. The world's corporate rulers and their governments are arrogantly triumphant after winning their one-sided war against Afghanistan.
Brushing aside basic human rights and international law, the corporate elite pursues its military and economic war against the Third World, and even against the First World working class.
In Australia the Liberal-National government is enjoying the fruits of its re-election, brazenly pursuing its widely condemned war against refugees and launching a new attack on civil and workers' rights.
It seems a world away from the situation just a few months ago, when we greeted the anti-G8 protests in Genoa as a new high point of the global movement against corporate tyranny. But things are not as bleak as they look.
Even as the Pentagon planned the next stage of its "war against terrorism" — with embargo-weakened Iraq as its likely next target — the Argentinian crisis served a reminder of the deep contradictions facing global capitalism.
This crisis is also evidence that the war drive has not defeated resistance to capitalist globalisation in the Third World. There was more evidence of resistance in Palestine where Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's military siege has failed to break the intifada.
Meanwhile imminent war threatens Colombia, India and Pakistan. Just to our north, Indonesia is rolling into another political crisis as IMF-decreed fuel-price rises force millions more into grinding poverty.
Pro-social justice movements in Australia will have to respond to the wars and crises that will now unfold. How do we ensure that our response is the strongest possible? Should we temporarily retreat and "recover" from the round of anti-war mobilisations? Or should we launch a new offensive? The Democratic Socialist Party and Resistance have opted for the latter course.
We must strike at our ruling elite's weakest spot: the inhumane and illegal bi-partisan policy on refugees. The Australian government is under tremendous moral pressure on this. World opinion is increasingly scathing of its overt racism. Pauline Hanson may have gone but Hansonism reigns in Canberra. That's clear for all to see.
What we need now is an escalating campaign of mass actions calling for a more humane refugee policy and a royal commission into the treatment of refugees. Hundreds of asylum seekers — in the Woomera detention centre and others — are bravely protesting. The progressive movement in Australia must match this or hang its head in shame.
If we don't take to the streets, with thousands of others, in the next few weeks then we will not have the moral authority to say that we fight for global solidarity. Solidarity with the war-blighted, debt-yoked, ruthlessly exploited billions in the Third World begins, for us, with supporting refugees today.
It is possible to build a mass movement capable of reversing this obscene expression of racist imperialism. Tens of thousands of democratic-minded people, all around Australia, are prepared to take to the streets and break unjust laws in support of refugee rights.
We should build a mass convergence on Parliament House in Canberra on February 12, the day parliament resumes. Then we should take the issue loudly to the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting at Coolum on the Sunshine Coast in the first week of March. At the International Women's Day marches in the following week, rights for refugees will be raised again.
The second Asia-Pacific International Solidarity Conference in Sydney, will be held March 29-April 1. The organisers are considering taking the estimated 1000 participants, including at least 50 international guests, to the gates of the Villawood detention centre for a powerful regional protest against resurgent global racism.
May 1 must be a show of global solidarity — against the corporate rulers' war on the Third World, on refugees and on workers. Last year, May Day was spectacularly resurrected after years of token observance by mostly conservative trade union committees. M1 alliances organised hugely successful one-day blockades of all Australia's stock exchanges.
M1 took place in the wake of the successful S11 2000 blockade of the World Economic Forum in Melbourne. But the next May Day lies in the shadow of September 11, 2001, and the imperialist war drive that followed. So this time we need to plan carefully if we are going to once again mobilise thousands.
No simple tactical formula will guarantee a successful M1 protest. But a campaign of mass mobilisations in solidarity with the refugees, beginning February 12, will place the movement in a much stronger position to make M1 a success.
Nor will an organisational formula take the movement forward. In Genoa a broad alliance of mass organisations — calling itself a social forum — played a key role in organising and leading the movement. So some activists reason that in Australia forming a social forum will take the movement forward.
But what mass organisations would this forum bring together in Australia today? A few student organisations, the radical left, some environmental groups and a couple of ALP-run unions? Maybe. And would such a body advance the movement or paralyse it with bureaucratism?
The Democratic Socialist Party and Resistance are prepared to experiment, but we have a realistic analysis of the state of progressive movements in Australia. First, most trade unions, student unions and peak-body NGOs are still dominated by the thoroughly pro-corporate ALP. Second, while S11 in 2000 and M1 in 2001 occurred outside the dominance of the ALP, the ranks of this new movement are largely unorganised.
Hence in order to mobilise anti-corporate protesters, activists need to make the political issues clear — not rely on alliances of groups that only organise a small fraction of our mass constituency. Nor can we rely on people simply identifying with the label "anti-capitalist" or "anti-globalisation".
Focusing on the pro-refugee campaigning during the next few months does not mean abandoning campaigning against the war drive or against corporate globalisation. These issues are heavily linked and people can readily understand the connections.
The real challenge we face in building mass, pro-refugee mobilisations is retaining the movement's political independence, particularly from the ALP, which, after its election defeat, is engaging in a little ritual breast-beating about its anti-refugee position.
Sadly, some refugee rights activists think that the Labor Party is the best place to put our efforts today. This is a mistake. The movement cannot afford to squander its scarce resources — resources that would be better spent on mass mobilisations calling for a reversal of the bi-partisan anti-refugee policy and a royal commission into the treatment of refugees.
A by-product of such a campaign will be to force some changes to ALP policy — as mass protests forced a change in ALP policy on East Timor.
[Peter Boyle is a member of the national executive of the Democratic Socialist Party.]
From 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly, January 30, 2002.
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