Jabiluka: how can we win?
By Lachlan Malloch and Ray Fulcher
There has been a lot of debate recently about strategies for stopping the Jabiluka uranium mine. This has been stimulated by the release of the Gundjehmi Aboriginal Corporation's proposals for the future of the campaign, known as "New Directions".
This article examines some of the strategies being advocated or pursued within the movement. One of these is lobbying corporations to cease their involvement with the mine project.
Lobbying
Almost since the campaign against Jabiluka began more than two years ago, a "corporate campaign" has been led primarily by the Wilderness Society and activists close to it, including the Minerals Policy Institute. The basic content is lobbying two corporations associated with ERA — parent company North Ltd and Westpac bank — to cut ties with ERA because of its involvement in the Jabiluka mine.
The most recent proposal for the corporate campaign is for a national day of action against Westpac on December 15.
Suggestions for activists include mass account openings and closings in order to tie up Westpac branches for several hours or a whole day, information stalls outside branches and anti-Jabiluka stickers on Westpac ATMs.
Activists plan to highlight the hypocrisy of Westpac's environment policy, which commits it to "meet or exceed recognised community environmental standards".
Earlier this year, activists were encouraged to write letters to and arrange meetings with Westpac branch managers, to pressure the bank to cut ties with ERA.
North Ltd is also being targeted, with a "North Ethical Shareholders" campaign. It aims to convince shareholders that ERA is an unethical and unprofitable investment and to call an extraordinary general meeting to discuss Jabiluka.
Ultimately, the goal of corporate campaigning is to convince the powers that be in Westpac and North to pull out of the Jabiluka project.
The activities that accompany the lobbying of corporations can have a positive effect in raising awareness about the issue, for example when people are approached to participate in letter writing or signing a petition. But the idea that lobbying is the best strategy for defeating the government and ERA is wrong.
Trying to win over the people who hold positions of power and privilege mistakenly assumes that ideas are what drives the decisions of the ruling class (the owners of large corporations and the governments that do their bidding), and that ours is an essentially democratic society. So it is thought that moral pressure in the form of letters, petitions and other expressions of concern can sway corporations and governments in progressive directions.
In reality, corporations are driven fundamentally by one concern: profits. Moreover, all levels of government ultimately function to defend and promote corporate profits. This is what has kept a dirty, dangerous industry such as uranium mining going for more than 40 years, and why ERA has had its sights on the huge uranium deposit at Jabiluka for the past 20 years.
Potential corporate profits are also the reason why a project which is opposed by a majority of Australian people — Jabiluka — is strongly supported by the government.
Minority actions
Another strategy for stopping Jabiluka focuses on confrontational actions such as small occupations of buildings, activists chaining themselves to doors/machinery/vehicles and stunts for media attention.
This sort of activity can be useful as holding actions or to dramatically publicise an issue. But of themselves, minority actions are not capable of winning significant gains.
Confrontations can inspire some people to become involved in a campaign, but when this is all that is happening, demoralisation at their lack of success (and casualties from police violence and persecution) can quickly end their involvement.
In the Melbourne student movement over recent years there has been a tendency to denigrate the possibility, or even the desirability, of mass street mobilisations. This reflects the demoralisation among some activists as a result of the demobilisation of the trade union movement and other community campaigns by the Labor Party.
Not having seen any mass victories recently (even the MUA victory was only partial), some activists have lost faith in the ability of masses of people to take up important issues. They conclude that the only way of fighting back is through the determined actions of a "militant minority".
Sometimes these actions are seen as an end in themselves, sometimes as a way of "sparking" others into action. But the action to be "sparked" is rarely seen as leading to mass involvement. Rather, it is viewed as leading to more and more "militant" confrontations.
Comments such as "Mass rallies are just passive strolls through the city that don't do anything", and "Only by occupying and shutting down business as usual can we win" have crept into the anti-Jabiluka campaign in Melbourne.
Discussions at recent Jabiluka Action Group meetings have revolved around "How can we successfully occupy something?", rather than "How can we draw ever wider layers into action around the issues of uranium mining, land rights and environmental protection at Jabiluka?".
At a Jabiluka action on November 19, despite the cops outnumbering the protesters, an attempt was made to enter and occupy the Victorian Stock Exchange. This was doomed to failure.
One of the arguments in support of this action was that we have to be confrontational to get media attention. But "militant minority" action of this sort, when pursued as a strategy, is self-defeating — which is one of the reasons the media may cover it.
As a noble quest against great odds, it may be inspiring for some activists, but such futile actions are not capable of involving the large numbers needed to bring sufficient political pressure to bear to force the government to back down.
Real politics, rather than perpetual stunts, begins where the masses are: not thousands but millions of people backing the cause. Millions of Australians oppose the Jabiluka mine; our task is to mobilise that, as yet, passive sentiment.
Mass action
The real power that could stand in the way of Jabiluka and the 23 other new uranium mines planned by the Howard government is the collective power of masses in action, mobilised around concrete political demands.
Mass action must also be independent if it is to win — not subordinated to the fortunes of an individual's career or the electoral success of a party.
Sustained mass mobilisations have the potential power to force any government and ERA to abandon the Jabiluka project.
In the past, such action has educated and convinced many new layers of people to take a stand against uranium mining. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, a strong peace and anti-nuclear movement forced the Labor Party to adopt a no uranium mining policy in its national platform.
In that movement, the social force that has the most power to change society for the better was brought into action: the working class. Unionised workers refused to export uranium from Australian ports.
Here we can see the fundamental weakness of the other strategies: they are not directed at the people, but at the ruling class.
Those strategies do not call the broadest possible masses into political action together. They fail to recognise that mass action has political power of its own — class power.
But unless people are mobilised in their tens of thousands and eventually hundreds of thousands, they will not gain a sense of their collective power to change society.
Apart from the reasons above, an anti-corporate campaign which focuses on Westpac is questionable. Westpac itself does not hold any shares in ERA or North. Rather, it runs a service which invests other people's money there for them.
In addition, if Westpac were to stop acting as ERA's banker, another bank would certainly step in and take that role. There is no such thing as an "ethical" bank.
Division of labour?
Exposing the hypocrisy of Westpac's and other companies' environmental policies can be a useful addition to mass campaigning, but it cannot substitute for mass political action.
The fact that corporations such as Westpac have an "environment policy", however token, is a result of the mass environment movements of the past which forced governments and corporations to make their colours a little more green.
In Sydney, a sort of consensus exists on the distribution of the various "arms" of the campaign. While JAG has concentrated on trying to build mass rallies and reach out to people, the corporate lobbying campaign has mainly been taken up by one section of the movement, centred on the Wilderness Society. Friends of the Earth has led domestic and international government lobbying efforts.
While this division of labour may seem neat and convenient, it is not the best way to proceed.
In order for us to gather the greatest strength to stop Howard and ERA, the mass rallies need to be built as big and broad as possible. Without the financial and organisational support and community respectability that the peak environment bodies can bring to a series of mass mobilisations, groups such as JAG will find it very hard to protest on a scale needed to stop the mine.
[Lachlan Malloch is an activist in Sydney JAG. Ray Fulcher is an activist in Melbourne JAG.]