issue no. 37 / August 2011 $3/$5 - Solidarity no. 37 / August 2011 $3/$5 gREEns bACk CARbOn tAX but...

it’s nO stEP FORWARD On CLiMAtE

Solidarity issue no. 37 / August 2011 $3/$5

gREEns bACk CARbOn tAX but

it’s nO stEP FORWARD On CLiMAtE

buiLDing thE REFugEE Rights

CAMPAign

thE CAsE AgAinst bORDER

COntROLs

thE sPAnish CiviL WAR:

75 yEARs On

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solidarity no.37August 2011issn 1835-6834 Responsibility for election comment is taken by James supple, 410 Elizabeth st, surry hills nsW 2010. Printed by El Faro, newtown nsW.

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3solidarity | IssUE thIrty sEVEN AUGUst 2011

COntEntsissuE 37, August 2011

REPORtsgo back Where you Came From 8building the refugee rights campaign 9O’Farrell’s law and the iRC 10All out september 8 in nsW 11Federal public servants pay fight 11Consultation sham in nt 12Malaysia solution finalised 28

intERnAtiOnALCrackdown on Malaysia democracy protests 13Murdoch’s media empire 14Murdoch crisis hits corrupt elite 15Egypt fights military government 16

REviEWsnagasaki: the massacre of the innocent and unknowing 26 Delusions of gender 27

FEAtuREs

17 the last wave of Arab Revolution: iraq 1958 Mark Gillespie

20 Racism, immigration and border controls James supple

23 75 years since the spanish civil war Freya Bundey

CLiMAtE ChAngE & thE CARbOn tAX4 Living standards and the carbon tax5 Editorial: supporting tax no way to beat Abbott6 the end of coal power?7 Claims on renewables funding not true

4 solidarity | IssUE thIrty sEVEN AUGUst 2011 solidarity | IssUE thIrty sEVEN AUGUst 2011

things they say

SOMe SuPPOrTerS of the carbon tax have rubbished claims that people can’t afford to pay more for power and other goods. One widely circu-lated blog post bellowed, “Let’s get one thing very clear. Australians, en masse, are enjoying a better standard of living than has ever been enjoyed in this country’s history…”

But the evidence shows otherwise.Tony Abbott’s campaign against the tax is a staggering piece of hypocrisy. After all he was part of the govern-ment that brought us the GST and WorkChoices—both savage attacks on living standards.

But when he points to the rising cost of living he is not simply taping into greed or a misplaced sense of entitlement amongst the population.

Financial journalist Adam Scwab wrote earlier this year, “rising assets prices, higher food costs, skyrocket-ing utility costs and increased educa-tion expenses have turned Sydney, Perth and Melbourne into three of the world’s most expensive cities. Eco-nomic statistics have created a mirage a wealth. People feel richer but in reality, they can afford less.”

The rising cost of housing is one example. As he notes, “Australians are now dedicating a record propor-tion of their disposable income to servicing their mortgages”.

But those who can afford a mortgage are the lucky ones. The rising cost of housing means that, apart from those who bought housing decades ago when prices were lower, many will struggle to afford their own home. “According to the ABS, less than 7 per cent of homes are deemed ‘affordable’ to low-income earners.”

The official inflation rate is often cited as the most important indica-tor of cost of living increases. But as economist Peter Martin wrote in the

Sydney Morning Herald in May, “Most Australians face a faster cost of living rise than the official rate of 3.3 per cent.

“The increase facing working families is 4.9 per cent, the increase facing age pension households is 4.1 per cent, and the increase fac-ing Australians on welfare is 5.1 per cent, according to living cost indices published yesterday by the Bureau of Statistics.” That is well above the rate of most pay rises. Since then inflation has risen to 3.6 per cent.

Statistics may show average incomes rising—but too much of the growth is going into the pockets of the rich. According to last year’s ABS re-port Measures of Australia’s Progress, between 1995 and 2008 the top 20 per cent increased their share of income earned from 37.8 to 39.4 per cent. At the same time the bottom 20 per cent went backwards, their share of income falling form 7.9 to 7.6 per cent.

Price increases from the initial car-bon tax will be small. A carbon price of $23 a tonne is expected to cost house-holds only $10 a week on average.

The Gillard government is gam-bling that the compensation for house-holds contained in the package will ensure people are not out of pocket. But John Howard’s modeling for the GST said the same thing, and there were still pensioners who were worse off.

The fact is that the cost of living generally is on the rise. Many people are going to blame the carbon tax for these price rises, whether it causes them all or not. This means demands for ordinary people to pay higher prices, as the cost of action on climate change, are both callous and politi-cally stupid. They, like the carbon tax itself, undermine support for the kind of serious action on climate change that still needs to be fought for. All they do is help Tony Abbott.

“We know we can’t be in Afghani-stan forever”. Maybe the penny has dropped for Defence Minister Stephen Smith

“A carbon tax could have united fervent environmentalists and economic rationalists, whatever the latter think about ‘climate change’. After all, a carbon tax is a consump-tion tax in green garb”. Adam Creighton from the right-wing think tank Centre for Independent Studies

“It was the kind of place you get out of and you never want to go back again”.A former reporter describes the News of the World when rebekah Brooks was editor

“That is what we do—we go out and destroy other people’s lives”.News of the World assistant news edi-tor Greg Miskiw in 2002

“I can look [workers] in the eye and assure them there is a great future in coal mining.”Julia Gillard at a NSW coal mine

“If the government had any intes-tinal fortitude it would have put petrol and electricity prices up and that would have changed people’s habits.”Mining boss BC Iron chief executive Mike Young doesn’t mind if we pay the carbon tax

“The less well-off will get compo, but even they could afford it if they had to. One less deck of smokes a week. Two less beers. Leave off the Foxtel subscription.”“Geoff Lemon’s” middle class rant, in a widely circulated blog post, was a great example of why Gillard can’t sell the carbon tax

“Our concerns about the adverse impacts of the proposed carbon tax on our competitive position have been substantially addressed”.OneSteel managing director Geoff Plummer

“Prime Minister John Howard has repeatedly proven to be one of the most sensible leaders in the Western world.”Norweigan Islamophobe and mass murderer Anders Breivik

higher bills not something we can afford

“People feel richer but in reality, they can afford less.” —Adam scwab


EDitORiALDefending carbon tax just helps AbbottTHe uNVeILING of the carbon tax package has produced only the slight-est improvement in the government’s support. Labor’s primary vote crept up to 29 per cent from 27 per cent in a Newspoll taken after the announce-ment. But the opposition retains a commanding 56 per cent in two party preferred terms.

It’s not just the carbon tax that has sent Labor’s popularity plummeting.

An Ipsos Mackay report, released in June, provided a telling snapshot of popular values. “Australians in 2011 generally embrace a social democratic world view, at least on the economy, the workplace and public services”, concluded the Sydney Morning Her-ald.

The report, Being Australian, involved detailed interviews with over 100 men and women from across the country. Its key finding was that people feel “Big business undermines our way of life”, demanding people work longer hours, and whenever the bosses want.

It shows there would be strong support for tackling corporate power to fund public services, and creat-ing jobs through acting on climate change. But Labor is so committed to the market and business interests that it is incapable of connecting with this sentiment.

The carbon tax is just one example of this, where Gillard tells us, “This is a big reform for our country’s future.” and “The carbon price is our dollar float”. All this does is reinforce that the carbon tax is another piece of pro-business “reform” just like those of the Hawke-Keating years. The whole experience of this is that it means at-tacks on living standards—and work-ing class people know this.

Gillard is hoping against hope that things will change when the carbon tax begins operating in July next year—and people find that, with the compensation, it’s not such a big deal.

Things won’t be that easy. Al-though the government protests that some people will actually be better off, that is not how most people will feel.

Cost of living pressures are a fact of life, with prices rising faster than incomes (see p6). The carbon tax will get the blame, whether or not it causes price spikes.

The media will jump on any evi-dence of people struggling to pay their bills—and there are sure to be many

people worse off.The carbon tax, and demanding

that ordinary people must pay for action on climate change, has given Tony Abbott a huge free kick.

Greens cave-inThe details of the carbon tax pack-age show why The Greens have made such a mistake to support it. They have compromised their credibility on climate change for some very minor concessions on renewable energy (see p7).

Like the CPrS, the carbon tax will not cut emissions. Treasury model-ling shows Australia’s emissions will continue to rise until 2030.

By 2020 emissions will rise by about 7.5 per cent. Labor’s claimed “reduction target” of 5 per cent by 2020 is only met through buying offsets from overseas, which are to make up two-thirds of the emissions “cuts”.

Numerous studies have exposed

these offset projects as dodgy or use-less.

The Greens have defended the package as a start, pleading that the emissions reduction targets can be increased later on. But the tax under-mines the public support that will be necessary to push for more serious action on climate change.

The Greens and most of the cli-mate movement look like spending the next year making the case for a “price on pollution”. Defending the carbon tax will limit the ability of the climate movement to take the fight up to Ab-bott. The “Say Yes” rallies may have been called in response to Abbott and the climate deniers, but their demands were limited to supporting a carbon tax.

This just plays into Abbott’s claims that prices will go “up and up and up”.

Carbon pricing has not worked where it has been tried in europe. The european union emissions Trading Scheme has been in place for over five years and emissions are still rising.

emissions trading, which will be-gin here in 2015, creates a new market for speculators—the very people who brought the global economy to the brink of collapse.

It would be a mistake for the climate movement to think that it has to support the Gillard/Greens carbon tax, and to think that the only alternative to it is Abbott’s climate denial. The best way to stop Abbott is to push Gillard and The Greens into delivering policies that will actually cut emissions—direct government investment that can build renewable power stations and more ef-ficient and widespread public transport.

The NSW Greens’ state election proposal for the state government to fund three small solar thermal power stations for $2 billion each is a good example of effective action.

This is perfectly possible—Spain is expected to have almost enough solar thermal power installed by 2013 to match the capacity of NSW’s Bay-swater coal power station, which can power two million homes.

These are measures that could cre-ate thousands of new jobs—and which could win broad public support.

But winning them will require rejecting market mechanisms and building a strong grassroots climate movement, able to force real change on a minority government too commit-ted to maintaining business as usual.

Above: Abbott is a menace—but simply supporting Labor and the greens’ carbon tax won’t do him any damage


big polluters grab billions in handouts—again

CARbOn tAX

By Chris Breen

LABOr AND the Greens claim the carbon price means the beginning of the end for coal-fired power.

Their evidence for this is Treasury modeling which says the $23/tonne starting price is enough to make coal unprofitable.

But at best we will see a large expansion of gas-fired power, which the government labels a “cleaner fuel”.

Greg Combet told Lateline in April, “What we’re really talking about is bringing on baseload gas-fired electricity generation”.

But gas still releases greenhouse gases and is no solution to the climate problem.

Campaign group Beyond Zero emissions point out that gas plants, “emit between 45 to 70 per cent of greenhouse gases compared to a coal-fired power station”, when emissions released in mining are included.

And emissions would be locked in for 30 to 50 years, the life of a new plant.

Even the end of new coal power plants is uncertain. Modeling done by consulting firms Deloitte and ACIL Tasman has said a price of between $40 and $60 is necessary to drive out coal. And the Treasury admits in one of their modeled “scenarios” that one large new coal power station will be built.

Buying out Hazelwood?The government is also proposing to buy out and close 2000 Megawatts (MW) of coal power by 2020. This is targeted at heavy polluting plants like Hazelwood in Victoria and Playford in South Australia.

These plants need to close. But they should not be replaced by more fossil fuels, nor billions wasted on compensation for their owners.

The government has promised a “comprehensive structural adjust-ment support package” for workers at closed plants.

But it will do little more than help workers with resume preparation and interview skills—not much help if there are not new jobs to go to. The government has offered only $200 million over seven years to assist all regional areas across Australia af-fected by the carbon tax package.

Hazelwood owners International Power-GDF Suez have demanded up

to $3 billion to close—although the money for buyouts will not be avail-able until after 2016.

Overall power stations will get free permits and cash compensation estimated at $5.5 billion over six years, as well as government loans if they have trouble refinancing existing debt.

Workers at the power stations are rightly worried. AMWu Hazelwood delegate Phil Bramstedt told AMWu News, “We don’t want another situ-ation like the Kennett privatisation, when we lost 8000 jobs overnight”.

The electrical Trades union has rightly refused to support the gov-ernment’s plan over the question of jobs, saying, “800 direct jobs would be lost if Hazelwood closed while the loss of indirect jobs could flow into the thousands”.

If these workers are thrown on the scrap heap it will fuel opposition to phasing out further power stations.

There is every indication the 2000MW electricity generation capacity eventually shut down will be replaced by natural gas, or even new coal, rather than renewable energy.

Soon after becoming prime min-ister Julia Gillard promised no more dirty coal-fired power stations would ever be built.

But the federal government still has a $100 million grant on the table for the proposed HrL brown coal “demonstration” plant in Victo-

is the carbon tax the end of dirty coal power?

AS uNDer the CPrS, the carbon tax contains billions in compensation for business.

In total there is $10.3 billion for business over the first three years, with compensation guaranteed until 2018.

Coal power stations alone will receive $5.5 billion in free permits and cash over five years, compared to $7.2 billion over ten years under the CPrS. This will result in windfall profits, as power companies pass on the cost of the carbon price and pocket the compensation.

Most of the compensation is likely to flow to heavy emitting brown coal generators. This means the government will spend hundreds of millions subsidising power sta-tions like Hazelwood over the next few years, which could then get paid billions more to close after 2016.

Business sectors that had com-

ria. Gillard refused to rule out HrL going ahead when asked a direct ques-tion about it on ABC TV’s Q& A.

We are still going to have to fight for a renewable future.

That means backing both the campaign to stop HrL, and unions fighting for new jobs in the Latrobe Valley.

“What we’re really talking about is bringing on baseload gas-fired electricity generation” —greg Combet

Above Right: Julia gillard visited hazelwood power station workers, but promised little in concrete help on new jobs


big polluters grab billions in handouts—again

CARbOn tAX

By James Supple

LABOr AND The Greens have held up a “massive $13 billion investment in renewable energy” as a key benefit of the carbon tax package. It is one of the main things The Greens claim to have used their Senate numbers to negotiate.

But $3.2 billion of the money, for a new Australian renewable energy Agency, is recycled from existing programs over the next ten years.

It is positive that responsibility for these programs will be taken from resources Minister Martin Ferguson, who is in the pocket of the coal and uranium companies. But this is not actually new money.

The rest, $10 billion, is for a Clean energy Finance Corporation (CeFC). Only half of that money is set aside for renewables—the rest can be spent on vaguely defined “clean energy measures” which could include gas. While compensation for corporations will start in full next year, proper funding for the CeFC has been put off until 2015.

And as Melbourne University renewables experts Patrick Hearps and Dylan McConnell noted, “The budget provided indicates that most of this money won’t be available until the lat-ter half of the decade, with only $944 million provided to 2015.”

The model for the new Clean en-ergy Finance Corporation is premised on securing most of the investment from business. Climate Change Minister Greg Combet told Climate Spectator, “it will be a commercially oriented body and is expected to earn returns on its investments… It’s not a grants body… It provides loans, loan guarantees or equity investments.”

Large scale solar misses outBut this model means it will not be able to deliver large-scale solar power plants, let alone solar thermal with storage—the technology Beyond Zero emissions recommends. The advantage of storage is that it allows solar to operate 24-hours a day, so that it can provide baseload power to replace existing coal power stations. Otherwise it can only supplement the existing power plants when the sun is shining.

This is why Hearps and McCon-nell argue, “Low-interest financing may not be enough in itself to get first-stage renewables off the ground.” Solar thermal power will be much more expensive than fossil fuels until built on a large scale. Therefore only direct government support to subsi-dise power produced by renewable sources will see them built.

The only reason we are seeing the installation of wind turbines and rooftop solar panels at the moment is because they power they produced is

subsidied through the federal govern-ment’s Mandatory renewable energy Target and state-level feed-in tariffs.

What would really make a dif-ference is a government plan to start building the renewables we need, and subsidising the power produced. This could be funded through progressive taxes like corporate tax or hitting high income earners.

But because any projects funded with the $10 billion have to be profit-able within the existing energy market, no new additional renewable energy will come from the $10 billion above what is already provided for by the 20 per cent Mandatory renewable energy Target and state government feed-in tariffs. So it won’t actually increase the use of renewable energy.

Leaving things to the free market is a disaster for renewable energy. This is shown by the Labor government’s ex-isting Solar Flagships program, which requires the private sector to fund two-thirds of any project.

As a result we have seen renew-ables projects collapse. Solar Systems, the Victorian company which won government funding to build a solar plant at Mildura, was forced to close in 2009 when it could not secure enough additional private sector funding.

The carbon tax package won’t work for renewables. We need to fight for direct government investment and subsidies if we want to see any serious growth in renewable energy.

Claims of billions for renewables are hollow

plained about the impact of the tax received special handouts—which will be funded from the budget not carbon tax revenue. The steel industry secured 94.5 per cent of its permits for free plus a $300 million package. Coal mining bosses got a $1.3 billion support package for “gassy” coal mines. As Bernard Ke-ane wrote in Crikey, this represents, “an outrageous cave-in to the indus-try that is responsible, more than any other, for Australia’s contribution to global warming.”

As under the CPrS, trade-ex-posed industries get the bulk of the free permits—94.5 per cent for those considered heavy polluting and 66 per cent for the rest. Other industries can access some of $1.2 billion to buy new equipment to help them cut power bills. The failure of the scheme to challenge the big polluters is blinding.

the model for the new Clean Energy Finance Corporation is premised on securing most of the investment from business

Above: Large-scale solar power plants, like the ones above in seville, spain won’t get much help from the renewables funding


REFugEEs

By Feiyi Zhang

SBS TV’s Go Back To Where You Came From has generated a huge amount of public debate about refu-gees. It was the highest-rating program for SBS so far this year, with over half a million viewers tuning in for each episode.

It followed six people sent on a journey to retrace the steps refugees make from their homes to get to Aus-tralia. In what they described as a “so-cial experiment”, the show’s producers selected people with some of the most shocking anti-refugee attitudes they could find.

Producers attended the community meeting for residents living near the Inverbrackie Detention Centre in the Adelaide Hills. Here they found raye Colbey, the “loudest most virulently anti-detention centre person at the meeting”. Raye starts off viciously racist towards refugees in the first episode, saying, “I could have gone over there with a gun and shot the lot of them”.

Then there is raquel, who openly admits to being racist and says, “I just don’t like Africans”.

The most striking thing about the show is the immense empathy that direct experience of refugees’ despair draws, even from these self-described racists.

Most of the participants’ dramati-cally shift their opinion as a result of the journey. This is the most important lesson of the series—that people’s ideas can be changed. And it is not just five people’s ideas about refugees that it has changed—as we’ve seen in the discussion around the show. This will be an important source of hope to refugee rights campaigners in the fight to shift public opinion.

ConditionsThe series has helped expose condi-tions for refugees in Malaysia, where Gillard plans to deport 800 people as part of her “Malaysia solution”.

Participants traveled there to spend time living in an overcrowded apart-ment with 40 Burmese refugees.

These refugees are essentially stuck in limbo. Adults only dare to work on the fringes of the city in backbreaking jobs while their children are afraid to venture outside for fear of being taken away.

The experience poses a question:

would you get on a boat, if it was your only hope of freedom and opportuni-ties. Adam, a lifeguard from Cronulla who took part in the Cronulla race riot and earlier called refugees “crimi-nals”, is moved to acknowledge that he would get on a boat if faced with their choice.

The show also brings to light the desperate situations that refugees flee. The participants’ meet an African family recently settled in Australia, who fled political persecution in the Congo. Later they make the journey to where their relatives are still stuck in a refugee camp.

Living alongside refugees in a Kenyan camp that houses 84,000 refu-gees, the participants get an insight into the poverty and despair refugees face.

Even Raquel ends up sympathis-ing with the plight of this family hav-ing fled from political persecution and now stuck in a camp. She sees how they live in brute poverty and shares their sadness in not being able to see their relatives in Australia.

The situation of these two families—one living in Australia and another still stuck in a camp—also highlights the arbitrariness of whether refugees ever get the chance of re-settlement.

But empathy with refugees’ suf-fering is not enough to see through all the racist myths. raye, who spent time

living in the African refugee camp, has shown since that she remains hostile to the refugee boats. Her conclusion has been that the most “deserving” refugees are in these camps, while those who come by boat are jumping the queue and “undeserving”, as she argued on a recent episode of Q&A.

But not everyone gets the chance to wait in a camp. People fleeing war zones like Sri Lanka or the Middle East have no where to apply and no queue to join. The millions of African refugees compared to meager refugee intake levels by developed counties also shows the fallacy of the idea of an orderly queue. Without getting on a boat most refugees will remain in these camps without any hope of resettlement.

Go Back To Where You Came From shows how racist ideas are built on myths pushed by the gov-ernment and the media. The series demonstrates how these myths can be broken down through learning about the situation of refugees. Meeting refugees can be part of the movement but a campaign working to shift public opinion is neded to end racist refugee policies.

Alongside telling these stories in workplaces, schools and universities, we need to mobilise the power of ordinary people on the streets to force an end to our government’s racist treatment of refugees.

go back: the series that set people talking

Above: the go back Where you Came From participants, ready to be sent off


REFugEEs

By Ian Rintoul

JOHN HOWArD’S election in 1996 brought with it Pauline Hanson and a steep rise in efforts to whip up racism—first against Aborigines and Asians but then quickly at Muslim and refugees.

Howard’s Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock initially rejected Hanson’s policy of Temporary Protec-tion Visas (TPVs) for refugees.

In 1999, as the number of boats went from 17 (in 1998) to 86, he introduced them, and dramatically expanded detention centres—opening Woomera in November 1999.

Socialists responded by initiating Refugee Action Collectives (RAC) to counter Howard’s racism, shift public opinion and break Labor’s anti-refu-gee stance. It wasn’t going to be easy. The Labor leadership backed every piece of anti-refugee legislation the Liberals put up during their first six years in power.

The rAC groups had a particular orientation to organised workers in the trade union movement—firstly to provide an antidote where Howard sought to sow racism most deeply, and to tap workers’ social power. Secondly, the unions have a special connection to Labor.

We produced leaflets targeted to unionists, addressed union meetings, and invited union leaders and Labor MPs to speak at rallies—laying the basis for the formation of what was envisaged to be L-a-b-o-u-r for Refu-gees. It became Labor for refugees with more of a focus on the Labor Party than we had planned, but gave us a real connection to the labour movement more broadly.

The orientation to Labor was controversial. Many in the campaign regarded the Labor Party as the enemy and wanted to protest against them in the same way we protested against Howard or ruddock. They didn’t understand that the party was not monolithic but had many mem-bers and even more supporters critical of the leadership but who maintained an allegiance to the party.

Our work with officials and rank and file members not only meant that refugee material was distributed on jobs and published in union journals, but that we could mobilise small contingents from unions. We were also able to push for union action at the air-ports to stop deportations of refugees.

At first, the protests were small. But in mid 2000, the refugees themselves pushed their way on the front pages of the newspapers when 200 broke out of Woomera detention centre.

There were two events in 2001 that polarised public opinion and pushed more people into the campaign. The first was a Four Corners program in August that dealt with escapes from Villawood and showed graphic footage taken with a smuggled camera of a young Iranian boy, Shayan Badraie, who was slowly dying inside detention.

The second event is better known—the arrival of the Tampa—also in August. The demonstration over the Tampa brought hundreds of people, disgusted with Labor’s capitulation to Howard, declaring they had torn up their Labor Party cards or that they were now voting Greens. An important minority were now actively opposed to Labor’s me-tooism.

All this led to a flourishing of refugee support groups. Within weeks ChilOut (Children Out of detention), Adelaide’s Circles of Friends, and We Are All Boat People were formed. Ac-tors For refugees was established in September and rural Australians for refugees in October. In the aftermath of Howard’s re-election in November came Labor for refugees.

The leaflets, the fact sheets and

other efforts meant that slowly more people were armed with the facts to counter Howard’s lies.

Despite the Pacific Solution the movement continued to grow, fuelled by the outrages and resistance inside Howard’s hell-holes. The dramatic eas-ter 2002 break out at Woomera again pushed the issue onto the front pages.

Having an impactThe campaigning began to produce shifts in the Labor Party. Every state Labor conference in 2002 and 2003 carried a resolution supporting Labor for refugees’ demands.

There were cracks in the Liberal government too, with some back-benchers becoming outspoken critics of Howard’s anti-refugee policies.

In 2002, for the first time since 1996, Labor opposed a piece of How-ard government refugee legislation—an attempt to excise more islands from the Migration Act. Howard withdrew the legislation rather be defeated in Parliament.

Slowly but surely, the grassroots campaigning swung public opinion against Howard. Newspoll records show that between 2001 and 2004, the number of people who thought some or all asylum boats should be able to land went from 47 per cent to 61 per cent.

By 2004, the government was forced to ease conditions in deten-tion. Many long-term refugees were released—albeit on less than adequate “return pending”= visas. Children and families were also released from detention.

But the overall policies remained in place. While Labor had also shifted, it too was still committed to maintain-ing mandatory detention and off-shore processing.

Howard was unable to play the refugee race card in the 2007 elec-tion, and many people voted Labor in the hope that they would embrace a humanitarian policy. Those hopes have been dashed. But tens of thousands had been part of the campaign—and many are now rejoining it. This year’s World refugee Day rallies were the biggest since Labor’s election.

The lessons of fighting Howard last time show that with patient work it is possible to shift public opinion and force governments to back down.

That experience stands the cam-paign in good stead for the fight we now have with Labor in power.

how the movement changed public opinion last time

Above: the tampa crisis in August 2001 pushed an important minority of people into the refugee rights campaign

The leaflets, the fact sheets and other efforts meant that more people were armed with the facts to counter howard’s lies.


uniOns

BY James Supple

uNION LeADerS have denounced the NSW Liberals new public sector law as “worse than WorkChoices”.

Their new law requires the Indus-trial relations Commission (IrC) to enforce any government decisions about public sector wages and condi-tions—such as its declared 2.5 per cent pay cap on pay rises.

unlike WorkChoices or the old award system there is potentially no set of minimum conditions for workers’ conditions. This means that some of the minimum conditions in WorkChoices, like maximum ordinary work hours and casual loadings, could be changed by government regulation except those, like superannuation, cov-ered by separate legislation. For now, its aim is simply to enforce the 2.5 per cent pay cap.

until now the IrC has supposedly been an “independent umpire”, able to make its own rulings on disputes between the state government and its employees in the NSW public sector. Private sector and federal public sector workers are covered by the federal Fair Work Australia system.

Some union leaders have attacked the new law by saying it takes away the right to collective bargaining—be-cause the government can refuse to bargain and the IrC must simply enforce government regulations.

What the new law really does is get rid of the option of IrC arbitration. Before O’Farrell’s new law, if the gov-ernment and a union could not reach a negotiated agreement, the IrC could make a legally binding decision itself.

In the past unions have often opted to make claims directly on the govern-ment, backing their negotiations with industrial action. Union officials at some weaker public sector unions, however, see the option of arbitration as a lifeline, since they have no faith in winning wage gains through the unions’ own industrial strength.

Arbitration’s history The IrC and the existence of arbitra-tion was designed to tie unions into an officially sanctioned system for registered unions and settling disputes. It offered the carrot that IrC decisions would become legally enforceable against the boss without having to take strike action.

Arbitration became entrenched

as a way of dampening down class struggle and incorporating the unions following the great strikes of the 1890s. Both the cost of the strikes for employers, and the weakening of workers’ position by the crushing defeats for the unions, encouraged both to look to a state system to man-age disputes. But Arbitration Courts like the IrC were established with the specific aim of preventing “industrial disputes”, and for most of their exis-tence strikes have been illegal.

Any group of workers that stepped outside the IrC system, by striking to demand higher wages than the IRC decided on, faced serious fines or even deregistration as a union. In 1969 the Victorian equivalent of the IRC jailed Tramways Union leader Clarrie O’Shea, after his union had refused to pay fines imposed by the IrC.

The IrC was designed to contain workers’ struggle. In 1940 industrial action was decriminalised in NSW, but only if 14 days notice was giv-en—enough time for the employer to make strike action ineffective through organising scab labour and making other preparations.

Industrial courts are not “inde-pendent” but are part of the capital-ist state—and therefore favours the bosses. During the Great Depression in 1931 the federal Arbitration Court imposed a 10 per cent wage cut on all workers. There is an old saying, what you can’t win on the ground,

you won’t win in the courts. The NSW IrC too has often handed down ap-palling anti-worker decisions.

Its decision in the NSW wage case for TAFe teachers at the end of 2009 was a prime example. It imposed an extra five hours attendance time a week for TAFe teachers, as well as making working hours “flexible” across a whole year. The union was forced to strike in defiance of IRC orders and the threat of fines to win a slight improvement in their agreement.

Anti-strike laws that shackle the unions are still in force. Both remain-ing state IrCs and the Fair Work Aus-tralia can fine unions for illegal strike action—either strike action outside a bargaining period or in defiance of an order by the courts.

Socialists have always argued for industrial militancy, in defiance of the law when necessary, as the only effective way to win the fight for pay and conditions. We will have to fight O’Farrell’s law, not to defend the supposed “independence” of the IrC, but to win real wage rises and defend conditions from government attack.

Industrial action can beat O’Farrell. We need strike action across the public sector for the unions NSW day of action against the law on Sep-tember 8. NSW teachers will be bar-gaining directly with O’Farrell at the end of the year. A concerted campaign, backed by other unions, can break the Liberals’ 2.5 per cent pay cap and make O’Farrell’s law a dead letter.

What does O’Farrell’s attack on the iRC mean?

Above: Protesting on June 15—some have called for a campaign to defend the iRC as an “independent umpire”


uniOns

By Mark Goudkamp

AS SoLidAriTY went to press, NSW Liberal Premier Barry O’Farrell’s assault on public sector workers had hit a minor snag, with the Shooters and Fishers Party join-ing Fred Nile in threatening to with-draw support for his anti-union laws in the NSW upper House, unless competition between ethics classes and scripture lessons in schools is scrapped.

But the key to stopping O’Farrell is the unions NSW-led campaign to make the laws unworkable.

unions NSW’s Mary Yaager has announced that another mass rally is planned for Thursday September 8, starting at the Domain.

That there is more anger and willingness to take action now than even existed during the Your Rights At Work campaign against Work Choices, she said, speaking at a forum organised by Power to the People and the NSW Union Activ-ist Network in July, attended by 50 people.

But union leaders have delayed announcing plans for industrial action on September 8, saying this could lead to legal action against unions. But this means that as Solidarity goes to press, with just six weeks to go there is no material union members can use to promote the rally.

Nurses, public servants and firefighters took industrial action on June 15—and no fines resulted. The turnout of between 12,000 and 20,000 on the day exceeded all expectations.

The Inner City Teachers As-sociation has initiated a cross-union delegates meeting on August 16, but unions NSW so far has no plans for Sydney-wide delegates meet-ings—preferring smaller meetings in regional areas and a handful of suburbs.

Activists in every union will need to apply pressure to make sure the campaign’s momentum deepens.

O’Farrell’s attacks are not limited to the new Ir laws. The MuA are fac-ing the privatisation of Sydney Fer-ries, as well as plans to absorb Sydney Maritime into the rTA with the loss of 350 jobs.

The PSA are mounting a legal challenge against changes to the Managing excess employees Policy that affect laid-off public servants, as

well as TAFe and migrant english teachers.

O’Farrell has offered unions fac-ing upcoming wage negotiations his 2.5 per cent pay increase up front,

allowing later negotiations on the “productivity savings” that must be offered to get a higher wage rise.

But the principle of the pay cap must be challenged. Public school and TAFe teachers’ agreement expires at the end of 2011. The Teachers Federation claim, for 5 per cent a year, 1 per cent extra superannuation and recognition of casual and tempo-rary teaching pay scale progression, directly challenges it. The Teachers’ Federation Annual Conference in July committed to calling out teachers to fight O’Farrell.

The larger and more militant September 8 is, the more confidence it will give teachers that we can take the sustained industrial action necessary to both win our claim, and to smash O’Farrell’s legislation.n Cross-union delegates meeting hosted by Inner City teachers Association6-8pm August 16 Cyprus Club, stanmore rd

FeDerAL PuBLIC servants in a number of agencies, including the ATO, Defence, Customs, Immigra-tion and the Bureau of Meteorology have now voted down enterprise agreements. Three out of four public servants are hostile to the govern-ment’s miserable below inflation 3 per cent per year pay offer ceiling and attacks on conditions.

Thousands of staff are ballot-ing for industrial action, including Immigration, Defence and Customs staff. In the Department of Agricul-ture, Fisheries and Forestry a series of rolling national stoppages began from July 26.

The public sector union, the CPSu, has drawn up a plan for an APS-wide bargaining system and claims for common pay and conditions. But the government has responded with a common program of cuts with no regard for appropri-ate conditions across the APS. The federal budget also included an increase in the “efficiency dividend” to 1.5 per cent, a further assault on public services which threatens staff cuts.

The union needs to hit back with common across the board industrial

action. unfortunately, it is allowing the government to deal agency-by-agency, leaving 75 agencies to conduct their own bargains, and squandering the industrial power of a public service workforce of more than 100,000 staff.

Now is a good time to propose united action, because most of the agreements are being negotiated at the same time.

Even on their own, some de-partments, for example the major revenue-collecting agencies like Tax, can impose better agreements with strike action, but they need solidarity from other CPSU members to have the confidence to take action.

Centrelink, Medicare, the Com-monwealth Rehabilitation Service and the Child Support Agency have been combined to make one mega-agency of 45,000 staff.

The government is crowing about avoiding the recession, and its plans for a surplus. They can pay, and staff deserve decent conditions to provide the quality public services that work-ing families need.Judy McVeyCPSU member, ABSMelbourne

Out all for massive rally in september against O’Farrell

Time to fight pay cap in federal public service

nurses, public servants and firefighters took industrial action on June 15—and no fines resulted.

Above: Part of the 12,000-strong union rally in nsW in June


REPORts

By Lauren Mellor

THe FeDerAL government is cur-rently in the middle of a six week round of “consultations” with Ab-original people on the future of the NT Intervention.

This process is a sham. A discus-sion paper released by government called Stronger Futures makes it clear that key Intervention measures are not up for negotiation. These include compulsory Income Management, the power of Government Business Managers, the abolition of Community Development Employment Projects and the push for long term leases over Aboriginal township land.

The government needs new leg-islation to replace Intervention laws, which expire in July 2012. This pro-cess is designed to fabricate consent for a second Intervention.

I have visited community con-sultations, seeing the overbearing involvement of Government Business Managers and local Shire bosses and consistent attempts to restrict discus-sion. Officials facilitating the meetings strongly emphasise the “achieve-ments” of the intervention so far.

But where Aboriginal people are organised and assertive, the meetings have become important sites of protest.

ResistanceJust five days after the launch of Stronger Futures, Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin and a team of bureaucrats set off on a whirlwind tour. In Tennant Creek where the first ses-sion was held, no attempt was made to give notice to any towncamp residents. Astonishingly, Macklin’s staff ex-plained the lack of notice as a “security precaution” to protect the Minister.

But local activist Dianne Stokes, who has led a campaign to oppose a nuclear waste-dump on nearby Ab-original land, quickly got the word out and 75 people attended the meeting.

Tennant Creek residents spoke passionately about the starvation of homelands and outstations since Com-monwealth funding began to be with-drawn in 2009—part of an attempt to force people to migrate to urban centres, or one of the 20 “hub towns” earmarked for investment.

Stokes and others demanded resources to sustain a future for their communities—without having to accept destructive projects like the nuclear dump.

In Maningrida, residents forceful-ly rejected the government’s push for a long-term leases over their township land. The meeting took place follow-ing disgraceful revelations that money from the Aboriginal Benefits Account, sourced from royalties from mining on Aboriginal land, is being used to pay rent to communities who agree to sign leases.

Reggie Wurrudjal, a traditional owner for Maningrida said: “The inter-vention over the last four years now, I haven’t seen anything done. It should be scrapped altogether. People are put-ting a lot of concerns to the Minister here, it’s not Closing the Gap.”

“By signing a lease, I’ll be handing over decision making to the government. I’ll have no power what-soever, no input into my community. I’m just losing my land.”

At Amoonguna, there were demands for a return to community based employment and training pro-grams with proper wages and condi-tions. unemployment has skyrocketed and young men and women on CDeP complained of being paid through Centrelink and the BasicsCard. They were used as cheap labour for the government’s $672 million Strategic Housing and Infrastructure Project (SIHIP) while receiving no ongoing qualifications or job.

In response the Government Busi-ness Manager facilitating the meeting simply urged young people to take up

work outside the community.The Gurindji people living at

Kalkaringi and Daguragu held a strike against the Intervention in 2010 and have led protest meetings in Darwin.

Community spokesperson John Leemans told their consultation meet-ing on July 27:

“The NT Intervention must end immediately. It is a violation of our human rights, our integrity and liberty. The world is condemning it through the uN. The churches and unions are condemning it.”

“We want control of our land back. We want to be able to practice our cul-ture and speak our language. We want jobs created so we can work in our community. There is a big movement of people into Darwin and Katherine, because there are no jobs in the com-munity any more. This is exactly what we don’t want—people must be able to live and work on their homelands.

“We have a brain to think for our-selves on how to run our own commu-nities. It’s called self-determination. But since the Intervention everything has been taken away from us”.

Leemans concluded, “We know Minister Jenny Macklin stayed away from Gurindji country because we are strong and organised against her Intervention. We are going to keep this battle going. We are organising a protest on Freedom Day, 45 years since our old people walked off Wave Hill station”.

Aboriginal people stand up to sham intervention consultations

this process is designed to fabricate consent for a second intervention.

Above: Aboriginal people in the nt have time and again voiced their opposition to key intervention measures, but the government has refused to listen


intERnAtiOnAL

Malaysian government cracks down on democracy movement

Above: Police in Malaysia arrested 1600 people during a peaceful pro-democracy demonstration

By Mark Goudkamp

ON JuLY 9, up to 50,000 people took to the streets of Kuala Lumpur in a mass rally called by the Bersih 2.0 (Coalition for Clean and Fair elec-tions) movement.

The government had declared the rally to be an illegal gathering, and blockaded all roads leading into Kuala Lumpur.

In the two weeks leading up to July 9, over 100 activists were ar-rested. Bersih’s offices were raided, and anyone wearing a yellow T-shirt was considered fair game by the police.

On the day itself, 1600 people were arrested, including key Opposi-tion figures such as Dato’ Ambiga Sreenevesan and Maria Chin Abdul-lah, two members of the Bersih’s Steering Committee. The police went all out to prevent a memorandum on electoral reforms being delivered to the king.

Baton charges and water cannons were used to disperse the protest. Large amounts of tear gas were fired, including into the Tung Shin Mater-nity Hospital compound, affecting many protesters who had sought refuge there, and also patients.

Globally, protests were held in 38 cities including 750 in Melbourne and 300 in Sydney.

Since 9 July, the Malaysian government has attempted to portray the Bersih movement opposed to a democratically elected government.

Prime Minister Najib Razak asserted that the rally was about “try-ing to seize power from a govern-ment that was put in place by the people”, adding that “we have never cheated in an election”. But fewer and fewer people are listening to the old lies.

Malaysia’s national elections are due in 2013, but many commentators predict that they will be called at least a year early.

The ruling Barisan Nasional (National Front) coalition headed by uMNO are spooked by recent election results in the region—the unprecedented strong showing by the Singaporean opposition earlier this year, and the Red Shirt-linked victory in Thailand.

Even more crucially, they fear a scenario like Tunisia or egypt where Malaysia’s masses rise up against decades of what has essentially been

one-party rule.Malaysia’s rulers maintain insti-

tutionalised racial divisions, treating the country’s significant Chinese and Indian minorities as second-class citizens. Higher education and public service jobs are more difficult for minorities to ac-cess, while many of the nation’s most lucrative assets, like the Petronas oil company, are overwhelmingly Malay.

Free the “EO6”uNMO is using draconian legisla-tion, the emergency (Public Order & Prevention of Crime) Ordinance (eO) to detain without trial six lead-ing Malaysian Socialist Party (PSM) members.

under the eO, if they are detained for 60 days (ie. until the end of Au-gust), the Home Affairs Minister (the very minister who signed the refugee swap agreement with Australia) can issue either a further detention, or a restriction order for two years.

Originally part of a group of 31 PSM activists arrested on 25 June, the EO6 are in separate jails, locked up in 2x2.5 metre cells since 2 July, forced to sleep on the floor with the lights on, and regularly interrogated.

They were denied family visits

for 15 days and now there are fears that they have been tortured. Among the “eO6” is Dr Kumar, an elected Federal MP.

A vigorous campaign to free the eO6 has held forums across Ma-laysia, and vigils outside the Royal Malaysian Police HQ in Bukit Aman. A petition can be signed on http://ber-sih.org.

Despite this repression of democ-racy activists, the Australian govern-ment has no qualms striking a deal with the Malaysian government to deport 800 asylum seekers there (see p28).

Yet, the people leading the fight for democratic change in Malaysia are also those that defend the rights of refugees and asylum seekers.

On Monday 25 July, around 50 pro-democracy activists protested outside the refugee swap deal “signing ceremony” in central Kuala Lumpur. Among them was Tian Chua, federal MP from Anwar Ibrahim’s Justice Party who arrested on 9 July at KL Sentral station.

He told Solidarity, “If Malaysian citizens including MPs who dissent from the government are not safe from arbitrary detention, what hope do returned asylum seekers have?”


intERnAtiOnAL

By Sadie Robinson Socialist Worker (uK)

MeDIA TYCOON rupert Murdoch’s motto is “expand or die”—and it seems to have served him well.

Murdoch is one of the most powerful men in the world. His News Corporation owns newspapers, televi-sion and radio stations spanning five continents.

He’s worth over $7 billion—and is rated as the 117th richest person in the world. Governments seem to be in awe of Murdoch and keep letting his power grow.

But he didn’t start with nothing. Murdoch inherited a substantial media business, the Herald group, from his father, Sir Keith Murdoch.

The Australian dictionary of National Biography described Sir Keith’s business as “the first national media chain” in Australia.

rupert grew up in a wealthy home. He went to the Geelong Grammar school and then to Oxford University in Britain.

His friend Rohan Rivett wrote to Sir Keith of rupert, “I am inclined to prophesy that he will make his first million with fantastic ease.” And so he did—when Sir Keith died and left him the business.

RuthlessFrom the start Murdoch’s focus was acquiring more titles and cutting costs. He sacked editors he felt were too independent and brought in those he was certain agreed with him.

He imposed his views on other things too. Subeditors were ordered not to wear coloured shirts or suede shoes (to fit in with Murdoch’s bigoted view that only “homos” wore suede shoes). And he didn’t like women who wore trousers.

Murdoch quickly expanded out of Australia—into Hong Kong, New Zealand, Britain and the uS. His aggressiveness infuriated his competitors.

Josef Barletta, general manager of daily News in the uS—a competing newspaper—complained, “I and my associates feel that there are some rules of good behaviour. In Murdoch’s world there are no rules.” One daily News writer went even further, calling one Murdoch publication “a force for evil”.

Murdoch might be more extreme

in his tactics, but he is no different in kind from other media owners.

He lost no time in building relationships with politicians. In 1972, his papers backed Labor’s Gough Whitlam at the federal election. He donated more than $74,000 to the campaign.

When Whitlam won, Murdoch was quoted as saying that he had, “singlehandedly put the present government into office”.

In 1975 Governor-General John Kerr outrageously dismissed the Whitlam government and replaced it with a caretaker administration under Liberal leader Malcolm Fraser.

Murdoch simply got his papers to switch sides. His behaviour led journalists on The Australian to strike. They burned copies of the paper in the streets.

Seventy-five of them wrote a letter complaining that the newspaper was “a propaganda sheet” and had become “a laughing stock”.

Murdoch is a right winger who has pushed right-wing ideas and neo-liberalism—but who he backs depends on his own business interests.

One Murdoch biographer, William Shawcross, stressed that Murdoch’s political choices are often about calculated self-interest rather than principle.

“Murdoch had always liked to be on the same side as the party in government,” Shawcross wrote. “He never wanted to be identified with a loser.”

Murdoch wanted to control the content and production of his papers. When asked in 1981 how he chose his editors, he replied, “I will be very concerned that he’s not a communist.”

He is notoriously anti-union. At the New York Post, he struck a deal with the Newspaper Guild allowing him to sack workers who were “incompatible with the new management”. The deal allowed him to get rid of 122 out of 460 Guild members.

But Murdoch is best known for his union-busting during the 1980s.

The print unions based in London’s Fleet Street were enormously strong. They controlled who was hired and many aspects of the working day.

ScabsBy this time News International owned four Fleet Street papers—the Times, The Sunday Times, the Sun and the News of the World.

Murdoch hatched a plan to smash the print unions, secretly building a non-union printing plant in Wapping, east London.

When printers voted to strike, Murdoch sacked all 6000 of them—and activated his scab plant.

A year-long battle began. Striking printers, journalists and other trade unionists fought daily with police and scabs outside the plant. union leaders eventually called the strike off. It was an enormous defeat.

Murdoch’s victory was helped hugely by British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s anti-union legislation. He has been grateful ever since.

Murdoch described Thatcher’s name as “a synonym for liberty and strength” in a speech last year.

Some feel Murdoch is all powerful. But lots of ordinary people see through the lies in his papers. And resistance to him is still continuing today.

the corrupt heart of Murdoch’s empire


intERnAtiOnAL

By David Glanz

THe MurDOCH crisis has opened a window onto the moral, political and economic corruption that permeates establishment circles.

The pundits, police and politicians who preach the rule of law—the same people who vilify unionists and other activists whose resistance pushes the boundaries—have been shown to treat their own law and order with contempt.

early attempts to brush off phone hacking as an isolated action, perpetrated by a few bad apples, have failed.

Now the questions have escalated: just how much did Rupert Murdoch know, and when? How complicit was British Prime Minister David Cameron?

There are implications in all this for Australia. Murdoch owns daily papers in every capital bar Canberra, the national Australian and swathes of weekly publications. His papers are leading the charge against the carbon tax and the Gillard govern-ment.

Murdoch monitors his media. When I worked at the Herald Sun, the first 11 pages of the paper were faxed each night to him, wherever he was in the world. editors fear Murdoch’s call and hasten to antici-pate his wishes.

So far, however, there is no evidence of the phone hacking seen in Britain. This is not because Murdoch’s lieutenants in Australia are kinder or more ethical. rather, it reflects the relatively stronger position of unions within newspapers here.

In Britain, Murdoch led the charge to smash newspaper unions. Voices of dissent were silenced. When News editors began to use illegal means to steal stories from competitors—hack-ing phones, bribing cops—journalists were effectively powerless.

In Australia, the journalists’ union is still strong enough to hold the line on ethics at Fairfax publications and within the ABC. Even at News, the union has about 30 per cent member-ship and some influence.

In Britain, however, the rot has gone very deep. In the space of a week, Britain’s top cop, Metropoli-tan Police Commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson, his Assistant Commis-

sioner John Yates, and head of News International rebekah Brooks all resigned.

They were brought down by The News of the World’s systematic use of illegal phone hacking, the police’s hiring of key journalists at the heart of the scandal, and the police’s failure to investigate phone hacking despite abundant evidence.

Murdoch has had to close the Sunday paper, abandon his bid for total control of Britain’s pay TV chan-nel and front a British parliamentary committee.

His son, James, who appeared alongside him, has since been accused of lying by former senior journalists.

Tories in troubleCameron, too, is in trouble. He hired a former News heavy-hitter as his media adviser. Now he has had to admit that he shared at least 26 dinners and other engagements with News International executives in just over a year.

The scandal shows the influence Murdoch has wielded on British politics.

But it also comes at a time when the Cameron government is begin-ning to lose its way—dealing with a backlash to its austerity plans that has included a national strike by 750,000 public sector workers.

This puts the unholy alliance between Cameron’s Tories and the Murdoch media at risk. Murdoch will find it difficult to campaign credibly

for the Tories’ cuts through his remain-ing publications, which include the mass circulation Sun.

Cameron in turn will not be able to ride to the Murdoch family’s rescue. There remains the real prospect that the scandal is yet to claim scalps at the highest level.

The ruling class under capital-ism is, as Karl Marx put it, a band of warring brothers. They unite against the workers—the government pushing through austerity, the police cracking heads on demonstrations and the mass media trying to fill heads with reac-tionary and racist arguments that lead to pessimism, despair and defeat.

This has been the story of News, the Tories (and Britain’s Labour gov-ernment before it) and the police who kettle and, on occasion, kill those who protest.

In the context of the big lies over war in Afghanistan and Iraq, cuts to public sector pensions and anti-Mus-lim racism, phone hacking went un-noticed for years (and not just at News publications—both Britain’s daily Mirror and daily Mail look set to be drawn into the scandal).

But once the real story began to trickle out, the warring brothers began to dob each other in and the façade began to crumble.

The British ruling class is exposed and vulnerable. The best revenge would be for unionists to fight back against the Tories and their media apologists.

Murdoch, politicians, cops: they’re all in it together


intERnAtiOnAL

By Mark Gillespie

MILLIONS OF people continue to radicalise as Egypt’s revolution moves left. Activists occupied Tah-rir Square in central Cairo in July and similar public squares across egypt, pledging to stay there until their demands are meet.

Millions more have mobilised to support them, creating a deep crisis for the government. Fourteen ministers in the civilian government that fronts the military regime have been replaced, while the Prime Min-ister, essam Sharaf, was hospital-ised for a short period due to stress.

But there are growing fears the military will launch a crackdown, after troops and gangs of plain-clothes police attacked a march in Cairo at the end of July. Over 300 were injured as they were attacked with knives and swords, and thugs threw bricks and firebombs.

As Solidarity went to press the Muslim Brotherhood, which is backing the military government, had announced a mobilisation to defend the government.

Following the fall of Mubarak in February it was almost taboo to criticise the military leadership who were handed power. They were seen as national heroes for not using force on demonstrators, and for forcing Mubarak to leave. But six months later many millions are deeply frus-trated with the slow pace of change.

“Determination Friday” on July 8 was the biggest mobilisation since the fall of Mubarak. Hundreds of thousands rallied in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, and millions more across egypt. The immediate catalyst for this was the release on bail by a Suez criminal court of seven police offi-cers accused of murder and attempt-ed murder of peaceful protesters during the February revolution. riots erupted as the families of the martyrs and supporters blocked highways and stormed security buildings.

Since the fall of Mubarak only one police officer has been con-victed (in absentia) for the deaths of more than 846 protesters, while more than 7000 activists have been tried and convicted in military courts where they have no right to appeal or to their own lawyer.

But it hasn’t been just the failure to prosecute police that put people on the streets. People feel

the military are not implementing the basic demands of the revolution as promised. “While the head of the former regime…may have been toppled, the body and soul of the regime is still in place and acting with impunity”, said Sharif Abdel Kouddous, a correspondent with democracy Now.

Besides the demand for trials for police accused of murder, there are also demands for speedy trials of Mubarak and corrupt former regime figures; a liveable minimum wage; a budget that prioritises social spending; the end of military trials for civilians; revoking the anti-strike law; and a through cleansing of the police force.

Continuing protestsegypt’s new independent unions have been active in support the ongoing sit-ins. “There were delega-tions from the property tax collectors union, the public transport workers and the Mahalla textile workers—all marching with their own banners” said Mustafa Bassiouny, an activist with Egypt’s Revolutionary Social-ists about Determination Friday. “They joined with many other workers in Tahrir Square, including delegations of pharmaceutical work-ers and the Helwan steel workers”.

So great has been the surge of anger that even the Muslim Broth-erhood felt compelled to support Determination Friday.

In the resort city of Sharm Al-Sheikh, protesters have been demon-strating in front of the International Hospital demanding Mubarak be

transferred to the hospital of Tora prison in Cairo—similar to what happens with any other prisoner.

On July 15 there was another national mobilisation of millions across egypt. While the Muslim Brotherhood did not back this mobilisation (nor the continuing sit-ins), their youth organization did and the momentum continues to be with the activists on the street.

In an attempt to take the heat out of the situation, the government made concessions including the cabinet reshuffle and the dismissal of 600 police officers accused of mur-der. So far this has failed to convince the demonstrators to end the sit-ins. “The new ministers will be as bad as their predecessors, and this is not what we called for,” Ayman Shalaby told the Los Angeles Times.

The fear of provoking a wider radicalisation currently prevents the government using force against the sit-ins, so they are instead trying to ignore them and wait them out. This has created debate amongst the activists as to what to do next.

A coalition of democratic and socialist groups is arguing to use the strike weapon. “The regime could not bear to keep Mubarak in power for more than two days after your strikes of 9, 10, 11 February”, they argue “…If you use the strike weapon to stop the railways and public transport system, close the airports and the big factories, the re-gime can crack within hours”. What is certain is that so far the revolution is continuing to push forward.

Demands for end of military rule grow in Egypt

Above: the army surveys a protest marching on the military government’s headquarters in July Photo: hossam el-hamalawy

six months later many millions are deeply frustrated with the slow pace of change.


intERnAtiOnAL

THIS YeAr the repressive regimes across the Middle East have been challenged by a new wave of revolt. In egypt and Tunisia pro-Western dictators have been toppled.

But these revolutions are far from finished. In Egypt the military has taken power in an attempt to hold together as much as Mubarak’s re-gime as possible, and to maintain his support for uS imperialism and Israel. In countries like Syria the opposition has yet to mobilise a force capable of toppling the regime.

In egypt, workers helped seal Mubarak’s demise. Since his removal, they have risen up in a strike wave across the country demanding fair wages and control of their workplac-es. Millions have continued to protest in Tahrir square calling for a thorough cleansing of the old regime.

The new wave of Arab revolu-tions echoes the waves of struggle after WWII which brought down regimes imposed by then dominant Western imperial powers France and Britain. But it is the nationalist political regimes that emerged from these struggles that are today being challenged and overthrown. Under-standing what went wrong, and the failure of the nationalist and left-wing political currents that created them, requires revisiting that history.

One of the most powerful struggles was the revolution in Iraq in 1958, which gave birth to the largest and most powerful left in the Arab world. Iraqis united across ethnic, religious and tribal divisions and overthrew the brutal British backed Hashemite monarchy. Profound social and land reform followed.

At the centre of this revolution was the young Iraqi working class concentrated in Iraq’s rapidly grow-ing urban centres. While the work-

ers lacked the political organisation to take and hold power, and a new elite filled the vacuum, their struggle nonetheless shows the possibility for today’s revolutions.

The making of IraqThe regime that ruled Iraq until the 1958 revolution was imposed by West-ern imperialist powers.

Iraq as a country did not exist until 1919. It was carved out of the collaps-ing Ottoman empire by the powers that won the First World War. As Turk-ish troops retreated from the Middle East, Britain and France moved in to create a string of new colonies and client states.

Britain received the League of Na-tions’ (club of rich nations) mandate to rule Iraq—and control of its oil riches.

The British were never welcome. An uprising in 1920 was suppressed at a cost of 2000 British soldiers’ lives. It was during this uprising that chemical weapons were first used in the Middle east. Winston Churchill, the then Brit-ish secretary of state in the war office, authorised their use against the Kurds and other “uncivilised tribes”.

The depth of resistance convinced the British to install a puppet regime headed by “king” Feisal I, the son of Hussein ibn Ali, the Grand Sharif of Mecca. Feisal was a complete inter-loper who had previously declared himself king of Syria.

Nasser and the 1958 revolutionThe “oligarchy of racketeers”—as one British official dubbed the corrupt regime—came crashing down on July 14, 1958.

A nationalist revolution lead by General Abdul-Karim Qasim and the “Free Officers” movement removed the boy King Feisal II and ended Brit-ish influence in Iraq.

Mass demonstrations on the eve-ning of the coup blocked the streets and prevented any hostile movement of troops. Iraq’s monarchy collapsed.

The revolution in Iraq was part of a regional upheaval against imperialist control inspired by the rise to power of President Nasser in egypt and his successful defiance of the main Western powers in the region, Britain and France.

Nasser overthrew a British backed monarchy in 1952 and attempted to steer a course of genuine indepen-dence. Part of his strategy was to encourage national liberation struggles against colonialism and the formation a third block of developing nations between the rival superpower blocks of the uS and the uSSr.

The Western powers felt Nasser was a threat to their influence and needed to be brought into line. At first they flexed their economic power, denying egypt loans it needed to build the Aswan dam, which was central to Nasser’s development program.

Nasser responded by nationalising the Suez Canal, telling the imperial-ist powers they could “choke in their rage”. This defiance was too much. Britain and France colluded with Israel to set up a provocation and invaded in October 1956. But this backfired.

The uS, determined to displace the older colonial powers in the region, opposed the invasion and withdrew support for the struggling British sterling. The old colonial powers were forced into a humiliating retreat.

Millions of Arabs were inspired by this victory and Nasser’s picture deco-rated walls from Morocco to Aden to Palestinian refugee camps.

The grip of the imperialist powers on the region was shaken for a decade until the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, when Israel—now armed and funded princi-

thE LAst WAvE OF ARAb REvOLt: iRAQ’s 1958 REvOLutiOnOur of the last wave of Arab revolutions, Iraq developed the most powerful left in the region. Mark gillepsie examines the lessons of that revolt for today’s upheavals

A nationalist revolution lead by general Abdul-karim Qasim and the “Free Officers” removed the king and ended british influence in iraq.


pally by the uS—smashed three Arab armies simultaneously.

Change from belowIn the ten years leading up to the 1958 revolution, Iraq’s monarchy was re-peatedly shaken to it roots by growing waves of workers’ strikes and protests.

In 1948 there was “Al Wathba” (the leap), a massive protest against the Portsmouth Agreement (essentially the renamed Anglo-Iraqi Treaty). Four hundred people were shot on the streets of Baghdad on January 27, but still the regime was forced to renounce the treaty.

On the heels of these demonstra-tions a great wave of strikes by rail, postal and oil workers rocked Iraq. Three thousand oil industry work-ers occupied the K3 pumping station during the strike; elected a strike committee; organised around the clock picketing; support from local villages; and later a 250 kilometre march to Baghdad.

“Al-Intifada” (the uprising) erupt-ed in 1952. The masses came onto the streets to demand an end to the corrupt electoral system. The regime again re-sponded with brutal repression declar-ing martial law, banning all political parties and ruling by decree.

By “Al-Thawa” (the revolution) in 1958, the monarchy was totally isolated. Historian Hanna Batatu de-scribes the demonstration in Baghdad on the day the army officers removed King Feisal:

“Before very long the capital overflowed with people... many in a fighting mood and united by a single passion: ‘Death to the traitors and agents of imperialism!’

“It was like a tide coming in and at first engulfed and with vengeance Nuri’s [the prime minister] house and the royal palace, but soon extended to the British consulate and embassy and other places, and became so terrible and overwhelming in its sweep that the military revolutionaries, ill at ease, declared a curfew and the crowds ebbed back, the statue of Feisal, the symbol of monarchy, lay shattered, and the figure of General Maude, the conqueror of Baghdad, rested in the dust outside the burning British Chancellery.”

A dual power situation developed when workers in Baghdad, determined to prevent a counter-revolution by the old regime, began organising armed resistance cells.

Far reaching reforms followed the downfall of the monarchy. unions were legalised, the eight hour day was established, rents were cut by 20 per

cent, social insurance introduced, wages increased by as much as 50 per cent, the price of bread and flour cut while the new regime began construc-tion of thousands of new homes. In the countryside substantial land redistribution broke the power of the tiny landowning elite.

These reforms survived even the rule of Saddam Hussein and only began to be seriously eroded in the 1990s as united Nations’ sanctions began strangling Iraq.

Whose revolution?Iraqis were united in their opposi-

tion to the monarchy but after its col-lapse a new struggle broke out over the shape of the new Iraq.

On the one hand, there were the military officers that had initiated the 1958 revolution together with thousands of middle class profession-als who had been part of the colonial state administration. But they aspired to “national economic development” not redistribution of wealth, let alone socialism. They wanted the huge fortunes being made from Iraqi oil to be directed toward developing the country’s economy along capitalist lines.

These middle class aspirations were enshrined in the constitution of the Ba’ath Party, formed in 1943. It called for the “cancellation” of con-cessions to foreign companies and the nationalisation of natural resources, banking, transport and utilities. At the same time, it also proclaimed “owner-ship and inheritance” to be a “natural right”.

Whereas the resistance to the Brit-ish in 1920 was primarily tribal and rural based, by the 1940s and 1950s the urban working class had grown substantially and was leading the struggle.

Two factors were driving the urbanisation of Iraq. One was the limited industrialisation that came with the oil industry. By 1957 the oil industry alone employed 15,000 workers, but many more were concen-trated in industries needed to support the oil industry—such as the railways, the port, and the post.

The other factor was the changing relations on the land. Old subsistence farming was replaced by capitalist land-holding. Agriculture became Iraq’s second export industry. But just 1 per cent of landowners owned 56 per cent of the land. Thousands of peasants were forced off their land, migrating to the cities looking for new opportunities.

But in the cities they came up

against gross inequalities. Just 23 families owned 56 per cent of Iraq’s entire private wealth. Ninety two thou-sand people in Baghdad alone lived in sarifahs (mud huts) on the edge of town. Those lucky enough to find work found the conditions oppressive, their rights limited, and their survival constantly squeezed by the rampant inflation.

The concentration of workers in the big urban centres, however, allowed them to more effectively organise and cohere a movement. As most of Iraq’s key industries, such as oil, the railways and the ports were under foreign control, the young Iraqi working class found themselves at the centre of not only economic, but also nationalist agitation. A constant feature of their struggles was the mix-ing of demands for higher wages and better living conditions with national-ist demands.

“Al-Wathba”, in 1948, argues Hanna Batatu, was not just an upris-ing against British domination, but also “the social subsoil of Baghdad in revolt against hungry and unequal burdens”.

The Iraqi Communist PartyThe most influential party amongst Iraq’s workers was the secular Iraqi Communist Party (ICP). It played an important role organising unions in oil, the railways and in the port. effec-tive union organisation began to break down ethnic, religious and tribal divi-sions. In Basrah’s port, for example, the ICP needed to overcome divisions between Nassar and Bahrakan tribes to organise a union.

The demands for reforms also cut across religious and ethnic divisions, polarising Iraqi society along class lines. So for example both Sunnis and Shias were united against a predomi-nately Sunni regime in 1948, but in the process they also forced the resigna-tion of Iraq’s first Shia Prime Minister, Salih Jabr.

By 1947, as an illegal underground party, the ICP had built a membership of 1800. Severe repression that in-cluded the public execution of its lead-ers reduced its membership to 500, but after the revolution it grew exponen-tially. At the peak of its influence in 1958/59 it had 25,000 members.

The party, however, had a severe political weakness. Influenced by Stalinism, it saw the struggle for socialism coming in stages. First was national liberation. The struggle for socialism was postponed to some unspecified later date. As we shall see, the potential existed to combine the

A dual power situation developed when workers in baghdad, determined to prevent a counter-revolution, began organising armed resistance cells.


intERnAtiOnAL

struggle from national liberation with the struggle for socialism. But at cru-cial times the ICP held back the devel-opment of working class struggle.

Class divisions post 1958The ICP saw their role limited to con-solidating the nationalist revolution by working with the most “progressive” part of the new regime, which they identified as Qasim, the leader of the “Free Officers” movement.

As the party with the deepest roots amongst the masses, the ICP’s support for Qasim was crucial on numerous occasions for maintaining him in power.

In spite of the ICP’s loyalty, however, Qasim saw it as a threat to his power. During the mobilisations to defend the government the ICP was encouraging workers to arm them-selves and patrol the streets.

Some workers even had the audac-ity to stop and search high-ranking military officers. Faiq as-Samarrai, a prominent diplomat, resigned his post, complaining that he’d been stopped and searched nine times in central Baghdad.

This frightened Qasim, who wanted to marginalise the ICP to reassure the upper classes, the foreign investors and the military elites, that he could be trusted to look after their interests.

A clash between Qasim and the ICP seemed inevitable. Britain rallied behind Qasim, providing him with arms to help put down a workers’ revolution.

But the revolution never came. A sharp debate in the ranks of ICP ended with it retreating and declaring loyalty to Qasim. Qasim rewarded the ICP by isolating and repressing them.

The politics of Stalinism, where the Communist parties were trans-formed from revolutionary organisa-tions into mere instruments of russian foreign policy, meant the ICP was not willing to seize this revolution-ary moment. The consequence for the workers and the ICP was disastrous.

Many years later the ICP reas-sessed its actions, concluding it was a mistake not to challenge Qasim:

We let slip through our fingers a historic opportunity and allowed a squandering of a unique revolution-ary situation to the detriment of the people.. ... Our party [had become] the master of the situation... and should of gone on to conquer power ...even though civil war and foreign intervention appeared possible if not unavoidable... Had we seized the helm and without delay armed the masses

in their interests, granted to the Kurds their autonomy and, by revolutionary measures, transformed the army into a democratic force, our regime would of have released great mass initiatives, enabling millions to make their own history.

The rise of the Ba’ath PartyOnce Qasim had brought the mass movement under control, more conser-vative elements began to raise their heads. A right-wing coup removed Qasim in 1963 and brought the Ba’ath party to power. The Ba’ath Party butchered the ICP much more thor-oughly, executing between 3000 and 5000 party members.

Saddam Hussein, who had been jailed for an earlier attempt on Qasim’s life, was freed and reinstated into a position of influence, from where he slowly established his per-sonal dictatorship.

The uS had no problem working with him when it suited their interests. A National Security Directive in 1983 stated the US would do “whatever was necessary and legal” to prevent Iraq from losing its war with Iran. Warm relations continued between the uS and Iraq until 1990. Saddam Hussein fell out with his masters only after invading Kuwait—another pro-west-ern regime.

The lessons for todayToday one of the dominant influences in the Middle east is political Islam, seen in the strength of groups like egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood. But this is not an unbreakable influence.

Political Islam was only able to build a following after the failure of secular politics, either in the form of radical Arab nationalism or Stalinism, to win genuine independence or show any way forward for the struggle to liber-ate the people of the Middle east.

recognition of the central role the organised working class can play in a revolutionary movement, and its capacity to point the way to control of the region’s wealth by the mass of ordinary people, will be key in all the movements across the Middle East.

rebuilding socialist organisation in order to bring together the frag-mented workers’ strike movements in Egypt and ensure workers have their own independent voice in the revolu-tionary struggle is a critical task.

The efforts of revolutionary social-ists in egypt to build the Democratic Workers Party alongside independent unions represent key steps in this process.

In pushing forward the revolution-ary process, the lessons of the last revolutionary wave in Iraq and across the region are an important guide in how to avoid the mistakes of the past.

Further readingHanna Batatu, The old Social Classes and the revolutionary Movements of iraq (1978). Tariq Ali, Bush in Babylon: The re-colonisation of iraq (2003).Anne Alexander, “Daring for victory: Iraq in revolution 1946-1959” in inter-national Socialism 99 (2003).Tony Cliff, Deflected Permanent revolution (1963).

Above: Revolutionaries in Egypt’s tahrir square—today’s movements must learn from the mistakes of the nationalist revolt of the 1950s

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RACisM, iMMigRAtiOn AnD bORDER COntROLsJulia Gillard and tony Abbott promote the myth that we must ‘secure our borders’ against refugees. James supple makes the case for open borders

BeHIND THe Gillard government’s slide into ever harder policies towards refugees is their agreement with the Liberals that there must be a “deter-rent” against arriving by boat.

It’s clear that even incredibly draconian policies do not stop refu-gees who are fleeing persecution. Mandatory indefinite detention was introduced under Labor in 1992, yet another wave of refugees started to come in 1999.

Boats are still arriving even after the Gillard government announced the “Malaysia solution”—which means asylum seekers face being forced back to unliveable conditions.

Refugee boats have only ever come in a trickle—even last year’s re-cord number was just 3 per cent of our overall immigration intake. In reality there is no refugee “problem”.

Yet last year the government spent $2 billion on detaining refu-gees, plus millions more on other “border security” measures, like new Customs patrol boats costing $350 million.

The Howard government went to great lengths to stir up hostility to refugees—from the manufactured cri-sis over the Tampa in 2001 to its lies about children thrown overboard. The media has played along.

The myth that asylum seekers arriving by boat are “jumping the queue” has been relentlessly rein-forced by the Liberals as well as the Labor government.

This serves to spread the myth that we need to force refugees to come “the right way”.

This enormous political campaign has never been motivated primarily by government concerns about the number of boat people coming here. It is theatre designed for a domestic political audience, designed to spread the idea of a threat to “our borders”.

Part of the way politicians and the media have tried to bolster this threat is to blur the distinction between refu-gees and migrants more broadly.

For instance’s John Howard’s

famous line that “we will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come” asserted a general determination to “defend our borders” against any sup-posed threat, whether from refugees, migrants or terrorists.

There are deeply ingrained fears about immigration among the Aus-tralian population. This is a product of Australia’s history as a white colonial outpost, whose rulers had a paranoid fear about invasion from the north.

This produced the White Australia Policy, an immigration policy based on the exclusion of non-europeans, which helped entrench racist attitudes in the Australian working class.

Immigration levels have long been a touchstone issue for the hardline racists. Pauline Hanson declared in her maiden speech to parliament, “Im-migration must be halted in the short-term so that our dole queues are not added to by, in many cases, unskilled migrants not fluent in the English language.” If not, she declared, “we are in danger of being swamped by Asians”.

Howard’s campaign against refu-gees came in the context of the strong showing of Hanson’s One Nation Party at the previous election, and was designed to win over her voters to the Liberals.

In the lead up to last year’s federal election the Liberals were even more explicit. They campaigned not just on the need to “stop the boats”, but sought to link this to wider “popula-tion pressures”.

Abbott promised to cut the im-migration intake by 100,000 a year, saying, “A fair dinkum debate about population can’t avoid immigra-tion…” Labor sought to pander to the same fears by agreeing there was a need for a debate about population levels.

Julia Gillard made it obvious that this was targeted at working class electorates by saying, “If you spoke to the people of Western Sydney, for

example about a ‘big Australia’ they would laugh at you and [say]… where will these 40 million people go?”

Open bordersThis blurring means that anyone who is pro-refugee can be accused of want-ing “open borders”. This is often used as a way to discredit refugee support-ers, with the assumption being that without any border controls, Australia would be “swamped”, as there are millions of potential immigrants just waiting to come here.

Even many people who see through the lies about refugees accept this. But it is an unjustified concession to racism. Socialists support open borders and op-pose all immigration controls.

Opening the borders would see an increase in immigration—but the num-bers that would come are massively overstated.

It’s true there are many people in the world that have worse standards of living than those in Australia.

But part of their tragedy is that they simply can’t afford to immigrate. “Most people cannot afford the fares, the loss of incomes when moving, and the expense of settling in a new coun-try,” Teresa Hayter, author of the book open Borders, has pointed out.

In addition, most people do not want to abandon the country they live in, along with all their family and friends, to move to a strange and different place. Moving to a different country with a strange culture, and often a different language, is not an easy thing.

Nor is there any guarantee for immigrants that they will succeed in finding work and a better life. The newest immigrants generally get the worst jobs on offer, and studies show they are the first to be sacked when recession hits. Frequently they are the victims of racism in their new countries.

An indication of what would hap-pen without border controls comes from recent history.

until the end of the 19th century

Part of the way politicians and the media have tried to bolster this “threat” is to blur the distinction between refugees and migrants


immigration controls did not exist. The spread of railways and steam-ships in the second half of the 1800s made large scale movements of people much easier. For instance around 70,000 people a year migrated from Britain to its colonies such as Australia during the 1840s.

Yet the first effort to restrict immi-gration into Britain, then the world’s leading power, did not come until the Aliens Act of 1905.

Immigration from within the Brit-ish Commonwealth, the remains of the British empire, was unrestricted until 1962. This allowed migrants from areas like the Caribbean and India to enter at will.

Despite the period of economic boom following WWII, only 0.6 per cent of the population of the Carib-bean countries migrated each year, despite their complete freedom to do so.

The situation was similar in most other developed countries. France had an open border policy for residents of French overseas departments in its empire like that of Britain.

The US did not even begin record-ing immigration across its Mexican border until 1908, allowing employ-ers to recruit labourers from over the

border. Apart from legislation restrict-ing Chinese migrants, there were no immigration controls until WWI.

More recently, the european union has adopted open borders among member states. But even in the face of mass unemployment in countries like Spain, there has been no surge of immigration into the stronger eu economies like Germany.

As the Wall Street Journal has noted, “as far as we can tell…Spanish citizens are staying put… europeans tend not to work outside their ‘home’ countries. In 2010, only 3.2 per cent of those working in the 17 members of the euro zone were citizens of another eu member nation. In 2007, the year before the financial crisis really took hold, that proportion was 2.9 per cent.”

Britain also opened its borders to immigrants from depressed eastern european countries like Poland in 2004. Immigration increased to an overall net level of about 200,000 from 50,000 in 1997. These numbers are small—less than the level of im-migration here, into a much larger economy.

Immigration and jobsMany people also believe that an

“open borders” policy would be impractical, because it would cause chaos through increasing unemploy-ment, overburdening government services or wrecking our environment.

The idea the immigration causes unemployment, or lowers wages, is a myth. This is the conclusion of numer-ous official studies.

A 2003 report by neo-liberal economist ross Garnaut actually found that, “contemporary immigra-tion raises the average income of Australians”.

There are a number of reasons for this. It is widely established that increased immigration leads to higher economic growth.

For this reason, some right-wing economists advocate open borders, as well as the Wall Street Journal, whose board member Jason riley authored a book titled Let Them in: The Case for open Borders.

Every new immigrant must have housing, food and clothing, and all this generates demand in the economy, creating jobs.

Most immigrants do not arrive penniless, bringing money with them to help pay for all of this.

A higher population also reduces the cost of many government and

Above: A boatload of migrants from Africa tries to enter the European union

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commercial services like interstate transport and communications, which need to be provided whatever the population, raising the general stan-dard of living.

unemployment is caused by reces-sion and capitalist crisis, not immigra-tion. The times of lowest unemploy-ment in Australian history have been periods of high immigration.

After WWII, the Australian government set a target of increasing the population by 1 per cent a year through immigration.

It even set up an assisted passage scheme to pay for the travel costs of many of them, so desperate was it to encourage new migrants. This was during the period of the great post-war economic boom.

Similarly periods of high un-employment, like the 1930s, saw migrants stay away—in fact from 1930-1934 net migration was nega-tive, as more people left the country than arrived.

When the economy is booming, employers need extra labour and so suck in workers from all over the world through high immigration levels.

This explains why Australian gov-ernments have run high immigration policies in recent years, at 215,600 net migration in 2009-10, down from 315,700 in the year ending December 2008. Business wants high immigra-tion to prevent labour shortages and ensure the economy continues to grow.

They aim to pick and choose which migrants to accept, favouring educated and skilled workers needed in industries like mining. This means that Australian capitalism gets the ad-vantage of using their labour without having to pay for its reproduction, education and training.

Greens leader Bob Brown, who wants to see immigration reduced, has used this to call for cuts to business migration, claiming “you can buy your way into this country if you’re rich or you’re highly skilled”.

Despite his efforts to dress this up as a humanitarian approach, by saying we should cut back on immigration but accept more refugees, he has sounded disturbingly similar to the racists, accusing skilled migrants of being the real “queue jumpers”.

And his rhetoric reinforces racist myths like the idea immigrants steal jobs.

There is nothing humanitarian about calling for cuts to immigra-tion. Migrants come here not only to improve their own lives, but often

to find work in order to send money home, sometimes supporting whole families.

But despite their need for labour, big business does not oppose govern-ment efforts to keep out refugees. For instance, the Business Council of Australia was vocal in its opposition to the Liberals’ proposal last year to cut the immigration intake, but has had comparatively little to say about the exclusion of refugees.

In times of recession, business and governments sometimes favour a re-duction in immigration levels. For the reasons discussed above, this actually hurts the economy.

But it is useful for them in foster-ing division amongst workers and blaming scapegoats for rises in unem-ployment. The purpose of immigration controls, then, is primarily ideologi-cal—to encourage workers to fear im-migration as some kind of threat, and to promote racism.

Racist agendaThese ideas are a very powerful way of turning working class people against migrants and refugees, and letting the real source of the problems in society—like government cutbacks to services and job cuts by business in the name of boosting profits—off the hook.

The idea that “our” borders must be maintained is also vital to foster-ing nationalism. It sets up a division between Australian workers and those outside “the nation”. We are encour-aged to believe that “our” way of life is privileged and superior to that elsewhere.

This encourages working class people in Australia to believe they have common interests with the corporate executives, shareholders and politicians who make up the ruling class.

So why do workers accept racist ideas?

Some have argued that white workers benefit from racism, but in fact the opposite is true. The idea that migrant workers, who are often will-ing to accept lower wages than local workers, drive down wages and take jobs appeals to people as common sense.

“economic competition” between european workers and Chinese mi-grants has been claimed as a motive behind working class support for the White Australia Policy, for instance.

But detailed studies in the uS, such as that by Marxist sociologist Al Szymanski, have shown that stronger

racism amongst white workers actu-ally forced down their own wages. In states where African American, Hispanic and migrant workers suffered the worst wages, white workers also had lower wages than elsewhere.

This was particularly strong in the southern states, where there remains vicious racism against African Ameri-cans as a legacy of segregation.

This is because divisions among different nationalities, or between local and migrant workers, weakens effective union organisation and industrial action, which relies on unity across the workforce.

Within a workplace, when a deci-sion to go on strike is made, it will not be effective if sections of the work-force refuse to strike, and allow the bosses to continue to run the business and generate profit.

Some employers have even con-sciously set out to play off workers of different nationalities in order to weaken unionism.

In 1952 the Immigration Depart-ment defended the immigration of southern european workers on the basis that, “migrants will almost certainly be more docile in accepting [management-imposed] changes of [work] practice”.

In Kalgoorlie and Broken Hill in the 1930s, mining companies donated money to the returned Soldiers’ and Sailor’s League which led a campaign against Italian and Yugolav migrants that led to riots.

employers can also use the fear of economic competition from migrant workers to convince other workers to accept lower wages.

The solution to this is to organise workers across racial and ethnic di-vides in a united fight for better wages and conditions.

Despite the strength of racism, there is also a strong history of this amongst Australian workers—and often new migrant workers have been among the most militant is fighting alongside their fellow workers for better wages.

Socialists from Karl Marx onwards have stood for working class inter-nationalism across all countries. As part of this we oppose all immigration controls, and support the free move-ment of people everywhere.

Not only is this the only truly hu-manitarian stance, especially in a rich developed country like Australia. It is also necessary to an uncompromising fight against the racism used to divide workers everywhere in the interests of our rulers.

Divisions among different nationalities, or between local and migrant workers, weakens effective union organisation.


ON JuLY 17, 1936 General Franco’s fascist forces staged a military coup that began the Spanish Civil War. As the elected government wavered, workers took up arms, formed mili-tias, and took control over the running of much of society. This was also the beginning of a social revolution—yet within a year this revolution had been undermined, not by fascists, but from within.

Spain in the early 20th century was a place of intense contestation and class conflict. Until 1931, the country was ruled by a monarchy backed by the major landowners and the military.

While it had begun to industri-alise, it remained a weak economy by european standards and its rulers were unable to provide basic living and working conditions for the vast majority of the population.

In 1931, following waves of strikes and protests, the emerging capitalist class got rid of the monar-chy and established a republic. Yet it became evident very quickly that the new government could not meet the promises it had made to workers and peasants.

The republican state did not deliver land or industrial reforms, conditions did not improve and any resistance was met with brutal repres-sion.

As the effects of the world Depression were felt, unemploy-ment rose. The working class surged forward, leading to the election of a Popular Front government in Febru-ary 1936. The Popular Front had been founded as an electoral coalition bringing together the main parties of the middle classes with workers organisations, including the Commu-nist Party.

Though its program was moderate (failing yet again to deliver promised reforms), it encouraged a further

escalation of workers’ struggle. For employers and landowners this repre-sented an existential threat to every-thing they stood for.

As strike activity escalated, the fascist Falange party was flooded by middle class youth who saw it as the only force capable of defending private property, the unity of Spain, the church and the family. Street bands openly engaged the left in armed clashes. In the first half of 1936 an average of two people a day died in such clashes.

The July 1936 fascist coup was thus a response to high levels of worker and peasant struggle and fear by both capitalists and landowners that workers might take power. It was an attempt to uproot the workers move-ment; to achieve what Mussolini had done in Italy or what Hitler had done

in Germany. The response of the republican

government, who were also desperate to prevent workers taking arms, was to negotiate with the fascists. Azaña, the elected president, attempted to broker a compromise with Franco and censored warnings about the coup. It was a brutal betrayal of those who had voted him into power.

However the working class recog-nised the threat that Franco posed. Militant workers rejected orders from the government, took up arms and erected barricades. This response was able to defeat Franco in five of Spain’s seven major cities.

A new societyThe workers’ uprising was not only about defending republican institu-tions. Workers sought not only to

Last month marked 75 years since the beginning of the spanish Civil War. Freya bundey explores the lessons of the events of 1936.

A ChAnCE FOR REAL FREEDOM:REvOLutiOn AnD CiviL WAR in sPAin

the response of the Republican government, who were also desperate to prevent workers taking arms, was to negotiate with the fascists.

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prevent a fascist dictatorship, but to assert their control of the factories and push forward the gains won through the overthrow of the monarchy.

In the ensuing revolution the republican state all but collapsed and workers became the de facto control-lers of the republican territory.

In the cities 3000 workplaces were collectivised and democratically elected committees and armed militias controlled the streets.

There were instant improvements in living and working conditions as wages were raised and hours were shortened. The local committees took control of health care, education, transport and distribution of food and resources. In Barcelona, where work-ers’ control was most extensive, the number of children attending schools doubled in the five months following the revolution.

In the surrounding areas of Cata-lonia, Aragon and Valencia, a large number of peasants not only took over the land but also collectivised agri-cultural production. At least 800 rural collectives of 400,000 day labourers and peasants were formed.

The significance of the revolu-tion is reflected in the transformation in the role played by women. Spain pre-1936 was a very conservative Catholic country, with women suffer-ing entrenched oppression in both the workplace and the home.

However during the revolution women played an active role and fought alongside men inside both committees and militias. This oc-curred at a time when it was illegal for women to fight in armies all over the world. In Barcelona abortion was legalised, birth control information was made available and a new type of civil marriage was developed.

George Orwell wrote of Barce-lona:

“It was the first time I had ever been in a town where the working class was in the saddle. Practically every building of any size had been seized by the workers and was draped with red flags or with the red and black flags of the anarchists… every shop and café had an inscription saying that it had been collectivised; even the bootblacks had been collec-tivised and their boxes painted red and black…

“Above all, there was a belief in the revolution and the future, a feeling of having suddenly emerged into an era of equality and freedom. Human beings were trying to behave as human beings not as cogs in the capitalist

machine.” These achievements reflected the

beginnings of a revolutionary process. They demonstrated the potential of workers’ struggle to not only defeat fascism, but to take control of society and run it according to the needs of the people.

Co-ordination and organisation could have seen the revolution spread into the fascist controlled areas of Spain and even Morocco, undermin-ing Franco’s base. This would have provided inspiration for the global anti-fascist and anti-capitalist resis-tance, and for those seeking a socialist alternative to the Stalinist Soviet union.

Counter-revolution The Popular Front government be-tween the old republican order and the Stalinist backed Communist Party consistently attempted to undermine workers’ power.

The Communist Party in particu-lar argued that socialism was not on the immediate agenda and that the revolution undermined the war against Franco, which required the cross-class unity between workers organisations and bourgeois republicans embodied in the Popular Front.

Therefore the Popular Front, domi-nated increasingly by the Communist Party, subordinated the workers’ struggle to the interests of capitalists in order to keep them “onside”, and argued that the derailing of worker and peasant power was essential in win-ning the war.

The argument reflected the degen-eration of communist parties all over the world. This resulted from Stalin’s defeat of the revolution in Russia and his ensuing foreign policy that sought alliances with major capitalist states and thus had an interest in suppressing revolutionary activity.

Yet it was only the grassroots struggle of workers fighting for a bet-ter society that had initially defeated Franco. The resistance had been able to spread because it was not merely about restoring Azaña to power, who was seen by many as a façade for the old order of oppression.

The Communist Party strategy of “war first” entailed the undermining of this grassroots democracy—forc-ing workers to increase productivity and coercing peasants to increase food production. It saw the implementation of an authoritarian top-down army and the forcing of women back into the home.

This was not only repressive. It

also had the effect of demoralising and alienating the only force capable of defeating Franco.

The civil war was first and fore-most a political war about what type of society for Spain, and as George Orwell ominously predicted, the loss of this political potential undermined anti-fascist resistance.

It was now impossible to appeal to working class solidarity abroad and in the fascist held territories, undermin-ing the opportunity to attack Franco’s rear through social upheaval in Mo-rocco. The anti-fascists had no hope of winning the war in purely military terms—they were up against the might not just of Franco’s trained and dis-ciplined force but also of the German and Italian armies who intervened to back him.

As the Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky wrote at the time:

“From a purely military point of view, the Spanish revolution is much weaker than its enemy. Its strength lies in its ability to rouse the great masses to action. It can even take away the army from its reactionary officers.

“To accomplish this it is necessary to seriously and courageously ad-vance the programme of the socialist revolution. It is necessary to proclaim that from now on the land, factories and shops will pass from the hands of the capitalists to the hands of the people… The fascists could not resist the influence of such a programme for 24 hours”.

The question was not that of war versus revolution but rather, as the historian Ronald Fraser identifies, that of revolutionary war.

By May 1937, long before the fascist victory, the popular front’s ideological and physical attack on collective control had destroyed the revolution. In less than a year Barcelona went from being a city run democratically by the working class, to one controlled by a capitalist state with a bourgeois top-down army.

As workers and peasants were bru-tally massacred and repressed across the republican territory, it became a crime punishable by death to be a revolutionary.

PowerThe success of the Communist Party’s attack on workers’ power was under-pinned by the failure of the revolution-ary left to offer a political alternative.

During the July coup, the initial call to defence was made by the lead-ers of the anarcho-syndicalist trade union the CNT, supported by the dis-

in the cities 3000 workplaces were collectivised and democratically elected committees and armed militias controlled the streets.


sident communists of the POuM. And while no left organisation called for the revolutionary takeover that followed, the struggle remained overwhelmingly influenced by anarchist ideology due to the size and weight of the CNT within the movement.

From the outset there was a desper-ate need to centralise and co-ordinate the workers resistance into a unified political force. While workers and peasants democratically controlled workplaces, certain army units, com-munity services and food production, the existing capitalist state—with its control of communications, trade, fi-nance and military organisations—was left intact.

This needed to be abolished and the fragmented elements of workers power such as individual occupied workplaces needed to be extended into a workers state. This could have democratically co-ordinated the war and the spread of the revolution.

Yet the anarchist leadership failed to recognise this necessity. In Barce-lona particularly, the old state apparatus had all but collapsed in the upheaval, to the point where the president actually offered the CNT state power.

Yet rather than abolishing the old state institutions and calling for the revolution to fill the vacuum, the CNT allowed the state to continue to exist. Throughout 1936 a system of dual power prevailed—a largely uncoor-dinated network of workers on the streets, and a centralised capitalist state whose institutions of power were left intact.

This failure to seize state power re-flected the deeper contradictions within the CNT, where there was no consistent approach to social transformation.

Many within the CNT adhered to a syndicalist philosophy with a focus on the trade union as the organ of change. Others were influenced by the more individual or autonomous philosophies that had gained strength through the 1920s.

For example, while a debate within the CNT in 1934 concluded that “indi-vidual expropriation was incompatible with collective class struggle”, one of the well-known leading members at the time and right through the civil war, Montseny, wrote that “individualism is the basis of life and human progress”. The individualists believed that work-ers could spontaneously take power, but any form of centralisation was seen as corrupt or dictatorial.

The syndicalists were less clearly anti-centralist; but in seeing the union as the basis of change they didn’t see

the need to cohere a separate workers’ state with clear politics.

Therefore the leaders of the work-ers’ movement left open a space for the old capitalist ruling state to reas-sert itself.

The Communist Party was quick to exploit this as it became increas-ingly evident that co-ordination and centralised planning would be needed to win the war. So by the end of 1936 the Popular Front was able to recruit, particularly amongst the peasantry, on the basis that a republican state was needed to defeat fascism.

The response of the CNT leader-ship exposed the contradictions inside their organisation. Leading members took seats in the Catalan government alongside counter-revolutionaries. In effect they faced the choice of fighting to set up an independent workers’ state or co-operating with the existing state.

Their refusal to see the need for a workers’ state led to the acceptance of the right of the existing capitalist state to control affairs, and drew them into trying to work inside it.

Criticism of them from other anarchists was simply that they had conceded to centralisation, failing to address the need for a workers’ state to continue both the revolution and the war.

The events of May Day 1937 pro-vide a microcosm of the way that the Communist Party was able to exploit lack of clarity within the workers’ movement.

By this point the counter-revolu-

tion, spurred on by the troops, arms and propaganda of Stalin, had been successful in most of the republican territory, and it was only Barcelona and its surrounding areas where work-ers remained in control.

The Communist Party attempted to ban demonstrations and seize control of Barcelona’s telephone ex-change, which had been an important symbol of workers’ power. None of the major left organisations called for resistance to this attack.

However by the next day barri-cades had gone up all over the city, a general strike was called and workers took up arms to defend the revolution. Again, they had the upper hand, but remained isolated, lacking any organ that could unify the defence. Far from providing this leadership, the CNT leaders capitulated and supported the republican state.

They left their own rank-and-file isolated, allowing 3000 Stalinist troops that arrived two days later to smash the barricades and persecute anyone who had supported the revolu-tion.

The events of Spain 1936 above all demonstrate the potential for creat-ing a new type of society—one based on the needs and the decisions of the majority not just a select few.

But the events also show the need for a revolutionary organisation with the size and the politics to link together all the elements of workers resistance into a united struggle for a new kind of society.

Above: An anarchist poster from 1936 celebrates the beginning of the workers and peasants revolution


REviEWs

nagasaki: the mas-sacre of the innocent and unknowingby Craig Collie, Allen and unwin, $32.99 HIrOSHIMA DAY, August 4, is an established part of the activist’s politi-cal calendar. Anti-war and anti-nuclear campaigns around the world hold rallies to mark the horrific day when 100,000 died in one terrible flash of the new atomic bomb.

Less well known are the events of August 9 when the united States dropped a second atomic bomb on Nagasaki killing 80,000 people.

uS President Truman claimed that the bombs were necessary to save the tens of thousands of Japanese and American lives that would have been lost, had uS armed forces had to invade the Japanese homeland islands.

But the claim was, and is, a lie. Firstly, no land invasion had even been planned to take place before November 1. It was expected that the declaration of war by rus-sia against Japan would be enough to force Japan to surrender.

Secondly, and perhaps even more significantly, uS President Truman had known since June, from intercepted cables between Tokyo and Moscow, that the Japanese emperor had expressed interest in ending the war through negotiation. The decision to drop the atomic bomb on both Hiroshima and Nagasaki was made in August.

Even earlier, in May, a close adviser to the US President reported that, “ Peace feelers are being put out by certain elements in Japan…”

The use of the atomic bomb was actually the opening shot in the Cold

War between the uS and russia. As one presiden-tial adviser wrote in May 1945, “Once russia is in the war against Japan, then Mongolia, Manchuria and Korea will gradually slip into russia’s orbit, to be followed in due course by China and eventually Japan.

The successful testing of the atomic bomb in the uS on July 16 came a few days before the Potsdam Conference between America, russia and Britain. It dramatically changed the balance of forces between the Allied powers. This marked the beginning of the nuclear arms race, as Stain ordered that all the uSSr’s re-sources be made available to break the uS monopoly on the bomb.

Months before, the Allies had agreed that russia would enter the war against Japan by mid-August.

But Japan had been urging russia to use its diplomatic relations with the uS to open peace

negotiations. For its part, russia, under the dicta-tor Stalin, did not want Japan to surrender to the uS before it had time to enter the war and could therefore claim some role in dividing the spoils of a Japanese surrender.

Imperialist calculationNow, armed with the bomb, the uS could see a way of excluding rus-sia from any role in the occupation of Japan. And there was a bonus. The use of the bomb would also dramatically demonstrate America’s devastating military superiority to the Russians themselves.

A more bloody-minded calculation is difficult to imagine. Hundreds of thousands of lives were sacrificed for the interests of uS imperialism. Collie

describes how when Presi-dent Truman got word of the “success” of the Hiro-shima bomb, he jumped to his feet and shook his aide’s hand declaring, “Captain, this is the great-est thing in history.”

When Japan did not surrender after the Hiro-shima bomb, and russia declared war on Japan on August 8, a second bomb became imperative for the uS.

Forty thousand people died instantaneously in Nagasaki. As Truman gave the order to begin mass production of further bombs, Japan surrendered on August 15.

Collie’s book tells the story of the bomb-ing through meticulously following the fate of individuals and families that survived the Naga-saki bomb. They included teachers, doctors and Mitsubishi workers, indi-viduals who survived the bomb at Hiroshima only to face a second bomb at Nagasaki, and Australian and Dutch POWs, some of

whom were killed.Those stories are hor-

rific enough—the incinera-tion of people and animals as heat rays evaporated water from organs, the third degree burns people suffered even 1500 metres from ground zero and the radiation sickness that followed days and weeks later.

Collie’s book puts the shocking history of the decision to drop the bomb before a popular audience.

For a more detailed history of the use of the bomb, there is Gabriel Kolko’s The Politics of War or Horowitz’s From Yalta to Vietnam or the very detailed book, The decision to use the atomic bomb by Gar Alperovitz.

Japanese people still live with the consequences of the bombing, and they are once again living with radiation, as it spills out of the Fukushima nuclear reactors. Collie’s book is a great reminder of why we commemorate Hiroshima Day to say “never again”.Ian Rintoul

nagasaki bombing: a war crime to boost us power

Above: A suburban street in hiroshima after the us dropped the nuclear bomb


REviEWs

Delusions of gender by Cordelia Fine, Allen and unwin, $29.99

In delusions of Gender, neuro-scientist Corde-lia Fine takes an axe to the drivel of biological determinism that self-help books like Why Men don’t Listen, Women Can’t read Maps and What Could He Be Thinking? are pumping out on an unsuspecting public.

She exposes the shoddy science and leaps of sexist logic behind the idea that traditional gender roles are biologi-cally, or more fashionably neurologically, hardwired. Those fighting for wom-en’s freedom from unpaid housework, undervalued paid work, and underes-timated human potential will need Fine’s inci-sive arguments to break through this thickening fog of gender essentialism holding women’s oppres-sion in place.

The sexual difference “hardwire” Sex-difference gurus would have us believe that women are not winning Nobel prizes, sitting in parliament or presid-ing over corporations as frequently as men because they literally don’t have the brains.

Simon Baron-Cohen, a respected psychology professor and author of The Essential difference, says that hormones and brains “hardwire” women for caring, nurturing roles, whereas men are “hard-wired” for mechanical, logical work. Given this science, we are advised not to struggle against nature, and instead adjust our expectations of each other to the physiological reality.

Fine tears the science of sexual hardwire to

shreds. The “discovery” of a connection between structural brain differences and gendered psychologi-cal function turns out to be just as crude as 19th Century phrenology, that explained racial and sexual inferiority by skull shape and size.

Pseudo-scientists like Louise Brizendine, author of The Female Brain, tell flagrant lies about neuro-imaging science. And Baron-Cohen’s foetal testosterone theory (in-utero testosterone reor-ganises the male brain so it is better at maths) turns out to be bogus. There is zero connection between estimated foetal testoster-one levels and “masculine behaviours” in children.

The social expectation “softwire” The sex difference theo-rists assert with obtuse cir-cularity that the behaviour of men and women con-firms that brain differences create typically feminine and masculine behaviours. Women’s behaviour con-forms to the norms of the invented category “female

brain” (which is emo-tionally intelligent) and men’s behaviour is of the systematically intelligent “male brain”.

But there is no consistent gender behav-iour pattern. Fine cites endless studies that reveal how “systematically” or “empathetically” a person behaves is highly sensi-tive to the weight of social expectation.

For example, when psychologists tell women they are likely to perform as well, or better than male peers in “masculine tasks” like maths exams or mental rotation tests, their skills prove equal or superior to men and better

than women who were not told of their equality or advantage.

When men are told their spatial awareness test is to discover aptitude for needle work, knitting and interior design they per-form far worse than those men who are told perfor-mance is linked to “engi-neering... nuclear propul-sion engineering, undersea approach and evasion, (and) navigation”. There is absolutely no evidence for a female or male brain to be found in comparisons of our “systematic” or “empathetic” skills. But there’s plenty of evidence to show that behaviour is overwhelmingly socially conditioned.

The gender choice? Why then, ask the sexual difference theorists, don’t women break the glass ceiling at work? Women must simply be made for housework if they do more of it than their male part-ners. Female toddlers must be sating a deep need to nurture when they choose the doll over the truck.

But, chemical imbal-

ances in career driven women are not corrected during housework, says Fine, and nor are men physically less capable of absorbing the sensory detail of an untidy home.

From cradle to grave there is an unchanging, relentless message that the possibilities for men and women are different. Fine draws our attention to the endless, unnecessary social gender alerts (“who’s a good boy?/go play with that girl”), highly gendered toys, toddler magazines, picture books, clothing, accessories, hair cuts, colours and TV shows.

She details the some-times conscious, often sub-conscious discour-agement of cross-gender behaviour by child carers, parents, the media and advertising, and the at-titudes of fellow workers, employers, partners and teachers that range from unhelpful to brutally discriminatory. These are just a few reasons why women and girls reach for the vacuum and barbie doll and don’t automati-cally seize the truck and the high powered career.

Biological determin-ism comes to us in 2011 just as it did under Queen Victoria. With both the ideological buttress of nature and scientific pre-destination there is an “explanation” for the insanity of sex-segregation in the work force, unequal pay and the three hours a day of unpaid domestic work women do.

But Fine reminds readers that there is no such excuse—that gender is a social condition, not a biological one. No hardwire fixes women’s oppression in place, only the (not so) soft-wires of a sexist society—and this is something we surely can reconfigure.Lucy Honan

sexism, psychology and pseudo-science

gender expectations are strongly imposed from any early age—often unconsciously

SolidaritysAy nO tO LAbOR’s

shAMEFuL MALAysiA DEALBy Ian Rintoul

ASYLuM SeeKerS who arrive by boat after midnight July 25 will be deported to Malaysia, under the deal signed by Immigration Minister Chris Bowen and Malaysian Home Minister Hishamuddin Hussein. It allows 800 asylum seekers to be sent to Malaysia in exchange for 4000 uNHCr refu-gees being re-settled in Australia over four years. Malaysian human rights activists were outside the hotel to denounce the deal as it was signed.

Bowen says this is a win for Ma-laysia, a win for Australia and a loss for the people smugglers. Tellingly he makes no mention of the rights of the asylum seekers who are the victims.

Bowen says the deal is about “breaking the people smugglers’ busi-ness model”, as if there was such a thing. refugees use people smugglers because they have no choice.

The talk about people smugglers is nothing more than an attempt to crimi-nalise the asylum seekers themselves. The Labor government wants to divert attention from the stark reality that it is trying to outdo Abbott and Morrison and slam the door on asylum seekers.

Disgracefully, Bowen and Gillard are also seeking a deal with Papua New Guinea to warehouse asylum seekers on Manus Island, the twin detention centre to Nauru under Howard’s Pacific Solution.

Prime Minister Gillard claims that the UNHCR will have a strong role to play in the Malaysia deal’s imple-mentation, but it is not a signatory to it. The Operational Guidelines say that the advisory committee to the agreement will include uNHCr and IOM representatives—“subject to their agreement”—but the uNHCr has not agreed. Not that the deal stands or falls on the uNHCr’s agreement. The deal fundamentally violates the rights of 800 asylum seekers.

The Australian government says that returned asylum seekers will have access to basic education and health services. Not really. Unless they can afford private education, all returnees will have are the meagre “informal” education and health arrangements of uNHCr or IOM.

The Gillard government insists that there are no exemptions for minors or families. Potentially the

Minister, the supposed guardian of unaccompanied minors, will be responsible for condemning widowed mothers, children and teenagers to the streets of Kuala Lumpur.

Similarly, the much-hyped right to work, referred to as “self reliance op-portunities” in the Agreement means little in the context of the realities of Malaysian society. The right to work doesn’t actually mean anyone will have a job that can support a family. They will be just as vulnerable as others forced to live on the margins of Malaysian society. There is a very real risk that the deportees will be even more likely to be preyed upon and be vulnerable to harassment if police believe they might have money.

Gregore Lopez, researcher in Malaysian economics at ANu writes, “They will be vulnerable to state agencies who are corrupt, violent and antagonistic towards immigrant com-munities.”

It is absurd to believe that the Malaysian government responsible for arresting 1600 democracy activists (see p13) will do anything to safe-guard the rights of asylum seekers sent from Australia.

Australia could easily take another 4000 refugees from Malaysia without holding them hostage to deporting 800 just as deserving asylum seekers.

Shamefully, the parliamen-tary convenors of the Labor Left and Fremantle MP Melissa Parke have already declared their support for the deal, despite earlier saying that any deal should have the approval of the uNHCr.

But Labor for Refugees has very publicly condemned it, insisting that it violates Labor policy. Amnesty International, too, has voiced its op-position.

In Sydney, around 200 people held a protest at Villawood detention centre the day before the deal, opposing the Malaysia solution and mandatory detention. Protests are set to grow. Contact the refugee Action group in your state, see www.refugeeaction.org.au

Protest explodes in detention centres As Solidarity goes to press, the roof-top protest by 20 Afghan asylum seekers at Darwin’s detention centre has been forcibly ended. The protest had been supported by 40 others hunger striking inside.

up to 100 asylum seekers at Scherger staged a three-day dry hunger strike demanding a review of all their cases and the removal of biased review decision makers.

Meanwhile for three nights in mid-July, Christmas Is-land was rocked by roof-top protests and fires. The Federal Police again fired tear gas and bean-bag bullets, and staged a room by room raid, dragging so-called ring leaders to the high security red compound.

Above: the “Malaysia solution” has generated enormous outrage among refugee supporters

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