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	Australasian Spartacist No. 196	Spring 2006

Letters of Protest to DSP

The Spartacist League received copies of the following protest letters sent to the Democratic Socialist Perspective (DSP) and their Melbourne Branch Secretary, Margarita Windisch.

25 September 2006

Dear Comrades,

I am a veteran socialist who has been active in the workers movement for many decades both in Europe and here. Recently I read the material made available to the workers movement by the Spartacist League regarding particularly the assault on their comrade by one of your comrades at the demonstration on 29 August 2006.

I was reminded of an incident in 1983 when I was forcibly removed from a public meeting of your forebears in the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) in 1983 because I was criticizing the SWP’s alliance with the Croatian Movement for Statehood (HDP) who were followers of the fascist Ustasha. On that occasion Spartacist supporters came to my aid.

I am hereby expressing my gravest concern about the recent assaults by Green Left Weekly salesmen against Spartacist supporters. Please note that it is crucial that differences of opinion can be freely argued out within the workers movement without leftists being physically assaulted by other leftists.

Yours Sincerely,

Jacob Bilander

26 September 2006

Dear Margarita,

We are writing to you regarding one of your member’s attack on a Spartacist woman at the WA Construction Workers rally on 29 August 2006. Both I and my partner severely condemn your member’s attack and DSP’s attempt to censor Spartacist League.

We probably had bought our paper from the Spartacist woman a short time before your male member attacked her and punched her in the face. This is clearly an attempt to censor Spartacist League by one of your members. Had I been right at the incident I assure you I would have done all possible to defend the Spartacist woman against your member’s vile attack on her and his cowardly attempt to censor Spartacist publications.

Your member punching the Spartacist woman in the face was not ‘uncomradely behaviour’ as you state, it was a vile male chauvinist cowardly act and regardless of if he was fully conscious of his act, his ripping up Spartacist paper was a clear action of censorship. He might be a backward element in your party but what he did is clearly reflecting the ruling class ideology. The Australian Government has legitimized suppression and censoring of dissent and somehow your member in question has internalized and found the right in himself to censor the fight for communism by Spartacist League. This can not be permitted within the workers movement!

In your letters to Spartacist League you try to bury up two very important facts. The fact that your male member’s attack was a vile male chauvinist act and that his whole purpose was to censor Spartacist League. It is inconceivable that any honest organization or person would try to cover up any male punching a woman by saying that the victim in this case is lying. This is what you have done by saying that the ‘punch is untrue and slanderous’ and accusing Spartacist League for ‘spreading lies’ in your second letter to them. Your member’s attack on Spartacist woman happened where there was hundreds of people and smack in the middle of a workers rally!!! You as the branch secretary represent DSP and your cover up of the punch and the attempt of censorship as just ‘uncomradely’ behaviour shows DSP has no problem with censorship of communist propaganda by violent means if necessary which is reflection of the dominant ruling class ideology.

We have serious problems with anyone who attempts to censor communist propaganda, and let alone this being done within the working class. We will do all possible to make everyone we know aware of the incident and the details of it to prepare them to be ready for the defense of Spartacist League or any Left political group against censorship and any physical attack by DSP or anyone else in the future.

Yours faithfully,

David L & Fatos B

October 5, 2006

I would normally open an address with the term, Comrades. However, your actions in relation to the violent censorship and physical assault against a female of the Spartacist League, by a male from your organization, make that impossible for me.

You have demonstrated the validity of this conclusion and added proof, not only to this man’s guilt but your own chauvinist political opportunism, by disgracefully attacking the victim. You paint her as a liar and the Spartacists, as having slandered you. But in order to do this, you have been forced to “disappear” the independent and otherwise neutral witness and Unionist, Austin Sadler. This should ring alarm bells throughout all workers organisations.

Your credibility and place as an organisation within this movement, is brought sharply into focus. Frighteningly, your actions greatly increase the risks of further violence against the SL and against all other working class organisations.

The “War on Terror”, is in reality a war on dissent, minorities and the independent organisation of workers. Your actions and the politics they represent, open the door to agents and provocateurs, whose agendas are to spread suspicion, violence and fear. Thus destroying open political debate and achieving the “climate of fear” and intimidation, that is required.

For the Communists of the Spartacist League, who have the politics and courage to refuse membership within the Australian deputy sheriff’s loyal opposition, to be subjected to such acts of suppression and violence, by those who purport membership of the workers movement, is terrifying.

I would warn you, that reaction considers even yourselves as communists and therefore, supporters of terrorism and therefore ripe to be denied human rights and violently targeted. As reaction grows, that famously infamous old quote may find a slight variation……..first they came for the Moslems, then they came for the Communists, then for the Unionists, then they came for the D.S.P.

The removal from history of all “uncomfortable facts” and opposition is what reaction must have. The more the “left” plays the game by these rules, the more it digs not only its own grave but that of the working class.

The only tools we have to combat this are by opposing at every instance, all acts of censorship, exclusion and violence within the workers movement. We must encourage rigorous debate, champion the rights of women and minorities and must proceed from the indispensable position, that an injury to one is an injury to all. To touch one, is to touch all.

This when acted on, rather than just mouthed, is principled class politics. Hopefully your members will also find disgust in your actions and break towards genuine class politics and towards those who know it, as the only road forward.

Martin Neal

Union Delegate

P.S. I don’t suppose there is any chance of this letter, or Mr Sadler’s appearing in your press. I suspect you would prefer to continue disappearing all such uncomfortable facts and principles, but would be pleased to be proven wrong, I thus await your response.