Subscribe to Workers Vanguard

View archives

	Workers Vanguard No. 862	20 January 2006

Australian Spartacists Demand: Mobilize Unions, Minorities Against Racist Attacks!

Lynch Mob Terror in Sydney

We print below excerpts from an 18 December 2005 leaflet issued by the Spartacist League of Australia, section of the International Communist League (Fourth Internationalist), which was reprinted in Australasian Spartacist No. 193 (Summer 2005/06). The leaflet was issued following a mass racist rampage primarily directed against Near Eastern minorities in Sydney’s Cronulla suburb. In response to the racist attacks, thousands of people in Sydney, Melbourne and other cities joined “United Against Racism” rallies on the weekend of December 16. The rallies, which were initiated by the National Union of Students, included groups of trade unionists. A truck with the slogan of the Australian Council of Trade Unions’ (ACTU) campaign “Your Rights at Work” served as the speaker’s podium in Sydney.

As the leaflet notes, such racist violence poses a deadly danger to the entire labor movement in Australia, the ultimate target of the fascists involved in the riots. But the ability of the trade unions to defend immigrants and minorities, who form a strategic component of the labor movement, is hampered by the unions’ attachment to the Australian Labor Party (ALP). The social-democratic ALP is typical of what revolutionary leader V.I. Lenin called “bourgeois workers parties”—parties based on the trade unions but with a thoroughly bourgeois program. It is the task of Marxists to fight to split the working-class base of the ALP from the pro-capitalist tops, winning that proletarian base to the struggle to forge a revolutionary workers party that fights for working-class rule.

* * *

On Sunday 11 December a racist mob of up to 5,000 overwhelmingly white youth, including significant numbers of fascists, mobilised at the Sydney beach suburb of Cronulla. Draped in the Australian flag and singing “Waltzing Matilda,” this beer-sodden crowd rampaged through the streets carrying out chilling pogromist attacks against anyone of non-white complexion. Pelting cans and bottles at people and chanting “Kill the w-gs” and “Aussie, Aussie, Aussie,” they chased down and cornered terrified individuals, bashing several who were lucky to escape with their lives. Such was their frenzy and murderous intent that they attacked ambulancemen trying to assist injured victims and even cops who got in their way. Increasingly emboldened fascist outfits such as Australia First, the Patriotic Youth League and Blood and Honour, who pose a deadly threat to immigrants, Aborigines, gays and ultimately the organised working class, were deeply involved in fomenting and building this racist riot.

The white racists and fascists who carried out this celebration of “Aussie pride” took their cue from the very top in Australian society. Following the reported beating of lifeguards at Cronulla a week before, allegedly by Arabs responding to racist epithets, Howard confidant and radio shock jock, Alan Jones, began whipping up a racist frenzy, including by airing the vile SMS [text message] rallying call for mob violence. Rupert Murdoch’s mass circulation Daily Telegraph fuelled the fire with headlines like: “Fight for Cronulla” and “Lines Drawn on the Beach Sand.” This was on top of the ever-escalating decade-long campaign by the NSW [New South Wales] ALP government to criminalise Sydney’s Arab population, particularly Lebanese youth. And topping this off has been the ruling class “war on terror” which targets first and foremost, alongside the peoples of Iraq and Afghanistan, all Muslims, and Arab and Asian populations in Australia.

This racist eruption was whipped up by the capitalist rulers in order to divide the working class at a time when the bosses are pushing through their biggest attack on unions and working conditions for decades. However, decent working people from all backgrounds are horrified by the white racist attacks. Today as an elementary act of self-defence it is desperately necessary that the multiracial working class be mobilised in defence of minorities on the streets and to crush the fascists whose program is murderous racist terror.

In the absence of a fight by the organised working class against such racist terror, the justified anger of some youth of immigrant background was vented in some indefensible retaliatory acts, including indiscriminately attacking individuals and wrecking cars. A church hall in Auburn has been torched. Seizing on such actions, the NSW government rushed through draconian new police powers to lock down whole suburbs, to search people and cars, and to confiscate cars. Penalties for the crimes of “riot” and “affray” have been dramatically increased along with removing the presumption of bail. Exposing their reactionary agenda, the bourgeois media and politicians talk almost exclusively about the “problem” of “Lebanese youth” while burying the white racist rampage on Sunday. The “lock down” powers target Arab or other immigrant and working-class suburbs. Pickets and protesters who defend themselves from scabs or police attack could see themselves facing 15 years jail, and without the right to bail!

Following their success in Cronulla and this green light from the bourgeoisie, the fascists have grown in confidence. Anti-Arab attacks have broken out in virtually every capital city in Australia and a repeat of Cronulla has been threatened from Perth to the Gold Coast.

Down With Liberal/ALP
Racist State Repression!

Having done everything possible to encourage the lynch-mob mentality seen at Cronulla, the racist prime minister, John Howard, and equally bigoted “opposition” leader, Kim Beazley, refused to label the Cronulla riot as racist. Instead Howard described the murderous attempted pogrom as “just incredibly bad behaviour” (Age, 16 December 2005) while Beazley ranted about “the rule of law” and “core Australian values” (Sydney Morning Herald, 14 December 2005). Justifying the pogromist mob Howard proclaimed: “We should never lose sight of the fact that primarily what happened was a group of people broke the law the previous weekend when they assaulted two lifesavers” (Sydney Morning Herald, 15 December 2005). The ALP NSW premier Morris Iemma declared that new laws were necessary to battle “Middle Eastern thugs” and recalled parliament to ram through the new police powers which will be directed in the first instance against youth of immigrant background. And, giving the racists and fascists exactly what they want, thousands of police have been mobilised this weekend to effectively prevent non-white youth going to Cronulla and other beachside suburbs.

The violence against minorities in Cronulla is the logical extension of the ongoing violence carried out by the state, from the racist police who regularly target youth for harrassment and who attacked heavily immigrant anti-war student protests in 2003, to the growing army of ASIO [Australian Security Intelligence Office] spies who carry out surveillance of immigrant neighbourhoods. Announcing the recent beefing up of police powers, including yet another police strike force, Iemma and Police Commissioner Ken Moroney have condemned the violence as “un-Australian.” To the contrary, the white racism on display in Cronulla was very much a part of White Australian capitalism, which was founded on bloody genocidal wars against the Aborigines and exclusion of non-white people and today means cop killings of Aborigines and the incarceration of refugees in concentration camps.

Break with Laborism:
For a Class-Struggle Fight!

There are plenty of workers itching to take on the bosses. This was quite palpable on 15 November when more than half a million workers from many different ethnicities rallied in cities throughout the country against the government’s vicious anti-union attacks. However, the pro-capitalist ACTU leaders are deeply opposed to launching a militant fight against the bosses’ anti-working-class assaults. For instance they have no intention of organising a fight for jobs for all at union wages. Politically supporting the ALP, these labour lieutenants of capital play the role of channelling working-class unrest and justified hatred of the bourgeoisie into deadly class collaboration under the capitalist system.

Importantly the New South Wales Teachers Federation and the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) have condemned the white racist violence in Cronulla. However it is necessary to turn these words of condemnation into union actions. Instead the MUA “call[s] on all levels of Government and community organisations to take a stand and work to eradicate these racist sentiments from our society” (Statement by the Sydney Branch Executive, 12 December 2005). Such appeals to capitalist governments only serve to legitimise the state, which is the key source of racist terror under capitalism. The unions must realise that the “lockdown a suburb” laws will be used to prevent mass union picket-line mobilisations like those in the 1998 Patrick’s waterfront lockout where thousands of workers assembled to defend the MUA at places like Port Botany, Webb Dock and Fremantle.

The hundreds of thousands of immigrant workers facing racist attacks are not just victims. They form a key component of the multiracial working class, which has the social power and class interest to combat racist divisions and push back the bosses’ attacks. A fighting unity of oppressed minorities with the social power of the heavily multiracial trade unions needs to be forged in struggle and completely independent of the capitalist state. What is needed are organised racially integrated workers defence guards, drawn from responsible union men and women, mobilised in places such as Cronulla as a show of force. A few weekends of multiracial workers contingents patrolling the Cronulla beach area would teach the white fascist scum a lesson should they dare raise their heads. It would also ensure that anyone, of any colour or background, could take a swim and enjoy the sun. Such a perspective for independent proletarian defence of immigrant rights demands a political fight within the unions to break with Laborite nationalism and loyalty to the capitalist state.

Earlier this year the fascists of the Patriotic Youth League mobilised outside the offices of the CFMEU construction union, complaining that the union was “importing foreign workers.” They were rightly dispersed by angry unionists, including from the MUA. We Trotskyists of the Spartacist League and Spartacus Youth Club stand for united working-class struggle against capitalist rule. Racist terror must be met with working-class justice. United actions mobilising the power of the organised working class and minority organisations must be brought to bear to smash fascist terror. Such a course demands a political fight to split the working-class base of the ALP from the racist pro-capitalist tops. Forging an internationalist proletarian revolutionary party is the key to building a society where racism no longer exists. For that to be achieved we need to overturn the whole capitalist system through workers revolution.