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Condemn DSP Thug Attack on Spartacist Woman at Union Rally Australia The following leaflet was issued on September 5 by the Spartacist League of Australia, section of the International Communist League (Fourth Internationalist). On 29 August, at the Melbourne union rally in support of 107 Western Australian unionists facing draconian fines under [Liberal Party prime minister John] Howard’s vicious anti-union legislation, a male member of the Democratic Socialist Perspective (DSP) carried out a vicious physical assault against a long-time woman supporter of the Spartacist League. Our comrade had offered the DSP supporter a copy of Australasian Spartacist, which was headlined “Australian/ In fact the same day the DSP felt compelled to write a letter to the SL apologising for the “unfortunate incident.” While the letter itself admits some responsibility, it disappears the fact that their member punched our comrade in the face! It seems the DSP cannot let it be known that they have a member who physically assaulted a woman—it would not go down well with their claims to be defenders of women’s rights. Acts of violence such as this attack have no place in the workers movement! Evidently some Green Left Weekly (GLW) salesmen/DSP members are willing to substitute the fist for the brain when losing an argument. Just weeks earlier our comrade had had a sharp exchange with this individual over the DSP’s refusal to oppose the current Australian military occupation of East Timor. In 1999, in opposition to the bulk of the left who lined up behind the White Australia capitalist rulers, the Spartacist League campaigned in word and deed against Australian imperialist intervention and for independence for East Timor. Such implacable opposition to Australian imperialism flows from our revolutionary purpose of building an internationalist, proletarian party that can lead the working class to sweep away the racist Australian capitalist rulers through workers revolution. In contrast, the DSP led the social-chauvinist charge, building marches openly demanding “Send Australian/UN Troops NOW”! Today, tailing nationalist bourgeois forces such as the Greens and pro-capitalist ALP [Australian Labor Party] leaders who are pushing for a greater role for bloody Australian imperialism in the region, the DSP refuse to oppose the occupation of East Timor by Australian military and cop forces. Such social chauvinism is evidently providing a culture medium within and around the DSP for violent anti-woman and anti-communist creeps. At the Melbourne May Day rally earlier this year we had to defend ourselves against an unhinged GLW salesman—known as “Alex”—who kicked over our literature table and attempted to bully a woman comrade. He has twice since threatened Spartacist salesmen, including screwing up the papers of a Spartacus Youth Club member at the 28 June mass union rally. “Alex” denounces our forthright defence of those, such as Melbourne schoolteacher Karen Ellis, who have been victimised under the reactionary age-of-consent laws. Like the cowardly assailant on 29 August, he also aggressively embraces the DSP’s support to the Australian imperialist military invasion of East Timor. We note that these attempts at violent political censorship of the SL are taking place at the same time the bourgeoisie is carrying out chilling state repression against Muslims, leftists and unionists under the bogus “war on terror.” Moreover these GLW goons reek of anti-communist social-democratic nationalism, which glories in the anti-woman bigotry of this remote, white imperialist enclave. Their hostility towards the SL is fostered by the DSP’s touching faith in the capitalist state, which consists at its core of the military, police, courts and prisons and exists to enforce the rule of the capitalist class over the working class and oppressed. Unable to defend the politics of the DSP, they seek to silence communists who fight for the political independence of the proletariat and for class-struggle actions against the depredations of Australian imperialist oppression abroad and state repression at home. We Trotskyists of the Spartacist League have a long and proud history as part of the working-class movement in this country and assert ourselves accordingly. In March 2004, mobilising support among trade unionists, we successfully defeated the attempt by the Victorian Trades Hall Council, reportedly acting at the behest of the Police Association, to ban our forum at Trades Hall in defence of the besieged Redfern Aborigines following the cop killing of Aboriginal youth TJ Hickey in Sydney. Reversing this ban was a small but important victory for all defenders of Aboriginal rights and for the entire left [see “Trades Hall Ban Beaten Back,” WV No. 825, 30 April 2004]. In the polemical traditions of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky, we will continue to argue program and principle against pseudo-socialists like the DSP in order to openly and clearly expose and defeat their sellout politics. Political debate is necessary to clarify what program and leadership the working class needs to fight for its interests. For that purpose we will assert the rights of any tendency, including our own, against violence in the workers movement. Thus as an act of principle and a service to the left, we will widely expose and condemn the recent thuggery by GLW salesmen and DSP supporters. We call on other leftists and trade unionists to do likewise. We repeat: acts of violence such as those perpetrated by DSP members against political opponents on the left have no place in the workers movement!
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