Condemn DSP Assault on Spartacist Woman Comrade

We Will Not Be Silenced!

OCTOBER 9—We reprint below a 5 September Spartacist League (SL) leaflet protesting the attack on one of our woman comrades by a male member of the Democratic Socialist Perspective (DSP) at a 29 August union rally in Melbourne. This leaflet has been distributed widely to unions, left, campus and other groups along with the statement of an independent witness and two letters received from the DSP following the attack. The statement of the witness expresses pure and justified outrage that the DSP member punched a woman— our comrade—on the jaw and noted that “a man resorting to violence on a woman is displaying an act of extreme weakness of character and cowardice.”

Feeling the heat of exposure, and with some of their members reportedly questioning their party’s handling of this issue, the lying DSP leadership responded to our leaflet in a second letter of 8 September accusing us of slander! Never mind that our comrade and the witness had immediately protested the assault to other DSP members at the union rally. As an angry letter (reprinted page 4) to the DSP from a couple who had earlier bought a paper from our comrade sharply noted, “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.” In fact the DSP’s response mirrors the “norm” in this brutal deeply misogynist society, where women are expected to accept lightly any violence perpetrated against them and suffer in silence.

The DSP’s visceral hatred of our Marxist politics is revealed in a recent Internet posting by “glparramatta.” This “unofficial” and slimy cyber “polemic” written in the language of dyed-in-the-wool social-democratic anti-communism aims to justify in advance further attacks by describing us as a “mad-dog sect” and the attack on our woman comrade as “an understandable mistake”! By reference to a meeting on Vietnam, which the writer claims took place in 1985, the posting states that the DSP has a tradition of defending workers democracy. This and almost everything else in the posting is a crock. They can’t even get the dates right. The meeting actually took place in 1983, not 1985 (and thus couldn’t have been a meeting “around the theme of 10 years since the liberation of Saigon”). On 13 August 1983 (see our article “Big Lies and Strange Bedfellows,” Australasian Spartacist No. 104, Summer 1983/84) the Socialist Workers Party (SWP—predecessors to the DSP) called a “public” meeting at Sydney Trades Hall on Vietnam, put a line of stick-wielding thugs across the entrance of the building to physically enforce the exclusion of the SL, and then, when some of their goons got hurt, squealed that this justified the decision to not admit the Spartacists to the meeting in the first place!

In the same year the SWP dumped the “Trotskyist” label as they cheered on the CIA-backed, Catholic reactionary, counterrevolutionary Solidarność movement in Poland, and scandalously embraced the Croatian Movement for Statehood (HDP) who identified with the fascist Ustasha, bloody butchers of hundreds of thousands of Serbs, Jews, Gypsies and Croats in World War II. Just eight years later the DSP, along with much of the rest of the left, lined up behind the Australian imperialists to cheer for capitalist counterrevolution in the Soviet Union.

Grovelling before the Australian rulers has been a defining feature of the DSP and its predecessors for decades. They supported racist Australia’s military mobilisations abroad under the guise of providing “humanitarian assistance” in Cambodia and Somalia and in 1999 they were in the vanguard of those demanding Australian imperialist troops to occupy tiny East Timor. Today the politically bankrupt, unstable and faction-riddled DSP leadership stand exposed in their abject social-chauvinist refusal to offer even paper opposition to the current military occupation of East Timor. Unable to defend their political positions they lash out with violence and big lies against the SL—the party which aggressively and from the outset has taken a principled stand against the depredations of Australian imperialism from Iraq to East Timor.

We want to thank the many individuals who have expressed to us their solidarity in the face of these attacks and encourage these brothers and sisters to directly inform the DSP that their violence, lies and slander are inexcusable and have no place in the workers movement. In defence of the rights of the whole workers movement we are continuing to solicit statements from unionists, leftists and others to condemn the DSP attack on our woman comrade. Email protests to the Melbourne branch of the DSP at melbourne@dsp.org.au or write to PO Box 12427 A’Beckett Street, Melbourne 8006; send protest emails to Green Left Weekly at glw@greenleft.org.au. Send copies to the SL (see contact details on page 9).

We have a long and proud history of defending the principle of workers democracy on behalf of ourselves as well as others. We will defend our comrades and our right to sell our press. We will continue to expose the DSP for its attempts at political censorship and the excuses it makes for the anti-woman and anti-communist attacks of its supporters. Those who seek to use violence, slander and intimidation to silence revolutionary criticism must not be allowed to prevail. We will not be silenced!

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On 29 August, at the Melbourne union rally in support of 107 Western Australian unionists facing draconian fines under 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 (SL).

Our comrade had offered the DSP supporter a copy of Australasian Spartacist, which was headlined “Australian/UN Imperialist Troops/Cops Out of East Timor and Solomons Now!” He ripped the paper from her hand and threw it to the ground! Pushing the DSPer away, our supporter loudly protested this unprovoked attack and violent attempt at political censorship. Then, as she moved to pick up the paper, he punched her in the face! Momentarily stunned, our comrade managed to land a blow on the arm of the DSP assailant before the coward fled the scene. She began yelling loudly “I’ve been punched in the face,” alerting all those around to what had happened. One union supporter who witnessed the DSPer’s assault accompanied her to the Socialist Alliance stall where she protested the outrageous attack to DSP members.

In fact the same day the DSP felt compelled to write a letter to the SL (reproduced below) [see graphic on left] 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 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.

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!