Solidarity meets in cities all around the country. Check here for details of the latest upcoming meetings.

MELBOURNE

6.30pm Tuesday February 14
Forty years since the Tent Embassy:

The Intervention and the fight for Aboriginal rights today

On January 26 1972, four young Kooris established the Aboriginal Tent Embassy on the lawns of Parliament house, following a statement by the Conservative McMahon government rejecting any possible recognition of land rights. The media beat-up over protests to mark the anniversary in Canberra has seen an attack on the idea that, 40 years on, their demands for land rights, self determination and sovereignty have any relevance. But with policies like the NT Intervention stripping away Aboriginal control their relevance is clear. This meeting will discuss what the Tent Embassy achieved, and the state of the struggle for Aboriginal rights today.

Melbourne Solidarity meets 6:30pm every Tuesday at the New International Book Shop at Trades Hall corner Lygon & Victoria Sts Carlton (enter via Victoria St)

SYDNEY

7pm Thursday February 16
Forty years since the Tent Embassy:

The Intervention and the fight for Aboriginal rights today

WITH SPECIAL GUESTS, ABORIGINAL ACTIVIST SAM WATSON
Sam was present at the Tent Embassy in 1972, as a Brisbane representative of the Black Panther Party

EYEWITNESS NOEL HAZARD
Noel, as a journalist for Tribune, drove in the car to set up the embassy and documented the event and the Aboriginal rights movement.

On January 26 1972, four young Kooris established the Aboriginal Tent Embassy on the lawns of Parliament house, following a statement by the Conservative McMahon government rejecting any possible recognition of land rights. The media beat-up over protests to mark the anniversary in Canberra has seen an attack on the idea that, 40 years on, their demands for land rights, self determination and sovereignty have any relevance. But with policies like the NT Intervention stripping away Aboriginal control their relevance is clear. This meeting will discuss what the Tent Embassy achieved, and the state of the struggle for Aboriginal rights today.

Sydney Solidarity meets 7pm every Thursday at the Brown st hall, on Brown st above the Newtown library, just off King st. All welcome.

Contact sydney <at> solidarity.net.au or 0438 718 348 for more info

BRISBANE

For more information contact Mark on 07 3123 8585 or brisbane<at>solidarity.net.au

Review: We Built This Country
By Humphrey McQueen, Ginninderra Press, $30

I found Humphrey McQueen’s second instalment of his trilogy on the building industry disappointing. And it shouldn’t be, because We Built This Country is about builders’ labourers and their unions, telling their story from all the way back to Australia’s colonisation.

The fight for higher wages, better conditions and safety is the stuff of class warfare and a constant battle on building sites. The tight-fisted money grubbers that run the building companies force builders’ labourers to fight for everything.

Each era and every state is given as much coverage as McQueen could find. But critical to the weakness of this book is the lack of a Marxist understanding of the trade union bureaucracy. McQueen has set himself the task of writing about builders’ labourers and their unions, which invariably means writing about their union officials: good, bad and gangster-like.

While McQueen’s understanding of capitalist competition, accumulation and exploitation is excellent, his theory used when dissecting the role of union officials in Western capitalism is primitive. It’s as if Marxist theory has not been updated since Lenin and his “aristocracy of labour” theory of the 1910s.

The formal political affiliations of the building union officials—Jack Mundey as a Communist, Pat Clancy as a hardline pro-Russian Stalinist and Norm Gallagher’s Maoism—mask the real issue: The role of the trade union bureaucracy in Western capitalism in boom and crisis.

The problem in the book is that it simply cannot explain the radicalism of Mundey as a product of his formal politics. The political period, the development of rank and file confidence, and industry conditions that allowed him to lead union in a militant fashion, are not given a cogent Marxist analysis.
Unions are schools for class struggle for workers, but the union officialdom as a whole are one wing of “reformism” just as the Labor Party is the other wing.

Reformism encompasses a complex of opposites: it arises from the antagonism and conflicts in class society, yet it also contains protest and opposition within the limits of this society.

In one of its shapes, as trade unionism, it gives organisational expression to workers’ everyday experience of capitalism, in demands for and battles over wages, improved working conditions and job security. It asks members to fight and then to accept a “result” good or bad. It contests some of the effects of capitalist power through “collective bargaining”, while simultaneously recognising and accommodating to capitalist power in general.

It works at once within, for and against the existing system. It takes over, from the world it only partly contests, all manner of organisational forms and assumptions. Aping its adversary, it accepts capitalism’s own demarcation between “political” and “economic” questions. Under this division trade unions must be primarily concerned with “economic” questions of wages and conditions, while “political” questions like government spending on health and welfare or about going to war are dealt with in parliament.

Because, under “normal” conditions, reformist unions and parties offer a limited means of resisting capitalist power, they attract workers’ loyalty. At the same time, these forms of organisation also act to demobilise their own supporters, to constrain them within safe limits for capitalism.
The more advanced the process of capitalist accumulation, the more developed become the institutions of reformism, as the potential capacity of the modern working class to damage capitalist production grows.

Trade union bureaucracies are essential shock-absorbers for modern capitalism and its states, effective precisely because of their capacity to smooth out and contain opposition.
Nonetheless, they arise because such opposition is constantly regenerated. So too is the potential for explosions of struggle.

Phases of struggle

Another annoying aspect of this book is the way McQueen telescopes the class struggle between one era and the next. All the bosses and governments’ manoeuvres are viewed as a continuous process, rather than seeing that there were breaks and shifts in the class struggle. The victories and defeats don’t seem to matter. It is as if there was no upturn in late 1960s and early 1970s that threatened capitalist profits. And no defeats of mid-1970s and early 1980s, which the bosses needed to inflict to restore profitability.

One example is, “What began as a try-on around Adelaide [in 1972] set a battle plan to disorganise labour. The use of the Trade Practices Act erupted at the Mudginberri meat works in 1983-5. The full force of the corporations power in the Australian constitution hit with Workchoices and Fair Work Australia.”

Another example of this is the smashing of the Penal Powers in the historic general strike of 1969, which freed union leader Clarrie O’Shea, is dismissed, “The O’Shea victory could not put an end to penal powers, since employers rely on the state to enforce their needs.” In the abstract this is formally correct. But it patently ignores the era of working class combativity that opened up after that victory.

The strike figures are impressive testimony of this. The strike days “lost” by bosses and won by our class are: 1967—705,000; 1968—1,079,000; 1969—1,958,000; 1970—2,393,000; 1971—3,068,000; 1972—2,010,000; 1973—2,634,000; 1974—6,292,000.

That combativity was defeated by a combination of the 1974 recession, with unemployment rising from zero to 5 per cent within a matter of months, the bosses using inflation as a class weapon and the sacking of Whitlam and the subsequent working class demoralisation.

Those strike figures put today’s into start relief. For 2010-11, there were 214,400 days “lost”, with a working class far bigger than in 1968-74.

In all McQueen’s latest offering could have been much more than just a potted history of building unions. More’s the pity.

By Tom Orsag

Protests celebrating the anniversary of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy have been subject to a vicious and distorting media campaign, after a snap protest directed at Tony Abbott and Julia Gillard. But this protest, and the demands of the Tent Embassy for Aboriginal rights and self-determination, remain absolutely right and should be defended.

On January 26, 2000 people from all over Australia came to Canberra to mark 40 years since the establishment of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy. Aboriginal rights activists came together to celebrate the struggles of the past, demand sovereignty and to organise against the horrific living conditions, police brutality and denial of land rights that continue to plague Aboriginal communities.

That morning, Tony Abbott was asked about the relevance of the Tent Embassy today. He replied:

“I think a lot has changed for the better since then. I think the Indigenous people of Australia can be very proud of the respect in which they are held by every Australian. I think a lot has changed since then, and I think it probably is time to move on from that.”

The truth is the opposite. As Redfern activist Lyall Munro told the crowd, “things are worse for us now than when I came out of a mission school over 40 years ago”. In 1972 the Kooris who occupied the lawns of Parliament House were demanding Land Rights and an end to the assimilation and “protection” policies of Labor and Liberal governments. But in 2012 both parties support the ten year extension of racist NT Intervention powers that aim to assimilate Aboriginal people through the defunding of communities and the reinvention of protection-era controls on land, alcohol and income.

What actually happened?

Abbott’s remarks about the Embassy were relayed to the crowd by anti-Intervention campaigner Barb Shaw, who also reported that at that very moment Tony Abbott was a mere 100 meters away. People drifted over to the restaurant and were surprised to see both Abbott and Gillard clearly visible through the glass walls of the restaurant, both intent on ignoring the historic gathering taking place next door.

Embassy veterans who asked to address Gillard and Abbott were refused. Chants of “shame” changed to “racists”, and then to “Always was, always will be, Aboriginal land”. A few people banged on the glass and others milled about chanting and taking pictures.

Then, without any warning, riot police burst out of the door of the restaurant, shoving aside demonstrators with their shields and kicking people out of the way, dragging Abbott and Gillard behind them.

Notably, Michael Anderson, the last surviving member of the original 1972 tent embassy, can be seen in several pictures struggling to remain standing as he was crushed between riot police and the steel bars on the steps.

The only violence that took place was on the part of police. There were no arrests and no one was harmed apart from the demonstrators kicked and shoved by police.

Gillard and Abbott complained about being trapped and worried about their safety. But there was never any threat. And they were protected at all times by a phalanx of armed men. Aboriginal people have no such security: they are frequently assaulted by police and the rate of Aboriginal deaths in custody continues to rise. In the NT, Indigenous incarceration has increased 40 per cent since the start of the Intervention in 2007.

Hypocrisy and the Intervention

There is no doubt that this incident pushed the Tent Embassy to the front of news coverage. Before it occurred mo media were even present at the Embassy, despite the historic events that were taking place. After the protest, Fairfax started to run a history of the Embassy. Sky carried out a lengthy interview with Michael Anderson. Abbott was forced to go on the defensive, saying that he “never, never” called for the Embassy to be shut down.

Yet despite being forced to address some of the real issues, the media and politicians also initiated a vicious smear campaign against the Tent Embassy and the protest, labeling the demonstration a “violent mob” the event as a “riot” and covering the incident as if someone had attacked the Prime Minister.

Former NSW Premier Bob Carr has come out saying, “The tent embassy in Canberra says nothing to anyone and should have been quietly packed up years ago. Every government in Australia is aware of its responsibilities to Aboriginal Australians.” His message is the same as Abbott’s—Aboriginal people have nothing left to complain about.

A layer of conservative Aboriginal people in positions of power have chosen to attack or dismiss the protest. Their positions on the protest largely correspond to their positions on the Intervention. Sadly, they included Mick Gooda, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commissioner. It is rumoured that he and his office will not be opposing the new ‘Stronger Futures’ Intervention legislation.

Sue Gordon also criticised the protest, saying that it did not reflect the opinions of Aboriginal people in remote communities. But Gordon can have no credibility after riding into Aboriginal communities accompanied by the army during the roll-out of the NT Intervention.

The struggle ahead

The kind of movement that created the Tent Embassy is needed again today. In February the government will move the Intervention-plus ‘Stronger Futures’ legislation. We need to unite in campaigning against this racist legislation, which cements in place the existing Intervention for a further ten years, and in many ways makes it worse.

The debate about recognising Aboriginal people in the Constitution, and in particular about whether racially-based legislation should be banned, will also be a key opportunity to raise awareness of the real state of Aboriginal affairs.

Julia Gillard must not be allowed to get away with reciting tributes to “elders past and present” and then getting her riot police to shove them out of the way when they criticise her policies. The defiant spirit on display at the Embassy in 1972 and the tradition of struggle it represents must be remembered and carried on in 2012 by everyone who genuinely supports Aboriginal rights.

One year from the start of the revolution that toppled Hosni Mubarak and is now challenging the power of Egypt’s military junta, Egypt’s Revolutionary Socialists analyse the dynamics of the revolution and the need to link up the revolutionaries in the squares with those fighting for economic justice in the workplace.

In an article written before the previous general elections, we proposed that there are three forces vying with each other to decide the fate of the Egyptian revolution.

The first of these is the counter-revolution that wants to retain the old regime, with all its powers, beneath a layer of superficial changes. The ruling military council represents the counter-revolution, as do the remnants of the old regime within the institutions of the state. Behind them stand big business (the 1,000 richest families in Egypt), the US government, the Zionist entity and the Saudi regime.

The second force is composed of the reformist political parties and movements that were opposed to the Mubarak regime and are rooted primarily in the middle class. At the head of these forces is the Muslim Brotherhood and its Freedom and Justice Party. They have an interest in sharing power and wealth with the old regime without making fundamental or radical changes to its social and economic policies, or disturbing its vested interests and international affiliations.

Finally, we have the forces for deepening and radicalising the revolution at the level of political democracy and at a socio-economic level. These forces have an interest in the complete eradication of the old regime – at the head of which stands the military council – and the complete cleansing of the state institutions and the redistribution of power and wealth in Egypt to the vast majority of Egyptians: the workers, peasants and the poor.

What is the balance of power between these three forces after the parliamentary elections, as we enter the second year of the Egyptian revolution?

Firstly, as was expected, the reformist Islamist movement, led by the Muslim Brotherhood, won a sweeping victory in the parliamentary elections. A large section of the Egyptian masses cast their ballots in the elections because the revolution gave them the confidence that, for the first time in their lives, their votes would count and not be forged. With this come illusions in parliamentary democracy and its ability to achieve the revolution’s demands of social justice, freedom and dignity.

Secondly, the present balance of forces between the reformist Islamists and the counter-revolution is delicately and dangerously poised between, on the one hand, the desire of the Muslim Brotherhood to use its parliamentary gains to exercise real power at the expense of the vested interests of the old regime, and on the other hand, its desire to maintain stability through deals with the military council and the remnants of the old regime.

This is for two reasons: the first is the Brotherhood’s fear of a coup by the military council that might annul the election results (repeating the experience of Algeria) or a full military coup to restore the old regime. The second is the fear that broad sections of the masses have broken out of the bonds of reformism and are threatening new revolutionary upsurges that might upset the delicate balance between the Muslim Brotherhood and the military council, with all the dangers that this poses for the two sides.

It is noteworthy at this critical juncture that the Brotherhood is willing to offer massive concessions and guarantees to the military council in order to preserve their electoral gains, even if these are as yet only superficial. So the Brotherhood has accepted the continuation of the Ganzouri government and has given guarantees of an amnesty for senior army officers with no legal questions asked about the massacres of the past few months.

In fact, the guarantees offered by the Brotherhood’s leadership and its victorious electoral party are not limited to the military council, but include promises to the class of big businessmen to encourage investment and continue with the neoliberal policies of the old regime, as well as guarantees to the Zionist entity and the American government to honour the Camp David Accord and continue the strategic partnership with the United States. The Brotherhood even agreed to negotiations with the International Monetary Fund on exactly the same humiliating conditions as the old regime.

Perhaps the image that best conveys this relationship is the picture of lieutenant general Sami Anan – his hands stained with the blood of hundreds of martyrs and thousands of injured – in a historic embrace with the Muslim Brotherhood’s Muhammad Mursi and Saad al-Qahtani, demonstrating that both sides’ fear of the third force (the masses who have an interest in deepening the revolution on a political and social level) is much greater than their differences over how to divide the political spoils between them.

But why are they so afraid? Is it not time to celebrate the marriage of democracy to the peaceful transfer of power as has happened in Tunisia? Here we have to say that Egypt is not Tunisia. This is for a number of reasons, and principally because of the economic crisis. None of the successive governments that have held power since the fall of Mubarak have been able to offer anything tangible to the masses; instead, the situation has worsened by the day.

Foreign exchange reserves are fast draining away – down from $US36 billion to $15 billion during the first year of the revolution. Inflation is rising in the absence of any mechanism to control rising prices. Unemployment is continually rising, and none of the successive governments has proposed increasing the budgets for housing, education, health or youth employment programs. Nor have they implemented a genuine wage increase or any improvement in public services for the majority of Egypt’s struggling masses.

All of this is happening in the context of a severe crisis of global capitalism, which in turn has reduced the income for Egyptian capitalism from sources such as tourism, the Suez Canal and foreign investment. As a result of their ongoing commitment to neoliberalism, the incoming Islamist military governments will be austerity governments that offer nothing but more poverty, job cuts, unemployment and the disappearance of public services for the mass of Egypt’s population.

They will possibly be even more brutal than those of the former regime. This means that the honeymoon between the masses and the reformist Islamist parties they elected in the hope of serving their own interests and bettering their standard of living will be short. It will rapidly expose the inability of parliament in general and of the Brotherhood in particular to solve the masses’ problems and to offer a genuine alternative to the old regime and all its violence.

We have an elected parliament that has been stripped of its powers and left helpless. The dominant political forces in parliament are allied with the military council and the remnants of the old regime. Both internally and externally, they are adopting the same political and economic policies as the old regime.

The new parliament and the military council will only produce capitalist austerity governments hostile to the workers, the peasants and the poor. Like their predecessors, they will protect the interests of big business and the foreign companies, and above all, they will remain faithful servants of the old regime’s masters in Washington, Tel Aviv and Riyadh.

The next phase of the Egyptian revolution, which will begin on January 25, 2012, will not only mark the beginning of the defeat of the counter-revolution and its violent attempts to resurrect the past that the Egyptian people have trampled under their feet, but also the beginning of a battle with reformist forces and parliamentary illusions.

It will be a fight to link the deepening of the democratic revolution (transcending a formal parliamentary regime with limited powers) with the project of redistributing wealth (through the overthrow of the military’s economic monopoly and the 1,000 richest families in Egypt) and the building of a new regime that represents and serves the interests of Egypt’s workers and peasants.

This does not mean, of course, that the revolutionary forces can afford to ignore, or not take a clear position on, issues such as the transfer of power from the hands of the military to civilians. However, the question remains – to whom is power being transferred, even if it is for a transitional period? Is it to a civilian presidential council, as some are suggesting? Or to the newly elected parliament as others have argued?

In fact, both of these perspectives are formalistic and short sighted. The idea of a presidential council lacks any degree of democracy. Who will chose its members and by which mechanism? As for the second suggestion – transfer of power to the elected parliament – this appears to be more democratic, but loses its real meaning in light of the composition of the current parliament and the nature and interests of the dominant forces within it.

At this perilous moment, we will focus on demands that serve the interests of the Egyptian revolution. This will not be achieved with meaningless slogans about the phoney transfer of power, but through a new wave of mass mobilisation. These demands can be summarised as follows:

·  First, the resignation of the Ganzouri government, as it is a government of Mubarak’s old gang.

·  Second, the trial of the military council headed by Field Marshal Tantawi on charges of killing, wounding and dishonouring thousands of revolutionaries in Egypt’s public squares, as there can be no talk of democracy without putting the military council in the dock.

· Third, the complete cleansing of the remnants of the old regime and the network of interests it represents from the institutions of the Egyptian state, starting with the military.

These demands are an inseparable part of exposing the reformists before the masses who voted for them in the elections. They also represent the gateway to the next wave of the Egyptian revolution under the slogan, “All power and wealth to the people”.

The task of revolutionaries in this new wave will be to link the uprisings and sit-ins in the squares with the strikes and protests of workers and the poor.

It will be to link those who want to complete the democratic revolution and take it beyond a restricted and incapacitated parliamentary democracy to forms of direct, mass democracy in the popular and workers’ and peasants’ committees with those who want to achieve the demands of social justice through strikes and sit-ins in order to reclaim Egypt’s wealth from the 1,000 richest families and the military establishment, and redistribute it for the benefit of the workers, peasants and the poor.

The Revolutionary Socialists, 25 January 2012

At the end of 2011 the Sydney University administration announced 340 job cuts (150 academic and 190 general) to be finalised by February 2012. They claim that this is because of reduced income. But they have plenty of money to spend on buildings and technology to promote Sydney University. This is about increasing the profitability of the University by slashing the quality of teaching and learning.

Staff and students are being made to pay for the interests and priorities of the University administration. We must oppose the job cuts and fight against our university being run like a corporation.

Lack of money?

The Vice Chancellor, Michael Spence, says job cuts were necessary to meet the University’s financial targets for 2012. The administration is determined to go ahead with $385 million of planned investment in building and infrastructure but to pay for $53 million of this in 2012 they will cut back on staff expenditure. The building priorities include a new business school and another swimming pool. It is obvious the University is not struggling financially. In fact Spence’s announcement came less than a fortnight after the University of Sydney recorded an operating surplus of $113.7 million for 2010, the third highest of all Australian universities. The University has recently spent almost $750,000 on redesigning the University crest and a further $500,000 on marketing their new logo. A whopping $50 million was poured into an online application system called ‘Sydney Student’ to the dismay of many staff, and $20-30million will be spent taking over the Student Union’s Manning bar. It is clear that the problem is not lack of money, but spending priorities.

Students suffer

The University is already badly understaffed, with ever more students crammed into tutorials and lecture theatres. Meanwhile course options are being slashed back to a bare minimum. Enraged students held protests to save courses and staff in geosciences, political economy and biology in the 18 months, with substantial victories. But the attacks continue. The lack of staff is a well known problem across Australian universities. A recent research paper released by the Australian Council for Educational Research stated there are not enough academics to meet growing demand. The author of the paper, Dr Daniel Edwards, stated that “unless something radical changes you can’t keep dealing with natural attrition and expect students will still be satisfied and patronising our universities as much. Quality is another issue which is questionable at the moment.” The University should be hiring more staff, not removing the very people whose work makes education at Sydney University possible.

They mean business

The warped priorities of the University are being driven by the logic of profit and competition. With less than 50 per cent of tertiary funding coming from government investment, universities are forced to act like businesses where they compete for students and corporate research contracts. The Gillard government declared an “education revolution”, but has done nothing to reverse the enormous cuts in education spending of the Howard era. Between 1995 and 2007, Australian was the only OECD country to see its contribution to higher education (as a percentage of GDP) decline.

Under this market model of education, self-promotion chews up funds. The University pours funds into revamping its superficial image, with constant renovations and new building projects. But when it comes to research, academics will be sacked based on crude output measures. Those who have produced less than four publications between 1 January 2009 and 11 November 2011 are at risk. This has nothing to do with the quality of their research (or their teaching, which is 40 per cent of their job). But the Vice Chancellor is slandering their reputations, claiming that there is a “small minority of academics who do not contribute significantly either to our research or teaching.” The truth is the VC acts like a CEO, intent on cutting jobs to save profit margins. (He is also paid like a CEO with a salary worth $1 million a year – cutting this obscene pay packet would be one way to show some financial responsibility). The VC and upper management benefit from the business model of education – they do not have students or staff interests at heart.

Time to fight back

Students should not put up with yet another assault on our education. We can stop these cuts. The University is nervous – that’s why they announced these cuts only after students had left for the summer.  But they are also determined. Thankfully staff did not hesitate to fighting back - the union organised actions outside the Vice Chancellor’s Christmas party and Alumni dinner. One hundred staff and students gathered outside the University senate meeting and chanted “Staff cuts hurt students”.

But we have to ramp up this campaign, fast. If the administration has its way, the deal will be finalised by late February. We can stop it being implemented, but only with a broad-based campaign involving as many students as possible, which will make life difficult for the University with direct protest action. 2011 saw world-wide struggles for fighting for decent education: mass student protests rocked Chile; a wave of university occupations hit Greece; and in Seattle students walked out against public sector cuts as part of the “Occupy” movement. And here at Sydney Uni, 200 students sat outside the Dean of Art’s office to save the Political Economy department – and won! With these lessons under our belt, we can beat back this latest attack.

Solidarity students will be building the campaign at O-week (29^th Feb – 2^ndMarch) and organising forums, protests and going to lectures to spread the word. We need your help. Get involved. Phone Freya on 043194259 or email sydney@solidarity.net.au

Egyptian trade unionists have called for demonstrations on January 25, the one year anniversary of the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak. The demands of workers and protestors have not been met by the ruling military regime.

Egypt: ‘The factory and the square are one hand’

A year has passed since the beginning of the Egyptian revolution, but the people’s sacrifices have not borne fruit, nor have the goals of the revolution – bread, freedom and social justice – been achieved. This is because those in power do not rule in the interests of the people, nor do they want to achieve the goals of the revolution, so this is why it is necessary for us all to join the demonstrations of millions on 25 January across Egypt.

Poverty, sackings and job cuts hurt workers throughout the period of Mubarak’s rule (both in the past and in the present). The only constitution which the factory owners and the heads of government institutions recognise is increasing their profits, and their only law is our exploitation. We were are the forefront of those who came out on 25 January, calling for bread, freedom and social justice, because we want to live with dignity, to be paid fair wages, to live in decent housing, to have access to healthcare for our families and education for our children.

The regime in power now stands on the side of big business and billionaire investors, while it refuses to meet our demands for a minimum wage of no less than 1500 pounds, which would put us on the poverty line. It refuses to give temporary workers permanent contracts, allowing the bosses to throw them on the scrapheap at any moment, in order to avoid raising social insurance payments. It is stalling over the issuing of the law on trade union freedoms, and is fighting and obstructing our independent unions which we have struggled to build in order to defend our interests in the face of the bosses’ and investors’ bullying and exploitation. Likewise it has refused to cleanse the institutions of the state from the remnants of Mubarak’s old party.

We, the workers of Egypt, kept the wheel of production turning with our blood and sweat, sacrificing our comfort and our health. The government and bosses stole what we produced, and refused to give us the wealth we created with our own hands, instead condemning us to poverty and helplessness. When we fought back against cuts in wages and rising prices, by stopping the wheel of looting, they accused us of sabotaging the economy. We want the wheel of production to turn in the interests of the workers … in fact we want to take back the wheels of production, such as our companies which were privatised by investors who either wanted to strip their assets and sack the workers, or steal their profits and enslave the workers.

The workers signing this statement insist that they will continue at the forefront of the working class and the Egyptian people on the coming 25 January, under the slogan: “the factory and the square are one hand in order to achieve the demands of the revolution for bread, freedom and social justice. We will fight for our just demands using our right to strike and demonstrate peacefully, and we call on the workers of Egypt to unite their ranks through forming trade unions, workers’ associations and workers’ committees to achieve the following demands of the working class:

-          Repeal of the law criminalising strikes, an end to military trials, and the execution of Mubarak and all those involved in the killing of demonstrators
-          A minimum wage of 1500 pounds per month and a maximum of no more than ten times the minimum
-          Temporary workers to be made permanent across all sectors: government, public sector and private sector.
-          Cleansing of state institutions and companies of corruption and of remnants of the former regime.
-          Renationalization of companies which were privatized, their re-opening for work, and investment in them, and reinstatement of all those workers who were forced into early retirement.
-          Full recognition of the independent unions and the issuing of the law on trade union freedoms.
-          Stop price rises and the imposition of price controls on basic goods.
-          Free health care and a genuine state education system for the children of the poor

Initial signatories:

Hala Talat: Federation of Egyptian Teachers
Hossam Abdullah: Independent Health Sciences Union
Tarek Sayed Mahmoud: Independent Health Sciences Union
Kamal Al-Fayoumi: Textile Workers’ Association – Mahalla
Wael Habib: Misr Spinning Company, Mahalla
Ramadan Ali: Railway Workers’ Union – Al-Wasta, Beni Suef
Gamal Othman: Campaign to re-nationalise the looted companies
Gharib Abdel-Fattah: Union of Local Development Information Centre Employees
Hamada Abu Zaid: Union of Local Development Information Centre Employees (Al-Sharqiyya)
Mahmoud Rihan: Union of EgyptAir Maintenance Workers
Mohamed Abdel-Sattar: Independent Union of Public Transport Authority Workers
Mansour Saad: International Company for Steel
Mohammed Abdul Rahman Ahmad: Misr Oils and Soap Company, “Sandoub” Dakahlia
Atef Abdel-Maksoud: International Company for Steel
Safwat Attia Hassan: Atlas General Contracting
Tariq Mustafa Imam: Union EgyptAir Maintenance & Engineering Workers
Na’amat Mohammed Saber: Senior Specialists EgyptAir Maintenance
Adel Abdul Naeem: Cairo General Contracting
Khamis Ibrahim: Independent Union of Gasoline Workers, Ismailia
Said Shehata: leading activist in Arab Polvara Textiles, Alexandria
Shaaban Abdel-Aziz: Union of Postal Workers, 6 October City
Abdul-Majid Abdul-Aziz: Union of Postal Workers – Fayoum
Hamdi Ahmed Bakr: Union of Postal Workers
Ali Nagi: Trade unionist in the Egyptian Commercial Company for Drugs
Ashraf Al-Harty: Tanta Linen Company
Ahmed Fadel: Kafr Dawar Spinning Co.

To send a message of greeting to Egyptian workers on the anniversary of the revolution email menasolidarity@gmail.com

Originally published by MENA Solidarity

Labour leaders in Nigeria called off a general strike on Monday of this week after the government agreed to partly reintroduce petrol subsidies. The subsidies were removed on 1 January. The price of a litre of petrol rose from 65 naira to 141 naira. The new price is 97 naira a litre.

This is a stunted victory. It’s a major setback to government plans. But it’s still a 50 percent increase. That’s a terrible burden on the poor.

For more than a week, ten million workers brought the country to a standstill.

Many militants insist that they will stay out until the full subsidy is returned. Some action has continued in seven or eight states. But I don’t think it will last.

Calling off the strikes has given the state the upper hand. Rank and file workers feel a strong sense of betrayal.

The government has now been able to put soldiers on the streets in most major cities.

The strike only had one demand—to return the subsidy. The unions say they will keep arguing for that. But if they believed it they should have stayed out.

Nigeria’s government has responded to additional demands for an end to corruption. It will set up a new anti-graft agency.

This will bring out a lot of dirt. But that has happened before—and usually nothing happens. Will anything change this time? Not if we rely on the government.

But the genie is out of the bottle now. The mass of people have realised they can change things by taking action.

Barricade

Some 20 people were killed during the strike. I only know of one incident where the state wasn’t responsible—a driver crashed while trying to avoid a workers’ barricade in Ogun.

The reality is that we have learned from last year’s revolutions in North Africa. Nigerians have never before taken over an area in their hundreds and thousands and stayed there from dawn to dusk. We have seen mass discussions, mass chanting and mass dancing.

Activists who only knew each other through Facebook or BlackBerry groups finally met in person. All kinds of new alliances have been formed.

Nigeria’s biggest city Lagos has been the centre of the struggle. Strikers set up action committees and neighbourhood committees. They organised barricades to defend the strike.

In the capital Abuja where I live these included mobilisation, medical and security committees. They keep the peace on protests.

People hear about how Nigeria is divided by religious violence. Several states in the north have been living under a state of emergency.

The ruling class has encouraged this ethnic strife to split the opposition.

But the strike showed another way for people relate to each other. In Abuja strikers showed solidarity by linking arms around Muslims on the protest as they prayed.

There was solidarity on a bigger scale in Funtua in the more Muslim north last week. The armed Islamic group Boko Haram had issued an ultimatum against Christians.

But local Muslims surrounded churches across town to protect them.

Australia cannot evade its share of the responsibility for the tragic sinking of another asylum boat off Java, according to advocates from the Refugee Action Coalition. The boat is believed to have been carrying Afghan and Iranian refugees.

“Australia’s push for Indonesia to detain asylum seekers and to criminalize people smuggling directly leads to the kind of tragedy we’ve seen yet again today,” said Ian Rintoul, RAC spokesperson.

“There’s nothing inherently dangerous about the passage from Indonesia – if it’s in proper boats. If the government is worried about people losing their lives at sea, they should decriminalize people-smuggling so that the voyages can be planned in the open and seaworthy boats can come here without having to sneak into Australian waters in secret.”

“But the policy of detaining asylum seekers in Indonesia means asylum seekers risk imprisonment if they contact authorities if they are concerned about the seaworthiness of any boat. The fact that Australia impounds and destroys the vessels that bring asylum seekers here means boats used are more likely to be unseaworthy. The crossing from Indonesia is these boats’ last voyage.”

“This time we tragically have hundreds of people likely to be dead. No doubt we’ll hear a lot of hypocrisy from government and opposition about the tragedy of lost lives. They’ll say the sinking shows Australia has to deter people from undertaking boat trips. But talk of stopping the boats only makes the situation worse. It doesn’t matter how unsafe the boat is, refugees will try to get to Australia because that is often the only place where they can be safe.”

“According to reports earlier this year, there were 1462 civilian deaths in Afghanistan in the first half of 2011 alone – a 15% increase. May this year was the deadliest month of the war for civilians since 2007. It’s no surprise that people are willing to risk their lives on the trip to Australia.

“Sending people to Nauru or Malaysia will make no difference. People trying to escape war and persecution in Afghanistan or Iran are still going to try and come here because they have no other option. And any refugees who are prevented from coming to Australia by government policies will just undertake other dangerous journeys to Europe or America, with just as much risk to their lives.”

“Australia’s obligation is to welcome asylum seekers. We have resettled a minuscule number of refugees from our region.”

“If the government and opposition really had a concern for asylum seekers’ lives they would institute the humane refugee policy Australia has needed for so long. They’d massively increase our refugee intake from the region, they’d end mandatory detention, decriminalize people-smuggling, remove offshore processing as a policy option, and process and resettle refugees from Indonesia.”

More information: Ian Rintoul, 0417 275 713

Originally posted at www.refugeeaction.org.au

The political crisis in Papua New Guinea split open in mid-December as two men both claimed the right to be the Prime Minister. The current PM, Peter O’Neill, was ousted by a PNG Supreme Court ruling, which reinstated the PM ousted in August, Michael Somare.

Both men set about trying the build the state machine around “their government” with rival Governor-Generals and police chiefs. As this article was written it seemed most of the police were throwing their support behind O’Neill.

But the two men are both part of PNG’s ruling class and there is no indication of any real political differences between them, apart from their rival claims to control of PNG’s lucrative governemnt revenues.

The split has forced the rival camps to mobilise supporters outside their own narrow ruling class circles. Seven hundred people came out to support Peter O’Neill in Port Moresby. O’Neill has the support of 72 MPs in the 109 seat Parliament. But with many so parties and independents, majorities can be very fluid in PNG.

Waiting in the wings, should PNG’s split become a chasm, is the Australian government, which regards PNG as a “strategic asset”. The Australian Financial Review ran a headline proclaiming “Australia will step in if asked”, when no one in PNG had called for Australian intervention.

While Defence Minister Stephen Smith said PNG was a “friend” and “neighbour”, Australia’s role as neo-colonial master of PNG is obvious. The Australian Defence Force (ADF) already has, “a contingency plan to intervene should the situation spiral out of control”, according the Financial Review.

The Gillard government’s National Security Committee met within a day of the PNG crisis erupting and was “briefed”. A senior Defence source told the Financial Review, “The plan would only be activated if the situation grew a lot worse.” O’Neill is reported to be maintaining links with Australian high commission officers.

Rowan Callick, wrote in the Australian that, “PNG’s resource boom, which parallels Australia’s, has tremendously raised the stakes.”

Control of the government in PNG means controlling enormous wealth. A Canberra Times editorial called it, “The rewards that flow from incumbency.”

This is the root of the crisis. The private sector, both locally-owned and expatriate, remains very small. One example is that PNG’s largest newspaper, the PNG Post-Courier, is owned by Rupert Murdoch.

Legacy of Australian colonial rule
PNG’s model of growth, bequeathed to it during Australian rule, is based on mining and mineral exploration. Investments in the billions are at stake, like Exxon-Mobil’s $15.7 billion LNG project, due to start production in 2014. Mining provides 60 per cent of PNG’s earnings.

PNG’s industrial development was held back because of imperial plunder by Australia, through the conscious policy of successive Australian governments to restrict industrial development and allow development based almost only on mining projects.

This has meant successive PNG governments have been unable to create a stable economy capable of matching the demands of a growing urban population.

Mining employs just 1 per cent of the workforce, with most managers and supervisors being expatriate Australians. Almost all mine-related consumption is imported from Australia, including goods consumed by its personnel.

As one academic in the field wrote explained growth in the mining sector has failed to stimulate the economy more broadly, including the agricultural sector, and mining, “has essentially remained an ‘enclave’ with almost no fiscal link to the PNG economy in general.”

According to the census in 1990, only 12.5 per cent of the population was employed as wage-labourers in the formal sector. With youth unemployment currently at around 70 per cent according to the Australian High Commissioner, many people who migrated to the towns for work have turned to crime to survive.

In early November, there were riots in Lae, PNG’s second biggest city. Local youths blamed Highlander people who moved into Lae’s many squatter settlements for rising street crime. At least six people were killed and 20 injured in the riots.

Australian neglect of its colony
When Australia took over New Guinea from Germany in 1914, it restricted and prohibited the growing, processing and export of any crops which would compete with Australian exports such as sugar and bananas.

In the 1920s and 1930s, when economic development in PNG began to take off, Australia’s policy was to ensure that Australian business dominated the economy.

Ironically, Australians had discovered the copper on Bougainville as early as the 1930s! They didn’t mine it on a large scale until the late 1960s.

Australian control meant that the PNG economy never had the space to diversify. Its economy is based on mining, such as gold and copper, and agricultural products like coffee, tea and cocoa. All these commodities have highly volatile prices on the world market.

The stunting of PNG’s ability to diversify means today that gold mined in PNG goes to the Perth Mint for refining and PNG’s crude oil is refined in Brisbane. This underlines the fact that a manufacturing base has not developed and the jobs that go with it.

Rowan Callick, an Australia journalist who specialises on PNG, once wrote, “PNG, has since the
early days, lacked the capital to meet its development aspirations. The colonial power, Australia, had failed to bequeath it the infrastructure or skills it needed.”

Corruption
In the context of the country’s wealth in mineral resources, the other issue is government corruption. The government’s corruption and priorities mean that revenue raising to fund social services stagnates. In the 1990s, Business Review Weekly quoted an example, that for want of $20,000, a tax audit of the forest industry would probably raise $3 million! But then would they really tax their business partners in the logging industry?

The government’s priorities meant that in the late 1990s, PNG spent $19 million on buying real estate in Cairns, rather than on social services in PNG. Indeed, PNG was then the fourth largest international investor in Queensland real estate, after Japan, the US and New Zealand!

This kind of waste leaves little to spend on social services. PNG Government spending on a range of services is woefully inadequate. Port Moresby and Lae are full of squatter camps with no running water, no electricity, no schools and no health care.

Just half of the country’s children go to school, and then only for an average of three years.

PNG spends 2.7 per cent of its GDP on health compared with sub-Saharan Africa’s 4.5 per cent and the world average of 8 per cent. The country has close to twice Australia’s rate of HIV.

Somare has been PM since 2002, in a period of growth based on mining and minerals, and is known as the “grand thief”.

Like all under-developed countries, PNG is a mixture of ‘combined and uneven’ development. That is a modern industry and working class is being created but in the context of an overwhelmingly agricultural and tribal society.

PNG’s working class has used the same methods as workers in Australia to improve their wages and conditions—strike action. Unions have been built in various cities and towns where there are concentrations of workers—on the waterfront, in transport, in the public service and amongst miners.

It is this class which can end PNG’s dependence on mining, corrupt politicians and Australia’s imperial meddling.

By Tom Orsag

Labor’s national conference saw a greater challenge to the government’s right-wing policies than at the previous event in 2009, where then leader Kevin Rudd orchestrated proceedings to ensure there was no debate. But the overall result was that Julia Gillard forced through a further shift to the right—and did nothing to boost Labor’s prospects.

There was a small victory around same-sex marriage—with the homophobic and most right-wing elements in the party losing their battle to keep support for it out of the Labor platform.

This showed that the political momentum is all on the side of allowing same-sex marriage. Up to 10,000 people marched on the conference on Saturday demanding that Labor support it.

But Gillard ensured that changing the Labor platform would not deliver same-sex marriage rights, by demanding Labor MPs be allowed to ignore the new party policy and have a “conscience vote” on the issue in parliament. Tony Abbott has ruled out allowing Liberal MPs a conscience vote, so the numbers to pass same-sex marriage into law do not exist in parliament.

Not only did this mean Gillard lining up with the most right-wing elements inside her party, it puts her in the embarrassing position of having to vote against same-sex marriage when it is introduced for a parliamentary debate.

This stance is hardly going to make Gillard look like she stands for anything, or win people back to Labor.

The government’s anti-refugee policies were challenged on conference floor by Labor for Refugees and members of the Left faction. Outside 500 people rallied for refugee rights on the Sunday.

But in the end Labor took another step to the right, entrenching offshore processing in party policy for the first time. This brings policy into line with the government’s planned Malaysia refugee swap deal. As textile union secretary Michele O’Neil put it, this was, “to reward the government for ignoring the current platform.”

After the conference, Immigration Minister Chris Bowen made clear his determination to re-introduce the Malaysia deal to parliament, in the hope of getting it through the lower house now that Labor has secured an extra vote with the defection of Liberal MP Peter Slipper.

This will be nothing more than a political stunt to try to outbid Tony Abbott on who can be “tougher” on refugees, as any legislation will still fail in the Senate, as long as the Coalition remains opposed to the Malaysia Agreement. But it shows that the Labor leadership’s efforts to race Abbott to the right over refugees are not going to let up.

Julia Gillard’s other notable move at the conference was to overturn Labor’s opposition to selling uranium to India, which has not signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty. This was one of the last vestiges of Labor’s anti-nuclear policy won by the anti-nuclear movement in the late 1970s.

Gillard first announced she would move the change on the eve of the visit of US President Barack Obama, signalling that it was designed to boost US interests. India is emerging as a key US ally in Asia, as it seeks to contain the rise of China.

But there was continued opposition to the government’s plan to impose a nuclear waste dump on Aboriginal land at Muckaty station in the NT. A fringe meeting heard from Muckaty traditional owner Dianne Stokes and lawyer George Newhouse, who is running a legal challenge to the plan.

A number of conference delegates and union officials packed into another meeting “The case against the NT Intervention”, hosted by the CFMEU.

Reforming Labor
With Labor still running at near record lows of around 30 per cent primary vote in the polls, and continuing to haemorrhage members, there has been plenty of talk about the need to “reform” Labor.

Party elder John Faulkner repeated his earlier warnings about the state of the party, telling a meeting during the conference: “The situation is now dire. Our party is in decline. Our membership is small and getting smaller. Our membership is old and getting older.”

But the conference failed to agree even on any of the major organisational changes that emerged from its review following last year’s federal election. The details have been shunted to an “implementation committee”.

However these changes to how delegates get elected to Labor’s conference will not solve the party’s problems. It is the determination of the party leadership to shift to the right that has shattered Labor’s membership and support base. Under Gillard this is continuing unchecked.

The fight inside Labor to change party policy does have an importance. A serious fight by rank-and-file members and the unions is capable of disciplining the MPs, as we saw over power privatisation in NSW. But Labor policy is also habitually ignored by Labor governments.

It is the fight outside Labor, on the streets and in the workplaces, that can really shift politics. The fight inside Labor can be the first step towards such a struggle outside for those that look to the party.

The Labor conference carried a resolution condemning the Qantas boss Alan Joyce grounding the airline, but without industrial action in defiance of Fair Work Australia, the resolution will be meaningless.

The campaigns to force change over refugees and same-sex marriage will have to continue. Most importantly we need a union fightback. Instead of simply looking to lobby the Labor leadership inside the party over Labor’s FairWork laws or the ABCC, unions need to build on the struggles at Baiada or by the Victorian nurses to defy Labor’s work laws and win change. This is the only way Labor’s race to the right will be halted.