Re: ...but I write this reeling

[Gary MacLennan <g.maclennan@xxxxxxxxxx>]

At 08:34 AM 5/30/96 +0100, you wrote:
>>
>Hello Gary:
>
>I think you deserve most sincere regards for your actions and those of your
>comrades and also solidarity in your endeavours to develop your struggle
>along class lines for a movement that in Mariategui's words works for unity
>"to accomplish the common historical duties of developing class
>consciousness and class sentiments, to sow and propagate class ideals and
>ideas of renewal, to rescue the workers from false institutions that claim
>to represent them; to fight repression and the corporative (fascist)
>offensive, to defend the organisation, the press and the tribune of the
>class"  "Historical duties that will merge and combine our roads in the
>course of their accomplishment".
>
>There is no doubt that when the class moves the bourgeois tremble! I wish I
>could have been there too!
>
>
>Adolfo

Thank you comrade Adolfo.  The reports from the demos in Sydney and Adelaide
were very encouraging. The students stormed the offices of the Minister for
educatoin and also the Prime Minister's.  Hopefully this is a sign that
there is some fight in the people.

At the rally I talked to an old friend from the Building Workers Union
(BWIU) and he said his members were spoiling for a fight.

Interestingly the Prime Minister came out and said that speculation as to
the size of the cuts was greatly exaggerated.  So perhaps there is a little
back down.

But what enrages me is that the union bureaucracy are not attempting to
build  unity.  I think we need to concentrate on educating the students to
the need to help defend the waterfront unions (longshoremen).  The latter
are really the govt's main target.  They want a totally deunionised
waterfront.  In some ways the seamen's position is quite like the miners in
England.  The Tories wanted to smash the miners at any price and I think
that sections of the conservatives have the same intention.

All this is why I was so bitter about our union turning down the offer of
support from the Seamen.  We communists dream about such unity, but the
social democrats simply cannot see any need for it.

Worse they believe all  the bourgeois media shit about how demonstrating
workers are bad for one's image.  Our union bureaucrats would rather have
support from one vice-chancellor than link up with a key section of the
working class.

Still I have to say that the evening news is full of  the sounds of
struggle.  Isolated and small and largely ineffectual but after 13 years of
the deadening hand of the Australian Labor Party we may be at the dawn of a
great revival.  Perhaps comrades Zeynep and Hugh are correct.  We all hope so.






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