Re: Forwarded from Ben Reid

[Gary MacLennan <g.maclennan@xxxxxxxxxx>]

> As to Drew Hutton et al I've never come across them directly but
> they sound a lot like the Tas Greens, with whom I am quite
> familiar.
>
> Ben Courtice

Christ Ben, that is the bad news!  I had hoped that the Qld Greens were the
exception.  Their leader Drew Hutton has always struck me as someone who is
the true victim of a happy childhood. Thus he was a star athlete and
captain of an exclusive school.  That gave him the born to rule mentality
that so governs his attitude towards the Left.  But the fatal flaw in the
mixture is that without theoretical back up he is quite lost. Worse he has
no sensse of his intellectual limitations.

Moreover when he cut his ties to the anarchist movement he lost the radical
edge to his libertarianism.  The shift to the Right then was almost
inevitable.  As an anarchist he had little or not contact with the
organised working class, and so he could turn up at a National Party event
and speak without any sense of shame.  The fact that he was regarded as
their tame Green never occurred to him.

As well because he had no understanding at all of class politics, he could
not make any distinction between master and slave, between the Masters'
party - the Nationals- and the party of the slaves who were anxious to
serve as the masters of other slaves - the Labor Party.

But it is important to look at the Cunningham result again and to see it as
a victory for a particular combination - left unionism and the progressive
middle class.  It was this alliance that gave the Greens their
victory.   The questions are they bright enough to fully grasp the need to
build unity with the working class?  I know the answer in the case of
Hutton and Connors.

As to what the Socialist Alliance should do, my own feeling is that it
should continue to concentrate not on the Greens but more on the trade
union movement and the emerging layer of militants.

We shall see though.

regards

Gary


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