[Marxism] NSW Labor conference: Beazley's opposition to individual workplace agreements

[Ozleft <Ozleft@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

 On a quiet sector of a quiet front: a momentous NSW Labor Party conference

By Bob Gould

The courageous English communist poet John Cornford, who had been moving 
away from Stalinism, sent his companion Margot Heinemann a moving poem 
from the Spanish Civil War, which began: “On a quiet sector of a quiet 
front”, and a few weeks later he was killed in battle.

The NSW Labor Party conference, held over two days on the Queens 
Birthday long weekend was a bit like Cornford's poem. I've attended 
every NSW Labor Party conference, the whole 40 of them, since 1954, many 
times as a delegate and for many years now running a bookstall of labour 
movement books in the foyer of the impressive Sydney Town Hall auditorium.

This was possibly the quietest conference I have ever attended. Many of 
these events have been far more boisterous than this one, with 
demonstrations outside on the Town Hall steps and protests in the 
gallery directed at the 900 delegates on the floor of the conference.

This conference was not like that, at all. It was all business. It's the 
state conference before the coming state and federal elections, so there 
probably won't be another one for two years.

Even at the big, turbulent conferences there are usually two events: the 
one on the floor, in the gallery and on the steps; and the linked event 
under the stage and in the caucus rooms on the other side of the 
corridors, where pressure is exerted and deals are made.

In the relatively quiet, defensive atmosphere facing the labour 
movement, the overt agitation was much reduced, but the pressure and 
deal-making under the stage and in the caucus rooms was intense indeed, 
reflecting the pressure from the whole trade union movement, which is 
under the hammer from the Howard Government and the ruling class.

Industrial relations was the burning issue at the conference by a 
country mile, and linked to that was the preoccupation of everyone in 
the labour movement with the re-election of a Labor government at state 
level and the election of a federal Labor government. Election of both 
governments is seen as necessary to defeat the Howard Government's 
attacks on the labour movement.

Full: http://www.gouldsbooks.com.au/ozleft/nswlabconf06.html



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