19.09.1996

All dressed up with no place to go

In the aftermath of the storming of the Australian parliament, Cass Bennett of Communist Party Advocates in Australia examines the fallout in the workers’ movement

A ‘riot’ in Australia, a ‘siege of parliament’. Could less than six months of a conservative Liberal federal government have so invigorated militant politics in Australia?

Indeed, the ‘siege’ was a surprising event. Surprising after 13 years of the Labor Party’s class collaboration Accord between the unions and government to hear of such an all-out, militant, combined action by trade unions. Surprising because of its symbolic value - the break from tradition, reports dubbed it the most violent mass assault on a parliament house in Australia’s history.

The scale of the event, labelled a ‘riot’, shocked people that were there, happily participating in the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) ‘talkfest’ further down the hill, safely away from Parliament House itself. Though these people could not have been totally unaware of what was happening - a crowd gathered around the doors of parliament was clearly visible - no concerted attempts were made to bring these people up to join the fight. One official from the Construction, Forestry, Mining, Energy Union (CFMEU) addressed the crowd with a riot shield and bloodied face, but what he said was interpreted by those listening more in terms of ‘look what is happening’ rather than a call for help.

For those that participated in the occupation, the media reports that a ‘siege’ had taken place seemed a little far fetched. To be sure, if events on the day had been more organised, if 25,000 or so trade unionists, students and Aboriginal activists had come together in a coordinated, militant protest activity, then a ‘siege’ may well have been an appropriate word to describe the situation.

As it was, the protest was split into two separate rallies: one sponsored by the ACTU, consisting of speeches from various politicians and union officials; the other by the more militant activists, frustrated (but probably not surprised) by the lack of militancy in the ACTU rally and campaign more generally. The latter activists had apparently been re-routed up to the doors of parliament and away from where the PA was set up. Initially thousands gathered at the doors, chanting, “Let’s go in”, while others began to scale the roof of parliament in order to hang down their union banners. Red flags and Aboriginal flags were flown from the coat of arms.

However, no concerted efforts were made to keep this crowd together and draw others in. The ‘violence’ at the doors became fractured, isolated and disorganised as people became bored and drifted away, looking around at the event as a whole, as though browsing at a market. For those that persisted at the doors - notably students, Aboriginal activists and CFMEU militants - two hours of struggle with the cops finally paid off and hundreds burst through.

It seems strange that more police presence was not made available to prevent this from occurring - and apparently 700 more police were stationed in the basement. In this light it does not seem too far fetched to suggest, as some on the left have done, that the Howard government ‘wanted’ the event to happen. Certainly they reaped good political mileage after the event, and have been continuously discrediting the ACTU leadership ever since.

The media worked fast to generate the requisite outrage. The storming of parliament was declared “a disgrace”. Mainstream Australia was said to be outraged. The evidence that this would be so was the response of prime minister John Howard as he staged a media tour of duty of the damage done to the parliamentary gift shop. The violence of the state is legitimised and the violence of the working class delegitimised at a time when we can expect an increasing frequency of strikes, pickets, rallies and other protest actions.

ACTU lead-up and response

In May, the Liberal government released its planned changes to industrial relations legislation, including proposals to: limit the jurisdiction of the Industrial Relations Commission (IRC); introduce a new stream of certified agreements which can be entered into without union involvement and without IRC scrutiny; reintroduce secondary boycott provisions; restrict union right of entry; permit injunctions against industrial action and permit immediate action for common law damages.

The response of the ACTU was to call a rally in Canberra for one day before the budget and to do very little in the intervening period to build it. A national strike was not called (hardly surprising), nor were unions encouraged to take strike action in their sectors. Some unions had organised strikes, rallies and actions in the intervening period, relating to planned and specific attacks on their sectors, but no union called a national strike for the day. The CFMEU went furthest, its mining division demanding that mining companies allow 10% of the workforce to attend the rally with pay, or face the threat of a two-day national strike. Other individual workplaces of a range of unions called strike action, but this was not coordinated or supported through union leadership. White collar unions had virtually no presence on the day.

In the lead-up to the rally, the focus was broadened as government ministers released pre-budget announcements of funding cuts in higher education and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission.

The ACTU wanted the rally as a ‘nice fluffy’ media event bringing together unionists, community and church groups, student and Aboriginal activists, with the aim of putting pressure on the government, and strengthening the resolve of the non-government senators to block the industrial relations legislation and parts of the budget.

In response to criticism levelled at the ‘violence’ the ACTU was quick to condemn and try to assert distance. Jennie George (president of the ACTU and former Communist Party supporter) was making statements that she was confident that the Australian Federal Police would make a report on the event that absolved the ACTU of responsibility. The CFMEU also tried to distance itself from the violence, claiming that they had been giving out their T-shirts to “anyone”. The direct result of these statements was a Sydney Morning Herald front page, McCarthyist investigation revealing (with names and photos) CFMEU paid officials who had been involved in the storming of the doors.

George toed the media line that the violence had harmed the ‘reputation and standing’ of the union movement and blunted its attack against the federal government’s industrial relations policies. George claimed that the movement had been taken back 20 years. Leftists can only wish that this was true - the 70s were pre-Accord and fondly remembered for the militancy and direct actions of unions, the Builders’ Labourers Federation in particular.

In its first official statement since last month’s riot, the 100-plus ACTU Council said it regretted the violence and accepted that the organisation of the rally was inadequate to handle unforeseen events such as the riot, but reaffirmed it was not responsible for the actions of a small minority of protesters:

“The action of these people undermined the collective objectives of the union movement’s campaign against the legislation and caused harm to the reputation and standing of the movement ... Individuals who act outside the collective framework and damage the collective standing of the union movement will receive no support or comfort from the movement.”

In this post-Accord era, the ACTU wants to use demonstrations to create the framework and give legitimacy to its negotiations - adopting a strategy of organising meetings with Howard on the same afternoon as an organised rally. On August 19, Howard cut short the scheduled meeting, saying that he did not think that it was ‘appropriate’ in light of events; that he would not meet under duress.

The ACTU seems to think that the mere physical presence of people at a rally is taking collective action. Its notion of collectivity is an extended form of lobbying - it is not concerned with the politicisation of people at the rally which could occur through mass action, nor was it interested in organising an assault on capital, in whose interests the Liberals are legislating.

Although workers can rally significant power by virtue of their ability to withdraw labour, the ACTU is reluctant to marshal this power. The ACTU is happy to speak of resistance in rhetorical terms; of ‘war’ and ‘blood in the streets’ but its arena of ‘war’ is the courtroom. Workers know whose blood will be on the streets, as the state gears up for increased repression against increasing dissent. The ACTU’s concern to establish credibility and legitimacy has seen it unable to face the reality of its own rhetoric, quick to condemn the August 19 violence and those that participated. The ACTU will clearly not be organising any protest actions again in a hurry, having seen that it cannot effectively control such direct action. The ACTU has little recent experience in organising workers in a political fashion, as August 19 shows. Neither, despite its wishes, can it contain workers forever.

Its response enfeebles the union movement and contributes to the quick and eager erasure of the possibilities of collective action. The fact that a protest planned by Aboriginal activists for the day after the ACTU rally was still going ahead was reported as ‘a story’ in the media all that morning.

The August 19 ‘riot’, like many spontaneous outpourings of anger, was ‘all dressed up with no place to go’. In so far as there is no mass revolutionary Party of the working class in Australia, such events are useful indicators of a resurgence in militancy. However, the reality is that without an organised Party structure, and organisation of labour, this militancy may be confined to isolated events. Damage to the capitalist state is reduced to the spectacle of a few smashed windows.