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The September 2006 Queensland electionsBy Bob GouldThe Queenland election result represents a rather dramatic closing of ranks by the organised working class, migrants and the progressive section of the intermediate social layers around the Labor Party and to a lesser extent the Greens. The Green vote increased significantly, to about 8 per cent, and the Labor vote held up in the mid-40s despite the multitude of very serious mistakes by the Labor government on matters such as health. It's absolutely clear that the dominant issue was the Howard government's attack on the working class. That's a political problem for which Howard has no answer. Alan Bradley on the Green Left Weekly list describes, simply, in an idiomatic way, a practical united front between Labor and the Greens on his patch in Toowoomba and the important point about this is that it was clearly replicated all over Queensland, at a local level. Bradley, at least, is interested in mass politics up to a point, and not just mad Potemkin Village stuff about the Socialist Alliance. His post stands in stark contrast to other comments on the Green Left discussion site and in Green Left itself, which largely confine themselves to discussing Sam Watson's campaign, which was backed by the Socialist Alliance, in the seat of Brisbane Central. Watson got 1.8 per cent, roughly the same vote that the DSP got last time it stood. The Greens in that seat got 19 per cent, Labor 49.8 and the Liberals 28.6. Dave Riley posts a comment on the GLW list that is confined to bagging Labor and the Greens ad nauseam, and touting his own Pinnocchio operation as the centre of proletarian politics. It gets worse. The call for the hastily convened Socialist Alliance national conference in October sounds as if the DSP-Socialist Alliance and its very small number of allies is the central force in the nationwide agitation against Howard's attacks on the unions. This is also barking mad as an approach to the labour movement. Politically, the DSP has emerged as even more obsessive, simplistic Third Period sectarians. According to Green Left, Watson and the DSP campaigned on a number of issues, but Howard's Work Choices attack is not mentioned. Neither is the sweeping Labor election victory. This narrow focus by a socialist group on its own much-trumpeted modest activity is barking mad, politically. Nowhere in all the agitprop about Watson's candidacy on the GLW site was there a slogan such as: "Vote for Sam Watson, keep the Liberals out" or anything similar. I'd be interested to know, from the DSP leadership, whether the DSP's how-to-vote card even suggested extending a preference after the Greens to Labor. That's a genuine question based on the bizarre nature of the coverage of the election in GLW. (Anyone going to GLW for serious news about anything anywhere is likely to be disappointed. Alex Miller has an upbeat article about the recent Scottish Socialist Party rally in Glasgow, exaggerating its size a bit, baiting the CWI and the British SWP as run from London, and failing to mention that Sheridan forces had their own rally the next night in the same hall and it was twice the size.) To summarise, the closing of ranks behind Labor and the Greens in the very far-flung state of Queensland underlines the critical importance of firstly the united front and secondly the need for socialists and Marxists to participate in some way in the broad mass movement that's developing quite rapidly against the Howard government and its industrial laws. The politics of abuse, directed by Riley and the DSP at the Labor, trade union and Green components of this practical united front is political madness of the highest order. |
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