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A new McCarthyism? War and the crackdown on support for Palestine
Repression of Palestine activism echoes the crackdown during previous wars, argue James Supple and Tom Orsag
The war on Gaza has seen Australian governments, schools, universities and the media all attempt to silence and crack down on support for Palestine.
Displays of support that would be commonplace around issues from climate action to anti-racism, or government-supported wars like Ukraine, have seen workers face disciplinary action and threats.
This is not a result of the Zionist lobby—although pro-Israel activists do press for sackings and other action against Palestine supporters. It is the kind of media and state mobilisation that often takes place during war.
The hysterical climate following 9/11 is one example—with the US President George W Bush declaring the population was, “Either with us, or with the terrorists”, and waves of Islamophobia and anti-terror laws.
Another is “McCarthyism”, the fevered climate in the US during the onset of the Cold War in the 1950s, when Senator Joseph McCarthy’s witch-hunt against Communist sympathisers saw many people lose jobs and careers.
Australia may not be formally at war in Gaza. But the ruling class here recognises that they have a stake in the outcome. Both major parties see US global power as essential to their own interests, and recognise Israel as the US’s key partner in the Middle East.
The result has been a closing of ranks across major social institutions against pro-Palestine activism—with a firm echo of wartime repression.
Ruling classes recognise war as a situation of life and death. Defeat is a threat to their power and privileges.
They will spend billions of dollars and require enormous sacrifices from the population. This requires mobilising all the means at their disposal to whip up support for the war, and isolate anyone standing against it.
The freedom of speech and freedom to organise that are accepted in ordinary times have frequently been suspended during wartime—with the First World World and Vietnam War clear examples.
The Great War
The federal Labor government that came to office in August 1914 was fully committed to the war effort.
Labor Prime Minister Billy Hughes passed a new War Precautions Act in an effort to target and silence opponents of the war. There were 3442 prosecutions under the Act. Even minor offences could attract six months’ jail.
While there was initial enthusiasm for the war, left-wing groups, most importantly the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), opposed it from the outset.
The government set out to break them. In 1915 IWW leader Tom Barker was charged for publishing an anti-war poster deemed “prejudicial to recruitment”.
He was charged again over a cartoon in their newspaper Direct Action and jailed in March 1916, but released three months later after a protest campaign. A succession of other IWW members were prosecuted under the Act for anti-war speeches at rallies in Sydney’s Domain.
Miners in NSW who took strike action in late 1915 for a shorter working week were denounced as “German sympathisers” and traitors by the media.
The crackdown accelerated as the government moved to introduce conscription. The union movement led an enormous campaign that defeated two referendums (technically plebiscites) in October 1916 and December 1917.
The IWW was also central to the anti-conscription movement.
In late 1916 police raided the IWW’s office, with membership lists passed on to employers to encourage sackings. Individual members had their homes raided.
Twelve IWW members were arrested on trumped up arson charges in Sydney just weeks before the first conscription referendum in 1916.
In July 1917, Hughes made continued membership of the IWW a crime punishable by six months’ jail.
Vietnam
Australia joined the US war against the National Liberation Front (NLF) of Vietnam in the early 1960s. Conscription was introduced in 1965.
In the climate of the Cold War, opposition was initially limited to a small minority. ASIO carried out intimidating surveillance of anti-war activists, feeding information to employers, conservative MPs and the media.
In July 1967 it was revealed that the mainstream press had agreed to a voluntary censorship system, where the Federal Government would issue a “D notice” on Defence-related matters not to be reported.
Protests were regularly attacked by the police. Even the massive Moratorium street marches in May and September 1970 attracted hysteria and vitriol. The media warned darkly that the protests would be be violent and leave blood in the streets. Billy Sneeden, then Minister for National Service, attacked marchers as “political bikies pack-raping democracy”.
School students were suspended for wearing badges supporting the Moratorium and several teachers supporting the protests were also sacked.
In July 1967, members of the Monash University Labour Club in Melbourne voted to collect money for “unspecified aid” to the NLF, including military aid. This signalled their intention to aid the enemy.
“All hell broke loose,” as one account of the movement explains. “The press, the government, the RSL and the ALP condemned the action as treason, and the Monash Vice-Chancellor banned the collection.”
The Federal Government passed laws to make collecting money for the NLF punishable by up to two years’ jail. But 1000 students voted to support collecting aid at a Student General Meeting, and the government backed off.
Both the First World War and Vietnam show that war leads to repression—but also that it can produce movements that bring the war to an end.
Teacher activist: ‘Antoinette Lattouf was fired. Teachers are facing intimidation by the Department’
NSW teacher Maryam Chekchok spoke at a Unionists for Palestine forum on supporting Palestine at work. Below is part of her speech
I ama high school teacher and I became one, not just to educate but to empower our youth to stand up for what is just and what is right. I also sought to work alongside like-minded individuals with whom I could share my ideas.
Like people in other industries, I was told to remain “neutral” and asked to never speak of the “international conflict” in the school space. Note the word, “international” as if it doesn’t have implications on us here in Australia. I guess we need to rewrite the syllabus for three-quarters of the subjects we teach if we are to steer clear of international affairs.
The refusal to expose students to different ideas, branded as provocative or too radical, for fear of corruption is absurd. The attempt at denouncing talk amongst teachers regarding the genocide occurring in Palestine goes against every moral bone in our body.
We are here to stand in the face of hypocrisy and call out our leaders for their uninformed stance that teachers are to remain neutral in the genocide happening in real time in Palestine.
What we do in our school setting is a direct reflection on the values we uphold outside of it. Our role as teachers emphasises that we have, not just a responsibility, but a right to inform students about global issues, including but not limited to the historical context, political dynamics and humanitarian consequences of the situation in Palestine. We have a right to discuss world issues with our fellow teachers openly and be trusted to do so respectfully.
In the same way we drive events and programs to show solidarity with our Indigenous community, we promote fairness in love and sexual freedom, so too should we stand up against the injustices being inflicted on our Palestinian brothers and sisters.
Campaigning for Palestine also raises important issues about our rights at work.
Our integrity, our professional judgement is being questioned every time we are told to keep schools as politically neutral spaces. Despite the Teachers Fed backing the wearing of the keffiyeh in schools, we are somehow still fearful of the repercussions.
Our leaders are very well aware of the power of education. The respect that teachers have in the community scares them.
This is why the Minns government is attempting to weaponise the education system for the purpose of supporting its pro-Israeli stance in schools through the call to neutrality. I’m sorry to say, but Chris Minns, when you lit up our Opera House with the Israeli flag, you made it very clear that you yourself would not remain neutral.
Censorship
When Zionists targeted Victorian teacher Jason Wong for speaking at a pro-Palestine rally in his own time and not in his school, his employer took heed of the Zionists’ complaints and almost cost him his job.
Antoinette Lattouf was fired from the ABC as a reporter for sharing a Human Rights Watch post—a post from a reputable organisation, skewed to no side except the side of humanity. The media union has labelled her sacking as “disturbing” and claimed staff from “diverse backgrounds” are “disproportionately” attacked.
This kind of censorship and discrimination negates the foundation of our democratic right to free speech and claims to be a multicultural society.
Teachers in NSW are facing the same intimidation by the Department. Our ever-growing group, Teachers for Palestine, is testament to our dedication and refusal to kneel to the demands of the Minns govt.
Starting with only 14 teachers at our first forum, we saw 40 at our second and 60 at our third. Our WhatsApp group has 217 members—that number continues to grow. Twenty schools took part in our first group photo action, including Watermelon Wednesday.
On Tuesday 13 February, we saw teachers and school staff don keffiyehs, pins, jewellery and watermelon symbols. We have had reports from 13 schools so far from this second action. The decline in the number of participating schools is because of the repression of any support for Palestine and the fear of disciplinary action.
We call on unions to speak up for humanity and to have our backs when we face disciplinary action in our workplaces.
With my olive skin, hijab and Lebanese background, I am told that I need to keep my “personal connection” to the conflict out of my classroom.
But, I still have hope. We must continue the fight, post about it on our social media, be allowed and be trusted to have these conversations with our students and our colleagues.
Remaining neutral only serves to perpetuate ignorance, gives life to the false notion that supporting Palestine is antisemitic and hinders meaningful and trusting relationships from being created through our common humanity.
Silence in the face of injustice is complicity with the oppressor.
The post A new McCarthyism? War and the crackdown on support for Palestine first appeared on Solidarity Online.
Israeli attack on UNRWA aid another genocidal act
Israel’s allegations against the UNRWA aid organisation in Gaza have been rapidly exposed as lies.
But the claims that 12 UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees) employees participated in Hamas’s 7 October attack saw a swathe of Western governments rush to freeze funding to the organisation—including Australia, the US, Germany, the UK and Canada.
This graphically confirms the Australian government’s direct complicity in the genocide in Gaza. UNRWA is by far the largest aid organisation in Gaza, employing 13,000 staff, and is absolutely essential to the population’s survival.
Israel made the allegations in a confidential six-page dossier sent to UNRWA donors the same day the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that its conduct plausibly constitutes genocide.
In just over a week Israel’s story fell apart. Channel Four in the UK obtained Israel’s dossier and said that it “provides no evidence” for the involvement of UNRWA staff members in the attack.
Foreign Minister Penny Wong has already been forced to backtrack, saying the Australian government “have asked for further evidence”.
Despite this, and Israel’s history of baseless lies, the employees were immediately sacked. UNRWA has been left crippled, warning it will be have to cease its operations by the end of February unless funding is restored.
Its former spokesperson Christopher Gunness commented that the withdrawal of funding from donor governments “will undoubtedly lead to mass starvation”.
This is an outrageous and devastating attack on the millions of displaced people in Gaza. Following Israel’s deliberate restriction on aid it is further proof of its genocidal intent.
Among its interim measures the ICJ ordered Israel to “take immediate and effective steps to ensure the provision of basic services and humanitarian aid to civilians in Gaza”. Instead it conspired to further cut aid off.
UNRWA was established in 1949 to deal with the 750,000 Palestinian refugees expelled from their homes during the Nakba, the ethnic cleansing that established the state of Israel.
Today it supports some six million Palestinian refugees both within the West Bank and Gaza and surrounding countries.
It provides a huge range of essential services in education, health, infrastructure, loans, and emergency and social services.
Its schools have contributed to Palestinians being among the best educated in the region, with some of the highest literacy rates in the world, despite the huge numbers still living in refugee camps, in poverty and under armed occupation.
Since 7 October nearly 45 per cent of Gaza’s population have been sheltering in UNRWA schools, clinics and other public buildings. Nearly the entire population now relies on UNRWA for basic necessities, including food, water and hygiene supplies.
Israeli hostility
Israel has long wanted to get rid of UNRWA. After its dossier was released, Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz said, “We have been warning for years: UNRWA perpetuates the refugee issue, obstructs peace, and serves as a civilian arm of Hamas in Gaza.”
The organisation is a thorn in the side of Israel because it represents the inconvenient truth that their state exists only due to the continued exclusion of millions of Palestinian refugees.
UNRWA recognises the Palestinians displaced to Gaza, the West Bank, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan as refugees entitled to education, healthcare and other services until they can exercise their right to return as affirmed by UN resolution 194.
Israel opposes the right of return and wants to see Palestinians in the region assimilated into neighbouring countries. Its ultimate aim is to deny the Palestinians their right to exist as a people and have them disappear.
The size of the Palestinian population, even in the occupied West Bank and Gaza, is a threat to Israel’s continued existence as an exclusively Jewish state.
UNRWA has faced constant attacks. In 2018, Donald Trump announced a complete end to US funding, cutting hundreds of millions of dollars later restored under Joe Biden.
Eliminating it fits with Israel’s overall genocidal aims in Gaza—displacing the population, crushing resistance and overseeing a new regime under Israel’s direct control.
In December the Times of Israel revealed a foreign ministry report laying out a three-stage plan to push UNRWA out of Gaza.
According to the piece, “The first involves a comprehensive report on alleged UNRWA cooperation with Hamas; the next stage would see reduced UNRWA operations in the Palestinian enclave, amid a search for a different organisation to provide education and welfare services.
“In the third stage, according to the report, all of UNRWA’s duties would be transferred to the body governing Gaza following the war.”
Netanyahu has already declared, “I think it’s time for the international community and the UN itself to understand that UNRWA’s mission has to end.” It is the urgent task of the global movement for Palestine to stop him.
By Cooper Forsyth
The post Israeli attack on UNRWA aid another genocidal act first appeared on Solidarity Online.
Western attacks on Yemen risk spreading war
The US and Britain have unleashed waves of attacks on Yemen, supported by Australian military personnel.
On 3 February, US missiles and planes hit at least 30 targets across at least 10 locations, following two attacks in January.
The bombings are a response to harassment by Houthi forces of shipping heading to Israel in the Bab al-Mandab Strait, the narrow waterway at the entrance to the Red Sea which leads to the Suez Canal.
“If Gaza does not receive the food and medicine it needs, all ships in the Red Sea bound for Israeli ports, regardless of their nationality, will become a target for our armed forces,” a Houthi spokesperson said.
Western powers have refused to lift a finger for the Palestinians suffering untold horrors in Gaza but have leapt into action to ensure their vessels can use the Suez Canal, through which passes about 15 per cent of world shipping traffic.
The Houthi movement—inspired by Shia Islam—controls the west of Yemen, including the capital Sanaa and the Red Sea coast. They have massive backing for their campaign in solidarity with Palestine, with huge numbers rallying in Sanaa.
While other Arab regimes have done no more than issue pious statements, the Houthis have acted—and it is unlikely that the Western military action will end their attacks.
The Washington Post quotes Ibrahim Jalal, an analyst with the Middle East Institute, who “described the Houthis as a nimble militant group hardened by years of guerrilla warfare in Yemen and weathering years of Saudi-led airstrikes.
“They have ‘little in the way of large-scale, permanent military sites’, he said, ‘and instead use mobile launchpads for rockets and drones in addition to networks of tunnels and caves that makes their targeting highly complicated’.”
Influence
Yemen has a long history of fighting British imperialism, forcing the British to withdraw in 1967. But the Houthi movement is the product of a later wave of struggle, sparked by the Arab revolutions of 2011.
The Houthis began to gain influence when supporters flooded on to the streets of Sanaa in August 2014, demanding the regime step down, that fuel subsidies cut the month before be reinstated and calling for a more representative government.
With Western backing, Saudi Arabia and the UAE waged a seven-year campaign to crush the movement. It led to 377,000 deaths and 4 million people displaced by the end of 2021, according to the United Nations.
In December last year, the World Bank ranked Yemen the 31st poorest country in the world—but that was using 2011 data. After years of war, the reality will be much worse.
Despite Saudi conventional military superiority, the Houthis fought them to a standstill and Riyadh is looking to turn a ceasefire into a permanent settlement. Meanwhile China recently brokered a resumption of diplomatic relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran.
As British Marxist Alex Callinicos writes, “The regional balance of power is shifting against Western imperialism. This is why the Saudis reacted to the US-British airstrikes by warning against ‘escalation’ and Oman said they went ‘against our advice’.”
The Houthi movement is often described by commentators as an Iranian proxy, but as an article in The Conversation put it, “There is limited evidence that Iran controls the Houthis’ strategy.
“The Houthis reportedly ignored Iranian advice not to take over Sanaa in 2014 and, while the Arab coalition [spent in 2019] between US$5-6 billion each month on the war, Iran’s spending on the Yemen war has been estimated at little more than several million dollars each year.
“There are also significant doctrinal differences between the Houthis’ Zaydi version of Shia Islam and that practised in Iran. Some Houthi activists are even on record stating that the Iranian system could not be implemented in Yemen because Sunni Muslims constitute a majority.”
Hypocrisy
The attacks on Yemen show that President Joe Biden’s calls for Israel to exercise “restraint” are hollow hypocrisy.
In recent weeks the US has also bombed Iraq and Syria. Israel routinely bombs Lebanon and has also attacked Syria and Iran.
This is the so-called rules-based order—where Western imperialism can act with brutal impunity while the Palestinians are told they cannot fight for their national liberation.
The risk is that attacks by the US or Israel may spark a wider conflagration, such as war with Hezbollah or Iran, with the massive suffering that will involve.
Meanwhile the Labor government backs US and Israeli aggression.
Our task in Australia is to build a solidarity movement powerful enough to force Labor to drop its support for war and genocide.
By David Glanz
The post Western attacks on Yemen risk spreading war first appeared on Solidarity Online.
Electricity workers strike for 8 per cent a year
More than 1000 Endeavour Energy and Transgrid workers, members of the Electrical Trades Union (ETU), walked out on strike last week for 24 hours.
The workers maintain the electricity network of poles and wires over most of NSW.
Workers at Endeavour are asking for a wage rise of 8 per cent a year for three years. Workers are now “a long way behind”, as one worker told Solidarity, after years of below-inflation pay rises. Wages have risen just 10.5 per cent since 2019 while living costs have rocketed by up to 18 per cent.
“Workers simply cannot afford to keep going backwards,” ETU NSW/ACT Secretary Allen Hicks said. “Pay rises have moved at half the rate of the inflation. Take home pay is shrinking.”
They are also fighting for better conditions when on standby—currently sitting at only $33 a day. On standby, “you’re not allowed to be more than half an hour away from your home. And if they call you, you’ve got to be at work within as quick as you can for an emergency breakdown,” one worker said.
Endeavour have offered workers an upfront $1000 payment followed by pay increases of just 5.25 per cent from 1 July, 3.25 per cent the next year and then 2.75 per cent the year after.
Yet 15 Endeavour executives and the board of directors picked up nearly $7.8 million last year, a 12.4 per cent increase.
But who takes the call to fix a powerline in a storm? Who responds to emergency breakdowns? Who maintains the grid so that everyone can get electricity? It’s certainly not the executives or the major shareholders, among them Macquarie Bank.
One Endeavour worker told Solidarity that as an electrician “you do emergency work where you put yourself, your life at risk, wading through waters, working in storm activity, working in fires, all that type of work”.
Renewables
The bosses have tried to use the urgent need for renewable energy to demand workers sacrifice their living standards, claiming they are “risking the decarbonisation of the grid”.
According to the Trangrid bosses, the strikes have put Transgrid’s $2.3 billion EnergyConnect transmission line build between South Australia and NSW at risk.
But what’s really putting EnergyConnect at risk is the delay in giving workers the pay they deserve.
At Endeavour, working conditions have been hit since privatisation in 2017—and household electricity bills have also risen. Transgrid was privatised in 2015.
The fastest way to transition to renewables would be to re-nationalise the grid, transition it to clean energy and pay workers what they’re owed. Instead, the federal government is spending $368 billion on the AUKUS nuclear submarines—far more than what it’s investing in renewables.
Unity
Workers from all sections of Transgrid and Endeavour went out on strike, from the transmission lines, high voltage underground cables, substations, switching stations, digital infrastructure and more.
In a protected action ballot 80 per cent of members responded, with 95 per cent voting for industrial action.
An Endeavour worker told Solidarity, “This is very much a grassroots campaign. We ran months and months of surveys before we started bargaining with members. We got feedback from the other members, and we’ve taken every step that we can to make sure that we’re keeping them in.
“When we took our protected action, we made sure that this was something that everyone could take rather than just a select few carrying the weight of everyone else.”
Building on that kind of unity and stepping up the industrial struggle is the way to win. Workers across the board are facing a cost-of-living crisis. If workers at Transgrid and Endeavour can win above-inflation pay rises, it will show workers everywhere how to fight for pay rises.
By Jayden Rivers
The post Electricity workers strike for 8 per cent a year first appeared on Solidarity Online.
‘Why we went on strike for Palestine’
Union members at the Foundation for Young Australians across the country joined the Global Strike for Gaza, demanding their employer make a statement of solidarity with Palestine.
They walked out on 25 January and held a national Zoom meeting of strikers. In Melbourne, strikers joined the Sitintifada—a daily protest outside the Victorian parliament.
Australian Services Union member Lee spoke to Solidarity.
“The FYA’s core purpose is to uplift the voices of young people and we work with brilliant young Palestinian activists.
“But we weren’t allowed to share the school strike for Palestine or any Palestinian protests at all, even though we work closely with climate strikers and post all the time about all youth-led campaigns.
“We sent the FYA board a request for them to put out a statement on Palestine and after three months had no response. We tried again after 100 days of genocide in Gaza, but still got no response.
“We saw that there was a call out for a global strike for Palestine and we decided to jump on that.
“Members were saying, do you want to stand in solidarity against injustice, for the people of Palestine or is our solidarity even real?
“We gave them one more chance and when we got no response we walked out.”
Other demands on the board were to:
- amplify the voices of young people speaking out about the devastation in Gaza
- let FYA teams decide how to support youth-led organisations who provide direct support to Palestinians
- show support for Palestinian liberation by implementing boycotts (BDS).
Systemic racism
Union activists have built 50 per cent membership and 90 per cent support at FYA through organising around insecure work and other industrial issues.
Last year, First Nations staff walked out of a meeting that was supposed to address issues of systemic racism in the organisation, and unionised staff joined them.
The stoppage started on a Thursday and workers did not return to the office until the Monday.
Lee said, “Once news spread that First Nations staff had walked out there was a discussion in each area and, one by one, the areas started to walk out.
“The issue was simple—do you want to stand in solidarity against injustice, for our First Nations staff or not?”
Liyan, the ASU delegate at FYA, added, “The walkout was about the restructure of a team that was mostly black and brown staff. The restructure was expected but the approach was horrendous.
“I think the common theme is the lack of agency and ownership the workers at FYA have over their work.
“We are hired for our commitment for social justice and experience in this space yet our vision for our workplace is consistently ignored by the board.
“Union organising has been the only way for staff to be able to even have a say in the direction of our organisation.”
Lee spoke of the effect the spontaneous midyear walkout had on staff and how it built the confidence to walk out for Palestine.
“The action built an enormous sense of solidarity between union members and got people talking about the power of collective organising.”
Liyan said that regardless of whether the board heeds the call of FYA ASU members over Palestine, they were not afraid of taking more industrial action.
“There is a restructure in three months and we may have to walk out again.”
The post ‘Why we went on strike for Palestine’ first appeared on Solidarity Online.
After the Voice, Albanese’s inaction on Indigenous rights is exposed
The failure of the Voice to Parliament referendum has exposed Anthony Albanese’s commitment to racist policies and severe neglect in Indigenous Affairs.
Months on from the referendum he has done nothing to advance Indigenous rights.
Many Indigenous people and supporters are still despairing after the Voice’s defeat, seeing it as evidence of racism and indifference.
But Albanese glibly declared in an interview on 2GB that, “I am not Indigenous so it wasn’t a loss to me”.
The Voice was always a way of the government creating the appearance of action for Indigenous people in order to avoid demands for real change. It would have enshrined a simple advisory body without any power to force governments to act.
Albanese now says he is looking for “new ways” for the government “to close the gap in education, in health, in housing”.
But the actions needed have always been clear.
Indigenous people still face huge levels of social deprivation and disadvantage as a result of colonisation. But instead of the funding and community control of services needed to address this, governments continue to remove kids, lock people up and punish communities.
Prior to the 2022 election, Labor promised to make the Income Management system that targets Indigenous communities in Northern Australia voluntary. They have now reneged on this and are also refusing to act on a promise to introduce a new publicly funded employment program.
The Albanese government continues to back race-based alcohol restrictions introduced with the NT Intervention. And Labor is supporting resource companies like Santos and Woodside to push ahead with destructive developments against the wishes of traditional owners from Gomeroi country in NSW to the Burrup Peninsula in WA.
Racism and over-policing means Indigenous people are massively over-represented in the prison system, making up a third of prisoners while only 3 per cent of the population. And the numbers are only increasing.
Yet Labor state governments continue to funnel more funding into police and prisons.
In Queensland, a special police task force roaming the state is deploying extra police on arrest blitzes against young people, boasting of over 450 arrests last year. The WA Labor government is bringing on an extra 1000 police.
Aboriginal legal aid is still starved of funds, with the NT’s NAAJA forced to stop taking on new clients between 20 November and the end of 2023.
Albanese has done nothing to address the ongoing scandal of deaths in custody. Most of the recommendations of the Royal Commission from 30 years ago are yet to be implemented.
The week of the referendum 16-year-old Cleveland Dodd committed suicide in youth detention after long periods in solitary confinement on pre-trial detention. At least 20 Indigenous people died in custody in 2023, the third highest number in the last decade, including a 46-year-old man in Perth on Christmas Day.
The national housing crisis is hitting Indigenous communities hardest, who are ten times more likely to be homeless and suffer appalling rates of overcrowding.
But Federal Labor’s only housing proposal has been to float a ridiculous, failed Howard-era policy of encouraging private home ownership instead of public or community housing in remote Indigenous communities—without explaining why companies would see that as a profitable investment.
Fighting Albanese
The Indigenous leaders who championed the Voice thought that cuddling up to Albanese and working with the government could deliver change. But this approach has failed.
Some are still appealing for a legislated Voice to Parliament while others want local and regional voice bodies. But it isn’t the lack of consultation stopping Albanese from acting.
It was grassroots organising and protest that ended the punitive Protection Acts in the 1960s, and put the struggle for land rights and self-determination on the map in the 1970s.
We need to rebuild a movement on the streets with clear demands that can take the fight to Albanese and drive change.
By James Supple
The post After the Voice, Albanese’s inaction on Indigenous rights is exposed first appeared on Solidarity Online.
Indigenous activist Ray Peckham: How unions helped stop segregation in the 1960s
Paddy Gibson spoke to Indigenous activist Ray Peckham about the fight against segregation and the Aboriginal Welfare Board, and how trade unions aided the struggle
In early December, 2023, I travelled from Sydney to Dubbo with Gadigal, Bidjigal and Yuin Elder Aunty Rhonda Grovenor-Dixon to interview Ray Peckham, a 94-year-old Wiradjuri man who played a central role in the Aboriginal rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s. We were joined by Suellyn Tighe, a Gomeroi woman from Coonabarabran.
Aunty Rhonda, Suellyn and I are all involved in campaigns against racism and for self-determination and land rights.
We learned some important lessons from Ray, who shared many precious stories and insights from his experience in the struggle.
Ray Peckham at his home in Dubbo, December 2023
Ray was a communist and his activism was grounded in the trade union movement.
When he first travelled to Sydney in 1950 at the age of 20, Ray was greeted by veteran Aboriginal activist Pearl Gibbs, who immediately recognised his potential, recruited him to the struggle and took him to Trades Hall to meet with union leaders.
Ray started work as a builders’ labourer and became deeply involved in efforts by the Communist Party of Australia (CPA) to mobilise the support of working-class organisations behind campaigns for Aboriginal rights.
He joined two campaign organisations operating in Sydney, the Australian Aboriginal Fellowship (AAF), which included non-Indigenous activists, and later the Aborigines Progressive Association (APA).
For two decades, Ray fought against the system of apartheid that operated in NSW and across Australia. The NSW Aboriginal Welfare Board (AWB) exercised dictatorial powers. Aboriginal people were kept in horrific poverty on the fringes of country towns and excluded from many shops and services.
Ray travelled across NSW organising Aboriginal communities to fight for their rights.
He also worked tirelessly to campaign in workplaces and trade union meetings, appealing to non-Indigenous workers to take a stand against racism and use the power of the trade union movement to seriously contest the draconian AWB.
Central to Ray’s political outlook was an analysis that Aboriginal people and non-Indigenous workers shared a common struggle against a capitalist system based on exploitation, war and racism. It was the common experiences of exploitation that created opportunities to use the collective power of trade union organisation to fight back:
“We were all working class people. Black and white, New Australians, it didn’t matter who you were, you were a union member. It’s that unity that gave us power.”
Ray got a taste of union power very early in his activist career. In 1951 he was invited to attend a Peace conference in East Germany, within the Soviet Bloc.
Ray was on board a vessel ready to sail from Melbourne, when they received word that the AWB was not going to let him travel and had stopped the government issuing him a passport, “they reckoned they were saving my life, protecting me from communism”.
The Peace Festival delegation, however, had the endorsement of a range of trade unions, who now mobilised to fight this racist restriction on the right to travel.
“The weight of the trade union movement said that if Ray Peckham doesn’t sail on this ship, we will tie up all the ports of Australia, nothing will move. For four hours we held up that ship, it cost them a lot of money too.”
This threat of widespread union action to stop commercial shipping forced the AWB to back down. A passport was hastily prepared and rushed to the ship so Ray could sail.
Union power against the Aborigines Welfare Board
Over the course of the next two decades, Ray worked to bring union power to bear against the AWB at strategic times, eventually breaking their system of racist controls. One campaign Ray argues was of crucial significance was a fight in 1960-61 led by Dunghutti man Horace Saunders, from the Purfleet Aboriginal Reserve at Taree.
The residents of Purfleet were refusing to pay rent to the AWB, protesting about the shocking conditions on their reserve. Houses had no running water, electricity or proper drainage.
“There were no bathrooms then. No toilets. No cooking facilities, you did all your cooking on a fire in the yard. Babies were dying from diphtheria and that sort of thing, caused by torrential rain flooding the pit toilets.”
One of the babies that died was a child of Saunders. In response to the strike, the AWB moved to evict Saunders and his family for non-payment of rent. Saunders was targeted “because he was the only man on the reserve at the time who had collateral”, owning two boats and other equipment from his commercial fishing business.
Ray explained that “they wanted to make a holy show of him, so instead of just taking him to the local magistrates court in Taree, they took him to the Supreme Court”.
Both the AAF and the APA supported Ray to travel to Taree, spend time with Saunders and help plan a fight back: “I said, the best thing you can do is come to Sydney with me, I’ll introduce you to the Trades and Labour Council and we will get the weight of the Trade Unions behind us.”
More than 20 trade unions participated in solidarity activities when Saunders visited Sydney in February 1961. A large delegation organised by the NSW Labour Council accompanied Saunders to see the Chief Secretary of the Aborigines Welfare Board and demand the case be withdrawn.
The CPA’s newspaper Tribune reported at the time that “wide trade union and public support in the Purfleet eviction case has lifted it from a housing struggle to a struggle for equal rights for the whole Aboriginal people”.
Union resolutions backing Saunders also called for the abolition of the discriminatory powers wielded by the AWB.
Saunders and Peckham campaigned for weeks visiting unionised workplaces, speaking to lunch-time meetings about the case and winning donations and resolutions of support.
“I went on a tour of all the mines, travelling to Wollongong and Lithgow. Horry stayed with the Builders’ Labourers in Sydney.”
In an article in the Tribune in 1961, Ray said:
“At every meeting, I was given a very enthusiastic reception. The white workers’ moral and financial support for the struggles of Aboriginal people are becoming a source of strength and courage which my people are coming to appreciate more and more.
“At the Coalcliff pit, the miners were actually meeting to hear a report on the strike at Nebo pit, but they deliberately delayed the vote on whether they would strike in sympathy to be sure I had an undivided hearing. They pledged full support for our campaign and decided on a 5/- levy per man to assist.”
When the case was heard in the Supreme Court, Saunders was represented by Fred Patterson, a barrister and veteran CPA member. In a huge blow to the authority of the AWB, Saunders won the case, and the AWB was forced to compensate him for nine weeks of lost earnings.
According to Ray, this was the beginning of the end for the AWB, “they didn’t last ten years after that. We showed they could be beaten and they were on the their way to being abolished”.
Breaking segregation
The success at Taree encouraged growing efforts to self-organise against appalling conditions in Aboriginal communities across NSW.
Throughout the early 1960s, the Tribune was regularly reporting on protests that led to the construction of new houses right across the state, from Moree, to Coonamble, Armidale, Nambucca Heads and down the South Coast.
In all these communities, the fight for better living conditions went hand in hand with demands against racial segregation. A visit by Peckham in 1962 helped residents of Moree successfully build pressure for new houses and win a declaration from the Health Minister that there could be “no racial or colour segregation of patients in Moree or other NSW State hospitals”.
Ray talked with us about a campaign at Port Kembla in this period to illustrate the crucial role of unions. Residents of the Coomaditchie Aboriginal reserve were demanding new houses, but some of the only remaining land in the area was being taken over by the adjacent University.
“Bobby Davis [a local Aboriginal leader] was a wharfie at Port Kembla and he worked with Joe Howe, a delegate from the Waterside Workers Federation.
“They set up a campaign, naturally it was through the Trades and Labour Council and backed by the union. They won that strip of land and had eight houses built on it from that fight.”
In Sydney and Wollongong too, union power was used to fight segregation. Pubs that refused to serve Aboriginal people would be confronted by crowds of trade unionists. Ray explained, “We would get the Liquor Trades Union to put a ban on the pub. Force them to change that way, with a black ban.”
By the mid-1960s, the ranks of leading Aboriginal trade unionists had grown substantially and played a crucial role in the broader struggle.
Many unions were affiliated to the Federal Council for the Advancement of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders (FCAATSI), which held annual conferences of hundreds of people and had a powerful trade union sub-committee convened by Peckham. This group issued a regular bulletin, The Aboriginal Worker.
The Waterside Workers Federation in Sydney had a committee of Aboriginal members that sent six delegates to the 1965 FCAATSI conference, including Rhonda’s father Chicka Dixon, who would come to play a crucial role in the Black Power movement.
That same year, in response to the jailing and forced removal of two Aboriginal children from Walgett for stealing some toys, Peckham led a delegation of 20 Aboriginal trade unionists from Sydney to visit and rally in support of community demands against racism.
Campaigning by FCAATSI, with the strong support of unions, led to a successful Yes vote in the 1967 referendum, which shifted constitutional responsibility for Aboriginal Affairs from the state to federal governments. Just two years later, the AWB was abolished for good.
Ray emphasises, however, that it was the fight at the grassroots, with community protests backed by the trade unions, that really broke the power of the board:
“The unions were like our boondi or nulla nulla [fighting stick]. That’s what we need back today, for the young people to understand that we are all working-class people, we have power in the union to fight the system.”
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Attack on Yemen raises risk of wider war
Labor has backed the savage attack on at least 60 targets in 16 locations around Yemen by the US and Britain.
Aerial bombardments took place in the capital Sanaa, the Houthi Red Sea port of Hudaydah, Dhamar and the north-western city of Saada.
The bombing was a response to harassment of shipping connected to Israel by Houthi forces in the Bab al-Mandab Strait, the narrow waterway at the entrance to the Red Sea which commands the route to the Suez Canal.
A Houthi official responded defiantly, “Do the American, British and Zionists expect that any aggressive act against Yemen will distract us from defending Gaza?
“We swear, even if we turned into atoms scattered in the air, we will not leave Gaza. We will continue to target Zionist ships and those going to the Zionist entity [Israel].”
Australia was one of ten countries to participate in the attack. Australian personnel were likely to have been involved in Bahrain at the joint maritime task force headquarters.
And Anthony Albanese gave political cover for the offensive when he signed a joint statement sponsored by the US that threatened the Houthis.
The Houthis are allied to Iran, which also supports the Hezbollah forces in Lebanon.
Greens spokesman David Shoebridge slammed the bombing as an “effective death sentence for thousands of people” who relied on Yemeni ports to receive food and medicine.
Yemen is the 177th poorest country in the world and has been wracked by civil war for a decade. More than 370,000 people have died from fighting or famine, according to the United Nations.
Labor has done nothing to stop the slaughter in Gaza. It has refused to call for a permanent ceasefire, continues to approve weapon exports to Israel and has not backed South Africa’s case against Israel in the International Court of Justice.
But it has sprung into action to defend shipping lanes, putting profits before the lives of people in Palestine, Yemen and Lebanon, which Israel bombs almost daily.
Defence Minister Richard Marles said, “The actions that have been taken today, supported by Australia, are about maintaining freedom of navigation on the high seas.
“They are about maintaining global trade, and that is completely central to Australia’s national interest.”
It’s a message that he will no doubt want China to hear in relation to shipping lanes in the South China Sea and around Taiwan.
The West’s bombing of Yemen puts the lie to any idea that the US is trying to constrain Israel’s savage attack on Gaza.
The US continues to provide the arms for Israel’s butchery and is now threatening regional war to intimidate anyone who provides support to the Palestinians.
The attack on Yemen is yet another reason to be out on the streets for Gaza, building a mass movement against not just Israel but US and Australian imperialism.
By David Glanz
The post Attack on Yemen raises risk of wider war first appeared on Solidarity Online.
Labor’s migration policy puts profit before people
Labor is fuelling racist views about migration, announcing a major crackdown on the number of people entering Australia to study or work.
It marks a retreat from the concept of a “Big Australia”, with the government boasting that net migration will fall from 510,000 in 2023 to 375,000 in 2024 and 250,000 in 2025. This is a return to pre-COVID levels after several years of catching up for the period where borders were closed.
The ALP is facing widespread worries about housing affordability. The Scanlon Institute reports that 33 per cent of Australians are concerned the migration intake is too large, the highest such figure in more than 15 years.
The response from Home Affairs Minister, Clare O’Neil, and Immigration Minister, Andrew Giles, is to “rebuild social licence”. That’s code for blaming migrants for problems the government won’t solve.
It’s a race to the bottom, with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese goading Opposition leader Peter Dutton that “there were more than 100,000 asylum-seekers claiming protection” from his time as Home Affairs Minister.
The new migration policy was announced by Albanese on 11 December, shortly after the government caved in to Dutton and rushed through draconian new restrictions on non-citizens released from indefinite detention.
Taken together, the crackdowns are a weaponisation of racist myths that foreigners are responsible for housing shortages and crime.
Rather than building public housing and ordering rent freezes, Labor is turning migrants into scapegoats. It’s a strategy that risks stoking racism.
Two objectives
Labor’s new migration strategy includes eight “key actions”. But they boil to two objectives—cutting migration numbers and recruiting more high-skilled workers.
The first victims will be international students, with tougher language standards and “genuine student” tests.
It will be harder to get a second student visa or to move between university and vocational education.
International student numbers shot up after the end of the pandemic. These measures are designed to slash numbers quickly, especially among those attending cheaper institutions.
There is no concern for the students themselves, whose high fees are a major export earner, worth $41.3 billion in the 12 months to September 2023.
But Labor is also using its changes to help the bosses who are facing shortages of skilled workers.
There is compassion for employers who can’t find workers, but none for refugees and asylum-seekers still living in limbo.
Labor could grant permanent visas tomorrow to refugees who spent years in offshore detention in Papua New Guinea or Nauru, or to the 12,000 victims of the flawed, so-called “fast track” system designed to keep out asylum-seekers.
It could make family reunion easier for migrants already settled here. Or slash the waiting time for partner visas, which has blown out to as much as eight years for offshore applications.
But its focus is on boosting profits.
Labor will introduce a Skills in Demand visa to make it easier for Australia to attract highly skilled workers and a Talent and Innovation visa for migrants “who can drive growth in sectors of national importance”.
As the government statement says, “Our task is to get migration working for the nation. Reorienting the program to address our national challenges … And building better planning in the system so we can get the skills we need, where we need them.”
Shortfall
Previous scare campaigns about the level of migration have centred on concerns about jobs, urban overcrowding or traffic jams.
This time the focus is on housing. Housing Australia, a federal government agency, predicts a shortfall of 175,000 homes by 2027.
Rents for units are increasing on average at about 10 per cent a year. Everyone has stories about long queues to inspect empty properties.
But it’s not high migration that is slowing the rate at which private houses and units are built but shortages of labour and materials, and high interest rates.
Migrants need housing but they can also contribute to building it.
Government policy favours property speculators and landlords. When Labor blames migration it is deflecting attention away from its refusal to build homes.
Meanwhile negative gearing and capital gains tax discounts for property investors will cost the government $39 billion this year—78 times what Labor is proposing to spend through its housing fund.
And many investment properties simply stand empty. In Victoria, the Parliamentary Budget Office estimates that 10,000 homes are long-term vacant.
As one local councillor put it, “People can’t get into housing, but there’s an abundance of housing—it’s just not being put on the market.”
Migrants don’t cause housing shortages—government support for property speculators is to blame.
By David Glanz
The post Labor’s migration policy puts profit before people first appeared on Solidarity Online.
Israel threatens wider war on Lebanon against Hezbollah resistance
Israel is threatening to widen its war into Lebanon, trading rocket attacks over the border with Hezbollah. By the end of December it had killed around 120 people, including at least 20 civilians.
Israel has illegally used white phosphorous on at least four occasions including in a strike against the town of Dhayra that Amnesty International labelled “indiscriminate” and said “must be investigated as a war crime”.
Two Lebanese-Australian men died in December when Israel bombed their house in the town of Bint Jbeil. In a further escalation in early January, Israel bombed a Hezbollah office in Beirut, killing senior Hamas leader Saleh Arouri.
Hezbollah is right to oppose Israel and the genocide it is inflicting on Gaza. Israel is a ruthless expansionist power that has invaded Lebanon several times.
The Australian government has hypocritically declared Hezbollah a terrorist organisation. But it is Israel that is waging a campaign of terror against the whole civilian population of Gaza—and threatening to spread this into Lebanon as well.
Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982 killed an estimated 18,000 people, as it laid siege to the capital Beirut and indiscriminately bombed civilian areas.
It aimed to crush Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) fighters who were allied with left-wing groups in Lebanon’s civil war, and to install the Christian Phalange leader Bashir Gemayel in power.
Israel continued to occupy southern Lebanon for the next 18 years in order to create a “buffer zone” on its northern border.
Hezbollah was formed as an armed resistance movement against the Israeli occupation, based among the country’s impoverished Shia Muslim population and inspired by Iran’s Islamic revolution.
Its courageous resistance and its network of health and welfare services brought it mass support.
Israel responded by assassinating its leaders and targeting villages where it gained support. In 1996 it bombed a UN compound in the village of Qana, killing over 100 refugees.
Hezbollah fighters succeeded in driving Israel out of southern Lebanon in 2000. Then in 2006 it humiliated Israel again after it invaded a second time with the aim of wiping Hezbollah out.
These victories made Hezbollah and its leader Hassan Nasrullah heroes across the whole Arab world.
But Hezbollah then discredited itself when it sent fighters into Syria to help crush the 2011 revolution, siding with the dictatorship of Bashar Assad.
This was the result of Hezbollah’s alliance with the Iranian government, which helps fund and arm it as part of what it calls an “axis of resistance”. But Iran’s real aim is to secure its own power in the region.
Sectarianism
Hezbollah has become part of Lebanon’s sectarian political elite. The country’s political system parcels out power based on religious identity, including Sunni and Shia Muslims and Maronite Christians.
Instead of seeking to unite workers and ordinary people on the basis of class against Lebanon’s corrupt elite Hezbollah has joined the scramble to divide up the spoils of office.
Since 2005 it has participated in a number of governments, supporting wave after wave of austerity measures and defending the sectarian political system against challenges from below.
In October 2019 mass protests erupted after the government introduced a new tax on WhatsApp calls, sparking a movement against decades of privatisation and neo-liberalism. It spread across the whole country, uniting ordinary people across sectarian divisions.
Weeks of road blockades and strikes forced the resignation of the prime minister and the axing of the new tax.
Hezbollah, however, was part of the governing coalition and opposed the protests. Its supporters even beat up some of the protesters.
Hezbollah’s support base among some of the poorest areas in Lebanon has meant that, at times, it has backed efforts to challenge inequality. But it also draws support from across the class divide within the Shia community, relying on wealthy donors to fund the party’s schools, hospitals and welfare services.
The more it has become incorporated into Lebanon’s political system the more it has backed wealthy business interests, sponsoring property development and facing accusations of corruption.
Lebanon’s economy is in a state of collapse, with hyperinflation and surging cost of living and unemployment. Yet it also boasts six billionaires with a combined wealth of $11.8 billion.
In the 1990s nationwide strikes demanding wage rises paralysed the country. Public sector strikes between 2012 and 2017 succeeding in winning a new pay system.
But workers’ struggles have been continually undermined through state repression and the establishment of rival sect-based trade unions that have fostered division and tied them to the political elite. Hezbollah has colluded in this process by setting up separate unions under its own control.
Fundamental change requires united working class action across sectarian divides against Lebanon’s corrupt ruling class—and challenging Hezbollah’s own role as part of it.
By James Supple
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