An interview with John McCarthy, editor of "Militant' and a leading member of the Communist What is the significance of the victory of the Australian Labour Party in the recent General Election?
With the end of the long post-war imperialist boom and the resultant sharpening of inter-imperialist rivalry, the Australian bourgeoisie faces two main problems. Firstly, the problem of foreign investment and the implications of this on native industry, and secondly, the problem of the economic and organisational strength of the trade unions, It is in the context of the feverish search for solutions to these two nagging problems that the clections occurred. The political climate which has developed during the last term of office of the Liberal-Country Party Coalition is vastly different from anything we have seen in Australia in the last twenty years.
In this situation the Australian Labour Party campaigned under the slogan of "It's Time The message of "It's Time" provided some of the important newspapers in Australia with an excuse for dumping the Liberals. It's time for a change they explained; the Liberal Party could only benefit from a term in the opposition seats. We also saw such groups as "Business Executives for a Change of Government" run full page advertisements in Australia's only national newspaper. The slogan of "It's Time" completely covered over the situation which was actually leading to the election of the ALP and merely implied that the Liberals had been in office long enough.
The significance of the ALP victory lies in the new situation in Australia. The McMahon Government failed to develop a clear and consistent policy for tackling the situation and the working class and middle layers turned to the ALP in the hope that it can solve the basic problems confronting the working class: unemployment, low wages, poor conditions, etc.
What type of policy did the McMahon Government pursue during its term in office?
The McMahon Government pursued a policy of confrontation with the trade unions. This policy did not rely on any one particular measure but used a variety of measures in an attempt to bully the trade union leaders into policing the activity of the rank and file. The aim of the measures taken by the MeMahon Government was to keep wage increases as low as possible. It became increasingly obvious that MeMahon was seeking to defeat an important section of the working class which could be held up as a lesson to the whole working class. In a Treasury Document Mr. Sneddon (Federal Treasurer) made it clear that the oilmen, the transport workers, the wharfies (dockers) and the metalworkers had to be defeated if the traditional flow-ons to the other sections of the working class were to be prevented.
The first step was the August 1971 Budget which was designed to create a pool of 200,000 unemployed which was rapidly successful - by June 1972 unemployment had doubled to stand at 110,000. Of course, the August Budget was not the sole cause of unemployment but the point is that unemployment was used as an instrument of policy by the McMahon Government in an attempt to hold down excessive pay rises. Even with 110,000 unemployed (and I am using official figures - real figures have been estimated by trade union leaders to be twice that) the Government could not halt wages militancy.
Then came the next step in what was developing by this stage as a clearcut policy of confrontation with the trade unions. In the closing session of Parliament on 31 May the Government rushed through a piece of legislation which was to bear the name of its architect - the Lynch Laws. (Philip Lynch was the Liberal Minister for Labour). The legislation took the form of amendments to the Conciliation and Arbitration Act and was the most significant thrust against the trade unions in the recent period.
During the oil strike the McMahon GovernNew Labour Prime Minister, Gough Whitlam ment made it clear that it was enforcing an unofficial wage freeze when it showed its preparedness to use troops or even recall Parliament to contemplate deregistering the unions. Australian Council of Trade Unions leader, Mr. Hawke, was able to back out of the strike, under the pretext of a plan to keep emergency services going (emergency services which included industry), a plan which he said would show to the majority of Australians what a monopoly is. All the plan did in fact was to divide and demoralise the rank and file who had struggled vigorously for five weeks. McMahon succeeded in keeping the oilmen to $ 14 over the next eighteen months.
Then we saw the Metal Trades Agreement come up. The Amalgamated Metal Workers Union originally presenied the same set of claims as the oilmen, but the new agreement gave them only $ 6 over eighteen months. The rank and file in several areas threatened immediate strike action but the union leaders preferred not to put up a fight and used the example of the oilmen to show what would happen. The Metal Workers were defeated without a fight, a defeat which was a defeat for all the working class in that the wage flow-ons normally come from the Metal Workers, traditionally the strongest section of the working class. Of course, this was not a decisice victory scored by the McMahon Government but it did mean that his policy of confrontation with the trade unions had been shown to be at least partially successful.
Could you tell us more about the background to and the meaning of the Lynch Laws?
The antendments to the Conciliation and Arbitration Act provided for the separation of the functions of arbitration and conciliation; updated penalties and indicated that all future fines would be collected; empowered the commission to order a secret ballot where a strike or ban is threatened or exists; and declared that the commission should have regard to the state of the "national economy" and the likely effects upon the "national economy" of any award the commission might make. The amend ments also sought to prevent the amalgamation of unions. However the significance of the amendments lies in the fact that they were designed to strengthen the penal powers.
All strikes in Australia are illegal (although the Labour Party has promised to correct this situation). This means that unions can be fined under the Conciliation and Arbitration Act for going on strike, and if the fines are not paid then union officials will be jailed. This happened in the case of the Maoist leader of the Tramways Union in Victoria, Clarrie O'Shea, and provoked a general strike which resulted in his release and the effective neutralisation of the penal powers by the sheer militancy of the working class. That militancy alone is not enough however, is revealed by the legislation of the Lynch Laws and their actual use in at least one dispute. (despite claims of many that they will be unworkable).
The Lynch Laws represented one aspect of a manysided policy of confrontation with the trade unions.
What has been the response of the trade unions to the policy being pursued by the McMahon Government?
The trade unions emerged from the postwar period economically strong. The working class was confident and had no immediate recollection of the defeats of the thirties, the war years and the post-war period. Any Government of Australia has to contend with this situation. That is, if anything at all is to be done about the problems facing the ruling class then the economic strength of the working class must be broken. This is the significance of the McMahon course of confrontation with the trade unions.
What we have seen in all the strikes over the past year however is a tremendous activity and initiative from the rank and file and a cowardly stand adopted by the union officials, be they members of the Communist Party or the Labour Party. Sections of the working class have adopted and developed new methods of struggle such as work-ins and sit-ins which indicate the depth of the class struggle. Also, we have seen on a number of occasions the rank and file breaking away from the control of the trade union bureaucracies and their political "leaders". We saw, for example, a group of rank and file Communist Party members oppose their leadership in struggling against the Metal Trades Agreement. Also significant in this respect was the recent Plumbers strike which had lasted for five weeks before a very narrow majority voted to go back to work.
Another important series of struggles have taken place around the question of Equal Pay for women. For the first time in Australia women have taken strike action and have been prepared to organise street demonstrations and other militant activities in defense of their claims. The ACTU is committed on paper to support for Equal Pay: the McMahon Govern ment rejected the ACTU's submission, claimin that it opposed Equal Pay "on principle" besides the fact that "the economy could not handle it".
With the problems facing the Australian ruling class and the renewed activity of the working class, what do you expect from a Labour Party Government?
Except for individual contributions to Labour Party strategy by people such as Cameron, the new Minister for Labour, the Labour Party as a whole has been more than confused on the main problems facing the Australian bourgeois Cameron came up with a statement on industrial relations for the June 1971 Federal Conference of the ALP which was premised by the assertion that if business confidence is to be restored we must have peace in inudstry"
Cameron planned to guarantee productivity by such methods as the use of secret ballots and fines on individual striking unionists (up to $ 20 per day). These proposals were actuall rejected at the Conference but Cameron has continued as though they were already Labour Party policy. This gives some indication of
Quintin Hoare reviews the current issue of New Left Review