BY ROB MILLER
MELBOURNE — The Socialist Alliance continues to expand with a new branch set up on June 28 in the federal electorate of Melbourne.
Attended by 50 people, the Melbourne meeting brought together activists from a wide variety of campaigns and backgrounds, laying the basis for a wide-ranging election campaign.
The meeting was addressed first by Toma Hamid, a member of the Worker Communist Party of Iraq (Australian branch). Hamid argued that the 1999 protests against the World Trade Organisation meeting in Seattle marked the beginning of a resurgence of left politics internationally. The Socialist Alliance, he argued, needs to become part of this renewal, and continue its involvement in anti-capitalist campaigns.
Pauline Spencer from the Fitzroy Legal Service, told the meeting that the Socialist Alliance could present a desperately needed alternative to the two major parties which have slashed legal aid funding while building new prisons.
The meeting was also addressed by Pamela Curr, who will be the Australian Greens candidate in the electorate. Curr thanked the Socialist Alliance for inviting her, pointing out that the invitation, like the formation of the alliance itself, showed the increasing ability of the left to work in a united way around issues of common agreement.
Dennis Evans, a director of community radio station 3CR, pledged that 3CR's proud tradition of providing a voice to those excluded from, and condemned by, the mainstream media would ensure they covered the Socialist Alliance's campaign.
The final speaker, associate professor Verity Burgmann, reminded the meeting of the long and shameful history of the betrayal of working people by ALP parliamentarians and of the proud history of those who have fought to build a genuine, socialist alternative to the ALP. She made the point that as the ALP not only fails to fight to improve workers' conditions, it actively attacks working people, the need for an alternative has never been greater.
From Geelong, Graham Williams reports that a new Socialist Alliance branch was also set up on June 28. The meeting was attended by 40 people, including trade union and community activists.
Gary Robb, an organiser with the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union, opened the meeting. He described the battle that workers face to defend basic conditions under the Coalition's industrial relations laws. But he pointed out that the Coalition parties were not the only problem. "The ALP made many promises when coming to power about getting rid of the attacks that Kennett made on workers and unions, but they are yet to live up to many of these", Robb said.
The themes raised by Robb, attacks on working people and the betrayal of the ALP state government, dominated the rest of the discussion.
Brenda Hunter from Radical Women discussed the Howard government's attacks on unemployed workers, and on women, and Resistance member Bronwyn Jennings condemned the state Labor government's attacks on young people, particularly cuts to public education and public transport.
The final speaker was Tim Gooden, Geelong branch secretary of the Democratic Socialist Party. He urged the participants to consider the Socialist Alliance a part of the global fightback against capitalism, pointing out the parallels between the local union struggles in Geelong and the struggle being waged, for example, by unions in Indonesia and Korea.