Celebrating International Workers Day, unions and community groups marched in Parramatta to support the Green Ban on the historic Willow Grove site. This rousing display of solidarity provoked feelings of both inspiration and disappointment. Inspiration came from the militant language and open appeals for building links between different groups and sectors that comprise the working class. However, outside of speeches and the use of key radical phrases, disappointment has set in for the workers’ movement as a whole. The sad state of affairs the Australian workers’ movement faces in our time is overwhelming, and the working class finds itself staring down the barrel of a gun.

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The question confronting all workers is which way forward? As communists, we stand for militant, class-conscious trade unionism, independent of hostile ideological influences.[7] We believe that workers must unite and assert themselves. As Marx stated on the role of those involved in the workers’ movement, it is our duty to ‘act consciously as focal points for organising the working class in the greater interests of its complete emancipation’.[8] This means that we must act within the existing unions and attempt to reinvigorate them to fulfil their proper role in society. If the state and the union bureaucrats refuse to allow this, then we have no choice but to operate outside of them. This lesson has been highlighted with the brutal crackdown on the Builders Labourers Federation in the 1980’s, punished by the union bureaucrats and the state for their militancy and class consciousness.[9] More recently, this has been demonstrated with the breakaway of RAFFWU from the right-wing SDA.[10]

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Are we to let defeatists, posers and cowards, whether individuals or organisations, lead us astray without purpose? The answer is an emphatic ‘no’. We shouldn’t follow those who do not have the workers best interests in heart. They can either engage in dialogue with us and move forward, or they can remain in their ways and be left behind. Let us not forget this is a class war. And, in this war, we are waging a struggle against the labour aristocracy, in the name of the masses of the workers. As Lenin said, ‘we are waging a struggle against the opportunist and social-chauvinist leaders in order to win the working class over to our side’.[12]

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Fight for victory by joining and getting your mates to join a union. Fight for victory by questioning the actions of the leadership. Push your organisers, your delegates, your executives to listen to the voices of the rank-and-file membership. And if, in doing this they are found lacking, then we must take it upon ourselves to lead the rank-and-file in deciding their own fate.

Today, in Australia, the workers’ movement is confronted with a daunting challenge. But it is a challenge that has been won before. We must fight back, and we must fight with victory as our end goal. The bureaucrats, politicians and sellouts may not like us for how we act and what we want to achieve. But we don’t care. For we know that the workers united will never be defeated. Not by the police, not by the Liberals, not by Labor sell-outs, and not by union bureaucrats. We have a world to win. And the only way is forward. Power to the people.

Comrade Dan Kelly for the Militant Monthly