Helen Palmer
Introduction
Bob Gould
In his History of the Democratic Socialist Party and Resistance, John Percy crudely portrays the socialist magazine, Outlook, as being isolated from the antiwar movement of the 1960s.
Green Left discussion list, March 22, 2004
Media estimates of the size of yesterday’s protest against the war in Iraq varied widely. The very generous ABC TV News said 8000. The less generous Sydney Morning Herald said 2000. My rather rough attempt at counting suggests between 2500 and 4000, which is in the same range as the organisers’ estimates.
Bob Gould
Labor loses the 1966 election in a landslide – a khaki election fought around the then popular Vietnam War. The Labor leadership of Arthur Calwell is on the skids but he’s still defiant. Vietnam’s Marshall Ky announces a state visit. Calwell agrees to address a protest against the war.
(more…)
Bob Gould
In my careful overview of the events in Canberra recently, A long march in Australia’s occult capital, I included the light-hearted but reasonably accurate observation:
“There was a certain amount of rebellious competition between the different socialist groups, with their red flags and their generals and colonels directing operations.”
Bob Gould
I would like to thank the Editorial Board of Green Left and the DSP for running my piece on the Johnson demonstration, for the careful way it was edited and the sensible juxtaposition of it with a smaller article and some pictures, and with the two-page centrespread by Doug Lorimer presenting the DSP leadership’s version of the first part of the history of the Vietnam antiwar movement.
Bob Gould
Australia’s national capital, Canberra, is a product of a political compromise at the time of federation between the two major colonies, New South Wales and Victoria. The deal was that the Australian Capital Territory was to be independent of any state and the location was chosen so as to be not too distant from Victoria.
Bob Gould
In 1966, the Vietnam War was still fairly popular, and the jingoistic patriotism of the previous period in Australia was still predominant. In this context, it is hard to understate the courageousness of federal Labor leader Arthur Calwell. Despite his other major political weaknesses, Calwell dragged the ALP and the labour movement, with some of his parliamentary colleagues kicking and screaming, into opposition to the Vietnam War.
7000-10,000 march in Sydney against George Bush
Bob Gould
I write this tired and stiff, sitting behind the counter in my shop late at night and I have to get up at 5am to get the bus to Canberra for another demonstration against Bush, so I’ll try to be brief.
Bob Gould
US President Bush is making a whistlestop state visit to Australia this Wednesday and Thursday. The more militant section of the antiwar movement is planning demonstrations demanding withdrawal of US and Australian troops from Iraq in a number of cities, including Sydney and Canberra.
Bob Gould
I’m finding it tedious to have to start every post on the Iraq question by responding to the most recent pieces of gratuitous abuse directed at me, and now even at Lueko Willms (and by implication, any other dissenters). Gould is obviously the Albania-Yugoslavia of this argument, and the thunderclaps directed at my skull are obviously intended as un example pour les autres, or whatever the correct French phrase is.
Bob Gould
I deeply and viscerally object to being labelled a scab because of a difference of opinion with the excited Jose P. I object even more to Gary McLennan labelling me a scab, by mealy mouthed inference, when he refers in a fulsome way to what a wonderful post Perez’s was. At least the vituperative Perez said it up front. He didn’t shelter behind someone else, like McLennan.
Bob Gould
About four months ago, when I got set up to directly access the web I signed up simultaneously to the Green Left Weekly list in Australia, and to Socialist Register, Marxmail and Leftist Trainspotters.
Honeymoon over: the collapse of the left coalition. Bob Gould
The CPA and the left. Denis Freney
An open letter to Moratorium sponsors
The recent movement against the imperialist war on Iraq was the biggest such movement the world has seen. There has been some dismay that it seems to have ebbed as quickly as it appeared. The Vietnam antiwar movement of the 1960s and early 1970s also surged and ebbed several times in the course of a very long struggle.
An overview of the present stage of the struggle in Sydney against the war on Iraq, a diary of events in the antiwar movement over the six days from March 30 to April 4, some observations on the strategy adopted, particularly by the DSP, and some observations on the future of the far left in Australia after the Iraq war and the likely decline of the antiwar movement for the moment, until the outbreak of the next imperialist adventure
Bob Gould
A lot has happened over the past two or three weeks. The imperialist war on the people of Iraq hasn’t been the walkover that the imperialist powers hoped for, due to the dogged resistance of the Iraqi masses, but the overwhelming technical military superiority of the imperialist war machine, and its ruthless disregard for human life will in due course give the imperialists a tenuous military “victory”.
Bob Gould
A week is a long time in politics and so, sometimes, is three hours. In the rather weird phoney war atmosphere created by the early-morning probing missile attacks on Baghdad and the repeated, insulting “addresses to the nation” by Bush and Howard, with all their fake religiosity, the Sydney Walk Against the War coalition decided to call the necessary demonstration for 5pm at the Town Hall.
