AN
INSIDER'S ACCOUNT OF THE
DEMOCRATIC
SOCIALIST PARTY
INTRODUCTION
by Matt Watts
The following piece is written
by an unkown individual scared about his/her safety after the publication
of the work on the website of The
Sydney Independent Media Centre on 6th January 2001. It highlights
the myriad of hypocrisies surrounding Resistance and its partner in crime,
the DSP. Read this and you'll never support Resistance again.
I would like to point out
that The Independent Media Centre allows use of all published articles
unless otherwise stated by the author. Also, the only editing of the piece
has been for formatting purposes - the content has not changed. Visit the
article as presented by the Sydney Independent Media Centre yourself by
clicking here,
however I am not certain how long these articles shall remain on the net.
This is one of the few histories
of Resistance and the DSP which is accessable by the public. Read on and
you'll know why.
RAIDERS
OF THE LEFT ARK
A LITTLE BIT OF HISTORY
The DSP's origins can be traced to the formation of Resistance in Sydney
in 1967. Resistance was formed from among anti-war youth who joined the
Vietnam Action Campaign (VAC). Resistance had a parallel "adult" organisation,
the International Marxist League which maintained a clandestine existence
at this time.
Although the VAC had a wide membership, it was dominated by Bob Gould
and his student supporters Jim and John Percy. After some initial success,
the VAC was unable to obtain a breakthrough in mobilising very large numbers
against the Vietnam War and Conscription.
In 1969, a broad sponsoring group began organising for the Vietnam Moratorium
held in May 1970. This was too broad and large for Gould or the Percys
to control.
The growth of the Moratorium led to divisions inside Resistance-IML.
The Percy brothers wanted both to become disciplined and structured organisations,
while Gould wanted a loose one which he could control. The other major
dispute concerned the Third World Bookshop which was formally owned and
operated by the VAC, which had virtually stopped existing.
The Percys claimed the bookshop should become the property of Resistance,
while Gould claimed it as his own private property (having legally made
sure this was so). The bitter and at times violent dispute did not stop
both trying to stack meetings and ferociously resisting demands that the
Vietnam Moratorium Committee(VMC) be a delegate body, with representatives
from its many affiliates.
SOCIALIST YOUTH ALLIANCE & SOCIALIST
WORKERS LEAGUE - SOCIALIST WORKERS PARTY.
Resistance became the Socialist Youth Alliance in 1970 and in 1972 the
"adult" and fully Leninist" party, the Socialist Workers League (SWL) was
formed and became at first a "sympathising section" of the Fourth International
and not long after the "Australian Section". In 1976 the SWL because the
Socialist Workers Party (SWP).
The Fourth International was founded in 1938 on the basis of "international
democratic centralism" and its various "sections" would become parties
with mass followings able to lead revolutions. Instead, they soon became
narrow sects revolving around leaders jealously guarding their cult following.
In 1979, the US SWP supported the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Later
in 1982, they reversed their earlier support. But the Australian SWP for
the first time ever disagreed with their American mentors and continued
to stridently defend the invasion.
Relations with the US SWP rapidly deteriorated and in August 1983 the
Percy leadership forbade any Australia SWP member to have any political
collaboration with the US SWP, even though both organisations were formally
members of the Fourth International.
Immediately after, a grouping of long-time Australian SWP members and
leaders were subject to an "investigation committee" and after an inquisitorial
examination were summarily expelled because they agreed with the US SWP
and disagreed with a number of Percy policies.
IN THE EIGHTIES
From the early 1980s the Percys had discussions with the Socialist Party
of Australia (SPA). Although the SWP supported Poland's "Solidarnosc",
its previous harsh criticism of the Soviet Union and Stalinism was softened
and eventually virtually disappeared from the pages of "Direct Action".
By 1984-85, the SPA and SWP had formed the "socialist Alliance" which contested
elections for a number of years.
In August 1985, the Australian SWP formally announced its split from
the Fourth International. The SWP was no longer Trotskyist, Percy declared;
the 1938 formation of the Fourth International was a mistake and it was
necessary to open up to the "communist current", namely the Brezhnevite
leadership of the USSR. The SPA "alliance" served to gain some introductions,
and for the following couple of years the SWP pursued this attempt to win
friends in Moscow with energy. But it achieved little.
NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT PARTY
The spectacular success of the NDP in 1984 including the near election
of Peter Garrett and Jo Vallentine's actual election to the Senate occurred
without the NDP having any structure, constitution or policy outside the
three nuclear disarmament points. This naturally attracted the attention
of the SWP whose members were directed to join what NDP branches existed
and to form them where they did not.
Jim Percy wrote in a booklet, "The ALP, the NDP and the Elections",
that "we should be in there helping to build it (the NDP). We don't know
where it's going but it's going to go better if we're in there, provided
we don't go in there with lead boots and stamp all over the place. There
is absolutely no contradiction between us loyally building the NDP and
continuing to build the SWP... The most important concern is the use we
make of the campaign to get our ideas around..."
The NDP was, as Peter Garrett later put it, clearly seen by Percy as
a "host" party for the growth of the SWP. After the NDP success in the
1984 elections, preparations began for the founding national conference.
It was an open conference held in Melbourne in Easter 1985, at which anyone
with an NDP membership card issued freely for a nominal charge, could attend.
Of the 170 present, it was estimated that 70 were SWP or Resistance members.
Jim Percy sat at the back of the hall, directing SWP tactics.
The SWP blocked any voting on resolutions proposed, including those
most hotly in dispute: that members of other parties could not be members
of the NDP and a proposal that the NDP call for nuclear disarmament "East
and West". Out of frustration, the leading figures in the NDP proposed
that all proposals not voted on be submitted to a referendum of NDP members.
This was defeated 87 votes to 86. The conference then divided and in the
emotional heated atmosphere, the result was unclear and the NDP leadership
around Jo Vallentine and Peter Garrett walked out.
Others like NDP founder Michael Denborough remained, as did Robert Wood
(later NDP Senator) along with others who did not understand the walkout.
But the SWP's "lead boots" had effectively "stomped over" any hope of the
NDP becoming a viable formation. Their use of well-tried meeting tactics
and number-stacking against people inexperienced in such operations made
sure of that.
The SWP opposition to the slogan "Disarmament East and West" which had
been accepted widely including in the Palm Sunday rallies reflected their
flirtation with the SPA and the Soviet leadership. Their opposition to
any ban on two Party membership reflected their desire to build the SWP
through the NDP.
The SWP quietly withdrew most of its cadres from the NDP. Only Rob Wood
and friends kept it operative in Sydney. The SWP however did recruit a
few members from the NDP experience, proving no doubt that it was worth
the effort...
NEW PARTY OF THE LEFT - THE "CHARTER"
PROCESS
In 1984 the CPA (Communist Party of Australia) publicly called for a
process for the "renewal of socialism" including the formation of a new
party of the Left. This was attacked by the SWP. The Broad Left Conference
held in Sydney in Easter 1986 brought together a wide range of some 1600
left, environmental and other activists. The SWP also strongly attacked
the organisers of this conference.
Later in 1986, when a wide range of activists issued a call for a New
Party of the Left, the SWP after initially attacking it, almost overnight
changed its position and asked to join in the process. Despite doubts among
many involved in what became known as the "Charter Process", the SWP's
public acceptance of the principles set out in the Charter meant that the
SWP was allowed to participate in preparation for an initial conference.
The SWP leadership initially agreed to the principle that members of
any New Party of the Left could not be at the same time members of another
party or para-party. As the conference to discuss the new party draw close,
the SWP began to back-track and floated the idea that Resistance would
continue as an independent grouping. Many saw this as a manoeuvre to keep
the SWP operating under a different guise.
At the conference, the principle was adopted that the major documents,
particularly the call for a founding conference of a new party would have
to be adopted by a two-thirds majority. At the conference, the SWP had
about a third of those present and with a few supporters was able to block
the final document, which had already been substantially modified to try
to accommodate their demands. The conference broke up in disarray. The
SWP tried to continue the fiction of their own Charter process, but this
was soon dropped by their leadership.
A group of long-time SWP members, including leading figures in its Sydney
organisation, who had been deeply involved in the Charter Process and genuinely
worked hard for its success disagreed with the SWP veto of decisions at
the Melbourne conference. They were summarily expelled by the Percy leadership
without even the minimal democratic processes.
Only in July 1990 was the New Left Party formally founded after another
long and laborious process initiated in 1988 by a second broad range of
sponsors. Two-party membership was banned. The SWP was not invited to take
part.
THE DEMOCRATIC SOCIALIST PARTY
In late 1989, the SWP announced that its national committee had voted
to change its name to the Democratic Socialist Party. The DSP was to be
more democratic and open to varying views. But it has remained as tightly
disciplined as ever with any dissent severely repressed.
In part, the change of name can be explained by the discredit the SWP
had earned itself throughout the broad Left, ecology and peace movements
by its manipulative practices throughout the previous twenty years. Second,
it was part of a new strategy to hitch itself to the process of renewal
and radical change taking place in eastern Europe and Gorbachev's Soviet
Union.
In these few years, Percy and other SWP/DSP leaders paid numerous visits
to Moscow and other east Europeans capitals. Resources were found to place
two SWP/DSP leaders in Prague for a long period. During these visits, Jim
Percy forged links with various forces inside the Soviet Union, including
many radicals, who may or may not have been aware of the SWP's stand supporting
Brezhnev's invasion of Afghanistan.
Some visits were made via Libya on tickets supplied by that county's
government through one Robert Pash, a long-standing neo-Nazi. But the large
expenditure on such trips cannot be accounted for from that source alone.
The various DSP initiatives in eastern Europe and the Soviet Union gained
credibility for the DSP as the local representative of renewal in that
part of the world. They also formed part of Jim Percy's empire-building
aimed at proving to his former comrades in the Trotskyist Fourth International
that he was a force to be reckoned with, and that he was successfully integrating
himself in the old communist movement.
An important DSP venture is the Green Left Weekly. Despite its claim
to be "independent" and under the supervision of a "broad" range of sponsors,
the paper remains very much under DSP control. GLW is well known for refusing
to publish or censoring articles which, although revolutionary and anti-capitalist,
do not conform to the Marxist-Leninst Party line.
ENTRISM - "DEEP" AND "RAIDING PARTIES"
The key to understanding the varied history of SWP/DSP intervention
in mass movements is the concept of "entrism". It was proposed by Trotsky
in the Thirties when his movement was very small and isolated. Under tactics
based on "entrism", Trotskyists entered the mass communist or social democratic
parties to form their own leftwing groups.
Such entrism was mostly carried out secretly and without acknowledging
membership of another party. The idea was to build a revolutionary left
within these mass parties which would, in a crisis, be able to lead the
masses, after taking control of the mass party.
There are several variants of "entrism":
"DEEP ENTRISM" implies the concentration of all members of the Trotskyist
Group in entrist work in the "host" party. No independent Trotskyist publication
is produced, with all efforts going into a newspaper produced under the
name of the front entrist Group. The most successful applicants of the
strategy have been the "Militant Tendency" in Britain which over decades
has worked with the Labour Party, denying the existence of the secret Trotskyist
group. The Militant Tendency won control of the Labour Party's youth wing
and city branches. In Liverpool it controlled the city council through
its majority in the caucus.
"RAIDING PARTY ENTRISM" on the other hand, scorns such long term tactics
and concentrates on relatively short-term entrism by a minority of members
of the Trotskyist Group into the mass party. This was the policy of the
SWP in the 1970s when it kept some undercover members in the ALP and produced
a small magazine "Labor Militant" a few times a year. At times, the numbers
in the ALP might increase when it seemed there were chances of recruitment,
but generally the number of SWPers undercover were small.
Most European Trotskyist groups have adopted a policy which spreads
numbers more or less evenly between "entrist" and "open" work, switching
emphasis as times change.
Although the SWP/DSP in the past decade has virtually stopped all entrist
work in the ALP, urging all left wingers to leave, it has adapted the tactic
to other formations and movements. Being very flexible, the Percys find-tuned
the old entrism tactic to a degree not seem elsewhere.
TASMANIAN UNEMPLOYED WORKERS UNION
The UWU in Hobart was unusual for such groups because it had been a
financial success. It established the first wholefood store in Hobart and
prospered. But by 1984 the initial founders of the UWU had drifted out
of the organisation due to other commitments. As an Unemployed Workers
Union it was moribund and not serving its initial functions. Among the
few remaining people active in it were the leading people in the small
SWP organisation in the State.
In April 1984, a special general meeting was called, supposedly to secure
its assets against a (non-existent) right-wing take over and to deal with
taxation and other difficulties. To stack the meeting, 25 SWP members were
flown in from Sydney and Melbourne and given UWU membership on the stop.
They voted to transfer its assets, of around $30 000, to a new organisation
the Tasmanian Progressive Society (TPS).
The TPS was not incorporated and had, to say the least, very strange
rules. Its constitution and rules spelled out that it would "not consist
of more than six members". New members could join by "invitation only".
The president was appointed by resolution to hold office "until death or
resignation or unless removed from office by resolution" of the other five
members. The President was none other than Jim Percy!
He could remove trustees and expel other members. And "there [was] no
quorum required" for meetings of the TPS. As President, Percy had the "sole
authority for the interpretation of these rules" and his decision was "final
and binding"!
David Mazengarb, a leading SWP member in Hobart had second thoughts
about the asset-stripping and alleged that the money went not to help the
UWU (as required in the TPS rules), or even to help the SWP operations
in Tasmania, but rather to fund the SWP's national operations based in
Sydney. He and other leading SWPers resigned in disgust and exposed what
had happened.
The only response offered by the SWP when their UWU operation was exposed,
was to say that Mazengarb and the other resigned SWPers had been part of
the operation transferring the UWU money to TPS/Jim Percy and agreed with
it at first, only to reject it later. The SWP then accused the four ex-SWPers
of wanting to grab the money for themselves and, when they couldn't get
it, setting up a rival wholefood shop to the one controlled after April
1984 by TPS/Percy.
Nothing has been heard of the TPS since. The "Corporate Raiders of the
Left Ark" moved on to other goals.
The Tasmanian UWU operation can be seen as a new variant of raiding-party
"entrism", with the sole aim of gaining access to a large amount of money.
THE "LEFT-WING" USTASHA OF THE HDP
The HDP (Croatian Movement for Statehood) never hid its admiration for
the Ustasha puppet regime established after Hitler's troops conquered Croatia
and the rest of Yugoslavia in 1941. Like other Ustasha groups in the West,
it celebrated April 10, the date the neo-Nazi regime was established. It
glorified the Ustasha fuehrer Pavelic and General Luburic who were responsible
for the massacres of hundreds of thousands of Serbs, Jews, Gypsies and
anti-fascist Croats.
The HDP leader was Nicola Stedul, who left Yugoslavia in 1956 for West
Germany to join the movement headed by Pavelic and later a rival one, the
HNO (Croatian National Resistance) headed by Lubiric. He was an HNO representative
in Australia from 1966 to 1971, a time when the HNO and other radical Ustasha
groups carried out a series of bomb attacks. The then Liberal Government
and ASIO outrageously covered up for those responsible for these bombings.
The SWP at the time condemned these terrorist attacks.
The HNO, which later became the HDP, was also on record as carrying
out numerous terrorist attacks in Western Europe. In one attack, HDP hero,
Miro Baresic, assassinated the Yugoslav Ambassador in Sweden in 1971. He
was released the following year when Ustasha terrorists hijacked a jet.
He went to Spain, then Paraguay, where he joined the death squads of the
dictator Stroesner. Baresic was arrested in the USA by the FBI and returned
to prison in Sweden.
The neo-Nazi credentials of the HDP were as clear as a pike-staff. But
they also tried to woo the left. Stedul formed the "Socialist Party of
Croatia" in exile precisely for the purpose. In Australia, they approached
Left Labor figures ...and the SWP. Only the SWP welcomed them.
In 1982, the HDP tried to march on May Day in Melbourne and received
a hostile reception. The SWP took up their cause and for the next few years
campaigned vigorously on their behalf against every other section of the
left and progressive movement who pointed out the HDP's attitude to the
Ustasha and its terrorist and neo-Nazi links. It was pointed out that in
the early 1970s, war criminals here such as Srecko Rover tried to woo the
Left and that early Ustasha and then the HDP had a well documented record
of trying to woo the Soviets ever since the Tito split with Stalin in 1948.
What were the reasons for the SWP's blind endorsement of these Ustasha?
SWP leader David Holmes wrote in August 1983 that "the HDP leaders are
revolutionaries...As a result of the collaboration between the HDP and
the SWP and also through the development of the class struggle in this
country, many more Croatians will come to see the need to build a revolutionary
workers' party here and fight to overthrow capitalism."
It is easy to see the very special "entrism" involved here. It is into
a whole community - there were then over 150 000 Croatian migrants in the
Australian workforce. The HDP had some support among them. By "collaborating"
with them, the SWP hoped to recruit among that community which would see
the need for a "revolutionary workers' party" (that is, naturally the SWP/DSP).
It is a very big raiding party involved; a couple of hundred SWPers taking
over the Croatian community....Such is the stuff of dreams!
Enough then to ignore what the HDP actually wrote about the Ustasha
regime, enough to even lionise the terrorist neo-Nazi Baresic in the columns
of Direct Action (now "Green Left Weekly").
The SWP did recruit a few HDP members into their ranks, but after all
their abject apologising for the HDP, its leaders here soon broke off links
with the SWP, precisely because the SWP was trying to recruit its members..
Even then, the SWP refused to criticise the HDP or admit its error, speaking
of it following a "rightwing drift" in 1984, although its extreme-right
credentials were available well before.
ROBERT PASH AND THE LIBYAN CONNECTION
Robert Pash has long been a member of the small neo-Nazi network in
the country. For many years he was a one-man Nazi band in Brisbane, heading
National Vanguard from a post office box in Capalaba. For some time he
was head of the Brisbane branch of National Alliance, then the Progressive
Nationalist Party and finally, for a brief period, of National Action.
But in 1984, Pash formed the All-Peoples Congress, began circulating
the Green Book on Libya's Ghaddafi and made the first of many trips to
Libya. Soon he was the semi-official representative of Libya here, much
to the consternation of its embassy.
Under attack from the Left, Pash felt if necessary to seek friends on
that part of the political spectrum. He contacted the SWP who expressed
interest in the free round-the-world air tickets he was handing around
for those who were friendly to Libya and himself. Always interested in
the main chance, Pash denounced the racists in National Action and swore
himself a friend of the non-Europeans around the world, after some of his
earlier productions had been widely exposed. But Pash remained in close
contact with anti-Semitic and neo-Nazi circles here and in Britain, organising
the visit of leaders of the neo-Nazi British National Front to Libya. Pash
did try to act out his Nazi fantasies a little more discreetly than in
the past, although the "Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion" were still
on sale in the Libyan Cultural Centre he operated in Melbourne.
In a repeat of the HDP experience, Direct Action defended Pash ferociously,
accusing his critics of being anti-Libyan and anti-Arab.
A number of SWPers did get those round-the-world airfares which meant
useful trips to Europe and the USA.
OTHER EXPERIENCES
The various forms of entrism have also been applied to many other mass
organisations over the past twenty years. In the "committee in Solidarity
with the Caribbean and Central America" (CISCAC) in the early '80s, it
provoked a split with almost all other forces when it insisted that it
have half of the membership of the ruling body as against all others, Latin
Americans included.
In the "Bring the Frigates Home Coalition", formed in Sydney around
the Gulf War, the SWP supported IS/Socialist Worker (whose slogan was "Victory
for Iraq") in blocking a resolution that would have also condemned Hussein's
invasion of Kuwait, while keeping the major emphasis on opposing the US
war. The SWP in fact had "two-bob each way", formally opposing Iraq's invasion
in Direct Action, but arguing that to include such a demand among those
advanced by the Coalition would have made it "narrow", even though "Socialist
Worker" were about the only ones opposing it.
In the early 1980s, the "Movement Against Uranium Mining" (MAUM) in
Sydney faced the usual SWP takeover numbers-game when it began to mobilise
many of the tens of thousands on the streets. The SWP was slow to jump
on the bandwagon, but when they did, they did so with a vengeance, stacking
one ordinary meeting with some 70 of its members, gaining the majority.
However, this was overtured the following meeting when all the other forces
in MAUM, particularly the non-party independents, rallied all their supporters
to stop the SWP take-over. The SWP/DSP can only succeed in such operations
when the numbers in the target organisation are small, or it is moribund
and at the end of its life.
CONCLUSION
The DSP, and other Marxist-Leninst groups like Socialist Worker, continue
to intervene in single-issue campaign groups, trying to recruit new members.
Stacking meetings, caucusing, blocking resolutions, accessing contact lists,
and other political manoeuvrings have often caused groups to spend more
time on dealing with internal wrangling, than with practical work.
Some caveats are necessary: many ordinary and younger DSP/Resistance
members are completely unaware of how their organisation works. Hence they
genuinely believe they are doing the right thing, seeing no contradiction
between "entrism" and real work for the campaign group concerned. In the
past, such people have often been expelled when they have questioned the
end results of the tactics they have worked hard to implement.
Second, there can be no question the DSP/Resistance has every right
to advance their views, act around their beliefs and join campaign groups.
But such organisations also have the right to expose and defend themselves,
against those who undermine campaigns by participating with ulterior motives
and hidden agendas.
In its own internal operations and in contrast to what it preaches,
the SWP/DSP/Resistance leadership rules with a rod of iron. They not only
refuse membership to those whose first loyally is to another party, but
will expel any dissident who persists in this error.
No DSP/Resistance member can ever give their full commitment to a campaign,
nor can they participate as an individual with their own ideas. As the
Constitution of the DSP states, "Members of the party shall... place ALL
of their political activity under the DIRECTION of the party...". DSP branches
"[direct] the work of party members in non-party organisations and movements...
in accordance with the Program, policies and decisions of the party".
The DSP's principles and practice of manipulation, deception and opportunism
are anything but "democratic" and "socialist".
This site © Matt Watts 2001-2006.matt_watts@bigpond.com.au
This site was last updated 17 April 2006.
This site does not necessarily reflect the view/s of any organisation/s and/or individual/s with which Matt Watts is associated.