Big turn-out at Australian left conference

The organisers reported 1140 tickets sold for the annual weekend of discussion and debate run by the Australian group Socialist Alternative, over Easter at Melbourne University Union.

About 400 attended the opening rally on the Thursday evening, and similar numbers the two biggest sessions of the weekend, with journalist John Pilger and former Black Panther Billy X Jennings.

The staple of the event was workshops, with six running at any one time, mostly delivered by young S Alt activists who had chosen to read up on a topic of interest - Gramsci and Bordiga, or gender construction under capitalism, or Darwin and Engels, or the Lassalleans, or market and planning, or anarchist horizontalism and platformism, or whatever.

Much of the building for the event had been done by S Alt stalls at university campuses across Australia. The picture the event gave of S Alt is of a group with a core of older activists who date back to the group's origin in an expulsion from the ISO (the SWP-UK's Australian offshoot) in 1995 and are now in their 60s or late 50s, plus a growing number of young activists (a majority, or so it appears, young women) recruited on uni campuses over the last ten years or so.

S Alt seems to have relatively few activists in the 35-55 age range, but over the years S Alt has built up its event enough that a wide range of left activists outside S Alt attend. For example, Greg Platt, a long-standing anarchist-communist activist in Melbourne, told us that the best thing for him from the event is that it had enabled him to meet another anarchist-communist group in Melbourne, apparently quite close to his own, which he didn't know before.

For the first time, S Alt organised a stream of workshops on "organising workers". It was mainly run as a showcase for the significant number of young S Alt members now getting involved in trade-union activity in their workplaces.

Workers' Liberty Australia ran a stall at the event. Our comrade Bob Carnegie spoke at the opening rally and in a workshop session on fighting against anti-union laws, and others of us were able to contribute from the floor in other sessions.

The event was boosted by the unification with S Alt of the Revolutionary Socialist Party (a small splinter from the DSP/ Socialist Alliance, a Castroite grouping with a fairly large profile on the left in Australia). Kim Bullimore from the RSP formally announced the completion of the merger in the opening session.

S Alt has also adopted a much more open attitude to left unity generally, stressing that its idea of revolutionary socialist discipline includes the right for minorities to express their ideas publicly. The Socialist Alliance co-sponsored the weekend, and had speakers both in the opening session and in some others; there will at least be more practical cooperation between S Alt and the Socialist Alliance, though (I think) not a full merger any time soon.

The left-unity theme was not the only explanation for the good attendance, though. Last year's similar event, before any talk of unity had started, drew 900. The numbers have been increased over the years through assiduous effort on campuses and in campaigns: it was more that such basic activity has made left unity more possible, than that unity moves provided a magic short-cut to a larger audience.

In a session specifically set aside for other left groups and activists to discuss with S Alt on the unity moves, Workers' Liberty Australia said that we welcomed the unity moves. We do not think that a merger of Workers' Liberty with S Alt looks workable immediately, but we do want, and think workable, increased joint activity and discussion. We will be following that up.

Solidarity (the "official" SWP-UK offshoot in Australia) and the Socialist Party (linked to Peter Taaffe's Socialist Party in Britain, and a noticeable force in Melbourne though not elsewhere in Australia) are pointedly not interested in unity with S Alt.

Oddly, none of the sessions were organised as debates. Apparently the S Alt majority had chosen to keep quiet on Venezuela and Cuba (the ex-RSP people are strong supporters of Chavez and the Cuban regime), and there was no debate on S Alt's controversial decision to boycott the big Reclaim the Night march in Melbourne after the murder of Jill Meager (the RSP not only supported but helped organise the march).

There was, however, lively debate from the floor in some sessions, notably over 457 visas (where a number of Solidarity activists turned up to argue their case) and Syria, and in the stream on Marxism and anarchism.