How dare you call me 'elite'By ROBERT JOHNSON
As a long-time ALP member and activist, Majda Flanagan's speech to the Tasmanian ALP Conference, This (now predictable) behaviour is a distinguishing characteristic of a Party leadership which loves to describe itself as 'New'. Clare Short describes (UK) New Labour as a "very defensive project created by a small group of insiders who saw themselves as separate from the [Party] mainstream". Yes indeed: the Tasmanian parliamentary Labor machine is keeping pace. But the membership - those members who remain in the Party out of a commitment to Labor principles, rather than as a vehicle for political opportunity - has not yet been vanquished, as Majda's presentation last month makes clear. Like Majda, I value my long-standing commitment to the ALP and my working class origins. I've been an active member for the past 33 years (not so active when, as at present, not in Australia), never - as far as I can recall - seeking any favours from the Party I love and see (temporarily, I hope) captured by interests contrary to social justice and equity. My maternal grandfather introduced me to the wonders of Henry Lawson and the foolishness of Bob Menzies, in his gentle way (it took me many years to understand my parents' repudiation of politics). My paternal grandfather died when I was 7, and - I was to learn in time - was factory shop steward (rejecting many offers of promotion as it would remove him from his union role), state president of his union (leather tanners) and ALP activist. I learnt this from my father once I turned 40 (at which time, he'd enquired as to whether I was still active in the Party - I'd moved away from home at 20). "Your grandfather would've been proud of you", he said, to my wonderment and confusion, at such a belated revelation. And my father explained the family hardship which his father's ALP and union commitment had meant for the family struggling in Richmond, Melbourne. My father died just 2 months after telling me this, and it wasn't until New Year 2001, when visiting his sister in Daylesford (rural Victoria), that she, also, asked me if I was still in the ALP. At this time, I was Assistant State Secretary in the Tasmanian Branch and part of the overhaul of the Federal Platform. So she told me that her father had "died of a broken heart" over the ALP, and mentioned the name of an ALP MP who my grandfather had been close to and had a falling out with. Her comments promoted me to start researching this more closely: sifting through the Victorian ALP records then only recently placed in the Victorian State Library archives after being held for so many years by people on the wrong side of the ALP/DLP split of the 1950s. And so it was that, after 30 years active membership of the ALP, I learnt that my grandfather had been president of the Richmond ALP branch in which the 50s split started; his 'friend' and ally that my aunty had mentioned to me having entered Federal parliament in the '49 election (when Chifley lost to Menzies) and then being one of only two ALP members to vote in support of Menzies' bill to outlaw the communist party (and then became central to the formation of the DLP). I've also uncovered Branch minutes of my grandfather's failed attempt to get ALP preselection for Richmond Council in 1949 (I was 4 months old): the embryonic beginnings of the NCC/DLP blocking him; and of his attendance as a union delegate to the subsequent bitter ALP State Conference which expelled those NCC/DLP tendencies. He died in 1957, distressed over what was happening to 'his' Party. (I still have several ALP archive boxes to look through when I am in Melbourne and have the time.) My father worked as a blue-collar factory hand all my childhood, until retrenched with factory closure in the early 70s. He then endured years of unemployment and casual work until he reached 65 and then died. I was to leave school as soon as I was old enough (I still recall the interviews in the engineering factory), but state assistance enabled my parents to keep me in school for two more years, and then I, too, went into a factory. Like Majda, I resent the latte-swilling stuff from social-climbing lackeys to monied interests and capital power, and am sure that many within the upper echelons of the Party see me as a middle-class out-of-touch intellectual. Yes, well, thanks to Whitlam's university reforms, I managed to enter university part-time and finally get a first degree at 42 - since followed by two Masters' degrees. "Intellectual": well thank you very much (or is Labor joining in making this a term of derision?); "middle-class": probably (curiously, those who use this as an insult seem to have taken their middle-class origins for granted); "out-of-touch": look in a mirror, comrade.
I've seen the cycles of Party rediscovery in times of electoral success (and job opportunity), the sycophancy of paid and aspiring lackeys, the rightwards lurch of colleagues learning how best to survive a Party discipline that rejects dissent and postpones principle as the cost of being 'pragmatic', the disease of taking the constituency of those in need and those who advocate for them for granted whilst cosying up to those vested interests who ultimately act contrary to Labor's constituency. (Anyway, a simple 'click' at the bottom of Majda's speech at I have well understood but consistently rejected the path taken by many friends who have parted company with the Party of their passion, to the added comfort of a leadership increasingly out-of-touch with our values and principles. But the ALP remains 'my' Party, and I thank Majda for having the courage to say what I know so many Party faithful have been intimidated and cajoled out of saying for too long. Robert Johnson has "had a fairly long association with the Tasmanian ALP - I resigned positions as Assistant State Secretary (Policy) and member, State Administrative Committee when I headed overseas in 2001 largely due to domestic political disillusionment. I'm presently a UN consultant with East Timor's Ministry of Foreign Affairs".
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