Dave Nadel

First of all let me preface my remarks by congratulating Tom on a really interesting and potentially very useful brief history of the IS. Whether it will be a guide to future rebuilding of the International Socialist Tendency, as I assume Tom hopes, is an open question, but even if it merely allows a generation of activists to consider their political pasts it is still more than nostalgic entertainment.

All the elements to explain the emergence of the IS tendency are present in the first two columns under the heading "Beginnings" – (column 2, p.1, column 1, p.2) but I am not quite sure that Tom has put them together correctly. The arrival of Tom, Janey and Ross is obviously a pre-requisite as is the general political climate of the late 60s ("social radicalisation and the surge of class struggle") but the background of the more experienced MWG members is also relevant. Tom traces this background but he doesn’t draw out all the consequences.

The combination of exposure to Maoism followed by a bout of Healyism (The Socialist Labour League) would tend to make several of us sympathetic to the IS Tendency’s analysis and tactics. While the Cultural Revolution might actually have been mass movements manipulated top down by one side of a faction fight in the Party bureaucracy, it was perceived by students and (some) young workers in the West as a bottom up rank and file revolt. When we split with the Monash Maoists we were always going to share with them an attitude of cheeky rank and file-ism. Furthermore, after the Healyites had introduced us to the concept of a "Degenerated Workers’ State" which we had rejected, we were always going to be sympathetic to the explanation of the USSR as State Capitalist. This was consistent with discussions at Monash about the USSR.

But the most important consequence of the backgrounds of the MWG members, not only the Monash people but also those who were recruited from the Labor College via the SLL, was our ultraleftism. Both the Monash Labor Club (because it represented a genuine far Left current) and the SLL (because it slavishly followed orders from London and its British leaders couldn’t distinguish Whitlam from Wilson) had a sectarian attitude to the ALP which Tom has correctly identified as self-isolating. On reflection, I think most of the early MWG members (and Mark and I in particular) spent 1972 looking over our left shoulders at the organisations that we had left. We were far more concerned with appearing reformist than we were with being irrelevant. This I think explains the dreadful front page of that first Battler with its silly headline and even sillier cartoon.

Tom’s description of the growth of SWAG to the regroupment conference (1972-75) is basically an accurate although too brief summation. I appreciate that he did not go into too much detail on the early relaunch of The Battler since I suspect some fairly devastating comments could be made about Griff and myself. Eventually I developed more realistic production timetables and Griff abandoned his negativism to become an enthusiastic part of the project but I don’t think either of us initially helped in reassuring a nervous organisation that we were ready to produce a monthly paper.

I have some reservations about the descriptions of the first year of the national organisation, both with Tom’s criticque and with what is left out. On the question of industrialisation, the problem was not only one of small group substitutionalism. It was also a question of inappropriate international influence. As Tom explained, the policy was recommended by American IS where it was being implemented with considerably greater success than the policy ever enjoyed in Australia.

Industrialisation may have been necessary in the US where the trauma of the McCarthy years had devastated the Left and widened the gap between working class organisations and socialists. In the US class structure is also much more complicated by racial questions than it was in Australia in the 1970s.

In Australia "Industrialisation" was not necessary, workers, students, trade union officials and middle-class intellectuals have always been together in both reformist and revolutionary "parties of the working class." As Tom, Janey and Kevin Bain (who were the most succcessful "industrialised" members) soon found out, workers have more respect for middle class intellectuals who genuinely support their struggles then for members of the middle class pretending to be workers. Industrialisation is only necessary in countries which lack mass reformist parties or when those parties lack militant workers in their membership which may be true of the ALP in 2003 but was not yet the case in 1973.

The reason I think that it is worth mentioning misapplied American conditions is not to criticise Tom and Janey but because while "industrialisation" was the last time Australian IS used an American tactic inappropriately it was certainly not the last time the IS was encouraged to misapply ideas by overseas leaderships.

I am generally in agreement with the material and the analysis under the headings "The IS and the working class" and "Some major struggles" but I am surprised at the lack of mention of David Shaw and the NSW BLF. I realise that this is a political history rather than a memoir so I do not expect every significant SWAG/IS/SA/ISO member to be mentioned individually. For example, although at various times the IS and Socialist Action depended on the legal and organisation skills, not to mention financial assistance of Jeff Goldhar, it is not surprising that he is not named in Tom’s history because he did not lead external struggles or internal debates. However David Shaw’s involvement with the organisation in the late 70s was crucial.

While David may not have been a typical "horny-handed son of labor" he was a leader of rank and file struggle in a cutting edge blue-collar union. This was qualitatively different to Tess and Max in the VSTA (because it was blue-collar) and qualitatively different from Alec’s support of the Latrobe Valley rank and file (because our member was an active insider) David Shaw’s union work was important for the prestige and relevance it gave the IS. His subsequent death in an industrial accident came close to destroying the Sydney branch, both because of his popularity as a member and a comrade but also because of his pivotal industrial role.

Finally I would like to make a couple of comments about my departure from the IS. Again I don’t think Tom’s history should chart the rise and fall of each leading member of the IS but I think that my departure and those of Andrew Milner, Verity Burgmann and Jeff Soar might suggest that the organisation was running into problems a little earlier than Tom suggests on page 9.

When I resigned in early 1979 I wrote that I was sick of being in small organisations which had no idea how to become large organisations and admitted that I did not have the answers either. Tom suggested at the time that I had really written an admission of being burnt out. In part he was undoubtedly correct but that was only part of the story. While I had been in small organisations all my political life (The Revolutionary Left of the Monash Labor Club, The Tocsin Group, MWG/SWAG/IS) they had always been part of a larger optimistic mass movement such as the Student and Anti-War movements of the 60s. Then later the period of Trade Union militancy and working class optimism of the early Whitlam years and the effective trade union and working class anger of the early Fraser years.

Although the IS leadership did not identify a downturn until 1981 (and then promptly exaggerated its extent) the downturn in mass left of centre politics began with the defeat of the Medibank struggle. Trade union wages struggle continued into the early 80s, and the Franklin Dam struggle mobilised a whole new layer of middle-class radicals, but the optimistic growing movement in which I had operated from 1966 to 1977 was definitely over.

I think I was part of a whole layer of former student radicals who were both unable and unwilling to operate in a contracting environment in which the principal objective for most revolutionary groups was the protection of their organisation and its particular interpretation of Marxist/Leninist/Trotskyist doctrine. I stress however that this interpretation of my departure and that of several other significant IS members is one of hindsight. This is not an explanation that I would have (or could have) given in 1979.

John Percy, in his book Resistance, (Vol I, p. 209), writes of my document:

"O'Lincoln ... concedes that the group's outstanding weakness was the "politics of impatience", although he contended it was a fine line between that and what he saw as their best point, their "daring, inspiration and flair". All young revolutionary groups are impatient, but we would be more forthright in calling the "impatience" of the IS current by its right name -- ultraleftism. Their ultra-left tactics often contrasted with their right-wing attitude to the ALP."

I doubt that our approach to the ALP was right-wing, but there isn't space to pursue that issue here. But I will point out two things. First that impatience isn't always ultra-left, it can also lead to reformism. In our 1984 faction document I quoted Trotsky as saying (quoting from memory) "The principle characteristic of opportunism is an inability to wait". Second, that while John's comments seem to imply that his own organisation was free from impatience, recent experience seems to suggest otherwise. In a statement made as leader of a minority faction within the DSP, John accuses the DSP majority of “hype and exaggeration”, insisting on the need to “realistically assess our experiences, and face up to our mistakes. If we don't, or can't, do that, then the resort is to hype…" and in a formulation reminiscent of mine about daring versus impatience, he writes:

“Revolutionaries are optimists, and we all need a good dose of that. But we can't exaggerate too much to the masses; we can get a reputation as bullshitters. But hype and exaggeration can have even worse consequences when we start extending it to our own members, and even believing it ourselves.” (John Percy, “Party-building report to October 2005 DSP NC on behalf of NE minority”). Very true, Comrade.

In the discussion that resolved to form [the Interventionist Faction](the day before the faction was announced) it was asked: is this dispute about leadership style (in which case the formation of a faction would be going to far) or is it about some fundamental political issue? Alec Kahn answered that he would characterise the politics of the leadership majority as "sectarian abstentionism", which is a fundamental problem. I might be wrong but I thought that Alec was the first to say this, and that his thumbnail analysis crystallised the feeling in favour of forming an open faction. Because Alec had named the beast, we should form a faction to slay it.

I also remember that in 1985 (?), leading up to the split, someone asked: "does Australia need another Trotskyist sect?". Alec answered "unfortunately it already has one. It is called the International Socialists".

The abstentionism was not only towards PND (though you saw that first hand). You'll remember the 1984 perspectives document that warned us that "remaining within the left milieu will lead to our DOOM" (or words to that effect, my emphasis).

Sydney branch had a funny habit of saying "March with the IS on Palm Sunday" (or whenever), and then it wouldn't march at all. On Palm Sunday (April 1985) the Interventionist factionalists found themselves (all 5 or 6 of us) assembling alone with the banner, while the rest of the branch, unbeknownst to us, had pissed off to staff bookstalls. It wasn't one of the great questions of our time, but it fitted a pattern, and it would have been nice to have been told. If this little item of abstention had been organised (as distinct from being a spontaneous act of mass boredom with Palm Sunday), it sure wasn't at the previous branch meeting. More importantly, at a branch meeting about one or two weeks later, we IFers had been abused for collecting for the SEQEB strikers (we hadn't sought permission). The resignations in Sydney soon followed. Gee it felt good to start going to demos, meeting, pickets, etc, without feelings of DOOM weighing on us.

Firstly, I thoroughly enjoyed this as a history. It was a relief to see you had avoided the pitfall 90% of the left-histories I've read fall for -- turning the history of a group into the history (or demonology) of a few individuals and then, once their own take falls out, declaring the group a "cult". I'm sure you know the sort of thing I'm writing about -- its generally more gossip than history and is all too common.

Added to this, giving the group some sort of context in Australian politics was enormously useful. The Fraser years are before most current SA and ISO members were born, so its good to see you're not assuming too much!

I would have liked to see a little more about the early moments of the MWG and Tess and the others making Hard Lines. Why didn't they join another left group? What was their dissatisfaction with the time? You mention left-nationalism -- perhaps a few more examples of this would be useful. Maoism, like the past, is a different country for most of us youngsters and we don't know how they do things differently there. It was mind-boggling for me to read that a debate on the path to socialism between Tess and the Maoists could draw over 100 people.

Also, I would have liked to see more about the "industrialisation" strategy and where it came from. I understand it must have had a good deal to do with impatience, but what other factors were there? It seems so foreign to our politics or perspectives now I was stumped by it on my first reading.

The idea of impatience being our curse and in a strange way our blessing rang true for me. The difficulty is in getting the right amount of intransigence and willingly setting your face against accepting demoralisation from realities such as Bush's war but at the same time acknowledging them and not slipping into an impatience with the world.

I joined the IS in early 1987 and left in early 1989. I went to a few Socialist Action meetings in 1989, but never joined that organisation. I then rejoined the ISO in 1992 and left with the split in 1995. Most of this time I spent in Melbourne.

Your history comes across as sketchy. I would have liked to know more details about the right to work marches for example. The Kortex strike, the melbourne club riot, the return to "street fighting" after the 1985 split. And I can recall at least two pitched battles in the Bourke st. mall with nazi skinheads. (very exciting stuff for a lad of 18.)

Also, I recall Marcus Banks talking about North and South branch in the early 1980s and how one had passed a motion to ban the others members from their meetings. All this just begs the question, how much detail can you put in to a history that only a handful of people are going to be interested in? I disagree with the idea that both the IS and the very raw people attracted to it in the 1986-1989 period were "apolitical" The political level was certainly very low and the politics sanitized, but it was also very intense. There was rarely any discussion at parties or any other function, that was not political. This was where I first learned of things like the labour theory of value and all the great workers struggles and revolutions of the 19th and 20th centuries, albeit in a very one dimensional and sanitized fashion. There was a big thing of grounding these very young minds in the the traditions of socialism from below.

The "politics of impatience" idea, I find very interesting, and may be worth a document on its own. It actually explains a lot, including the trajectory of the British SWP during the 1990s. Unfortunately I fear it is something small groups are very susceptible to. Believing that you stand in the grand traditions of the Russian revolution makes your own impotence against the great tides of history that much more frustrating. And it is the one thing that a revolutionary group needs, a rise in struggle or a favorable shift in the political climate that can bring on a bout of impatience that can wreck everything.

Thanks for sending your history, it is an insightful read, especially the early years. I'd like to add a couple of comments but am weary of falling in to one of the two groups you described when writing about an organisation you were once a member of, twice in my case. (I'd like to avoid it, but will probably fall into the ' hostile ex member category!).

I can only comment about the Brisbane branch, between 84 to 90/91.The one thing our branch did well, was to educate people very quickly, in the basics of marxism yet it is hard to overestimate how many people came through the branch that were, as a result of their contact with us, put off radical politics for a very long-time. Not because of the politics particularly, or even the climate (though this contributed to the process of self selection). But the internal regime was stifling, and not at all conducive to debate, reflection, open exchange of views. Political growth could only be stunted. Not only dissent, but debate was pretty much non existent. At the time, some put this down to personalities, but it became increasingly evident that such organisational, operational methods were a reflection of the sectarianism that defined the branch at the time. Hard evidence of sectarianism and authoritarianism wasn't fragmentary, as you suggest, but rampant. IS houses, stage managed meetings and social events, the disparaging of others on the left, etc. Personally, the final straw was having a specially called branch meeting arranged to advise me of the errors of my ways in organising a rank and file group in my union, and pondering the offer of an organisers position in the union, with a prominent local Stalinist. Once the political argument ran out, the personal slurs began. In the circles we moved in, such methods when they become known, only poisoned the soil from which we hoped to reap. The impact of such methods, not only on our ability to grow, but even to cohere a branch, soon began to tell. And it would seem, it has taken a very long time to recover.

The only other comment I'd make is that the relationship between the ISO and the UK SWP was, on reflection, not particularly useful or productive. Why always the eye to London? We had sufficiently capable people to assess the climate, develop strategies, and convince others of the need for a new course. The particularly distasteful incident concerning the coercing of the NZ ISO to amalgamate to another local group, against the NZ iso's desire, under guidance from the UK mothership, and carried out by a Brisbane 'leader' provided the most illustrative example of the unquestioningly reliance on the relationship. You seem to comment on the relationship only in positive terms,

It's quite interesting, but maybe you might be able to say what the basis of growth was more explicitly. You mention the paper timetable wasn't central to growth. You also mention the gulf war as a period of growth for the group, but what was it about the way we related to it that helped us grow? It's clear that impatience and trying to force the pace of events was a major reason for the exoduses.