Power, Profit and Protest: Australian Social Movements and Globalisation

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Power, Profit and Protest

Associate Professor Verity Burgmann is Reader in Political Science at the University of Melbourne

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For John Iremonger

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Power, Profit and Protest Australian social movements and globalisation

VERITY BURGMANN

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First published in 2003 Copyright © Verity Burgmann 2003 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act. Allen & Unwin 83 Alexander Street Crows Nest NSW 2065 Australia Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100 Fax: (61 2) 9906 2218 Email: [email protected] Web: www.allenandunwin.com National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry: Burgmann, Verity, Power profit and protest : Australian social movements and globalisation. Includes index. Bibliography. ISBN 978 1 74114 016 3. 1. Social movements—Australia. 2. Demonstrations—Australia. 3. International business enterprises—Social aspects. 4. Globalization. I. Title. 303.4840994 Set in 10/12.5 pt Cochin by Midland Typesetters, Maryborough, Victoria Printed in Australia by Griffin Press 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2

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Contents Preface and Acknowledgments

vii

1

Social movements and social change Understanding social movements American versus European approaches A time of hope: new social movements debate the old A time of despair: postmodernism and identity politics Social movements and the problem of globalisation The aims of this study

1 2 9 15 22 35 42

2

The Aboriginal movement In denial: white society and indigenous Australians The land rights movement The battle for native title rights The development of the Aboriginal movement Reconciliation, the stolen generations and the ‘sorry’ debate

44 45 66 75 52 84

3

The women’s movement Earlier waves The development of the contemporary women’s movement Ideological divisions in the 1970s and 1980s Organisational divisions Making demands: winning some, losing some The women’s movement and lesbianism The women’s movement and Aboriginal women Women helping women: ideology and practice The women’s movement and the state Feminism in the 1990s Feminism in the new millennium

98 99 101 104 109 115 141 145 148 151 157 161

4

The green movement Environmentalists and the greening of politics Some important campaigns

165 165 169

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vi

Power, Profit and Protest Some current organisations The Australian Greens and parliamentary politics Ideological conflicts The labour movement and the environment Corporate power and environmental politics Corporate strategies: confrontation and co-option A green state? Ebbing of the green tide? New wave environmentalism?

188 202 206 217 223 226 230 237 239

5

Anti-capitalism and anti-corporate globalisation Naming globalisation and its discontents The old ‘anti-capitalist’ social movement The case against neo-liberal globalisation Mounting resistance in the 1990s Seattle and S11: case studies of the new anti-capitalism Democracy versus the neo-liberal strong state

242 244 250 256 264 276 322

6

Globalisation: the cancer stage of capitalism? Absence of critique: strength or weakness? A crisis of capitalism Possibilities for the future Revolution in the cause of reform?

327 328 332 335 344

Notes References Index

350 354 385

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Preface and acknowledgments The world has changed in significant ways since the publication of Power and Protest: Movements for Change in Australian Society in 1993. As a result, Power, Profit and Protest: Australian Social Movements and Globalisation has emerged as a new book as well as a second edition of the earlier volume. Two of these six chapters are completely new: the chapter on the anti-corporate globalisation movement and the concluding chapter on globalisation as the ‘cancer stage of capitalism’. The introductory chapter on social movements and social change is almost completely new. The chapters on the Aboriginal movement, the women’s movement and the green movement contain material from Power and Protest in an edited and abbreviated form, then provide substantial new material, comprising about half of those chapters, to take account of the political events and academic outpourings of the past ten years. A rough quantitative measure is that around three-quarters of the material presented here is new, and is based on extensive research. Unfortunately, the original chapter on the gay and lesbian movement has had to be discarded due to restrictions on length, though the section on lesbians in the women’s movement has been incorporated into the new chapter on the women’s movement. In wrestling with the problem of producing this new book and this second edition, my greatest intellectual debts are to Susan Hawthorne’s eco-feminism, Andrew Milner’s late-model socialist humanism, Andrew Ure’s anarchism and Steven Wright’s autonomist Marxism. However, I take full responsibility for any resulting eclecticism or confusion in my own position. I am especially grateful to Boris Frankel, James Goodman, Stuart Macintyre and Elizabeth Weiss for reading and commenting on the whole manuscript; and to Wayne Atkinson for reading and commenting on the chapter on the Aboriginal movement. Various people helped with pieces of information, advice or resources: Craig Bird, Peter Christoff, Michael Connors, Joy Damousi, Jacqui Dickenson, Robyn Eckersley, Susan Hawthorne, Stuart Macintyre, Colin McNaughton, Andrew Milner, David Milner, Clare McCutcheon, Sean Scalmer, Julie Stephens, Andrew Ure,

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viii


Graham Willett, Patrick Wolfe and Steve Wright. My three sons—David, James and Robert—put up with what they call my ‘rubbish talk’ over the dinner table with Andrew Milner. My colleagues in the Department of Political Science have provided a congenial and stimulating environment in which to work. And publication remains possible in these difficult days in higher education thanks to the efficiency of the general staff: Rita DeAmicis, Cheryl Hamill, Ben Harper, Natalie Madaffari and Wendy Ruffles. The team at Allen & Unwin—Elizabeth Weiss, Alex Nahlous, Sue Jarvis, Anne Savage and Emma Sorensen—have been professional and very proficient. An ARC large grant 1997–99 for a project on the Australian left in the twentieth century provided valuable resources for researching this book. The Faculty of Arts at the University of Melbourne assisted the project with a grant of $1800. Finally, this volume and the earlier one would never have appeared if John Iremonger had not told me to write Power and Protest and then badgered me to produce what he initially described as ‘Daughter of Power and Protest’. In more general ways, too, John was a guiding and inspiring influence in my life, from my first meeting with him back in 1966. For 36 years he provided regular instruction, encouragement, friendship and amusement. I owe him so much and I dedicate this book to him.

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1 Social movement and socia s l change

WORLD BANK CAVES IN TO PROTESTERS. GLOBAL UTOPIA TO BEGIN IMMEDIATELY. Such is not the stuff of which headlines are made. The satirical newspaper, The Chaser, continued with this report: In a major victory for the opponents of the global capitalist oligarchy, the World Bank’s intransigent resistance to the will of the people collapsed today, following a concerted campaign of marches and demonstrations, ‘guerilla gardening’, riots, counterhegemonic T-shirts and carefully drafted letters to selected daily newspapers . . . At simultaneous press conferences, the World Bank and [World Trade Organisation] announced a joint initiative to ‘dismantle the world military–industrial complex’ in favour of a ‘more gentle world which respects values of


2

Power, Profit and Protest biodiversity, cultural activity, the greening of public spaces and the riding of bicycles’.1

The humour, obviously, lies in the implausibility of such a triumph for ‘the will of the people’. What, then, is the point of protest? There is a widespread perception that even nation-states are powerless in the face of the external pressures associated with ‘globalisation’. Now a commonplace term, ‘globalisation’ refers to the emergence of a global economy characterised by market forces and the prominence of economic actors such as transnational corporations, international banks and other financial institutions (Capling et al 1998, p. 5). Globalisation is marked, especially, by the growing power of international agencies of capital—notably the World Trade Organization (WTO), the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Economic Forum (WEF). Globalisation is also characterised by increasing socio-economic polarisation (with and between nation-states) and decreased political choice for citizens, because virtually all major parties across the world have committed themselves to globalisation. With hi-tech communications, lower transport costs and unrestricted trade turning the whole world into a single market, fierce global competition encourages ‘downward adaptation’ within each state towards lower wages and working conditions for most employees, decreased public spending on social services, and increased subsidies and tax-breaks to transnational corporations. ‘And everywhere,’ according to Hans-Peter Martin and Harald Schumann (1996, pp. 5–6), ‘protest ends in resignation.’ The implications of globalisation for social movements and social change are clearly immense. If nation-states are helpless, what role can mere social movements within these states possibly play in asserting people’s rights?

Understanding social movements The study of social change through collective action was described in 1970 as ‘one of the great terra incognita of sociology’ (Gusfield 1970, p. viii). It is now a crowded space. Moreover, much of this territory now requires reconquering with new analytical equipment, because of challenges mounted by globalisation to both social movement action and previous ways of understanding social movement action.2 Increasingly, policies are being made and decisions taken by political units outside the nation-state; such


Social movements and social change

3

S11 protesters express concern about the nature of corporate globalisation, Melbourne, September 2000 (Susan Hawthorne, copyright 2000).

circumstances permit and impel social movements to go global.3 Nonetheless, some fundamental definitions and insights remain valid. Cyrus Zirakzadeh suggests contemporary social movements: comprise a group of people who consciously attempt to build a radically new social order; involve people of a broad range of social backgrounds; provide an outlet for political expressions by the non-powerful, non-wealthy and nonfamous; and deploy confrontational and socially disruptive tactics involving a style of politics that supplements or replaces conventional political activities like lobbying or working for a political party (Zirakzadeh 1997, pp. 4–5). For Dieter Rucht, a social movement is ‘an action system comprised of mobilised networks of individuals, groups and organisations which, based on a shared collective identity, attempt to promote social change, predominantly by means of collective protest’ (Rucht 1999, p. 207). Manuel Castells (1997, p. 3) defines social movements as being ‘purposive collective actions whose outcome, in victory as in defeat, transforms the values and institutions of society’. It is helpful to flesh out such definitions, and in particular to consider the ways in which our understanding of social


4


movements needs to be broadened in the light of the recent phenomenon of concerted transnational social movement activity. Firstly, a social movement—as its name suggests—is both social and distinguished by movement. A social movement is not a static group, but an enduring process of confrontation characterised by capacity for protest. Unlike a purely political movement, it operates at the level of civil society, whether national or transnational.4 Robin Cohen and Shirin Rai (2000, p. 16) argue that the possibilities for opposition and protest in the global era are enhanced if a social movement has a transnational framework; hence there are distinct signs of an emergent alternative ‘global civil society’. A social movement, or a section of a social movement, might also operate within formal political channels, but this is never the entire and only aspect of a social movement. For example, the green movement in Australia has various political parties associated with it, but its range of activities far exceeds that of a purely political movement. A social movement generally makes demands upon the state, but it usually makes these demands from within society rather than from within the institutions of the state. In an analogous process, social movements contesting globalisation have focused their demands upon transnational institutions and agencies and from within global civil society. The social movements that operate within ‘global civil society’, ‘transnational civil society’ or ‘international civil society’ are distinct from the myriad of international non-government organisations that are also a feature of this alternative political force, though their concerns frequently overlap and they do work together on campaigns. Essentially, the international nongovernment organisations are the respectable, reforming face of global civil society and are now courted by transnational corporations in attempts to ‘legitimate’ these corporations’ activities. By contrast, the transnational social movements are, to varying degrees, much more radical in their demands and less institutionalised in form, and face opposition from corporations and repression from states, especially those social movements or elements of social movements that participate in the anti-corporate globalisation movement. Secondly, the basis of a social movement lies in the acknowledgment of a common interest among a specific group of people against another, equally defined, group of people (Scalmer c. 1994, p. 6). Social movements are thus ‘imagined communities’ of the oppressed, disadvantaged or threatened.5 Green activist Brent Hoare describes how it feels from the inside: Sharing common cause with others in response to the crises that affect us all brings forth incredible feelings of solidarity, camaraderie,



5

empowerment and joy. The shared conviction that arises from standing up against what is plainly wrong is a tremendously positive and sustaining experience, and is without doubt the most effective remedy to feelings of hopelessness, despair and surrender (Hoare 1998, p. 22). In a way, a social movement is an assertion of community; and a community of the oppressed can, under the right circumstances, become or remain the base for a social movement. Michael Connors has observed of the gay community in Australia that, while it has been forced on homosexuals by society’s prejudice, it has also been created by homosexuals. For that reason, it is ‘a potential base for radicalisation and struggle, giving homosexuals a sense of strength and, at the same time, a knowledge of their twilight existence in society’ (Connors 1989, p. 7).6 Recalling the mid-1990s mobilisation of gays against Tasmania’s anti-gay laws, the solidarity of Aboriginal communities against deaths in custody and the defiance of draft dodgers during the Vietnam War, Marion Maddox observes: ‘When individuals engage in collective protest action or solo acts of resistance which are supported by webs of association, they assert their membership in particular communities against the wider society’ (Maddox 2001, p. 17). Now, too, transnational communities of the oppressed, disadvantaged or threatened, imagined even more creatively than those within nation-states, assert themselves in the movement against corporate globalisation. Despite the fact that many theorists regard identity-formation as a prerogative of what came to be known in the 1990s as ‘identity politics’, social movements have always constructed ‘new collective identities’, in a manner comparable with self-identity. However, group identities are more significant because they endure through time and over space; they render collective actions possible and therefore they have more significant social effects. According to Paul Bagguley (1999, pp. 75–76), social movements as phases of collective action involve a collective reflexive monitoring of action by the individuals involved, but they are acting reflexively together, rather than as isolated agents: ‘Social movements are centrally an expression of collective reflexivity and not just an aggregation of, nor merely an arena for, self-reflexivity.’ Social movements invariably develop a group identity, shaped by the nature of its participants but which also shapes the consciousness of those participants. Out of this process, movements often create a distinctive ‘movement culture’, invisible and unstated yet also instantly discernible—almost predictable—and consisting in shared likes and dislikes pertaining to many


6


aspects of social and political life (Lofland 1995). Activists create social movements, yet are themselves politically constructed by these social movements. A symbiotic relationship exists between movement and participants: they make each other. A movement is defined by the aspirations of its supporters, yet the image of the movement becomes part of the self-identity of its adherents. Bagguley emphasises ‘the unintentional transformation of self-identity through collective action’; it is a common occurrence in social movements for individuals to find themselves transformed in quite unpredictable and unintended ways through their involvement in conflict with others, and through induction into the habits of social movement activity (Bagguley 1999, p. 76). Thirdly, and stemming from this identification of a common interest in opposition to an ‘enemy’, social movements are capable of effecting social and/or political change, because they engage in deliberately collective action towards challenging this enemy and promoting the common interest identified. The forging of a common self-identity enables the group to have a political impact, because it makes a collection a collectivity, a mass a coherent political actor. Social movements are not the simple accumulation of individual actions—like the massing of vehicles on a city expressway at rush hour. Social movements, unlike traffic jams, are characterised by ‘socially shared activities and beliefs directed toward the demand for change in some aspect of the social order’ (Gusfield 1970, p. 2). For example, the movement against corporate globalisation has named multinational corporations as the ‘enemy’ and it challenges these corporations by amassing supporters to converge en masse at their international meetings with the purpose of disruption and public exposure of their global operations. In Nomads of the Present, Alberto Melucci declares himself uneasy with the treatment of social movements as historical agents, ‘living subjects who act as homogeneous entities, expressing the deepest contradictions of society or its values’. Sociological analysis, he claims, must reject ‘the assumption of collective action as unified datum’ and ‘discover the plurality of perspectives, meanings and relationships which crystallize in any given collective action’ (Melucci 2000, p. 25).7 Such an approach might well inform a more sophisticated sociology of social movements, yet there is an important sense in which social movements only matter inasmuch as they are living subjects who act as unified entities, who act as coherent forces for change. Karl Marx distinguished between the working class as a class-in-itself (those who sold their labour power and were therefore objectively working class by virtue of their relationship to the means of production) and the



7

subjective category of the working class as a class-for-itself (those who were objectively working class and were also aware of their exploitation and prepared to struggle against it). Extrapolation from Marx’s distinction between class-in-itself and class-for-itself aids understanding of social movement action, because a movement is interesting primarily as the means by which opposition becomes politically effective. Atomised discontent— opposition-in-itself—has little political impact; however, collectivised grievances held self-consciously in solidarity with others and acted upon— opposition-for-itself—can effect political change. Social movements often develop and grow as the discontented discover that normal channels of political communication are not open to them. Blockage encourages both spectacular forms of action and more critical forms of analysis. When people make what they perceive to be eminently reasonable demands upon relevant authorities and find these authorities either resistant or incapable of offering redress, direct action is a common resort, and the formation of a social movement a logical outcome. For example, when women found their attempts through prevailing avenues to achieve equal pay for equal work were getting nowhere, a woman chained herself to a public building in Melbourne to draw attention to this demand. The builders labourers’ green bans movement in Sydney was kickstarted when residents of a certain suburb discovered that traditional petitioning and lobbying tactics were useless to protect a local bushland area from destruction; only the withdrawal of labour could protect the bush. In France, José Bové had for some time been leading a farmers’ lobby group that had worked in circumspect ways to express grievances, and few people took any notice; however, when the government in Paris informed Bové it could do nothing about the trade sanctions hurting his Rocquefort cheese sales to the United States because of rulings by the WTO, and he subsequently returned home to Millau and drove a bulldozer through the local McDonald’s outlet, this spectacular incident advertised loudly the presence of a social movement, greatly aiding that movement’s expansion.8 In the furore surrounding such direct actions, the people concerned seized the opportunity to explain their motivations to the public. In the process, they were reconstituted as more than themselves; they became social movement activists. Fourthly, as social movements act upon society, words and actions are reciprocal components in their political repertoire; articulation and agitation are mutually dependent aspects of social movement action. Language is crucial in the mediation between an individual’s being and their consciousness, and therefore between individuals and social structures.


8


Words are political and they are needed to voice grievances—the feelings of a group that they are being denied rights or opportunities important to them. As Miguel Cabrera argues: In general, the mere existence of subordination (real fact) is not enough for it to be converted into oppression (meaning). Instead, for this to happen appropriate discourse must mediate actively between these two entities. For this reason relations of subordination only convert themselves into relations of oppression, and generate the corresponding social practice, when a particular body of categories (for instance, the modern democratic humanist one) articulates social, political, sexual, racial or any other inequalities as oppression (Cabrera 1999, p. 86). In other words, articulation—the public expression of grievances—is a crucial component in effective agitation; and agitation facilitates articulation by securing the means by which the oppressed can be heard. Amory Starr notes of the groups comprising the anti-corporate movement that they all use discourse in the form of truth as part of building the movement and in the process of presenting themselves to outsiders (Starr 2000, p. 156). Language plays an active role in the creation of aspects of social reality. Knowledge and interpretation are not automatically given in ‘reality’ and ‘experience’. The formation of social identities—and thereby of social movements—is accomplished in large part by words; however, emphasis on the significance of language in the mobilisation of subordinate groups does not entail commitment to post-structuralist theories that wrench political languages and concepts loose from their material and other influences (Kirk 1994, pp. 233, 235, 237). It is important to attend to language in ways that are instructive—to be attentive to the contextualised emergence of new verbal frameworks or vocabularies within which experience is expressed and communicated (Palmer 1990, pp. 64, 86, xiii, 122, 143). Social movements that successfully articulate grievances invariably create new verbal frameworks and vocabularies, thereby converting relations of subordination into perceived relations of oppression. Erving Goffman’s Frame Analysis (1974) is useful for understanding ‘framing processes’—the patterns of perception or the ideological filters that organise how people process information. David Snow (1986, pp. 464–81) has described ‘framing’ as the conscious strategic efforts by groups of people to fashion shared understandings of the world and of themselves that legitimate and motivate



9

collective action. Through language and within social movements, framing processes become collective rather than individual, and can therefore lead to social change. Through the formation of social movements, subjects participate in active ways in creating meanings, and language is crucial in mediating between being and consciousness. ‘Black Power’, ‘Gay Pride’, ‘The Personal is Political’, ‘Indigenous Rights’—numerous slogans come to mind, reminding us of the ways in which social movements have created new verbal frameworks and articulated inequalities as oppression. Attention to the language of protest also simplifies social movement analysis. It is not necessary to develop elaborate typologies such as those favoured by most social movement theorists. Social movements, as Manuel Castells (1997, pp. 69–70) argues, ‘are what they say they are. Their practices (and foremost their discursive practices) are their self-definition.’ In other words, articulation (discursive practices such as language) and agitation (practices) define a social movement. When thousands disrupt a meeting of business leaders while chanting ‘Human Need Not Corporate Greed!’ and waving banners declaring that ‘The World is Not for Sale’, it is appropriate to designate this protest as part of an anti-corporate—possibly even an anti-capitalist—social movement. Amory Starr’s extensive study of the anti-corporate movement reveals how such a diverse movement, composed of anti-corporate discourses emerging in many places and in a variety of different ideological approaches, can nonetheless be deemed a movement because it names a common enemy (Starr 2000, esp. p. x). Since the publication of Starr’s study, the anti-corporate movement has increasingly added the practice of disrupting the enemy to the discursive practice of naming the enemy, indicating its growth as a social movement and also the logical tendency for some degree of articulation to precede agitation.

American versus European approaches It is commonplace nowadays to view social movements as explicable and rational, even if one disagrees with the movement’s aims. This has not always been the case. For several decades in the United States, theorists developed a confusing array of approaches to understanding the formation and operation of social movements, precisely because the existence of social movements was assumed to be problematic. American Functionalist approaches largely dismissed social movements as symptoms of dysfunction rather than sources of possibly constructive


10


S11 protesters, Melbourne, September 2000 (Susan Hawthorne, copyright 2000).

social change, and social movement activists were deemed to be irrational and politically incompetent individuals reacting to distress. Within the Functionalist paradigm, Collective Behaviour Theory (Turner and Lillian 1957, cited in Byrne 1997; see also Smelser 1963), dominant in the immediate postwar period, expressed both the complacency and conservatism of the 1950s but also the traumatic recent memory of Fascism in its portrayal of social movements as potentially dangerous, or at least disruptive, intrusions into an otherwise functional society. Other variations within this ‘classical’ American Functionalist approach were Mass Society Theory (Kornhauser 1959) and Relative Deprivation Theory (Gurr 1970) which, like Collective Behaviour Theory, saw protest behaviour as stemming from the frustrations of atomised individuals who lacked the skills necessary to work within the ‘normal’ channels of the pluralist political system (Byrne 1997, p. 39). By the early 1970s, American political scientists and sociologists were less inclined to dismiss social movement activists as irrational, alienated, atomised or politically dysfunctional, for academics were part of the growing numbers of well-educated people who participated in the burgeoning new social movements from the 1960s onwards. Resource Mobilisation Theory,


Social movements and social change 11 formulated initially by John D. McCarthy and Mayer N. Zald (1973, 1977), proceeded from the assumption that the holding of grievances was normal rather than abnormal and that the voicing of dissatisfactions was rational rather than irrational. So, rather than analysing the individual psychologies of those who felt aggrieved, as in the classical Functionalist approach, this theory argued that it was more helpful to ascertain why only some grievances and dissatisfactions produced social movements by focusing on the processes of mobilisation. The answer lay in the availability and use of resources— tangible ones such as money and facilities, but also intangible ones such as skills, time and contacts; hence the term ‘Resource Mobilisation Theory’. Apart from stressing how the potential for social movement action is determined by the economic, political and communications resources available to the aggrieved group, Resource Mobilisation Theory is interested in measuring the impact of movements on political outcomes. In an interesting variation on Resource Mobilisation Theory, Frances Fox Piven and Richard Cloward agreed that movements were likely to emerge when resources outweigh constraints, but they viewed the capacity to disrupt as a more valuable resource than the ability to organise. Indeed, they argued that organisation often became an end in itself, which distracted energy away from disruption and therefore worked against the power of protest (Piven and Cloward 1979). The concept of ‘political opportunity structure’, closely associated with Resource Mobilisation Theory, considers broader political processes to identify ways in which factors external to the movements themselves affect opportunities for mobilising resources. This concept, implicit in the work of earlier scholars, was formulated from 1978 onwards by Charles Tilly, Doug McAdam, Sidney Tarrow and others. For example, McAdam traced federal government actions that either opened up or closed down opportunities for Black Americans to organise resistance (McAdam 1982). More ambitious, the Cyclical Approach of Tilly (1978) and Tarrow (1983, cited in Tarrow 1986b; Tarrow 1989a, 1994, 1998) employed longer time-spans to examine ‘cycles of protest’, in order to ascertain how previously excluded groups gain access to political power and why movements ebb and flow over time. For Tarrow (1998, p. 7), ‘changes in political opportunities and constraints create the most important incentives for initiating new phases of contention’. To varying degrees, the North American approaches endorse the Pluralist premise that liberal-democratic societies accord in reality with their own declared principles of openness and equal access; if only social movements are able to mobilise effectively, then the interests of the individual


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participants will be furthered. This fascination with how movements mobilise therefore stems from the Pluralist conviction that the political playing field is a more or less level one in the first place. A distinguishing characteristic of Pluralism is its tendency to ignore the ways in which power is exercised discreetly yet decisively against those who would change the world.9 Resource Mobilisation Theory, for instance, has been criticised for its ‘methodological individualism’, whereby social actors are presumed to employ a narrowly instrumental rationality, a careful weighing up of the costs and benefits of participation in social movement action. The actors’ interests are therefore defined in such a way that their participation is always seen to further their interests. It is unable, then, to explain social movements that are too weak to distribute selective benefits. It also tends to ignore movements that remain unrecognised by government authorities (Foweraker 1995, p. 17). The assumptions of American Pluralism are evident in what can be described as the ‘do-it-yourself’ guides to social action. For example, as Martin Mowbray has argued, the 1997 Australian volume I Protest! Fighting for Your Rights: A Practical Guide suggests strongly that it is apathy which constitutes the chief obstacle to the restoration of power to the people, rather than any systemic problems. Though rehearsing many practical ideas about social action that merit periodic repackaging, it overlooks important considerations such as globalisation, economic policies and the distribution of wealth, the structure of government, gender relations and class society. It reinforces the perception that, in terms of equity and social justice, our political system is unproblematic: Inequities and injustices may be overcome through personal resolve and adoption of clever tactics that, though they be short term and localized, have the capacity to shift power away from whoever are in current possession. Behind the book’s radical façade, this is a deeply conservative message (Mowbray 2000, p. 25). It is often argued that American research into social movements, notably Resource Mobilisation Theory, is distinguished by a concern with how social movements develop and that European ‘new social movements’ approaches are uninterested in the micro-level analysis typical of American research and are more concerned with why social movements develop, emphasising the significance of collective and conflicting world views (Weltanschauungen) (Maheu 1995, pp. 4–5). In 1985, Jean Cohen made a distinction between the ‘strategy-oriented’ approaches typical of North American writings about


Social movements and social change 13 social movements and the ‘identity-oriented’ approaches emerging from the European debates about new social movements (discussed in the next section). Cohen argued that the European approaches, by contrast with the North American, lacked analysis of how social movements mobilised, but they offered more effective ways of explaining why social movements moved, because they understood identity, ‘the passion of the actors’ (Cohen 1985; Cohen and Arato 1990). This distinction is a useful one, but requires qualification. After all, European historians such as Edward Thompson (1971), Eric Hobsbawm (1959) and George Rudé (1964; Hobsbawm and Rudé 1968) produced important studies of social movement actions in preceding centuries, which considered carefully both the ‘how’ and the ‘why’ of these mobilisations. Moreover, the French existentialist Marxist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre and the Portuguese Brazilian philosopher Paulo Freire, who also worked in Geneva between 1969 and 1979, provided distinctively European and highly theoreticised responses to the ‘how’ of social movement action. Jean-Paul Sartre’s progressive–regressive method is relevant to an understanding of this aspect of social movements, because it entails a search for ‘mediation’ between ‘being’ and ‘consciousness’, to understand how subjective processes are played out through individuals—how individuals are subjects. His process begins with social structure and traces its input in the individual, then returns to the individual and traces his or her input on the social structure (Sartre 1963). In Sartrian terms, social movements are an important form of mediation between a participant’s ‘being’—the result of social structure—and his or her ‘consciousness’, and participation in the social movement also enables an individual to make an input on the social structure. Moreover, in his Critique of Dialectical Reason, first published in 1960, Sartre distinguishes between groups capable of significant actions and those incapable. He makes a distinction between the ‘alienated series’ (a collective where scarce matter forms the interior bond between people, where they have internalised the passivity of matter, where each acts in the same way, but in a way shaped by the material object of the scarce matter) and ‘fused groups’ (which are structured by interior bonds which overcome passivity, where the group has the project of overcoming scarcity and asserting freedom, and where every member has the same project). Examples of the former include the bus queue; the latter category includes groups that make revolutions, such as that which stormed the Bastille on 14 July 1789.10 Sartre’s existentialist Marxism offered a coherent sociology of the group— but was ignored by American analysts of social movements.


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Paulo Freire’s concept of ‘conscientisation’—the dialogue between situated subjective experience and objective knowledge—is a related attempt to understand the process by which people become aware of their oppression and decide to act upon this realisation—how they move from their subjective understanding to develop greater consciousness of objective forces of oppression. During conscientisation, a shift occurs from naïve consciousness to critical consciousness. Naïve consciousness is characterised by passivity, resignation and a static world-view; critical consciousness allows the oppressed to view themselves as subjects of a historical process and agents of collective action, not simply as inert victims (Freire 1975, pp. 49, 17, 73, discussed in Johnston and Goodman 2001, pp. 12–13). In Freirean terms, conscientisation is the process of social change in that it prompts individuals to form social movements, which then encourage conscientisation on the part of more individuals. For instance, at several points in history, women in sufficiently large numbers have moved beyond naïve consciousness and decided that they shared a common interest against men. This process of conscientisation explains the emergence of the women’s movement as a social movement at various moments and in many places that articulated a women’s critical consciousness. The existence of this movement then enabled many other women to reach such a consciousness. Now, too, according to Josee Johnston and James Goodman, the social movements contesting corporate globalisation can be seen ‘not just as propaganda machines railing against corporate power, but as potential agents of conscientisation and creators of new knowledge about neoliberal globalism’ (Johnston and Goodman 2001, p. 13). Thus contributions to understanding how social movements form are not an American prerogative. The principal difference between American and European approaches lies in their political assumptions. European theorists of social movements, to a much greater extent than their American counterparts, assumed the existence of fundamental and problematic inequalities in society, and believed that significant transformations within societies were part of a natural historical process. Such assumptions prompted them to reflect upon why certain sorts of social movements emerge at certain moments in history; they have generally also been anxious to identify which social movements were truly viable agents of change. They were concerned primarily with social movements as rational expressions of major cleavages within society— especially in terms of class—or as potential sources of revolutionary structural change. The influence of Marxist theory had taught them to expect the working class to act as the principal force for social change.11 When such


Social movements and social change 15 expectations appeared to be confounded in the postwar period, they did not abandon the search for a revolutionary subject but simply looked elsewhere, to the new social movements, as we shall see in the next section.

A time of hope: new social movements debate the old The debate about social change that exploded in the 1970s was initiated by European theorists of social movement action and was marked by passionate disagreements about which forms of protest action offered a greater likelihood of change and which gestured towards a more desirable future. The intensity of this debate about how political and social change could best occur was testimony to a strongly held conviction that change was indeed possible.

The challenge of the new social movements Until the 1970s, the dominant assumption in European and Australian academic debates was that the labour movement was the principal force for social transformation within society. Whether one loved or loathed the idea, change was seen to depend on the extent to which the organisations of the labour movement—the trade unions and the labour or social democratic parties—pressed their claims for a more equal society. The political spectrum was perceived as a left–right one, with the labour movement situated on the left and acting as the main bearer of the duties of the left, even if manifestly failing to act as the revolutionary ‘midwife of history’ of Karl Marx’s formulation. The distinction between left and right was understood—and to a lesser extent is still understood—as the distinction between a left that wants a greater degree of socio-economic equality and a right that wants to resist moves towards more equality or move in the direction of increasing inequalities (Bobbio 1996, esp. p. x). This was the mainstream political spectrum. Further to the left than the labour and social-democratic parties were Marxist and New Left theorists and activists, who argued that militant working-class movements constituted the best prospects for seriously challenging the class-based structures of power, which were seen as responsible for all forms of exploitation and oppression. By contrast, ‘new social movement theory’, as it came to be known from the early 1980s onwards, saw in the ‘new’ protest movements of this period—such


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as the women’s movement, homosexual liberation movements, the green movement and movements against racial discrimination—the best hope for creating a more truly equitable and just society.12 In the 1970s, Marxist and New Left theories were in the ascendancy within social science disciplines in universities throughout the Western world, revealed in the popularity of theorists such as Antonio Gramsci and Louis Althusser and the frequent holding of seminars, conference streams and even whole conferences on ‘class analysis’. However, during the 1980s, new social movement theorists—many of them former Marxists—became the predominant intellectual force in the social sciences. This shift in the balance of forces within university departments reflected changes in the patterns of struggle and conflict within Western societies. When the new social movements first appeared on the scene in the 1960s and early 1970s, it was generally assumed that the labour movement would remain the principal force for change and work in concert with these movements. Beginning with the black rights movement in the United States, the women’s movement that was occurring simultaneously in many countries, the homosexual liberation movement, the anti-war movement opposing the Western world’s interference in Vietnam and the first stirrings of environmental activism, these new social movements proved deeply disturbing to the political life of Western countries. Yet it was some time before they were seen to usurp the role of the labour movement in effecting change, because it was not until the 1980s that a taming of the labour movement became apparent. During the 1960s and 1970s, the labour movement was especially militant, engaged in a range of struggles at home and abroad. In Australia, some examples of militant unionism were the late 1960s union campaigns against the penal powers of the arbitration system, the green bans movement of the early 1970s when building industry workers refused to construct environmentally damaging projects, the involvement of unions in both the anti-Vietnam War movement and the campaign to boycott racially selected South African sporting teams, and a generally high level of industrial action in support of higher wages and better conditions. There were also the more bureaucratic, but nonetheless notable, achievements of the union movement that secured formal equal pay for Aboriginal and female workers, via Arbitration Court decisions between 1968 and 1974. The new social movements naturally sought to enlist the support of the labour movement and benefited greatly from its assistance. Indeed, in the 1960s and 1970s, the interests of the working class and the concerns of


Social movements and social change 17 the new social movements were seen to be complementary rather than conflicting. In 1975, Serge Mallett wrote in The New Working Class about a working class characterised not only by the best traditions of militancy but by the best innovations in values. In Australia, the New South Wales Builders Labourers’ Federation epitomised the radical possibilities of a juncture between old and new social movements, supporting the employment of women as hoist-drivers and labourers on equal pay with the men, stopping construction on a university college in protest at the dismissal of a homosexual tutor, organising the demolition of the goal posts the night before a racially selected Springboks rugby union match, forcing a government to grant valuable urban land to poor Aborigines and pursuing the most successful environment campaign yet seen in Australian history—while significantly improving the wages and conditions of its members through militant industrial action (Burgmann and Burgmann 1998). In the 1960s and 1970s, as Kevin McDonald (1987, p. 12) notes, ‘the importance of the labour movement to the new social movements was regarded as self-evident’ and there was a general expectation that the new social struggles that had developed would combine with working-class organisations and lead to significant social transformation. All were seen as radical forces working in the same direction towards the same ends: restraining the power of capitalism to exploit workers, super-exploit non-white workers, destroy the environment, fight imperialist wars, encourage homophobia and subordinate women by restricting them to home and hearth. The first women’s liberation leaflet distributed in Australia identified ‘imperialist racist capitalism’ as the enemy that women needed to fight (Women’s Liberation Group 1970).

New social movement theory Within ten years, however, the assumed complementarity of old and new social movement aims had dissipated. Articulating positions developed during the late 1970s within the new social movements, by the 1980s new social movement theory was arguing that these new movements had replaced the labour movement as the principal force for social change and that this was a positive and necessary development. Their appearance both indicated important structural changes already occurring in society and provided a means towards effecting further changes. According to new social movement theorists, the liberal democracies of the Western world were politically constructed in new ways by the conflict between those in power and those


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who protested—in particular, by those who asserted claims based on gender, sexuality, race or ethnicity, or voiced concerns about environmental degradation and militarism. New social movement theorists suggested various ways in which these movements were new. The alleged novelty of the new social movements consisted, firstly, in their rejection of both the aims and the methods of prevailing avenues for change. New social movements were critical of workers’ parties and trade unions, both for their alleged neglect of issues such as gender and sexuality, race and ethnicity, peace and the environment, and for the bureaucratic and hierarchical forms of these institutions or parties (for a useful discussion, see Misztal 1987; Melucci 1989). The organisational methods of the new social movements—their patterns of egalitarian interpersonal relationships and democratic decision-making mechanisms—were revered by their participants as ends in themselves. The activists within these movements self-consciously practised, in the present, the future social changes they sought. It was for that reason that Melucci (1989, p. 6) designated these contemporary collective actors ‘nomads of the present’. A second defining feature of the new social movements, according to the literature, was that they were ‘anti-systemic’ or ‘non-institutional’: interested only in success that fell exceedingly short of traditional notions of political achievement. Unlike the parties to which they were opposed, the new social movements did not generally aim to attain state power. In general, it was argued, the more a social movement aspired to parliamentary office, the more it became like a political party and accordingly the less it was like a social movement (Feher and Heller 1984, p. 37). It is because the old social movements of the workers often did aspire to state power that avoidance of this strategy is deemed a novelty. Yet it should be acknowledged that there were many currents within the old social movements that argued strongly against statist strategies for achieving their aims—for example, the anarchist and syndicalist movements of the turn of the century. Thirdly, the new social movements maintained that oppression and domination were not just restricted to the workplace and that struggles over the production and distribution of material goods and resources were not the only battles that mattered. They championed the interests of those who experienced social, political and cultural oppression, whatever their economic circumstances—a black person, a woman, a gay man—or the interests of the human race, irrespective of class. Finally, the new social movements, according to the theorists, were in


Social movements and social change 19 stark contrast to the old, which were movements by and for the working class, because they were based on ‘the new middle class, especially those who work in the human service professions and/or the public sector; elements of the old middle class; and those people outside the labor market or only peripherally involved, such as the unemployed, students, housewives, and the retired’ (Offe 1987, p. 72). Many of these non-proletarian supporters of new social movements possessed ‘intellectual capital’, a point repeatedly emphasised in academic studies of new social movements. Ronald Inglehart, for example, stressed the importance to the growth of new social movements of the increased levels of ‘cognitive mobilisation’—the ability to understand and comprehend politics and political change in abstract and theoretical ways— due largely to greater access to education in modern societies (Inglehart 1990, esp. pp. 336–42, 375–88). The term ‘new’ was not simply in temporal opposition to ‘old’; it contained a value judgment. Movements of the working class—whether labour, communist or socialist—were typecast in new social movement literature as old social movements, battling merely on behalf of those exploited in their working lives. There was a strong implication that they represented an inferior—even obsolete—form of political mobilisation, that their concerns were too narrowly focused on economic deprivation and that they overlooked other important issues. In general, they were contrasted unfavourably with the new social movements, which were said to express individual needs; to assert the significance of social divisions based on gender, sexuality, race and ethnicity rather than class; and to contest expressions of power existing outside workplace relations. Alain Touraine (1974, pp. 9, 11, 17, 61, 73, 75–76) argued that the labour movement, which was the social movement of industrial society, was no longer the prime social actor. The workers’ social movement, the labour movement, was developing into a political force as distinct from a social movement; it was irremediably institutionalised and incapable of offering social opposition (Touraine 1981, esp. p. 13). For Jürgen Habermas (1981, pp. 33–35), the new movements represented the interests of those further removed from the ‘productivist core’ of the system, who viewed the trade unions as sharing with big business and the established political parties a commitment to growth and its associated material values. Claus Offe (1985, esp. pp. 133–36, 141, 148) maintained that society was objectively less shaped by the fact of work, that the sphere of production and work had lost its capacity to determine the structure and development of the larger society.


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All these theorists suggested in different ways that the labour movement was outmoded, left behind not only by the changing circumstances of society but by new forces within society. Though indisputably the main agency for change in earlier industrial society, the labour movement in postindustrial society was no longer the dynamic social force it had once been. These theorists argued not only that the labour movement’s days as the principal medium for social change were over but that the labour movement and the new social movements were not necessarily on the same side at all, and that their conflicting priorities brought them into conflict with each other. These intellectual arguments expressed and reinforced the political sensibilities of new social movement activists. Substantial sections within these movements regarded the labour movement as part of the problem rather than as part of the solution, because of its alleged complicity with capitalism’s ecologically unsound commitment to economic growth and its assumed neglect of issues dear to the new movements such as gender and sexuality, race and ethnicity. By the 1980s, a perceptible distancing of new social movement supporters from the old social movement was apparent. In this situation, understandings of ‘the left’ shifted to embrace people unconnected with the traditional organisations of the labour movement but espousing progressive stances on the rights of women, homosexuals, racial and ethnic minorities, and peace and environment issues. While labour movement organisations had long championed such causes to varying degrees, the nomenclature of ‘left’ was redefined by this inclusion of new social movement supporters, many of whom in fact rejected basic tenets of left-wing thought and action. An editorial in New Left Review in January/February 1988, for instance, acknowledged that many people on the ‘left’ questioned the efficacy of class struggle as the moving force of human emancipation (1988, p. 1). They had come to doubt, as Peter Beilharz (1987, p. 167) observed, that the future of history lay still in proletarian hands. They sought an alternative subject—or, rather, alternative subjects. The history of all present and future societies, they believed, would be the history of movements. With Michel Wievorka and Francois Dubet, Alaine Touraine insisted in 1987 that ‘the working class cannot be defined “objectively”’, and therefore that ‘the concept governing the analysis is no longer one of class position, but of social movement’. They argued for the theoretical superiority of the concept of ‘social movement’ over the concept of ‘social class’ on the grounds that ‘social movement’ is fully its own creation—it generates its own subject, it constitutes itself into a social agent (Touraine, Wievorka and Dubet 1987, pp. 20, 21, quoted in Bauman 1991, pp. 54–55).


Social movements and social change 21

Contesting new social movement theory In defence of the old social movement, left theorists in the 1980s continued to assert the significance of class as a social division and to assert the importance of the labour movement as an agent of political and social change. New Left arguments were generally supportive of the aims of the new social movements, yet sceptical about their capacity to effect fundamental change in capitalist societies whose central dynamic and organising principle was class-based inequalities—unless such movements were able to secure the support of organised labour to achieve their aims. For example, in 1989 Ralph Miliband outlined the important ways in which the priorities of the new social movements could not be abstracted from class and the myriad ways in which the oppressions these movements rebelled against were shaped by class. While a bourgeois woman does experience male domination, she experiences it in ways very different from a working-class woman; similarly, the power of a bourgeois man to oppress a woman in particular and women generally is much greater than that of his proletarian counterpart. Miliband (1989, p. 96) stressed that the notion of the ‘primacy’ of labour movements as agencies of radical change did not require a devaluation of the importance of new social movements. Ultimately, however, Miliband insisted that these movements could achieve little without the power that alone could contest ruling-class power. This was the power of the producing class, its ability to effect political change based on its strategic location in the economy, the necessity of its labour and the havoc that could be wreaked through its withdrawal. The greens, and all new social movements, were inescapably dependent on the potential strength of labour movements and their political agencies: ‘without labour movements organized as political forces, no fundamental challenge to the existing social order can ever be mounted’. So long as organised labour and its political agencies refused to fulfil their transformative potential, the existing social order would remain safe from revolutionary challenge. Whatever feminists, black people, gays and lesbians, environmentalists, peace activists or any other group might choose to do, and even though their actions might well produce advances and reforms, the basic structures of power would endure (Miliband 1989, p. 110). How could the new social movements exert pressure upon the system equivalent in force to that exerted by workers when they withdraw or threaten to withdraw their labour-power? Essentially, New Left theorists maintained that, unless the new social movements successfully harnessed the


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potential power of organised labour in pressing their demands, any reforms they won would only be conceded in the manner most conducive to capitalist interests. Such minor changes, the New Left insisted, would not remove the underlying causes of sexual and racial oppression, environmental degradation and militarism, for such phenomena were not incidental features of capitalist societies but unavoidable systemic effects of its system of exploitation.

A time of despair: postmodernism and identity politics From the late 1970s the New Right, as it was then known, began promoting free-market ideas and policies; during the 1980s this ‘economic rationalism’ became ascendant in political life; by the 1990s this same ideology, now re-badged as ‘neo-liberalism’, was politically dominant. At the same time, but from the progressive side of politics, new social movement theory, in its questioning of the centrality of class divisions and the primacy of the labour movement as the agent of change, paved the way for postmodernist critiques from the late 1980s. However, postmodernist thought constituted an even more dismissive approach towards ‘class’ than new social movement theory. Assailed from both the reactionary and progressive sides of the political spectrum, in the 1980s and 1990s class analysis and class-based activism were marginalised or became beleaguered forms of intellectual inquiry and political engagement.

What is postmodernism? The term ‘postmodernism’ is used in two ways: as a descriptive/periodising category and as a prescriptive/celebratory category. Frederic Jameson (1991, esp. pp. 17, 36, 305, 400) describes postmodernism critically as the ‘cultural dominant’ of multinational ‘late capitalism’, ‘the purest form of capital yet to have emerged’, a commodity culture distinguishable from earlier periods of capitalism by its ‘resonant affirmation . . . of the market’ and its aesthetic populism. However, it was postmodernism as a prescriptive or celebratory category, as in the writings of Jean-François Lyotard (1984) or Jean Baudrillard (1983b), which became the dominant framework of academic debate. Postmodernist thought rejects the modes of thinking associated with the ‘Enlightenment’ of the eighteenth century, which insisted that human social


Social movements and social change 23 and political arrangements could be improved by the application of reason, that progress was both possible and desirable. According to postmodernists, Enlightenment thinking suited the modern period—‘modernity’; it was characterised by industrial technologies, such as steam engines, which lasted from the eighteenth century until the late twentieth century. For postmodernists, the present period—‘postmodernity’—is the period of the new global economy and is characterised by a preponderance of post-industrial technologies, such as computers, and a decline in public ideological debate, which supposedly points to the general global acceptance of liberal democracy and free-market forces (Preston 1998, p. 9). Postmodernist paradigms thereby accepted or acknowledged as an aspect of ‘postmodernity’ the project of neo-liberal globalisation. In such a world, according to postmodern thought, there is no role for the ‘grand narratives of emancipation’, such as socialism and feminism, that were part of the Enlightenment tradition continuing down through modernity. Postmodernist thought argues that such ‘grand narratives’ are guilty of valueladen pretensions to truth and universal applicability. It thus laid down a fundamental challenge to all grand theories that attempted to explain structures of inequality. While postmodernist thought especially disputes the importance of class and the possibility that the working class could act as an agent for social and political transformation (Lyotard 1984, pp. 13, 36–37; Baudrillard 1975, p. 29; Baudrillard 1983a, pp. 82, 85–86; Baudrillard 1993, p. 29), it in fact entails scepticism about all ‘emancipatory projects’ (those aiming to end oppression and attain equality). For Lyotard (1984), the postmodern can be defined precisely in terms of ‘an incredulity towards metanarratives’, whether aesthetic, scientific or political. While the deconstructive scepticism of postmodernist theory opened up many exciting avenues of intellectual inquiry, its ascendancy from the mid-1980s onwards discouraged political engagement on the part of radical intellectuals, because postmodernist thought very elegantly theorised the pointlessness of protest. Indeed, it distinguished itself as an ideological position by its justification of its own existence, in its enumeration—even celebration—of the processes that rendered it popular. Postmodernists likewise discard the idea of ‘totality’, the attempts to understand the whole of society, furnished in different ways by all the grand narratives of emancipation. They did so, according to Terry Eagleton (1996, p. 9), to provide themselves with some much-needed consolation: For in a period when no very far-reaching political action seems really feasible, when so-called micropolitics seems the order of the


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Power, Profit and Protest day, it is relieving to convert this necessity into a virtue—to persuade oneself that one’s political limits have, as it were, a solid ontological grounding, in the fact that social totality is in any case a chimera. It doesn’t matter if there is no political agent on hand to transform the whole, since there is in fact no whole to be transformed. It is as though, having mislaid the breadknife, one declares the loaf to be already sliced.

Given the emerging ‘totality’ of globalisation, the rejection of the notion of totality was one of the many ways in which postmodernism, other important insights notwithstanding, contributed to the inability of radical intellectuals to notice and care about important changes in the world around them. The movement against the ‘whole’ of globalisation has resurrected with determination the concept of totality laid to rest by postmodernist theorising.

The ‘politics of identity’ versus the new social movements Under the influence of postmodernism, new social movement theory and practice lost much of its critical, collectivist, confrontationist and campaigning impetus and became largely submerged in the ‘politics of identity’. As Amory Starr (2000, p. 31) observes: Identity has become a resource, a frame, and a political opportunity. It has reshaped notions of constituency, constrained solidarity, and created a new language of legitimacy. But most importantly, it has reached the status of a paradigm, shaping the way we conceptualize movements and the tools we use to build them. It has been naturalized as a way of understanding how individuals and groups make politics. A closely related influence in the rise of identity politics came from poststructuralist modes of thought, especially Jacques Derrida’s emphasis on ‘difference’. Eli Zaretsky (1994, p. 11; see also Grosz 1994, pp. 31–32) describes poststructuralist ‘identity politics’ as: a politics aimed less at establishing a viable identity for its constituency than at destabilizing identities; a politics that eschews such terms as groups, rights, value and society in favor of such


Social movements and social change 25 terms as places, spaces, alterity and subject positions; a politics that aims to decenter or subvert, rather than to conquer or assert. For Craig Calhoun (1994, p. 25), ‘advocates of identity politics too commonly opt in the same arguments for a “soft relativism,” a rediscovery of the philosophy of will that glorifies choice as such, and an exaggeration of difference’. In Australia, the specific contribution of poststructuralism tended to be subsumed under the much broader influence of postmodernism. Acknowledgment of shared identities was and is important in social movement formation. For movements about gender or sexual identity, for example, collective grievances are inextricably linked with issues of identity—the identity-affirming functions of feminist and gay rights groups are well known (Johnston, Laraña and Gusfield 1994, p. 23). The same could be said of movements emphasising racial or ethnic identities, whether progressive or reactionary. However, the new ‘politics of identity’ viewed this ‘identity-affirming’ process as an end in itself, rather than as one of the necessary means to the end of effective mobilisation. Moreover, emphasis on ‘difference’ conceded the possibility of multiple forms of ‘difference’ within any group of people sharing ‘identity’, creating a myriad of unendingly flexible, fluid and free-floating forms of identity.13 For instance, postmodern thought suggested that individual differences amongst women were so immense that the notion of a feminist emancipatory project was impossible and politically preposterous. (For a discussion of the extent to which ‘postmodern feminism’ argued likewise, see Tong 1989, pp. 217–33.) In relation to new social movement constituencies in general, the boundless pluralism of postmodernism encouraged a proliferation of subject identities. Where the mood of the 1970s could be parodied with expressly political, though absurd, slogans such as ‘Land Rights for Gay Whales’, the jokes of the 1990s were about support groups for mothers of New York Latino lesbians (a self-referential identity-based network making no political demands). In contesting notions of community, collectivity and common interests and needs, identity politics had a white-anting effect on new social movement thought and action. The demobilising and disintegrative aspects of identity politics ensured that the once highly political liberation movements of the 1970s were reconceptualised and reconstituted in ways that rendered them less challenging to the political order. They became the sum of individual parts rather than assertive wholes, and parts concerned primarily with ‘reflexivity’ (the reflexive monitoring of action) and ‘self-identity’ rather than collective protest


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aimed at eliminating oppression and inequality. Attention was focused on what Ulrich Beck called ‘sub-politics’ and Anthony Giddens deemed ‘life politics’.14 As Floya Anthias (1999, p. 61) explains: Post-modernism puts at the centre of analysis a decentred subject with the result that there is no collective actor, be it a class, an ethnic group or a gender . . . The negation of collective action debilitates the possibility of understanding social movements and processes as a more than ad hoc coalition of social forces. Frederic Jameson (1991, p. 349) sees such politics as a feature of the postmodern condition in that it lacks ‘the allegorical capacity to map or model the system’. In The Seeds of Time (1994), he observed that the new social movements increasingly engaged in a ‘ceaseless alternation’ between ‘identity’ and ‘difference’, which attested to a kind of cultural ‘blockage’ that obstructed further development through interaction and suggested a collective incapacity to imagine or effect change (1994, pp. 65–66, 70, discussed in Milner 1999, p. 132). The turn to identity politics undermined the new social movements as coherent political actors. In the Australian context, Boris Frankel (2000, p. 73) charts the decline in effectivity of the new social movements, which had boomed when the personal was discovered to be the political: But that was before the personal was mediated, reworked and redefined by market forces into a hyper-individualism. Selfrealisation movements that were originally anti-authoritarian and critical forces in the 1960s and 1970s have now become the means whereby neo-liberal capitalist regimes increasingly rely upon individuals to ‘govern their selves’ in the name of ‘freedom’. Though weakened by the impact of postmodernism, significant remnants of new social movement activity nonetheless persisted. Josee Johnston and James Goodman (2001, p. 6) observe: As extreme post-modern theorists abandon themselves to relativism, social movements continue their practical struggles to expand rights, explore opportunities, and protect the commons. Meanwhile, much theorizing remains detached from practical struggles.


Social movements and social change 27 The radical kernel of new social movement theory and practice continued to be expressed in the articulation and agitation of feminists, homosexual liberationists, indigenous rights proponents and green theorists, who took serious issue with the implications for emancipatory politics of postmodernism’s fundamental scepticism about such politics. However, the reflections of combative new social movement ideology that lingered in the 1990s were marginalised within academic circles. New social movement theorists and activists who continued to theorise and act in collectivist and politicised ways were dismissed by the new breed of poststructuralist and postmodernist theorists as ‘old-fashioned 1970s-style’ feminists or homosexual liberationists. In an increasingly vicious circle, new social movement activity, and the identification of intellectuals with that activity, went into decline. Nancy Fraser (2000) has noted that struggles for the ‘recognition of difference’, which assumed the guise of ‘identity politics’, seemed charged with emancipatory promise. However, this promise was not realised in the 1990s because the emphasis on identity, or recognition, displaced the earlier emphasis on redistribution of resources that originally informed the agenda of new social movements, such as feminism. The relative decline in claims for egalitarian redistribution is disturbing, because this move from redistribution to recognition in the language of political claims-making is occurring at a time when an aggressively expanding capitalism is radically exacerbating economic inequality. ‘In this context, questions of recognition are serving less to supplement, complicate and enrich redistributive struggles than to marginalize, eclipse and displace them.’ Insofar as the politics of recognition displaces the politics of redistribution, Fraser argues it may actually promote economic inequality (2000, pp. 107–8). At the same time, the politics of recognition discourages respectful interaction within increasingly multicultural contexts and encourages separatism, intolerance and chauvinism, patriarchalism and authoritarianism, which Fraser terms the problem of reification. Thus the results of the politics of recognition tend to be doubly unfortunate: ‘in many cases, struggles for recognition simultaneously displace struggles for economic justice and promote repressive forms of communitarianism’ (2000, pp. 108, 119). In the Australian context, an obvious example of this problem was the ‘backlash’ phenomenon of Pauline Hanson’s One Nation, countering what it claimed was unfair recognition of indigenous identity with an intolerant pleading for the recognition of the identity of its own supporters. One Nation was able to position itself as the champion of ‘the battlers’ because those who


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argued for assistance to indigenous Australians did not sufficiently emphasise a politics of redistribution—insisting that Aborigines, along with others in the same position, warranted aid because of their extreme levels of socioeconomic disadvantage—as opposed to a politics of recognition—claiming special treatment because of their indigeneity. Ultimately, then, recognition of disadvantaged groups can be served badly by emphasis on identity alone, by the displacement of the politics of redistribution by the politics of recognition. For Zygmunt Bauman (1992, pp. 197–98, 200), there are no signs that postmodern politics can alleviate the inequalities and hence the redistributional conflicts proliferating in modern society, because postmodern politics is mostly focused on ‘the reallocation of attention’ rather than ‘the express redistribution of wealth, income and other consumable valuables by society at large’. The politics of recognition can render its socio-economically advantaged proponents vulnerable to criticism. The supersession of class politics by identity politics amongst radical intellectuals enabled conservative intellectuals in Australia to seize the abandoned tools of classed rhetoric to succour the notion of ‘the battler’, epitomised in the figure of Hanson, to argue that ‘the battler’ was hurting because of policies enacted by university-educated ‘politically correct’ elites. As Sean Scalmer (1999, p. 12) observes: ‘Progressive intellectuals, many of them adherents of the importance of discourse and cultural construction, have now become discursively constructed as a new ruling elite.’ Such ‘radical’ intellectuals not only incurred the wrath of the battlers; they also ceded intellectual ground to conservative intellectuals because their ‘politically correct’ responses to issues of identity politics—the politics of recognition—were not accompanied by a politics of redistribution, an ability to critique increasing polarisation and socio-economic inequalities, including their own privileged position.

The strange death of class The politics of recognition, by and large, could not recognise class; its vision was impaired when it came to issues of socio-economic disadvantage. There was thus a notable absence in identity politics: class was the one amongst the multiple forms of identity that went missing. Symptomatic of the politics of identity’s insensitivity to class identity was the policy of the University of Melbourne Undergraduate Studies Committee adopted in 1993. Similar to such policies at most other universities, it declared that curriculum planning ‘should take into account the possibility that gender and ethnicity enter into


Social movements and social change 29 the construction of knowledge’ and it stipulated that all new course proposals include a statement ‘about whether gender, ethncity, sexuality or sexual preference are addressed in the syllabus’. There was no mention of class (see www.arts-admin.unimelb.edu.au/cg...c=look-form&ID=APOL-NEW001& proposal). It conducted this incomplete consciousness-raising exercise on behalf of an undergraduate population which, since the late 1980s, has been more than 50 per cent female, but in which children of working-class parents are woefully under-represented.15 By the late 1980s, intellectuals concerned with class and its injuries were lone voices crying in the academy. Marxists were even more unfashionable than ‘1970s style feminists’. Some theorists attracted to postmodern paradigms were not always dismissive of the significance of class; nonetheless, a decided antagonism towards the notion of class as a salient social division and class conflict as a likely avenue for change constituted what Eagleton (1996, p. viii) identifies as ‘the culture or milieu or even sensibility of postmodernism as a whole’. While the anti-class views attributed to postmodernism in general might well be qualified or even rejected in the work of a particular theorist, ‘they constitute even so a kind of received wisdom’. The fate of sociology illustrates the extent of postmodern dominance. Sociology is the discipline traditionally most insistent upon the significance of class. As ‘an adjunct of modernity’ (Baumann 1992, p. 54), its popularity and status in academia suffered in the 1990s, eclipsed by areas of scholarship such as cultural studies, which were more clearly under the influence of postmodernist paradigms (Milner 1999, p. 145). There were obvious temptations for academic sociologists to bail out of the ship of class. Anthony Giddens (1994, p. 143), the Anglophone world’s most prominent sociologist, was clearly prone to changing academic fashions when he proclaimed in 1994 that class was a less significant marker of social differentiation than ‘lifestyle and taste’. The retreat from class rendered the leading figures in sociology unlikely critics of free-market globalisation and the increasing penetration of the market. Boris Frankel (1997, pp. 57–92; 2001, pp. 20–24) has detailed the way in which many of the world’s most prominent sociologists have encouraged rather than criticised the neo-liberal direction taken by labour and social democratic parties and governments. Giddens, as John Hinkson (1999, pp. 114, 119, 122) has observed, makes no contribution to a reflexive understanding of the key practices of the emergence of globalisation: ‘He stands with many others here.’ In Giddens’ view, the market is not an institution to be culturally dominated. Instead: ‘It is a positive institution at


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the heart of global interchange.’ His work is fatally flawed by his incapacity to identify any realm of contradiction. Notwithstanding the postmodern questioning of sociology’s irreparably ‘modern’ concern with class, some sociologists continued to boldly go where no postmodern academic would go: to provide valuable analytical information about the facts of increasing class inequality. Predictably, these works did not receive the attention and acclaim their authors typically enjoyed in the 1970s. For example, in Britain in 1995, John Westergaard (1995, pp. 113–14, 161–62) revisited his renowned 1975 research and found that the British class structure had hardened even further in the interim, and was even more significant in determination of life chances. He regretted that ‘class has . . . been re-declared dead . . . at a time . . . when its economic configuration has become even sharper’. In Australia, a similar lack of interest was shown when Lois Bryson and Ian Winter (1999) published Social Change, Suburban Lives, a revisiting of An Australian Newtown (Bryson and Thompson 1972), an influential community/class study of the 1970s. Other sociologists, such as Erik Olin Wright, took issue with the postmodern notion that contemporary empirical working-class belief can effectively be discounted, pointing out that the available sociological evidence clearly shows class position to be a primary determinant of cultural and political behaviour, attitudes and lifestyle. A related study in Australia found that occupation was the single most important source of social identity, more important than nationality, gender, religion or ethnicity, and it found strong empirical correlations between class location and certain political attitudes, such as towards trade unionism and private enterprise. Interestingly, 100 per cent of the capitalists in the survey thought of themselves as belonging to a social class (Emmison and Western 1991, pp. 264, 290, 335–36). However, postmodernist thought patterns prompted myopia towards significant developments in society at large. The most remarkable aspect of the decline of class analysis was that it occurred at a moment in history when socio-economic inequalities were widening, in Australia as elsewhere. As transnational corporations embarked upon an especially aggressive campaign to increase profits and decrease workers’ wages and working conditions across the globe, academics were busily debating the death of class. Thus intellectual trends in the 1990s became more and more out of step with developments in the real world, where the injuries of class and the consolidation of class divisions were becoming increasingly apparent. Although postmodernists liked to point to declining levels of class


Social movements and social change 31 consciousness to justify their denial of class, the postmodern ascendancy in intellectual circles exacerbated rather than diminished the growing gap between the objective importance of class and people’s awareness of class. The chasm between reality and perception has only recently started to close, as revealed in the rise of anti-corporate politics discussed later in this book.

The postmodern ethic and the spirit of capitalism Terry Eagleton (1996, p. vii) suggests of postmodernism: This way of seeing, so some would claim, has material conditions: it springs from an historic shift in the West to a new form of capitalism—to the ephemeral, decentralized world of technology, consumerism and the culture industry, in which the service, finance and information industries triumph over traditional manufacture, and class politics yield ground to a diffuse range of ‘identity politics’. Taking his lead from Karl Marx’s Grundrisse, Murray Kane (1998, pp. 220–23) argues that it is indeed capitalism that has created the polymorphous identities and hybrid phenomena of the current period, in which individualities, idiosyncrasies and modes of taking pleasure are developing in all directions; it is for this reason that we live in a period in which hybridity of forms, pluralism, cultural relativism and the continuous subjective transgression of fixed standards are being hailed, or lamented, as signifying a radically new and final phase of world history. The new sub-cultures of difference may have been initiated by radical new social movements, but they were sustained to a large extent by the rampant commodification of the globalising economy. For example, Michael Connors (1994/95, p. 10) mentions improvements in gay men’s lives ‘that reflected changes in the nature of the global economy, one aspect of which was the turn to sub-groups for establishing niche markets’. For the more socio-economically advantaged amongst the new social movements, individualist and consumerist solutions to discrimination have proven attractive and much more readily attainable than the kind of structural changes which might eliminate, or ameliorate, the inequalities suffered by the majority of those supposedly represented by these movements. With the marketplace providing most of the needs of the better-off ‘vanguard’ of the new social


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movements—such as reasonable salaries for the best educated women and sub-cultural leisure pursuits for the most affluent homosexuals—new social movement politics became reshaped and identity politics was nourished in this environment. Capital, and especially postmodern globalising capital, readily co-opts difference, as Andrew Milner and I (Burgmann and Milner 1996) have argued. It co-opts difference by offering market-based solutions to discrimination and highly favourable employment terms to a tiny proportion of women and people of colour in the name of recognition of difference. It also readily exploits difference in the way it has always taken particular advantage of women and people of colour within the working class. Women have long endured worse pay and conditions than male employees, but after gains in the 1970s and 1980s, Australian women in lower occupational groupings experienced declining employment conditions during the 1990s under the impact of globalisation (see ‘Equal opportunity in employment’ section in chapter 3). Around the world, migrant workers rendered vulnerable by official and unofficial racism are super-exploited by employers. Globalisation ensures capital unprecedented freedom to globetrot at the whim of profitability while migrating workers are obstructed and vilified (Burgmann 2001b; McNally 2002, pp. 137–38). Capital’s newfound capacity also to co-opt difference does not suggest a realm of contradiction, for it is class position that most commonly determines whether difference will be co-opted or super-exploited. Either way—via co-option or super-exploitation—class relations are reinforced. Hardt and Negri (2001, pp. 138, 142) argue that the postmodernist theorists who advocate ‘a politics of difference, fluidity and hybridity’ have been outflanked by the strategies of power, because the new enemy ‘not only is resistant to the old weapons but actually thrives on them, and thus joins its would-be antagonists in applying them to the fullest. Long Live Difference!’ Despite the best intentions, then, ‘the postmodern politics of difference not only is ineffective against but even can coincide with and support the functions and practices of imperial rule’ of contemporary globalising capitalism. Postmodern identity politics became more an effect of than an alternative to postmodern late capitalism. While more radical new social movement activists and thinkers continued to struggle, and remained committed to the goals of their respective movements, the new social movements were clearly splintering and weakening, a process of fracturing driven, in large part, by material forces. The aims of the less radical wing of the new social movements and the interests they represented, expressed in class-free identity politics, were


Social movements and social change 33 not necessarily opposed to the imperatives of global capitalism. For Carol Johnson (1996, pp. 194, 198), one of the reasons that the new social movements appear to have had so much more success than left-wing movements recently is precisely because they have achieved noticeable changes—within a predominantly hegemonic pro-capitalist agenda: ‘Capitalism can offer people an equal identity as individual consumers, workers or business-people.’ In its insensitivity to class identity, the rise of postmodern identity politics had adverse repercussions not only for the labour movement and workingclass people generally, but for the more disadvantaged amongst the identity groups commonly championed. Cecelia Lynch (1998, p. 149) maintains that the ability of social movements to articulate a challenge to globalisation was retarded by the retreat from class analysis: ‘past rejection of issues and politics deemed too class-based’ resulted in an inability to identify and analyse the socio-economic problems created by globalisation. Postmodern theory, as ‘the cultural dominant of late capitalism’, also weakened intellectual resistance to globalising neo-liberal capitalism. In Specters of Marx (1994), Jacques Derrida noted that the dominance of the neo-liberal discourse was evident not merely in the political culture and the mass media culture, but also in the scholarly or academic culture, in the marked retreat from Marxism and class analysis. Postmodernist intellectuals did not merely prove themselves incapable of critiquing the new global world order and confronting its ideological celebrants; Derrida (1994, pp. 52–54, 62) also draws connections between the crowing of Francis Fukuyama’s ‘End of History’ thesis and the dominant neo-liberal discourse on the one hand, and the postmodern certainties of the academy on the other: The gospel of political-economic liberalism needs the event of the good news that consists in what has putatively actually happened (. . . the supposed death of Marxism and the supposed realization of the State of liberal democracy) . . . however . . . actual history and so many other realities that have an empirical appearance contradict this advent of the perfect liberal democracy . . . Australian critic Guy Rundle (1997, pp. 43–44) observed that, while most artists, writers and humanities academics can be assumed to have a left-liberal disposition, this is displayed more in their lives as general citizens than as particular commentators. In their work, little attempt is made to confront the depredations of economic globalisation: ‘The lack of an ongoing attempt to theorise the whole of globalisation (or the whole of


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postmodernism) has been particularly unfortunate given the absence of any other significant centre from which an alternative picture of life could spring.’ Boris Frankel (2000, p. 72) notes that an ‘anti-radical postmodern culturalism’ swept campuses in the 1990s, at the same time as the Hawke, Keating, Kennett and Howard governments were corporatising, privatising and slashing the federal, state and local public sector, thus further reducing the social base of resistance that had formerly sustained left-of-centre political movements. Precisely because the labour movement had declined as a social movement, criticism of postmodern capitalism was all the more necessary and urgent; instead, celebration of the postmodern condition ensured that radical intellectuals contributed further to the lack of criticism they identified as a characteristic of the period. With postmodern convictions paralysing the critical faculties of many academics when confronted by the seductions of globalisation, most of the past decade’s plethora of critical anti-corporate literature has been produced largely outside of the academy. According to David Graeber (1998, p. 61): ‘It’s hard to think of another time when there has been such a gulf between intellectuals and activists.’ Transnational social movements have provided their own ‘organic intellectuals’, who have been called ‘paradigm warriors’. For example, the International Forum on Globalization (IFG), founded in 1994, consists of international experts on globalisation, who produce educational materials and organise teach-ins about global financial integration to advance public debate about globalisation. In the absence of much academic work, social movement activists in the IFG, according to Cecelia Lynch (1998, pp. 155–57), are attempting to delegitimise the current order by emphasising the loss of control over economies and social welfare on the part of governments, peoples and communities. The ‘organic intellectuals’ of the anti-corporate movement are largely unaided by ‘traditional intellectuals’. The popularity of postmodernist paradigms amongst academics at a time when the art of class war was being raised to a new level—when the world was being fundamentally reshaped in the interests of multinational corporations and to the detriment of employees across the globe—enabled those directing this class war to win easy victories. For Terry Eagleton (1996, pp. 134–35): Postmodern end-of-history thinking does not envisage a future for us much different from the present, a prospect it oddly views as a cause for celebration . . . In confronting its political antagonists, the left, now more than ever, has need of strong ethical and anthropological

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Social movements and social change 35 foundations; nothing short of this is likely to furnish us with the political resources we require. And on this score, postmodernism is in the end part of the problem rather than of the solution. The popularity of postmodernist thought impaired the capacity of organisations and movements within civil society to challenge the imperatives of the marketplace. With media outlets increasingly favouring marketisation (McKnight 2001), extra effort—not less—was needed for academics to place critical arguments in the public sphere. Many, but too few, tried, resulting in apparent acquiescence. John Hinkson (2000, p. 9) explains this ‘booming silence from the universities’ in terms of the ‘drawing of higher education into the economy’. In relation to environmental issues, Drew Hutton and Libby Connors (1999, p. 259) argue that the increased emphasis in universities on obtaining consultancies and research funds has made it difficult to find dissenting intellectuals willing to put their expertise to work for the movement. Practical pressures such as these—in addition to the increased workloads and the stressful bureaucratic demands of the ‘enterprise’ university—have operated hand in hand with postmodern intellectual responses to distance university staff from radical politics. The opposition of academics to neo-liberalism has thus been weak, incapable of confronting its arguments and manifest hypocrisies and offering alternative solutions to evident problems.

Social movements and the problem of globalisation Until recently, it was generally assumed that the success or otherwise of a social movement could be measured by the extent to which the state acknowledged the demands of the movement. However, in the past few years, much evidence has accumulated about the ways in which the choices of governments are now restricted, in qualitatively greater ways, by the forces known as ‘globalisation’. Nation-states are pressured by the dictates, stated or unstated, of the largest transnational corporations. According to Hans-Peter Martin and Harald Schumann (1996), authors of The Global Trap: Globalization and the Assault on Democracy and Prosperity, ‘no single nation is capable of resisting the pressure’ (1996, p. 7). One might add to this: no single nation except the United States, which regularly ignores WTO rulings. Otherwise, transnational agencies such as the WTO, WEF, IMF and World Bank increasingly lay down the rules for governments to follow.


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Moreover, the threat of ‘capital flight’—the relocation of businesses to parts of the globe with the lowest labour costs and taxation regimes most favourable to profitability—acts constantly as a deterrent to governments that might otherwise seek to legislate for a slightly more equitable and socially just society, in response to social movement action and in the interests of systemic stability at least. In the Australian context, it is not just the federal government which competes with other nation-states to offer bribes and tax cuts to business; the state governments even compete with each other, creating a situation of ‘competitive austerity’, as Frank Stilwell (2000, p. 244) observes, because the ‘bidding wars’ between states generate pressure to abandon more socially oriented expenditure programs: ‘Resources are shifted from social services to projects tailored to appeal to mobile capital.’ Capitalism has long insisted on the right of capitalists alone to make decisions about the deployment of the productive resources they own and about the allocation of the product derived from the employment of these resources, despite the fact that these decisions clearly affect the public. Andrew Levine (1988, p. 133) argues that, under capitalism, questions of this sort are ‘privatised’; thus many public questions never come before the public and can never, even in principle, become objects of democratic collective choice: ‘In this way, capitalism restricts the scope of democratic choice.’ With globalisation, the processes whereby such important decisions are made have been removed even further from those affected by those decisions. For John Wiseman (1997, p. 73), globalisation has deeply disturbing consequences in relation to the sovereignty of national democratic decision-making processes. The dramatic challenges to nation-state sovereignty wrought by globalisation have overturned concepts popular in mainstream political science in the 1980s. In 1984, Theda Skocpol (1984, pp. 30–32) argued that states were potentially autonomous, that the use of state power to support dominant class interests was not inevitable. She asserted ‘the explanatory centrality of states as potent and autonomous organizational actors’ and insisted that states ‘may formulate and pursue goals that are not simply reflective of the demands or interests of social groups, classes, or society’. Skocpol’s acclaimed attempt (1984, pp. 4, 6, 7, 9) to ‘bring the state back in’—as part of a paradigmatic shift involving a fundamental rethinking of the role of states in relation to economics and societies—seems to have been very much overtaken by events. By 1996, Susan Strange’s (1996) detailed study of the diffusion of power in the world economy articulated an emerging consensus when she maintained that ‘the domain of state authority in society and economy is shrinking’ and that ‘what were once domains of authority


Social movements and social change 37 exclusive to state authority are now being shared with other loci or sources of authority’ (1996, pp. 4, 84). Outside mainstream political science, in 2000 autonomist Marxist theorists Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri (2000, pp. 43, 307–9; Hutnyk 2001, pp. 1–3) depicted globalisation as ‘Empire’, because globalisation is a system in which ‘nearly all of humanity is to some degree absorbed within or subordinated to the networks of capitalist exploitation’. In the earlier period of modern imperialism, nation-states were the primary actors; the new Empire is characterised by the autonomy of transnational corporations in relation to the nation-state, whose administrative functions are displaced on to newly formed international bodies (see Hardt and Negri, 2001 for an account of the decline of nation-state sovereignty): The declining sovereignty of nation-states and their increasing inability to regulate economic and cultural exchanges is in fact one of the primary symptoms of the coming of Empire . . . It is a decentered and deterritoralizing apparatus of rule that progressively incorporates the entire global realm within its open, expanding frontiers. Empire manages hybrid identities, flexible hierarchies, and plural exchanges through modulating networks of command . . . The transformation of the modern imperialist geography of the globe and the realization of the world market signal a passage within the capitalist mode of production (Hardt and Negri 2000, pp. xii–xiii). The decline in sovereignty of nation-states does not mean that sovereignty itself has declined. Sovereignty has taken a new form, composed of a series of national and supranational organisms united under a single logic of rule: ‘This new global form of sovereignty we call Empire.’ This process entails ‘the closing of the institutional channels through which workers and citizens can influence or contest the cold logic of capitalist profit’ (Hardt and Negri 2000, pp. xi–xii). By contrast, Hirst and Thompson (1996) argue that the extent of globalisation is exaggerated and that, rather, the notion of globalisation is deployed to excuse the inactivity and loss of imagination of political agents: ‘One can only call the political impact of “globalization” the pathology of over-diminished expectations.’ Taking a different tack, in arguing that ‘globalization tendencies have been exaggerated’, Linda Weiss’s The Myth of the Powerless State (1998, pp. 204, 212) insists that ‘states may at times be


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facilitators (even perhaps perpetrators) rather than mere victims of so-called “globalization”’. She sees ‘robust domestic linkages between government and industry’ as evidence of states having ‘strong transformative capability’. In a Marxist version of the Weiss position, Ellen Meiksins Wood (1998, p. 12) points out that, despite the neo-liberal rhetoric of freedom from state intervention, capital relies more and more on the state to create the right conditions for accumulation. In the global market, capital needs the state to maintain the conditions of accumulation and competitiveness in various ways, including direct subsidies and rescue operations at taxpayers’ expense, to preserve labour discipline and social order in the face of austerity and flexibility, and to enhance the mobility of capital while blocking the mobility of labour. Far from losing its function in the economy, the nation-state has acquired new functions as an instrument of competition: ‘If anything, the nation-state is the main agent of globalization.’ Frank Stilwell (2000) likewise disputes the declining nation-state thesis and shows how the policies enacted by the state in Australia have been crucial in establishing the conditions for competitive advantage for Australian corporations in the global economy. In summary, the debate is between those who argue that nation-states are actually unable to contest the power of globalising capital (e.g. Martin and Schumann; Hardt and Negri), those who insist governments are simply too inactive and unimaginative to make the attempt and use the convenient excuse of globalisation (Hirst and Thompson), and those who maintain that governments positively choose to deploy state power to facilitate globalisation (Weiss; Meiksins Wood; Stilwell). Yet these positions do not necessarily contradict each other. It is possible that governments are increasingly unable to contest the power of globalising capital; that they invoke the mantra of a remorseless globalising process to justify their positions; and that, to varying degrees, they also actively encourage and sponsor the globalising process. As R.W. Cox (1994) has observed, domestic economies have become subordinated to perceived exigencies of the global economy and nation-states mystify their new external accountability to a nebula personified as the global economy through the new vocabulary of globalisation. Josee Johnston and James Goodman (2001, p. 7) argue that neo-liberal ideology has made corporate globalisation seem inevitable: ‘To resist it is to resist reality.’ Any attempt to manipulate such powerful forces is futile and dangerous. The only option—to accept and adapt to the new reality—is neatly summarized by the acronym ‘TINA’ (There Is No Alternative). ‘The TINA scenario is of course ideological, and obscures the interests it serves.’


Social movements and social change 39 Globalisation, presented as a natural, inevitable and inexorable process that cannot be denied, has allowed transnational capitalism to bend nation-states to its will, to press its interests and present its demands as a necessary corollary of this natural process. Yet the process is far from natural and requires immense effort on the part of nation-states and transnational institutions. To this extent, it is more accurate to talk not of ‘the powerless state’, but of ‘the supine state’. Nation-states are complicit in the processes associated with globalisation—and even provide the resources to protect transnational institutions from anti-corporate protesters—despite the fact that these same processes threaten the role of nation-states. Since the early 1980s, the Australian state—like most nation-states—has been generally acquiescent with the corporate model of globalisation. According to Tom Conley’s study of Australian government responses (2001, p. 224), a fundamental but neglected aspect of the effect of globalisation has been the way that it shapes perceptions of economic policy possibilities and is used to explain and justify difficult policy decisions: ‘Globalisation is more than an empirically measurable, exogenous variable to which domestic politics must react; it is also an increasingly dominant construction—an ideology—that provides support for policy change.’ Typical of the messages constantly purveyed in the Australian media is Terry McCrann’s article headed ‘Go Global or Get Ready to Go Down the Gurgler’ (2001), in which he argues that: ‘The surest path to becoming a victim of “globalisation” is to try to resist it.’ According to federal Treasurer Peter Costello (2001): ‘Ranting against globalisation is like ranting against the telephone.’ As he geared himself up to launch ‘a campaign on the benefits of globalisation’, he insisted that globalisation ‘describes what is happening’ (Weekend Australian 21–22 July 2001, p. 4). If the operations of the free market are inevitable, why, asks Mark Davis (2001, pp. 12–13), do they need so many foot-soldiers? Why do they need the armies of compliant journalists; the proselytising politicians; the ever-increasing round of annual conferences; the endless lobbying and funding of free-market think-tanks and research institutes by corporations? The potential significance of the anti-corporate movement then becomes apparent. Only those forces that contest the power of globalising capital have the kind of autonomy that Skocpol assigned to states; only they are not subject to the will of the few and capable therefore of expressing the will of the many. Certainly, this is part of the self-image of anti-corporate politics. As one of the S11 leaflets puts it (S11 Alliance 2000a, p. 2): ‘S11 is an opportunity for all of us to demand global justice, to join with everyone in protesting the system,


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not just the symptoms, of globalisation.’ Another (Public First, 2000) explains that opposition to the Asian Pacific Regional Summit of the WEF in Melbourne takes the form of a loose alliance of organisations and individuals concerned about the ‘anti-people process of globalisation’ which is enmeshing Australia: ‘We do not accept that it is inevitable. We can make decisions about our future and carry them out.’ Contesting the notion that globalisation in its neo-liberal form is inevitable is a significant aspect of the emergent anti-corporate movement. It is not simply a retort to corporate globalisation but also a response to the perceived ineffectualness of nation-states to represent the interests of their citizens against the interests of the major corporations. In an age of bipartisan neo-liberal consensus amongst parties capable of forming government, are social movements the only possible expression of political opposition to the corporate nature of globalisation? The globalisation theorists may be right about the limits of government action, but do the same rules and restrictions apply to social movement action? Yes and no. Social movements are themselves transformed in subtle ways by the same pressures of globalisation that act upon governments and alternative governments. This is as true of the social movements deemed ‘new’—such as the indigenous rights, women’s, homosexual liberation, peace and green movements—as of those typecast as ‘old’—the various expressions of the labour movement. Social movements might not be beholden to multinational corporations in the manner of present-day governments, but they are operating within a world order that is being remoulded to suit these corporations. It is necessary, in studying Australian social movements in the present era, to assess the degree to which this new world order has reshaped these oppositional movements. Social movements are susceptible to the pressures of globalisation in various ways. Firstly, globalisation has enlarged the space for identity politics. As noted above, the world market and the increasing commodification of everyday life offer ever more opportunities for escape from subordination to certain fractions of oppressed groups, but within the limits—those of class relations—imposed by multinational capitalism. Secondly, if governments are subject to the will of the globalisers, or too eager to please them, then social movements are, to some extent, affected by the decreased room for manoeuvre of the nation-state. Although the new social movements have not formed themselves as conventional parties aiming for state power, their principal demands—such as land rights, equal pay and affirmative action legislation, homosexual law reform, demilitarisation


Social movements and social change 41 and protection of the environment—have been made to the state. Indeed, it is to a large extent in the framing of demands upon the state that the disaffected have constituted themselves as social movements. However, in a globalising economy, federal and state governments of whatever political persuasion are considerably less likely than they were in the 1970s to consider policies that might threaten the interests of private enterprise and redistribute resources from rich to poor. As the state has become less responsive to demands from below, or responsive only to demands formulated in certain ways, the demands have been reformulated. That is the negative impact on social movement activity of the decline in power of the nation-state. However, there is a third consequence of globalisation that has the potential to reinvigorate social movement action: the increasing tendency on the part of radical social movements, and especially the anti-corporate movement, to bypass the nation-state as the focus of demands and to engage in spectacular forms of protest activity aimed at the decision-making institutions of transnational capitalism. Ironically, this tendency to bypass the state even as a site of protest contributes further to the perceived decline in the role of the state. That the realities of globalisation have altered the target of many social movements has obvious implications for social movement research. Dieter Rucht (1999, p. 215) has referred to this process, by which social movements increasingly transcend the boundaries of nation-states and confront problems that also explode these boundaries, as the ‘transnationalization’ of social movements. This process has been likened by Jackie Smith (2001) to the earlier transition in social movement repertoires identified by Charles Tilly (1984, p. 9) that occurred with the rise of nineteenth-century national politics: the distinctive contribution of the nation-state was to shift the political advantage to contenders who could mount a challenge on a very large scale and intervene seriously in national politics. By the same token, by the late twentieth century, the growth of international institutions has imparted political advantages to contenders who can intervene in transnational political processes. ‘The Battle of Seattle’, according to Smith (2001, p. 17), ‘is one of the most significant recent episodes of collective action, and it points to a future of social movements that is increasingly global in both target and in form and that is in more direct confrontation with global institutions than its historical predecessors.’ The implications of globalisation for governments are obviously profound. For social movements, as for governments, globalisation is recreating social movements in its own image. Della Porta and Kriesi (1999,


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p. 4) note that globalisation has changed the extent of mobilisation of social movements in a manner analogous to its impact on other forms of communication and interaction. This new development—the framing of demands upon transnational agencies rather than on nation-states—confounds much earlier social movement analysis. While engaging in comparative studies of social movement action, pre-existing social movement paradigms could not envisage a truly international and internationalist protest movement such as the anti-corporate movement. Moreover, the real target of this movement is the entire system of globalising neo-liberal capitalism and not simply its most obvious and easily identified agencies, such as the WTO and the IMF. However, it is early days for the movement against corporate globalisation; social movements, as history reveals, often require decades of patient mobilisation and organisation. The truly remarkable achievement to date is the capacity of this new international anti-corporate movement to subsume an increasing number of localised and particular struggles within its orbit, or at least to render them intelligible and connected. This development not only has important implications for the adaptation of social movement analysis to this new transnational social movement, but it also affects our understanding of earlier, nationally bound social movement formations. This new anti-corporate movement enables a common thread to be discerned in seemingly disconnected and disparate movements—for example, the struggle of indigenous Australians to contest the depredations of transnational mining companies; the efforts of feminists to confront the trafficking of women for sexual exploitation; the demands of gay rights groups to oppose the high prices charged by drug companies to control AIDS; the struggle of environmentalists to counter the power of transnational corporations in the global debate about greenhouse gas emissions; or the campaign of a community to resist the disappearance of services such as schools and banks. So many of the discontents of the present period can be laid at the door of neo-liberal globalising capitalism; therefore the world is witnessing the emergence of a new form of resistance—a single-issue protest movement where the issue is as large as the planet itself but fought on many different locations under many different banners.

The aims of this study It is tempting to write the recent history of social movements, new and old, in the light of the recent anti-corporate movement; to attempt to ascertain the


Social movements and social change 43 extent to which these pre-existing movements anticipated or required this movement to fulfil or at least express more fully their aims and objectives. This temptation cannot completely be resisted, and constitutes one aspect of the analysis. However, as Castells (1997, pp. 69–70) insists, ‘social movements must be understood in their own terms’. It would be inappropriate to enter a judgment on the political meaning and impact of a social movement based entirely on knowledge of subsequent historical developments. This study therefore seeks to measure the extent to which social movements, within their own periods of ascendancy, have or have not brought about the political changes they seek. However, it also aims to explore the extent to which the class forces now clearly identified and contested by the anti-corporate movement have determined, and are still determining, the scope and nature of the political changes achieved by these movements for change. The movements presented in this volume—the Aboriginal movement, the women’s movement, the green movement and the anti-corporate globalisation movement—all aim for progressive social change, that is, change towards greater equality between people and the challenging of those who abuse power. There are frequent mentions of reactionary political forces such as the New Right and the economic rationalism or neo-liberalism it propounded, and of conservative formations such as Pauline Hanson’s One Nation, but regressive social movements such as these are not the subject of this study. The progressive movements chosen are all important and groundbreaking in their own right. And, in the context of globalisation and its discontents, they are all key sites for contesting erosion of the realms of common provision and the commodification of resources and rights. The anti-corporate globalisation movement also directly confronts the corporate takeover of politics itself, as that chapter will argue.16 Moreover, this newest of progressive social movements sharply highlights the connections between corporate capitalism, racism, patriarchy and environmental degradation— and suggests new ways in which those concerned about these destructive forces might protest.


2 The Aborigina movementl

Before the arrival of European settlers in 1788, Aboriginal Australians occupied the whole of the continent under a system of land ownership with clear rules for rights of occupancy, use and inheritance. Because there were no animals such as cattle, sheep, pigs and goats on the continent, it was not appropriate to abandon hunting and gathering and develop settled agricultural communities; the ‘neolithic revolution’ was neither possible nor desirable. However, in their traditional nomadic societies, Aborigines ate better than the vast majority of Europeans in 1788, and normally had only to work three or four hours each day to maintain this standard (Coombs 1979, p. 1; Blainey 1975, pp. 162–63, 226). The European occupation of this continent, which has almost wholly destroyed the Aboriginal system of land ownership and traditional way of living, was achieved by a long series of acts of aggression (see Reynolds 2001). According to Justices Deane and Gaudron in the Mabo judgment of 1992:


The Aboriginal movement 45 The acts and events by which that dispossession . . . was carried into practical effect constitute the darkest aspect of the history of this nation. The nation as a whole must remain diminished unless and until there is an acknowledgement of, and retreat from, those past injustices (quoted in the Age, 3 June 1993, p. 16).

In denial: white society and indigenous Australians Robert Manne (2001) has observed that large sections of Australian society are ‘in denial’ regarding the facts of dispossession, the resulting extent of indigenous disadvantage and the role of settler Australians in causing and perpetuating this disadvantage. In particular, Manne has drawn explicit comparisons between ‘holocaust denial’ and the refusal on the part of a rightwing political and intellectual establishment to concede the extent to which Aboriginal children were forcibly removed from their families during much of the twentieth century (2001, esp. p. 105). A process of ‘racialisation’ in Australian society since 1788 has resulted in the contining oppression of Aborigines and reluctance on the part of white Australians to acknowledge that oppression. In December 2000, the Final Report of the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation noted: ‘Despite major advances, Aboriginal people and Torres Strait Islanders often still face prejudice when trying to rent a home, find a job, hire a taxi, get service in shops and banks, and when doing the simple everyday things that most Australians take for granted.’ This report also expressed concern that, despite overwhelming evidence that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples are the most disadvantaged Australians, almost half of Australian people believe that they are not disadvantaged (see Reconciliation Australia website, www.austlii.edu.au/au/orgs/car/). Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party expressed such views in extreme form. In her maiden speech in September 1996 Hanson claimed indigenous Australians were privileged recipients of special benefits. In the previous financial year, the federal government had spent $6.2 billion to run the Department of Veterans’ Affairs, to assist the survivors of wars at home and abroad; in the same year it spent $1.5 billion on Aboriginal programs, to assist the indigenous survivors of invasion, frontier war and occupation. Moreover, the indigenous affairs programs funded by such money were substitutes for those given to the rest of the community—for example, in the


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areas of health, water, roads and other infrastructure that state and local governments leave to the specialised federal indigenous bodies (Age, 27 June 1998, p. 14). On 2 June 1998, Hanson again complained in parliament: ‘Identifying as an Aboriginal has definite financial advantages, as Aboriginality allows them to claim a share of the booty of the native title scam as well as various other publicly funded perks not available to other Australians.’ Yet statistics show that the ‘booty’ of Aboriginality includes: an infant mortality rate twice the national average and a life-span 20 years shorter than other Australians; appalling health problems; an unemployment rate three times the national average; a retention rate to Year 12 of 36 per cent, about half that of the population as a whole; and the high probability of living in a community where clean water, adequate housing and sewerage are unavailable, because local councils have long persisted in deliberately zoning Aboriginal areas of towns as beyond the responsibility of the council (ABS 2001; Wright 1998, p. 15).

The state and indigenous Australians Jan Pettman (1988) argues that throughout post-settlement history, Aborigines were constructed as ‘the Other’ in ideologies of race and nation and, as part of the process of developing policy for their management: ‘Aboriginal people were denied agency, for they were not seen as purposive or creative actors in their own right’ (1988, pp. 2–3). Over more than two centuries, white Australians therefore found various ways of dealing with what they defined as the ‘Aboriginal problem’: the ‘killing method’ of the days of pastoral expansion; ‘segregation’ on reserves from the late 1800s until the 1940s; ‘assimilation’ from the 1940s to the late 1960s, fading into ‘integration’ in the 1970s; then ‘selfdetermination’ from the 1980s, until the Howard government undermined even this semblance of Aboriginal control of Aboriginal affairs. At every stage, white Australians have made the decisions that have affected the lives of Aboriginal people. Not only were Aborigines dispossessed of the rights they once enjoyed in their traditional societies, but until two to three decades ago indigenous Australians were not permitted to live and work where they chose, to marry whomever they wished, to retain custody of their children, to receive equal pay for equal work, to receive welfare benefits, to consume alcohol, to receive education, to vote or to control personal property. As the Aborigines Progressive Association stated in 1965, the ‘pitiful condition’ of Aboriginal people was the result of the


The Aboriginal movement 47 short-sighted, inflexible, unenlightened and bureaucratic policies of the Aborigines’ Protection Board and the pathetic ‘head-in-the-hole’ attitude of the general community (Churinga, Feb–Mar, p. 3). It was not until the 1970s that the policy of forcible removal of indigenous children was abandoned. Barriers to other forms of equal civil rights were only dismantled between the 1960s and the early 1980s. In 1979, the Aboriginal Treaty Committee listed the following reasons why Aborigines and Islanders remained disadvantaged: their affairs are controlled by white-imposed structures and laws; their requests for real selfdetermination are not being heard; their lives are complicated by different and often conflicting policies at state and federal levels; their well-being is dependent on the good will of the government of the day; and their interests do not always prosper under government programs because a significant proportion of funding is used to maintain the bureaucracy and projects are often inappropriate and introduced without consultation with the people concerned (Aboriginal Treaty Committee 1980). According to H.C. Coombs, about three-quarters of the federal government money allocated to Aboriginal Affairs went into ‘white pockets’ (cited in Foley 1988, pp. 206–7). Colin Tatz (1979, p. 1) argued at this time that the way money was spent on Aboriginal Affairs was symptomatic of the major problem in Australian race relations: White society unilaterally defines the problems, prescribes the policy dicta, enacts the laws, creates the administrative machinery and determines the nature, content, personnel and flavour of remedial programs. The whole setup was premised on the racist assumption that whites know best. The solutions favoured are typically welfare-oriented, tending simultaneously to increase both Aboriginal dependence and white control (Pettman 1988, p. 7). From the Aboriginal side, Robbie Thorpe (1989, p. 2) inquires: How can we talk about self-determination when we are caught up in welfare . . . While the government spends money on welfare for our people, and sets up its governing bodies, it is dictating the terms of our existence. In 1989, the Hawke government announced its plans for Aboriginal ‘selfdetermination’: the winding up of the Department of Aboriginal Affairs and


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the Aboriginal Development Corporation and their replacement with a statutory authority, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC), comprising 20 members, seventeen elected by 1200 councillors from 60 regional councils around the country and three, including the chairperson, appointed by the government. ATSIC has the power to formulate and implement policies for all Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders; the regional councils set priorities for their own people in their own regions. But the Commission is responsible to the Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, who retains power of veto over ATSIC operations. Hawke described ATSIC as advancing both the great principles of self-management and ministerial accountability, as though no conflict necessarily existed between the two principles (see articles in the Age, 2 December 1989, p. 3; 4 December 1989, p. 11; Weekend Australian, 2–3 September 1989, p. 5; 20–21 January 1990, p. 23). Some Aboriginal communities were enthusiastic about the proposals, because they were inclined to the view that any degree of self-management would be an improvement on the white person’s bureaucracy embodied in the old Department. Pat Dodson, Director of the Central Land Council, believed it was ‘a mechanism that goes some way down the path of selfdetermination’ (Land Rights News, March 1989, p. 4; Weekend Australian, 2–3 September 1989, p. 5). Lowitja O’Donoghue, the first chairperson of ATSIC, was confident that ‘in the future the policy decisions will be made by Aboriginal people’ (Age, 16 December 1989). Other communities were concerned about the proposal. In September 1990, the Northern Land Council seriously considered boycotting the ATSIC elections, fearing ATSIC would compromise Aboriginal people’s sovereign rights by threatening the power of the land councils. As it turned out, voting for this first election was low, with only about one-third of indigenous Australians voting. There was considerable suspicion about the ministerial power of veto (Land Rights News, March 1989, p. 4; Weekend Australian, 2–3 September 1989, p. 5). The indigenous newspaper, Koorier 3 (December 1989, p. 2), feared that the same white public servants would be working under the ATSIC regime and they could not understand Aboriginal identity, culture and needs. ‘They still have this inane ability to pre-determine our lives.’ Scepticism about ATSIC was apparent in the proclamation by Michael Mansell and others of the Aboriginal Provisional Government in July 1990. It was based at the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre, and insisted upon ‘the right of Aboriginal people to have the ultimate say over their destiny’ (quoted in Attwood and Markus 1999, p. 323).


The Aboriginal movement 49 A few years after its establishment, Gary Foley (1993) argued that ATSIC had undermined the strong Koori political movement of the 1960s and 1970s: ‘A vast amount of . . . money was spent subverting, buying off and compromising the key people in Koori communities all over Australia.’ (Indicative of the continuing tensions within indigenous politics between radicals and moderates is the fact that Gary Foley’s current website explains the acronym ATSIC as ‘Aborigines Talking Shit In Canberra’.) ATSIC was nonetheless regarded as a symbol of too much indigenous self-determination by the Howard government, which moved quickly upon accession to government in 1996 to severely curtail its budget and powers. Most indigenous leaders have been concerned to defend ATSIC against Howard government attacks although Pat Dodson has said ATSIC should be ‘scrapped’ as a ‘nonperformer’ (Weekend Australian, 19–20 October 2002, p. 11). As Robbie Thorpe suggested when ATSIC was established, there was a certain contradiction in the notions of self-determination and the continuation of welfare-oriented solutions. Over the past few years, Noel Pearson (2001/02) has argued that welfare, brought to Aboriginal communities as a gift of citizenship, has increased white domination of indigenous Australians by encouraging ‘the breakdown of responsibility in Aboriginal society’. Other indigenous leaders have been wary of Pearson’s arguments, mindful of the long battle fought by indigenous Australians to secure welfare rights. Pearson therefore emphasises his support for the welfare state as a progressive political and social achievement, but argues that indigenous Australians have had ‘passive welfare injuries inflicted upon them’ because they have experienced a marginal aspect of that welfare state: income provisioning for people dispossessed from the real economy, whether traditional or market. Thus indigenous people’s experience of the welfare state has been destructive. It has increased the social disadvantages they suffer in comparison to the wider society. It has also led to epidemics of substance abuse, which have increased social confusion and made people less able to organise themselves, politically and socially (Pearson 2001/02, pp. 23, 25, 27, 29; see also Pearson 2000).

Problems for the Aboriginal movement The Aboriginal movement is the most beleaguered of any of the new social movements in this study: its support base is extremely limited and official policies towards indigenous Australians have long contributed to the fragmentation of their communities and rendered political mobilisation difficult.


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In the first instance, white Australians have guaranteed the numerical isolation of indigenous Australians. The main causes of the drastic decline of the estimated 1787 Aboriginal population of two million were smallpox and venereal diseases introduced by whites; the economic and social effects of land loss, which led to poverty and despair; and direct killings by whites (Butlin 1983). The 2001 Census counted only 410 000 Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders. Although this represented a 16 per cent growth rate since 1996, Aborigines constitute only 2.2 per cent of the population (ABS 2002a). They are thus numerically negligible, a social movement with no electoral leverage, except insofar as they can mobilise broader support. But how broad must it be? Despite the fact that the recent Reconciliation movement has indicated the existence of a substantial body of white opinion in favour of indigenous rights, the Howard government has treated the movement with contempt. There has also been a long history of official political marginalisation of the few indigenous Australians remaining, resented and opposed by Aboriginal political organisations. It was not until 1949 that some Aborigines were given the right to enrol and vote in federal elections, providing they were entitled to enrol for state polls (some were, some were not) or had been in the defence forces. In 1962, Aborigines in Queensland, Western Australia and the Northern Territory became entitled to enrol and vote in federal elections. It was 1983 before the Commonwealth Electoral Act was amended to make electoral enrolment and voting compulsory for Aborigines, as for other Australians, but indigenous enrolment rates are well below average. Several Aborigines have been elected as endorsed candidates for the major parties to parliaments throughout Australia, especially in the Northern Territory. In federal parliament, Senator Neville Bonner for the Liberal Party was the first, in 1971. Senator Aden Ridgeway of the Australian Democrats was the second, taking up his position from 1 July 1999. Independent Aboriginal candidates, however, have all failed to be elected, except at local government level in some areas. The numerical and political isolation of indigenous Australians, combined with the effects of economic weakness and social dislocation, renders the Aboriginal movement powerless within the parliamentary political system. Our liberal democracy offers no scope for indigenous Australians to effect the changes they desire, because Aborigines—except perhaps in the Northern Terittory—do not have the numbers to apply pressure on the electoral process, either directly through the election of candidates representing specifically Aboriginal interests or indirectly through the weight of Aboriginal


The Aboriginal movement 51 opinion. Many Aborigines see no point at all in voting (Australian, 28 February 1990, p. 3). Michael Mansell (1989, p. 11) puts it this way: ‘How many Aborigines could we possibly get into Parliament? Could we ever gain a majority? . . . is it not time to refuse to participate in the farce and make a stand?’ There are also many ‘divide-and-rule tactics’ employed against indigenous Australians, especially activists. In the past, when Aborigines stood up for their rights, the stock response on the part of white Australians was that the trouble was caused by a handful of agitators stirring up discontent amongst an otherwise happy people.1 Nowadays, white commentators still attempt to undermine the Aboriginal movement by suggesting it is not representative or that sections of it lack authenticity. And political disagreement amongst indigenous activists is used to discredit all their viewpoints, as though only non-indigenous Australians are allowed to have differences of opinion. For example, in October 1998 Aboriginal Affairs Minister John Herron said an apology would never happen and that indigenous Australians must first achieve reconciliation amongst themselves to appease deep-rooted hostilities between ‘traditional’ and ‘mixed-blood’ Aborigines (Australian, 29 October 1998, p. 13). Indigenous Australians have persistently been subjected to linguistically racist categorising designed, amongst other purposes, to divide them from each other. Cathy Prior (1998, p. 13) has recently described the process as ‘that artificial division that split many families down the middle’. It was also used to fragment indigenous resistance and to denigrate Aboriginality by suggesting that an individual’s value was greater according to the extent to which he or she had ‘white’ blood. Often, still, whites impugn the integrity of indigenous leaders by questioning their racial credentials. In these instances, we see a case of how racism upholds stereotypes by shifting the criteria of Aboriginality to create categories of convenience for the dominant race, to deny Aboriginal identity to educated, urban or non-traditional people when this can be used to ignore their political claims (Pettman 1998, p. 4). Racism has not only caused the numerical and political weakness of indigenous Australians but also the belief or assertion on the part of many white Australians that Aborigines have not been mistreated. This is a situation of double jeopardy, leaving the Aboriginal movement potentially worse placed to effect social change than practically any other social movement, while needing it more than any other social movement. How, then, can the Aboriginal movement achieve its aims? It has no reason to have

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faith in white goodwill, yet without white public opinion on side it can get nothing out of the political system. In this situation, the Reconciliation movement, its problems and shortcomings notwithstanding, becomes significant. Yet, at the same time, the Aboriginal movement has good reasons to continue to mobilise separately from the Reconciliation movement and to set its own priorities and objectives.

The development of the Aboriginal movement As a social movement, the Aboriginal movement has had to cope with the immense difficulties attendant upon the destruction, discrimination and disadvantage endured by indigenous Australians in all aspects of their existence: economic, political, social and cultural. It expresses the desire of Aborigines to rid themselves of their very serious ‘white problem’ by achieving true equality and again becoming independent of white Australians. Its strategy and tactics assume whites will never voluntarily grant equality and independence, having failed over more than two centuries to make adequate amends for the damage inflicted on indigenous society. As Charles Perkins (1989, p. 13) long insisted: ‘We are our own salvation . . . Our destiny is in our own hands . . . We cannot leave it to churches, government, international pressures, dreams or the goodwill of others.’ The Aboriginal response to white control has been the development of an autonomous social movement which embraces tactics of self-help or selfmanagement and the political principles of self-determination. However, success for the Aboriginal movement as a social movement entails negotiation, and possibly compromise, with the state, persuading it to allow and facilitate Aboriginal projects in such a way that whites cease to control Aborigines. Ironically, such independence can only be granted to indigenous people by non-indigenous people; entrenched power relations therefore place limits on the extent to which the Aboriginal movement can operate autonomously. The Aboriginal movement, since 1788, has always aspired to organise autonomously. Indeed, between World Wars I and II, Aboriginal political mobilisation was Aboriginal-led, though its demands focused on civil rights: the attainment of formal equality for indigenous Australians with white Australians. The desire for autonomy has entailed, most obviously, the desire to formulate Aborigines’ own demands and run their own affairs, but it has also involved a determination to maintain indigenous identity. Even while arguing primarily for equal rights in the period up to 1967, indigenous


The Aboriginal movement 53 activists were adamant that Aboriginal Australians wished to retain their identity and to resist assimilationist pressures. As Doug Nicholls announced in 1958: ‘we want to identify ourselves as a people . . .We are fighting to keep ourselves as a people’ (quoted in Attwood and Markus 1999, pp. 19–20).

The civil rights movement, 1922–1967 The Australian Aboriginal Progressive Association was established in New South Wales in 1922. It held large meetings, particularly on the north coast of the state, which demanded full citizenship rights for Aboriginal people. It was active in Sydney from about 1924 to 1927 under the leadership of Fred Maynard, and was hounded by police and forced to disband. The Aboriginal movement in New South Wales achieved a higher profile in the late 1930s with the formation of the Aborigines’ Progressive Association, which published Abo Call and was supported by sections of the trade union movement and the Communist Party. In 1932, the Australian Aborigines League was formed in Melbourne by William Cooper to fight for human and civil rights for Aboriginal people. It was an entirely Aboriginal organisation, which petitioned the King for direct Aboriginal representation in the Commonwealth parliament. Similar organisations were formed in Western Australia: the Euralian Association in Port Hedland and the Native Union in the southwest. And there were other Aboriginal political organisations scattered around the country, demanding citizenship rights and ‘uplift’. Bain Attwood and Andrew Markus (1999, p. 12) summarise their achievements: They criticised the protectionist policies and practices of government and rejected, at least in part, the racial assumptions upon which these were based; attacked discriminatory legislation and government control over Aborigines’ lives; and called upon the Commonwealth to take over control from the states and introduce a uniform policy—a new deal—which would allow and help Aborigines take their place in society alongside other Australians. These organisations restricted full membership to indigenous Australians, but non-Aborigines could assist as associate members (Attwood and Markus 1999, p. 14). As white Australia’s sesquicentenary approached, the Australian Aborigines League and the Aborigines’ Progressive Association joined forces


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to declare a Day of Mourning and Protest on 26 January 1938, the celebration of 150 years of ‘theft and genocide’. The Aborigines League called to white Australia: ‘You took our land by force . . . You have almost exterminated our people, but there are enough of us remaining to expose the humbug of your claim, to be civilised, progressive and humane’ (quoted in Middleton 1977, p. 72). At the Day of Mourning Congress on 26 January 1938, Jack Patten, as president of the Aborigines’ Progressive Association, announced: The conference is called to bring home to the white people of Australia the frightful conditions in which the native aborigines of this continent live. We ask for full citizen rights, including old age pensions, maternity bonus, relief work when unemployed, and the right to a full education for our children (Daily Telegraph, 27 January 1938). The Aborigines’ Progressive Association formed a Committee for Aboriginal Citizenship Rights. It produced a booklet entitled Aborigines Claim Citizen Rights! by Patten and William Ferguson, who were both shearers and members of the Australian Workers Union (Abo Call, no. 1, April 1938, p. 2; Age, 18 January 1938, p. 14; 22 January 1938, p. 20; Workers Weekly, 25 January 1938, p. 1; Patton and Ferguson 1938). The APA also started issuing a newspaper, Abo Call: The Voice of the Aborigines, the slogan of which was ‘Education, Opportunity and Full Citizen Rights’ (Abo Call, no. 3, June 1938, p. 1). An important issue at this time was unequal pay. The cattle industry in the top end of Australia had exploited cheap Aboriginal labour for over a century, paying nominal cash amounts or payment in kind of a pathetic size, in the form of rations, clothing and tobacco. The conditions under which most Aboriginal workers lived were appalling. Aboriginal workers often raised the demand for equal wages, and activists such as Patten and Ferguson persistently raised the issue within trade union circles. From 1946 to 1949 there was a strike of Aboriginal stockworkers in the Pilbara area of Western Australia, where most of the indigenous workers were receiving no cash wages at all. This affected 6500 square miles (17 000 square kilometres) of sheep farming country. Aboriginal strikers were seized by police at revolver point and put in chains (Tribune, 18 May 1949, p. 4). The Pilbara strike was supported by trade unions, including placement of a ban on the transport of wool from stations affected by the strike that extracted


The Aboriginal movement 55 concessions from the pastoralists. A white communist unionist, Don McLeod, was arrested for ‘inciting Aborigines to leave their place of lawful employment’; the Aboriginal strikers marched on the gaol and McLeod was freed (Fieldes 1988, pp. 12–13). Other sections of the labour movement were not so supportive of the demand for equal pay. The right wing-dominated Australian Workers’ Union (AWU), which covers much rural work in the areas where most Aborigines live, did not exclude Aborigines from membership but for many decades opposed Aboriginal workers’ demands for equal pay (Littlewood 1987, p. 18). However, it was persuaded by Aboriginal activists and communists that the interests of white workers, as well as Aboriginal, were best served by equal pay. In 1965, it filed claims through the ACTU to remove discriminatory clauses in awards relating to employment of Aborigines. In 1968 Aborigines were finally granted equal pay for equal work by being included in the Cattle Station Industry Award of the Northern Territory, the Federal Pastoral Award and the Queensland Award. In the meantime, the Aboriginal Advancement Leagues of Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia had come together in 1957 to form the Federal Council for the Advancement of Aborigines, renamed the Federal Council for the Advancement of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders (FCAATSI) in 1964. Various trade unions were involved in FCAATSI from 1957 and practically all the white FCAATSI members were supporters of the Labor Party or Communist Party. It aimed to push for reforms in certain areas of the Constitution dealing with Aboriginal affairs and to ‘help the Aboriginal people of Australia become self-reliant, selfsupporting members of the community’ (Read 1990, p. 73). Unlike the inter-war organisations, FCAATSI was dominated by whites, though it always had Aboriginal leaders, such as Joe McGuinness and Kath Walker, and tried to include and promote Aboriginal perspectives (Attwood and Markus 1999, p. 19). Until 1967, sections 51 and 127 of the Constitution stated respectively that the Commonwealth parliament could make laws for any people in Australia other than the Aboriginal race and that Aboriginal people were not to be counted in calculating the population of the Commonwealth. It was FCAATSI that urged the federal government to conduct a referendum to change the Constitution to give the federal government power to override state governments and legislate on behalf of Aborigines, and to include them in the Census (Sykes 1989, p. 2). On 27 May 1967, nearly 92 per cent of the population voted ‘Yes’, but the ‘No’ votes were highest in the areas where


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most Aborigines lived, shoring up the many structural barriers to Aboriginal advancement (Bennett 1989, pp. 53–54). While FCAATSI was lobbying for this referendum, indigenous leaders such as Charles Perkins, then at Sydney University, were becoming inspired by American developments. In 1965, with the help of white university students, Perkins organised a ‘freedom ride’ through northwestern New South Wales, the ‘Deep North’ of the state, where racist attitudes and practices were harsh. Entering small country towns en masse, groups of Aborigines and white students ignored the racially based restrictions and customs of the town—the official and unofficial apartheid that excluded Aborigines from swimming pools, clubs and certain pubs, or offered segregated facilities. They used the ensuing publicity caused by the outraged locals’ response to highlight the extent of discrimination against Aborigines and their appalling living conditions and, in some cases, forced changes upon the local scenes (for a recent study of these events, see Curtheys 2002). Charles Perkins maintained his interest in American developments, visiting Jesse Jackson in 1967. He began to articulate the rising indigenous discontent with white control of the civil rights movement and with the inherent limitations of the civil rights approach in general. As Vincent Lingiari commented on the referendum: ‘our citizenship has not brought us the opportunity to live a decent life . . .’ (quoted in Rowley 1971, p. 341).

Campaigning for indigenous rights, 1968–2001 The late 1960s saw a growth of Aboriginal publications, of Aboriginal political organisations and demands for a greater say in other organisations and of links between these organisations and liberation movements elsewhere in the world, representing the interests of indigenous populations.

FCAATSI FCAATSI noted in 1968 that ‘there is a growth of “Aboriginality”, of the desire to identify as Aborigines and to find one’s identity in such identification’ (Engel 1968, pp. 12, 16). Attwood and Markus (1999) suggest FCAATSI contributed to this process by facilitating communication between Aborigines across Australia through its annual conferences and other networks. Aborigines came to have a much greater sense of themselves as a common national group with a shared historical experience of oppression: ‘the attenuated sense of Aboriginality of Aborigines in settled Australia


The Aboriginal movement 57 was renewed or revived through their contact with traditionally-oriented Aborigines in remote areas’ (Attwood and Markus 1999, p. 20). In November 1969, FCAATSI convened a Conference on Autonomy and Self-Government for Aborigines and Islanders in Sydney. Developments such as these were heralded in the Aborigines Advancement League newspaper, Smoke Signals, as ‘a new and radical turn in Aboriginal affairs’. Aboriginal organisations protested against the bicentenary of Captain Cook’s landing in 1970, presaging the much larger mobilisation of 1988. Smoke Signals again commented on the new mood: ‘Fear of white disapproval . . . is rapidly disappearing’ (Pittock 1970, p. 11). FCAATSI split in 1970, a fracture indicative of the development towards Aboriginal autonomy. At Easter, the FCAATSI conference debated whether its Constitution should be altered so that only people of Aboriginal or Islander descent could comprise the executive and vote at general meetings. The vote was 48 to 48, largely but not entirely along racial lines, which was not the two-thirds majority required for a constitutional amendment. Accordingly, the Aboriginal supporters of the motion withdrew and formed a short-lived National Tribal Council based in Brisbane with executive and voting rights exclusive to Aboriginal and Islander members (Read 1990, pp. 73, 75, 78–79).

The Black Power debate The Aboriginal movement in the 1970s was debating the pros and cons of Black Power, popularised by the American Black Panthers from the late 1960s. The mere possibility of a burgeoning Australian Black Power movement helped to shake the complacency of white society, and radical Aboriginal activists jokingly exploited this fear. In December 1971, Dennis Walker, Gary Foley, Billy Craigie and Gary Williams introduced themselves to the nation as the ‘field marshals’ of the Australian Black Panther Party. They explained: ‘We’re going to train a select group in urban guerilla tactics and use of explosives. We’ll be ready to move in a month, and then all hell will break loose.’ Dennis Walker alleged his mother, Kath Walker, had ‘gained nothing for all her work over 20 years . . . sitting on Prime Ministerial committees’ (Sunday Australian, 5 December 1971, p. 11). The Black Power mood disturbed many of the white supporters of Aboriginal causes. FCAATSI was slow to recognise that by 1970 indigenous rights had overtaken civil rights as the principal goal of Aborigines and that joint leadership, let alone domination, by whites in such a movement was no more appropriate than to have men lead the women’s movement


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(Read 1990, pp. 76, 80). In 1978, FCAATSI changed its name to the National Aboriginal and Islander Liberation Movement (NAILM) and its new Constitution required that its leadership comprise Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders only. Broadly speaking, however, the ‘black movement’, as the Aboriginal movement then called itself, did not accept Black Power with all its ramifications of strict separatism and use of violence. Roberta Sykes, in debating against Neville Bonner in 1972, stressed that Black Power was not about ‘blood and guts’ or black capitalism, but was ‘the power generated by people who seek to identify their own problems . . . and who strive to take action in all possible forms to solve those problems’ (Turner 1975, pp. 10, 66).2 Violence was generally rejected by most indigenous activists, and a compromise position on separatism maintained that it was important for the black movement to work towards control of its own affairs but that the help of concerned whites need not be spurned in the meantime. It was felt that the dangers for the Aboriginal movement did not generally come from those who help the movement on the ground, but from those who sought to control Aboriginal people from their positions of power in the white structures of government and bureaucracy. White assistance could be received, but on indigenous terms, and accepted as long as it suited indigenous purposes (McGuinness 1970, p. 7).

Community survival projects Prime examples of this principle in operation have been the Aboriginal Legal Service and the Aboriginal Health Service, which are rightly cited as successful examples of indigenous control of indigenous affairs—Aboriginal community initiatives set up by Aborigines for Aborigines. The reliance on sympathetic white expertise has not diminished as rapidly as was hoped in the early years, especially in the health area, but these services are successful, compared with white-controlled services, precisely because of their acceptance by their client populations. These services rely, however, on state funding which, although inadequate, keeps them beholden to government. The Aboriginal Legal Service (ALS) was established in 1971. It was located in Redfern, the inner Sydney suburb with a large Aboriginal population. The Service quickly spread throughout Australia; it was a good idea whose time was overdue. When it started, it relied on white lawyers, assisted by indigenous field officers and indigenous staff at Redfern. There are now Aboriginal lawyers working for the ALS in many areas. Before the ALS was established, arrested Aborigines rarely had proper


The Aboriginal movement 59 legal representation, a problem all the more serious because of the fact that Aborigines are seriously disadvantaged in the white legal system. In 1989 the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody found that the custody rate for Aborigines was twenty times higher than for other Australians (Age, 1 July 1989; 9 February 1990). At 30 June 2001, indigenous Australians suffered an imprisonment rate fifteen times that of the non-indigenous population; the rate was much higher in Western Australia (ABS 2002b). The high imprisonment rates for Aborigines stem not only from their socioeconomic plight but also from the way in which the law is administered: the disproportionate number of Aborigines arrested and charged; the disproportionate number of these found guilty; and the disproportionate number of these who receive prison sentences. In recent years the discrimination endured by indigenous Australians in the criminal justice system has been compounded by Northern Territory and Western Australian experiments with mandatory sentencing. Given the disproportionate numbers of indigenous Australians arrested, charged and found guilty, mandatory sentencing laws operate especially harshly and unfairly against Aboriginal people. The ALS has been at the forefront of campaigns to overturn such laws, and public attention was focused on the issue when an indigenous teenage boy from Arnhem Land committed suicide in prison early in 2000, having been sent there under mandatory sentencing provisions for having stolen some felt-tip pens. Soon after the establishment of the ALS came the Aboriginal Health Service, which was the first community-controlled health service in the world. The statistics on Aboriginal health are alarming on all significant indicators such as life expectancy, infant mortality and maternal mortality. In the 1997–99 period, life expectancy at birth for indigenous males was 56 years compared with 76 years for all Australian males; and for indigenous females it was 63 years compared with 82 years for all Australian females. In the 35–54 years age group, the indigenous death rate was between five and six times higher than for the population as a whole. The ABS also reported that indigenous people experienced ‘lower levels of access to health services than the general population’ (ABS 2001). The Australian Council of Social Services has concluded that the Aboriginal legal and medical services are far more effective than services run by whites, precisely because they are run by the Aboriginal community and are not separated from the Aboriginal community—in fact, they are seen as belonging to that community (quoted in Western 1983, p. 224). These services are also important politically, because they challenge white-bureaucratic


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control of Aboriginal people. Foley (1988, p. 21) argues that many white Australians find it very difficult to accept that Aboriginal people are capable of controlling their own affairs and doing it better than the white ‘experts’. This is why Aboriginal initiatives are so often perceived as threats by the bureaucrats. An editorial in Koorier 3 (June 1990) is adamant that ‘we have proven that we are the best ones to do our own work looking after our people. And we have been forced into the position of having to make do while we are under resourced.’

Asserting independence and protecting culture During the 1998 waterfront dispute, an Aboriginal speaker told an appreciative gathering at Webb Dock in Melbourne that his mother on the reserve had persistently stressed two principles: ‘Always defend your culture and never cross a picket line.’ A defining characteristic of the Aboriginal movement is its emphasis on the need to achieve, as far as possible, independence from white initiatives and certainly from white control. By 1976, all 70 Aboriginal advancement organisations were either in Aboriginal hands or defunct; the brief postwar period of black–white cooperation was

A march through Sydney’s Redfern (courtesy Committee to Defend Black Rights).


The Aboriginal movement 61 clearly over. By 1992 there were over 1200 Aboriginal organisations, almost all of them managed by Aborigines or Islanders. Yet the aims of the movement cannot be achieved without state intervention and funding, and it is largely in the making of demands upon the state that Aboriginal discontent has taken the form of social movement action. Thus there are continual tensions within the movement, caused by the desire for autonomy and the ultimate reality of dependence on white structures of government and bureaucracy, in whose power it lies to accede to the demands of the movement. Jackie Huggins (1999, p. 9) has emphasised this problem of political dependence: ‘While the power rests with white institutions, politicians, men and women . . . we can never embark on any meaningful dialogue, let alone try to find solutions.’ The growing independence of the Aboriginal movement was clearly symbolised in the growth of land councils from the 1970s—a development that also signifies the importance to Aboriginal organisation of region and locality. Lately, Aborigines have indicated the desire to be known by their regional names, such as Murri in Queensland, Koori in New South Wales, Victoria and Tasmania, Nungga or Ningi in South Australia, Nyunga in Western Australia, Anangu in central Australia and Yolngu in the Northern Territory. In doing so, they are asserting the distinctiveness of the many Aboriginal groups here before 1788, and reminding whites that the word ‘Aboriginal’ and its meanings are not theirs. A desire for independence is expressed also in the Aboriginal outstation movement—the reoccupation of traditional lands, aiming at the achievement of ‘cultural and economic independence’ (Coombs et al 1989, p. 39). Land Rights News claims the outstations have restored pride to Aboriginal people and ‘the chance of self-determination in a modern sense’, as many of the outstation communities generate income through whatever economic activity is appropriate to them (Land Rights News, September 1987, p. 7). When Aboriginal people confront problems within their own communities, such as domestic violence and sexual assault, the approach is not usually constructed in ‘feminist’ ways as in non-indigenous society. Hilary Saunders has summed up the feelings of many indigenous women: We must not let this awareness as women go too far. We are a race of people who have suffered many injustices, we are fighting for selfdetermination. Women must play a large part in this yet we can only hope to achieve this as one people not a race of men, nor a race of women but of Black United People (quoted in Huggins 1987, p. 81).


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Charles Perkins’ address to the National Workshop on Domestic Violence in 1989 stressed ‘domestic violence must be viewed in the more general context of Aboriginal social and economic disadvantage’; ‘strategies for approaching the problem must be community based and involve community members’ and be ‘closely linked to general strategies for Aboriginal advancement’ (Koorier 3, May 1989, pp. 6–7). Unfortunately, indigenous Australians have remained disadvantaged, so Aboriginal women still suffer. Crime and Justice Statistics for Western Australia: 2000 revealed that women accounted for 71.3 per cent of Aboriginal victims of crime, whereas non-indigenous women account for only 46 per cent of non-indigenous victims of crime (Executive Summary, p. 1). The urgency of the situation had become a public issue by 2001 (ABC Lateline 9 July 2001; 10 July 2001). Jackie Huggins has called on indigenous men to ‘wake up to themselves and see what they are doing to our communities, our culture and our children’. A growing number of indigenous men have made public commitments to non-violent behaviour. Mick Dodson, while emphasising the devastating impact of colonisation that has turned indigenous men from warriors to victims, has praised these moves, because violence is ‘not blackfella way’ and should not be permitted to corrupt indigenous culture (Weekend Australian, 26–27 October 2002, p. 6). Determination to defend culture and identity can be seen, likewise, in the campaign for the return of Aboriginal relics and remains, pilfered over the years and placed in museums and other institutions in Australia and overseas. Bob Weatherall, a Murri elder, says: ‘Aboriginal culture will never rest until all the remains come home and are recognised by their tribal elders’ (Australian, 11 April 1990, p. 5; Age, 22 June 1990, p. 15; Pelczynski 1989, pp. 12–13). Indigenous artists and activists are also campaigning: to protect indigenous artists from unscrupulous dealers who pay artists only a tiny proportion of the money they themselves make on sales; to prevent breaches of copyright in relation to indigenous art; and to deal with the problem of white artists passing themselves off as indigenous artists. They aim to prevent what Land Rights News has referred to as ‘the wholesale rip-off of Aboriginal designs by entrepeneurs around the country seeking to cash in on the popularity of Aboriginal art’ (Land Rights News, March 1989; Australian, 21 November 2001, p. 3).

Eco-tourism Tourism, especially ecotourism in inhabited national parkland such as Uluru (formerly Ayers Rock), Nitmiluk (formerly Katherine Gorge) and Kakadu, is another area fraught with both opportunities and dangers for indigenous


The Aboriginal movement 63 Australians. In many places, tourism has been foisted on Aboriginal people from the outside and Aborigines have been excluded from any financial benefits. Aboriginal involvement in the tourist industry is slowly developing but, without control over tourist developments, Aborigines are easily overridden by larger, white players. The National Coalition of Aboriginal Organisations advises caution: ‘If environmentalists and the indigenous people cannot control the activities of tourism in their area, then they should reject tourism altogether’ (Koorier 3, December 1989, p. 14). Moreover, any protection ecotourism might provide to indigenous Australians is limited by the interests of more powerful players, notably mining companies. In 1994 the Australian Conservation Foundation report on Mining and Ecologically Sustainable Development recommended protection for Aboriginal sacred sites (Hutton and Connors 1999, p. 247). By 2000, Kakadu National Park, since 1978 leased back by its Aboriginal owners to the Commonwealth through the National Parks and Wildlife Service, was receiving 300 000 tourists per year. Yet this was insufficient to prevent serious proposals for a uranium mine in the Kakadu National Park in the late 1990s, which would have disturbed sacred sites (Gundjehmi Aboriginal Corporation 1999a). The Gundjehmi Aboriginal Corporation, representing the interests of the Mirrar people as the traditional owners of the area, opposed the mine operating on their country, fearing both the environmental consequences for country and the social consequences for the Mirrar people. In a joint publication with the Australian Conservation Foundation, Kakadu—Worth Fighting For, the Gundjehmi Aboriginal Corporation explained: ‘Kakadu, for many, represents the idea of a fabulous holiday but for Mirrar Kakadu is home and because it is their home Mirrar are vehemently opposed to another mine on their land, in their home’ (Jabiluka Alliance 1998). This campaign, which mobilised around the issues of both indigenous land rights and environmentalism, is discussed in Chapter 4. There are also problems of a conceptual nature in the relationship between ecotourism and the protection of indigenous culture. Marcia Langton (1998) argues that the popular usage of the term ‘wilderness’ in Australia has had the effect of denying the imprint of millennia of Aboriginal impacts on, and relationships with, species and ecologies in Australian environmental history. The notion of ‘wilderness’ also encourages unrealistic expectations of a pristine environment without human impacts and of an indigenous population living in pre-colonial circumstances (1998, pp. 18, 31). The entry display board at the Nitmiluk Visitors Centre makes an important statement from the traditional owners:


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Power, Profit and Protest Nitmiluk is not a wilderness. It is not pristine or untamed: it is a human artefact. It is a land constructed by us over tens of thousands of years—through our ceremonies and ties of kinship, through fire and through hunting over countless generations of our people the Jawoyn . . . Nitmiluk is now fenced by lines on a map but remains an indivisible part of our traditional lands, linked through our ceremony and our law. Once again we are able to care for our country—not as terra nullius, or an empty land; not as an untamed wilderness—but as a part of a living heritage that forms a basis for economic and social independence for our people (cited in Langton 1998, p. 34).

Though Hutton and Connors (1999, p. 253) argue that the environmental and indigenous movements have a closer relationship than most other social movements, it is a relationship that can only assist indigenous Australians if the environmentalists understand their outlook and situation.

Ending the war? There has been recurrent debate within the Aboriginal movement about the idea of a treaty. In 1979 a national Aboriginal conference called for a treaty to be negotiated between the Aboriginal people and the Commonwealth, which would include a recognition of prior ownership of the land by the Aboriginal people, a recognition that did not then exist in Australian law (Aboriginal Treaty Committee 1980). By 1988, some indigenous activists were calling for negotiation of a sovereign treaty recognisable by international rather than Australian law, under the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (Yunupingu 1989, p. 8). The Treaty 88 Campaign issued a declaration: We, the Aboriginal People, restate that we are the Sovereign Owners of Australia. There have been no Treaties with us and we have never ceded our Sovereignty . . . in 1770, Captain Cook declared the legal lie that our land was terra nullius, a wasteland and unoccupied. Our humanity was denied and the historical fiction that Australia was peacefully settled . . . perpetuated (Treaty 88 Campaign 1988, p. 1). There was significant indigenous mobilisation against the bicentenary celebrations in 1988. For Land Rights News (September 1987, p. 11), the celebrations presented ‘the obscene spectacle of the brutality and arrogance of British colonialism’. The Aboriginal movement instead celebrated 1987 as


The Aboriginal movement 65

The Mirrar people and their supporters joined in the S11 protest, Melbourne, September 2000 (Susan Hawthorne, copyright 2000).


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the bicentenary of its last year of freedom and registered its anger the following year. On 26 January 1988, about 50 000 protesting Aborigines from all over the country (nearly a fifth of their population) descended on Sydney in ‘freedom buses’ and by other means. Les Collins, coordinator of the Cairns Aboriginal Health Service, explained the indigenous perspective by pointing out that Australians would be horrified if Germany decided to commemorate its crime against the Jews, yet Aboriginal people were witnessing the celebration, with fireworks and fanfares, of the taking of their traditional lands (Times on Sunday, 17 January 1988, pp. 1–2). In an imitation of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy established in Canberra in 1972 (discussed below), in July 2000 another Aboriginal Embassy was set up in Victoria Park at the corner of City and Parramatta Roads in central Sydney, sacred land that belongs traditionally to the Eora people. Isabell Coe, in a statement dated 5 September 2000, explained that this Tent Embassy called for a cease-fire and for peace on equal terms between sovereign nations: ‘The Aboriginal Tent Embassy is a Peace Keeping Camp. It is not a protest. There has been enough bloodshed, it is time to end the war.’ This Tent Embassy was timed for maximum publicity before and during the 2000 Olympic Games. Coe (2000) explained that its establishment was to make the world aware of the continuing genocidal war against indigenous Australians, in the hope that it could be ended and Aboriginal sovereignty acknowledged so that a treaty could be entered into by both black and white Australia: ‘This isn’t just a token gesture like the walk over the bridge, this is real, and hopefully by the end of this process there may be some sort of legal document that Aboriginal people want to put up to the government.’ During the 2001 centenary of federation celebrations, there were renewed calls from indigenous activists for a treaty (e.g. Dodson 2001, p. 15). This notion has steadfastly been rejected by the Howard government and by John Howard in particular, although an AC Nielsen poll showed 53 per cent of Australians ready to embrace the concept of a treaty (Treaty Now website). To many Aboriginal people, white resistance to the negotiation of a treaty expresses reluctance to acknowledge there has been a war that needs concluding (Coe 2000).

The land rights movement Aboriginal societies developed a precise, although complex, concept of landholding, in which individual men and women hold particular relationships to


The Aboriginal movement 67 land, inherited from parents and arising from their own conception and birth sites. These relationships entail obligations and responsibilities to protect the land, its species and people from damage and unauthorised use; and to husband the land, use it, harvest it and do the things it needs to maintain its productivity. As Heather Goodall (1996, p. 9) explains, the Aboriginal concept of landholding is very different from the European concept of land as individually owned private property, a commodity to be bought, sold and used to generate profit. The demand for citizenship rights emphasised the right of indigenous Australians to equality of treatment. In raising the demand for land rights from the 1960s onwards, indigenous Australians were also emphasising their difference from non-indigenous Australians, their distinctive position as the original owners and custodians of the continent. Yet the desire for land rights was also motivated by the desire to secure economic independence from white structures in order that indigenous Australians might have a better chance of attaining equality. Indigenous lawyer Pat O’Shane (1979, p. 1) defined land rights in this way: that the people having traditional links with a particular area be given inalienable title to that land and complete, unfettered control over how that land is used. Where people have lived on reserves . . . then the same rights be extended. In places where it is impossible for the people to regain their land, then some form of compensation be made, whether by way of some other land or by way of monetary compensation.

The significance of land rights In 1887, William Cooper at Cumeragunja had pleaded: ‘Return to us this small portion of a vast territory, which is ours by Divine Right.’ In 1972, Millie Boyd at Woodenbong stated: ‘We are hungry for our own ground. We should have land, this is our land. We are hungry for our land’ (quoted in Goodall 1996). The Aboriginal and Islander publication Identity (vol. 3, no. 8, October 1978, p. 14), declared in 1978: ‘Today when we speak of Land Rights we do so with one voice . . . We the Aboriginals love our land, our country and the water and sky around us.’ The symbol of the land rights struggle—the black, gold and red flag, representing the people, the sun and the earth—became the symbol of the Aboriginal movement during the 1970s.


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For tribal elder Ted Thomas (1979, p. 2): ‘This flag means a lot to the aboriginal people . . . It means land rights.’ Charles Perkins (1989, p. 13) maintained: ‘We all understand clearly the importance of the struggle for land rights: it symbolises our eventual victory. Let this struggle continue constructively and remain the prominent part of our platform.’ The demand for land rights expresses an urgent desire to regain some of what was stolen and articulates the extent of Aboriginal attachment to land— a link that is not broken by the fact that an indigenous person may have lived away from it for many years. A Mornington Islander named Lanley explains it like this: At the heart of everything is the land. It is the way we feel and think about the land that makes us Aboriginal. It’s the only way to keep our culture. We belong to the land in the true sense that it is part of us that we need to survive . . . that is why land rights are so important to us. We need the land to be Aboriginal in our minds (quoted in Brennan et al 1985, p. 55). Given the repeated dispossessions endured by Aboriginal communities in relation to their land, they need to feel secure in their occupation of these lands: they need land rights. Otherwise, according to a statement from the Yuin tribe of the New South Wales south coast area: ‘We must always live in fear and insecurity, worrying if even the little we have will be taken away from us’ (Koorakookoo, no. 2, 1978). The demand for land rights is central in the politics of the Aboriginal movement: land rights is a united and a uniting demand of the movement. Gary Foley (1988) argues that, in white terms, land rights would be costeffective, because it would give economic independence to many indigenous Australians: ‘We won’t have to go begging to anyone, and we will cease to be a burden on the Australian taxpayer, which is what everyone keeps telling us we are’ (1988, pp. 206–7). Certainly, the independent Aboriginal concerns functioning in New South Wales since the 1983 land rights legislation in that state have had a much better survival rate than small businesses generally (Jull et al 1989, p. 24). As the Aboriginal movement for land rights became stronger and better organised from the late 1960s onwards, mining and pastoral interests in particular responded with all the money and power at their disposal. In the early days, the practice of mining companies of sending well-placed journalists on junkets to visit mining sights helped ensure that the media took


The Aboriginal movement 69 its cues from the mining industry; urban whites were encouraged to identify with the interests of white mining companies (Fesl and Markus 1986, pp. 3–4). It was not difficult for the media to play upon the deeply entrenched belief in development, especially mining development, as progress (Toyne 1989, p. 39). More recently, mining companies—including those most hostile to unions—have managed the ‘problem’ of indigenous rights to land by more sophisticated or co-optive strategies, such as the appointment of indigenous community relations officers, liaison and consultation with Aboriginal communities and less grudging payment of royalties to appropriate land councils and benefit accounts (Moodie 2002, p. 30). Pat O’Shane (1979) argues that, in a complex sense, the whole of white society is opposed to her people’s demand for land rights, because it runs contrary to the very foundations on which white society is based. But in an immediate sense, it is the mining companies who determine the extent and scope of white resistance to Aboriginal land claims, because: the struggle for land rights threatens the continued exploitation of our people and our natural resources by multinational mining corporations. Such corporations control simply massive financial interests and, consequently, they exercise enormous political control, making or breaking national governments (1979, p. 2). The Billiton Metals manager in Australia explained mining industry opposition: ‘When we give land rights to the Aboriginal people it means that they will be in the same position as other white Australians. I don’t like it. It is a very big problem and it is dangerous to the mining industry’ (Roberts 1981, p. 140). Pastoral interests are also ranged with mining companies against Aboriginal land rights and, in the more densely settled states such as Victoria and New South Wales, so are agricultural and forestry interests. The National Farmers’ Federation (NFF) has been campaigning since at least 1984 to prevent any federal legislation that could conceivably threaten white landed interests (Age, 5 August 1989; Weekend Australian, 5–6 August 1989). Its leading role in opposing the Wik judgment is discussed later.

The land rights struggle, 1788–1971 The long history of resistance to dispossession is important in the culture of the Aboriginal movement. Though white Australians are more likely to have heard of Sitting Bull and Geronimo, their Aboriginal equivalents—such as


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Nemaluk and Musquito—are revered in indigenous communities. Aboriginal armed resistance went on until the 1860s at least. When guerilla warfare was no longer possible, late in the nineteenth century, a land rights campaign developed in southeastern Australia. Heather Goodall (1996) has revealed how old this land rights struggle is and how it developed. In the 1870s and 1880s, Aborigines began to reoccupy their land by squatting on it, building shelters and planting crops. They then demanded that the government give them secure tenure but, instead of conceding land rights, the governments turned the areas concerned into reserves, bending the situation created by Aboriginal activism to the whites’ advantage: the reserves would keep Aborigines separated from white society while according them no rights over the land reserved. This was the origin of the reserve system, by which the government was seen to be doing something to ‘smooth the dying pillow’ of the race assumed to be doomed to extinction. When this assumption was shown to be false, policies towards Aborigines became more aggressive and Aboriginal communities were dispersed. There was bitter resistance as each community defended its right to farm and live on the reserve land. There was often hand-to-hand fighting. Aboriginal farmers were literally dragged off the land by police, often in mid-crop, always under protest (Goodall 1988, pp. 184–88; see also Goodall 1996). The Aboriginal political organisations of the interwar and immediate postwar period included land rights, as well as civil rights, in their concerns. But the modern land rights campaign is usually seen as beginning with the actions of the Yirrkala and Gurindji peoples in the 1960s: one fought against mining interests, the other against pastoral interests. The Gurindji people lived and worked at Wave Hill cattle station in the Northern Territory, run by the British pastoral company Vesteys, which owns over 12 000 square kilometres of the Northern Territory (Benson 1988, p. 2). ‘Hunger was an ever-present fact of life for Vestey’s Aboriginal workers,’ according to Land Rights News (September 1987, pp. 30–31). In August 1966, the Aborigines employed at Wave Hill went on strike; and in March 1967 they left Wave Hill to set up their own township settlement at Wattie Creek. Under their leader, Vincent Lingiari, they requested the return of some of their traditional land, 500 of the 6000 square miles (1550 square kilometres) of the Wave Hill pastoral lease, and made plans to establish their own cattle station. This was a strike and a land rights struggle all at once, and it lasted about nine years, serving as an inspiration for Aborigines all over Australia. It was supported directly by the North Australian Workers’ Union and other trade unions (‘The Gurindjis Fight for Their Land’ 1972).


The Aboriginal movement 71 Well-known Communist Party writer Frank Hardy assisted the Gurindji and told their story in The Unlucky Australians. Ultimately, in 1975, the federal government granted the Gurindji a mere leasehold interest in just 25 of the 500 square miles claimed outright by them, preferring to keep the rest of the enormous lease in the name of absentee English aristocrat Lord Vestey. The Gurindji now manage their land for horsebreaking and contract pastoral work. At the same time as the Gurindji were waging their struggle, the Yirrkala people of the Gove Peninsula were fighting their own battle. The development of the modern land rights movement has much to do with the response of Aboriginal communities to the depredations of mining companies in the postwar period; the excision of land from reserve areas to suit the purposes of these companies led Aborigines to question their apparent lack of legal rights over their traditional lands. In 1963, the Yirrkala presented a petition on a piece of bark to the federal government against the intrusions of the Nabalco Company on their Gove reserve. Their protests were ignored: the 140 square miles (360 square kilometres) required by Nabalco was excised from the reserve and bauxite mining operations began. In 1968, the Yirrkala commenced a claim against the Commonwealth government and Nabalco, with respect to the mining leases the Commonwealth had granted to Nabalco over areas of tribal land. In 1971, the Gove Land Rights judgment judicially recognised and legitimised the theft of the entire continent. In a muchcriticised decision, Mr Justice Blackburn concluded that the people had failed to establish that the common law recognised the doctrine of communal native title (Harris 1972, p. 3). Following this judgment, Aboriginal demands for land rights were for a time fought out in the political rather than the legal arena, in the streets rather than in the courts. Just as white radicals turned to direct action forms of protest at this time, so too did Aboriginal movement activists. Having come up against the barrier of judge-made law, the attentions of the Aboriginal movement had to centre on securing changes to statute law. By the 1970s Aboriginal organisations such as regional land councils were springing up spontaneously, campaigning for legislation to secure land rights.

Federal governments and land rights, 1972–1979 As the Aboriginal movement focused its attentions on legislation, the major political parties’ attitudes to land rights became an issue. The Coalition position was put by Prime Minister McMahon in his Australia Day speech


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in 1972, which declared that the government would grant exploration licences and mining tenements on reserves (Davis and Gardiman 1989, pp. 35–36). Aboriginal activists responded by erecting a tent outside Parliament House in Canberra (now Old Parliament House), declared the tent an Aboriginal Embassy and announced a five-point plan for land rights (Newfong 1972, pp. 4–5). This plan demanded: 1. full state rights to the Northern Territory under Aboriginal ownership and control with all titles to minerals, etc.; 2. ownership of all other reserves and settlements throughout Australia with all titles to minerals and mining rights; 3. the preservation of all sacred lands not included in Points 1 and 2; 4. ownership of certain areas of certain cities with all titles to minerals and mining rights; 5. as compensation, an initial payment of six billion dollars for all other land throughout Australia plus a percentage of the gross national income per annum (Attwood and Markus 1999, pp. 257–58). During 1972, Labor Party leader Gough Whitlam visited the Aboriginal Embassy and promised that a Labor government would give Aborigines legal, freehold title to land where they could be identified as a community, tribe or clan. Labor became identified in the public mind with the land rights cause and the Coalition parties with determined opposition to land rights. The Embassy did not disappear, however, after the December 1972 election that ended 23 years of Coalition rule. Although demolished by police on several occasions, the Embassy has remained to this day and has become a significant tourist attraction (http://www.australianexplorer.com/canberra_ aboriginal_tent_embassy.htm). Immediately after the Labor government was elected in 1972 it froze applications for mining and exploration leases in Aboriginal reserves and appointed Mr Justice Woodward to inquire into ‘the appropriate means to recognise and establish the traditional rights and interests of the aborigines in and in relation to land, and to satisfy in other ways the reasonable aspirations of the aborigines to rights in or in relation to land’ (Identity, April 1974, p. 3). (Woodward’s recommendations were largely implemented in the Land Rights Bill (1975), which was unable to be passed before the government was dismissed from office. Many powerful concerns had an interest in the dismissal of Whitlam Labor: the mining industry was one of these.


The Aboriginal movement 73 On 26 January 1977, the Fraser Coalition government proclaimed the Northern Territory (Land Rights) Act 1976, a substantially amended version of the Bill prepared by the Whitlam government. The alterations all protected the interests of mining ventures on traditional Aboriginal land. Aborigines were given freehold title to Northern Territory reserves, but they no longer controlled the roads running through their land and were obliged to permit any government official on to their land. Moreover, Aborigines could lay claim only to vacant Crown land and lands already held by or on behalf of Aborigines, and only if they could establish traditional ownership, offering nothing whatever to communities whose tribal land did not correspond with such land. Even for those tribes contending for vacant Crown land, the Act contained the difficult clause allowing mining companies to oppose their claims, stating that the claim should be disallowed if ‘detriment to persons or communities might result’. Furthermore, Aboriginal landholders’ veto power over mining and other such operations was greatly curtailed, following an amendment suggested to the Fraser government by the Australian Mining Industry Council, and veto power was dispensed with altogether in connection with mining operations pursuant to the Atomic Energy Act 1953 (Davis and Gardiman 1980, pp. 41–44). Contrary to the impressions conveyed in the press, the Act did not give the Aboriginal people mineral rights over any land. The only right given was to negotiate the payment of royalties from mining operations and even that right could be denied them because, if the people did not come to the party in such negotiations, an Arbitrator could be appointed to take over that role. The Act states in Section 45 (1): Where the Minister for Aboriginal Affairs is satisfied that a Land Council has refused, or is unwilling, to give its consent to the granting of a mining interest . . . the Minister may, after consultation with the Land Council . . . appoint an Arbitrator . . . to determine the terms and conditions of the agreement (O’Shane 1979, p. 6; Jennett 1983, p. 134). It is because, ultimately, they have no choice that land councils end up negotiating with companies and signing agreements concerning the conditions under which mining goes ahead, after objecting to the mining in the first place and finding their objections ignored. This absence of choice is often wrongly depicted in the media as royalties-induced support for mining. As Marcia Langton explains: ‘If they don’t participate, the Government will


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sign on their behalf, and they will get the proverbial bugger-all’ (quoted in Jennett 1983, p. 134). The 1976 Aboriginal Land Rights Act is as effective in securing the rights of mining companies over traditional land as it is in securing Aboriginal rights over the land (Davis and Gardiman 1980, p. 51). Despite the bias in the legislation towards mining interests, the Australian Mining Industry Council (AMIC) launched an all-out attack on the ‘discriminatory’ and ‘divisive’ federal land rights legislation, objecting to the idea that Aboriginal landowners should be able to negotiate mining rights and royalties (quoted in Roberts 1981, p. 135). The AMIC pontificated about its ‘special responsibility to make its resources available to the world community on equitable terms’ (quoted in Bennett 1989, p. 55). The first land claim under the legislation, mounted in 1977–78 by the people of Boorooloola, resulted in very little of the area in dispute being granted to the traditional owners: the tracts of land that Mt Isa Mines did not need. As one of the traditional owners, Leo Finaly, commented of the decision: ‘We only got a little bit, rubbish part of it . . . Good part of it, it’s all gone’ (Koorakookoo, no. 2, 1978). State governments in New South Wales and South Australia also enacted land rights legislation, while the Queensland and Western Australian governments demonstrated concerted resistance to land rights demands.4 To introduce uniform federal lands rights legislation, in 1984 the Hawke government indicated its intent to apply the Northern Territory legislation Australia-wide. However, the mining industry stepped up its offensive. Hugh Morgan of Western Mining Corporation claimed the mining industry was keeping faith with 2000 years of Christian tradition and doctrine and that land rights for Aborigines would represent a step back ‘to the world of superstition, fears and darkness’ (quoted in Bennett 1989, p. 56; see also Libby 1989 for a study of the AMIC campaign). Western Mining Corporation’s parent company CRA (now Rio Rinto) owns Comalco, which 20 years previously had imprisoned Aborigines and bulldozed their homes to make way for the Weipa bauxite mine. AMIC propaganda depicted black hands locking out other Australians and maps showing huge areas of land alienated, and recited perverse nonsense about compensation claims. Public opinion was moulded by this onslaught, which was then used as a stick to beat the proposals. The Hawke government capitulated; the AMIC won (Stokes 1987, pp. 182–98). In October 1984, the government publicly reneged on its promise of uniform land rights, with freehold inalienable title. Hawke effectively cancelled ALP policy on land claims: either they were not granted or they were made conditional on agreeing to mining taking place on the land.


The Aboriginal movement 75 In 1987, amendments to the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act of 1976 weakened this original legislation. Stock routes and stock reserves were excluded from consideration as claimable land, so Aboriginal communities whose traditional lands lay within those areas would be dependent upon pastoralists’ willingness to allow them excisions; the limited right of veto on mining was replaced with a limited veto on exploration and, should the community consent to exploration, they forfeited the right to veto future mining; payments from mining companies to Aboriginal communities were limited to compensation for the degradation of the land surface and the disturbance to the local community; and 1997 became a deadline for lodging land claims. The Hawke government’s record on Aboriginal land rights was determined by strong sensitivity towards mining and pastoral interests (Pettman 1988, pp. 5–6).

The battle for native title rights With land rights legislation proving inadequate and piecemeal, indigenous activists returned again to court challenges in the 1980s. In 1982 a writ was issued claiming land owned by Eddie Mabo and others on the Murray Islands, the easternmost of the islands in the Torres Strait between Australia and Papua New Guinea. Mabo and about 400 other Murray Islanders made this claim on the basis that they were members of the Miriam people who had lived continuously on the islands since ‘time immemorial’. The Queensland government responded by passing legislation declaring any traditional rights in Torres Strait were extinguished without compensation by Queensland’s assumption of sovereignty in 1879. In 1988 the High Court decided that the Queensland legislation was invalid, but the seven judges had then to decide what legal rights the litigants did possess over the land. In a legal environment where the international current of judicial interpretation has moved strongly against terra nullius and supported the robustness of native title, it was eagerly anticipated that the decision could be of great significance to the land rights struggle (Reynolds 1991, pp. 12–13; Action for Aboriginal Rights 1987, p. 6; Nettheim 1993, p. 23; Bruer 1994, pp. 9–10). It was.

The Mabo judgment and the Native Title Act 1993 The High Court had to consider whether the extension over Australia of British sovereignty and English law automatically terminated the pre-existing


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laws, and rights under those laws, of the indigenous population. The Murray Islanders’ case that their traditional laws were still valid was strengthened by the fact that the Miriam people conformed more to European notions of land usage, living in permanent villages and growing crops in clearly marked family-owned plots of land; further, the Queensland authorities had given tacit recognition to local land tenure after 1879 by buying land from traditional owners to erect government buildings. Mabo died before he could hear the court’s decision on 3 June 1992 that the traditional land ownership laws of the Murray Islanders were still valid—that pre-existing land rights, or native title, survived the extension of British sovereignty over Australia. This judgment therefore also reversed the long-standing legal fiction that Australia was uninhabited when the British arrived in 1788—what was known as the concept of terra nullius, which is Latin for ‘uninhabited land’ (Reynolds 1991, pp. 12–13; Nettheim 1993, p. 23; Bruer 1994, pp. 9–10). However, the court acknowledged native title as an interest which Australian common law is able to recognise and protect subject to two significant qualifications. Firstly, the Aboriginal group needed still to maintain its traditional connection to its land in order to be able to establish a case of native title. So native title would lapse if the traditional owners left the land or no longer maintained their traditional links through law and custom. Secondly, native title was liable to extinguishment by governments through legislation or regulation. This meant that governments could extinguish native title by granting interests over the land to others or by setting the land aside for public purposes. This is clearly the case for most of the country, so in most areas native title has already been extinguished and the Mabo judgment confirmed this as an irreversible fact which had occurred without consent or compensation (Nettheim 1993, p. 23). To indigenous Australians, the judgment appeared to promise some justice, yet in reality the benefits for indigenous Australians were very limited. The High Court did not rule there should be compensation for the extinguishment of native title. Moreover, native title provides less security and fewer rights than a statutory title, which grants inalienable freehold. Indigenous lawyer Noel Pearson observed that very few Aboriginal people would be able to benefit directly from the decision, though it laid down the basis for a negotiated reconciliation of outstanding issues between nonAboriginal and indigenous Australians (Nettheim 1993, p. 23). Aborigines who have been forced off their land against their will, or for whom ‘the tide of history has washed away any real acknowledgement of traditional law’, in the words of the judgment, will not be able to establish native title. The


The Aboriginal movement 77 tribunal will throw out most claims and even make claimants pay costs if the claim is deemed especially weak. Because the judgment makes it clear that native title, once extinguished, cannot be revived, only traditional owners who have been able to continue to follow their traditions and customs and can prove a continuing association with the land will have any chance of a successful claim. These are strict requirements which most Aborigines cannot now meet, precisely because of the extent to which they have been dispossessed (Bruer 1994, pp. 9–10). However, in a broader sense, the judgment was helpful to the indigenous cause in that the court at last acknowledged the original injustice of dispossession. Thus the central challenge posed by Mabo was to put right the disadvantages confronting indigenous Australians in work, health, resources and access to economic and political power—disadvantages which have all stemmed from dispossession. How far are those who have benefited from Aboriginal dispossession prepared to go in the name of restitution and compensation? (Bruer 1994, pp. 9–10). The immediate response from the richest sections of white Australian society was not promising. Despite the fact that the judgment was no real threat, the country was thrown into a media-inspired turmoil. Former Chief Justice Gibbs remarked: ‘Many decisions of the High Court have resulted in controversy, but few, if any, have given rise to such a diversity of responses, ranging from euphoria to deep anxiety, as Mabo v Queensland’ (Nettheim 1993, p. 23). To mining companies, pastoralists and others, the Mabo ruling seemed a threat to longestablished status and income; people were panicked into thinking that possession of their quarter-acre suburban blocks was in peril, a needless fear deliberately encouraged by powerful interests (see Taylor 1993, p. 17). In June 1995, Eddie Mabo’s grave in Townsville was desecrated and daubed with red paint and swastikas (Age, 6 June 1995, p. 13). Mining industry leader Hugh Morgan criticised the judgment, saying that the court had fallen prey to populist notions of collective white guilt. He said: ‘Mabo is a challenge to the legitimacy of Australia, including the legitimacy of the High Court itself.’ He argued the ruling should not be recognised. Other critics attacked the judges for ignoring the practical effects of their decision on investment in Australia. Victorian Premier Jeff Kennett argued that the High Court decision discriminated against non-Aborigines and that Australians ‘cannot continue to be guilty about the past’. Conservative historian Geoffrey Blainey alleged that Aboriginal tribes would end up owning lands as big as some countries as a result of the Mabo decision. When he made this statement, he was speaking as a guest of federal Liberal


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MP Ian McLachlan, whose family owns a substantial slice of South Australia (Taylor 1993, p. 17; Thompson 1997, p. 8). The federal Labor government defended the judgment. In December 1992, Prime Minister Paul Keating delivered what became known as his ‘Redfern Park address’: Mabo is an historic decision—we can make it an historic turning point, the basis of a new relationship between indigenous and non-Aboriginal Australians. The message should be that there is nothing to fear or to lose in the recognition of historical truth, or the extension of social justice, or the deepening of Australian social democracy to include indigenous Australians. There is everything to gain. Introducing legislation in parliament in 1993 to clear up uncertainties created by the judgment, Keating described the Mabo decision as ending the ‘pernicious legal deceit of terra nullius for all of Australia—and for all time’, and presented the legislation as aiming to provide ‘ungrudging and unambiguous recognition and protection of native title’ while also working to ‘safeguard the rights of those who hold existing grants of interest in land’ (Chesterman and Galligan 1999, p. 263; Australian, 17 November 1993, p. 1). Firstly, the Native Title Act 1993 validated all existing freehold and leasehold land titles, thus reassuring farmers and mining companies that their businesses would not be taken from them under a Mabo-based land claim. It confirmed that native title claims would not succeed in the case of residential, commercial and pastoral grants. However, it allowed that native title could be revived once a mine closed. It provided that any other valid grants of title would override native title only to the extent of any inconsistency between that grant and native title; native title could co-exist with another title, such as that of a pastoral lease. (The Wik decision later confirmed this.) Secondly, the Act set up an independent body—the National Native Title Tribunal—to determine whether native title existed over a particular area of land or water and whether native title still existed over an area where there was also a valid title, such as a farm, so that Aborigines could seek compensation from governments. Compensation could be paid in the form of land or money. Thirdly, in recognition of the fact that many Aborigines would be unable to establish native title, the Act also established a fund to help dispossessed Aborigines to buy and manage land (Bruer 1994, pp. 9–10).


The Aboriginal movement 79 In parliament, the passage of the Native Title Act was described as a ‘day of shame’ by the Coalition parties (Hocking 1997, p. 5). Despite Coalition fears that indigenous Australians might gain something from Mabo and the Native Title Act 1993, the practical consequences of the judgment and the legislation were minimal. In most parts of Australia, governments have extinguished native title or Aboriginal people have stopped living in their traditional ways. This means claims will not succeed over land where most non-indigenous people live, including all freehold land (people’s homes, town and suburban blocks, shops and offices in business districts in towns and cities, farming properties) and land used by the public and government (roads, railways, post offices, public buildings, schools). In most cases, the only land left which might conceivably be claimed is vacant Crown land in areas where a continuing association with the land can be shown. The native title legislation allows states and territories to confirm grants for pastoral, mining or tourism purposes, which are affected by the existence of native title, on a basis which accords with the Racial Discrimination Act and Australia’s international obligations. The government insisted: The Federal Government’s response allows mining, exploration, pastoral and other operations currently being undertaken to continue with certainty. And it takes nothing away from ordinary Australians, pastoralists, miners or other commercial interests (ALP n.d.). In the case of the mining industry, the legislation was clear that, where there were existing mining leases and rights, they would continue unaffected and any compensation to native title holders as a result of making these leases valid would be paid by the federal government, not the mining company. Companies wanting new mining leases on land claimed by traditional owners or land determined as having native title over it would need to discuss with the titleholders or claimants how the development would affect them and their land. Native title-holders would have no veto power. Where there was no agreement, the Native Title Tribunal or a state equivalent would make a decision on whether the grant would proceed. The Tribunal’s decision may be overridden by governments in either the state or national interest. Aboriginal native title-holders do not have mineral rights over any land; governments still control who can mine them. Although the mining industry blames the legal existence of native title for a downturn in exploration levels and argues that ‘native title-related impediments’ need to be removed, the


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real impediments are in fact commercial and market derived (Lavalle 2001, p. 45–46). The Native Title Act 1993 confirmed the validity of pastoral leases including all rights of renewal. This preserved the pastoralists’ demanded ‘certainty’. Governments would provide compensation that may be necessary to native title-holders as a result of making these leases valid. All the existing rights of holders of pastoral leases would be unaffected by the federal government’s legislation. In relation to the tourism industry, the validity of commercial leases was confirmed by the legislation with no change to the condition of the grants. Future grants over native title land would be subject to the standard negotiation requirements and tribunal procedures—that is, negotiation with native title-holders would be needed before any development occurred, just as with any other land title-holder (Thompson 1997, p. 8).

The Wik judgment and the Native Title Amendment Act 1998 In 1994, the Wik tribe placed a native title claim on Crown land in Queensland that was subject to a pastoral lease. On 23 December 1996, the High Court of Australia decided that: a pastoral lease does not necessarily confer rights of exclusive possession on the pastoralist; the rights and obligations of the pastoralist depend on the terms of the lease and the law under which it was granted; the mere grant of a pastoral lease does not necessarily extinguish any remaining native title rights; and if there is any inconsistency between the rights of the native title-holders and the rights of the pastoralist, the rights of the native title-holders must yield. Thus, if there is a conflict of rights, the native title-holders come off second best; if there is no conflict, the rights of each coexist (Brennan 1997, p. 23). Prior to the Wik decision, it was widely assumed that pastoral leases extinguished native title. In response to the Wik decision, National Party leaders and the NFF demanded that native title be extinguished on pastoral leases (Thompson 1997, p. 3). Pastoralists’ arguments about the need for ‘certainty’ created the perception that pastoral leases were the private property of the leaseholders. They are not, because they are leases—not freehold title. Both the Mabo and Wik judgments were clear that native title had been extinguished on all land that had been sold to others as freehold title, which includes all homes and farming properties. Howard was thus


The Aboriginal movement 81 quite wrong in his televised address to the nation to refer to ‘farmers’ who were furious to be told that their properties were threatened with native title claims as a result of the Wik decision (Wolfe 1998, p. 19). No farmers are jeopardised, for farming is not allowed on pastoral leases. In the case of pastoral leases, the Wik judgment merely ruled that such leases did not necessarily extinguish native title: native title rights could coexist with the rights of the leaseholder, but if any conflict existed then the rights of the leaseholder prevailed. The law was recognising the important difference between leases and freehold. Patrick Wolfe explains that, in the mid-nineteenth century, British colonial authorities sought to devise a means whereby pastoral settlement might not automatically spell the liquidation of the natives. Their solution was the pastoral lease. Rather than vesting full freehold title in graziers, pastoral leases provided for coexistence between Aborigines and cattlemen, so that Aborigines could continue with traditional practices such as rituals and hunting native game. As leases, they were for a fixed term, were less valuable and accordingly sold for less than freehold title, and were expressly for grazing stock and did not permit the land alterations that go with farming (Wolfe 1998, p. 19). Pastoralists in Western Australia, the Northern Territory and South Australia have always had to provide some Aboriginal access to their pastoral lands (Thompson 1997, p. 8). The Wik decision did nothing more than recognise the untidy reality of pastoral Australia: that pastoralists have never enjoyed ‘exclusive possession’ of their leases (Hearn 1997, p. 9). Despite NFF complaints of ‘uncertainty’, all the Wik decision entailed was an obligation to figure out the precise extent of enduring native title rights—for example, the right to visit sacred sites, hold ceremonies or collect native foods. Such issues would have to be decided on a case-by-case basis or by negotiation between the parties, unless parliament stepped in. Mark Hearn commented: The only native title rights that may coexist with the rights of a pastoralist holding a lease are those that are not inconsistent with the rights of the pastoralist. In short, Wik poses no economic threat to pastoralists. They can continue to manage their leases as they see fit (Hearn 1997, p. 9). Barbara Hocking (1997, p. 5) concluded that only racism could explain ‘the widespread implacable refusal to countenance the survival and coexistence


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of native title on land subject to a pastoral lease’. Environmental groups were also concerned about the Howard government’s intentions. Australian Conservation Foundation director Jim Downey claimed that, if the NFF’s demands for the upgrading of pastoral leases to freehold title and further tax relief to allow non-pastoral uses of the land were acceded to, the environmental impact would be disastrous (McDonald 1997, p. 8). Whereas Keating had enacted legislation to confirm the Mabo judgment, Howard set out to subvert both the Mabo and Wik judgments. This represented a continuation of the ‘wedge’ politics apparent in his refusal to confront Pauline Hanson’s ideas: presenting an ‘us’ (mainstream Australia) against ‘them’ (minority and fringe groupings). In airing his Ten Point Plan, which formed the basis of his government’s Native Title Amendment Bill, Howard complained that the High Court Wik decision was treating people ‘unequally’ and had ‘pushed the pendulum too far in the Aboriginal direction’ (Dept. of Prime Minister and Cabinet 1997, p. 1). Yet the Howard government used the opportunity to diminish native title rights in a number of significant ways, to improve conditions for mining companies and to facilitate the upgrading of pastoral leases to freehold title, even though pastoral leaseholders had paid significantly less for their leases because of the restrictions on the uses to which such land could be put. Howard’s legislation made the expropriation of Aboriginal land even more complete than hitherto and provided a windfall gain for leaseholders at the expense of indigenous people (Australian, 29 April 1997, p. 1; 9 May 1997, p. 4; Damania 1997, pp. 19–24; Hinkson 1997, pp. 5–6). The legislation enables pastoral leaseholders to diversify their holdings to include agriculture and forestry, which the terms of their initial leases had historically denied them in order to respect native title rights in these outback areas. It also stipulates that, in this process, indigenous groups have no right to negotiate, even if those activities extinguish native title by preventing continuing association with traditional land (Bachelard 1998, p. 6). As Noel Pearson observed, ‘the automatic ability for all leases to allow full primary production is a stand-out grab-for-more-rights provision by the farmers’ (Pearson 1998, p. 13). Also, states will find it much easier to upgrade leases to freehold by the compulsory acquisition of land, thus extinguishing native title (Bachelard 1998, p. 6). During the negotiations, Western Australian Premier Richard Court and Northern Territory Chief Minister Shane Stone both received promises from the Prime Minister that no deal would be done without their consent, because, as Court put it, ‘we are most directly affected’ (Le Grand 1998,


The Aboriginal movement 83 p. 1). Indigenous people were deemed unaffected and were not consulted on the final form of the Bill. When the legislation was finally passed in the Senate by a vote of 33 to 31, Labor Senator Nick Bolkus remarked: ‘I stand here appalled at our collective failure to move forward to decency, compassion and real equality for all Australians’ (McDonald 1997, p. 1). In responding to Wik, Coalition politicians were divided only as to tactics: how best to secure the interests of pastoral and mining concerns against those of native title-holders. Howard’s solution opted for extinction in practice rather than in law, ‘extinguishing native title in all but name’; outright extinguishment, he pointed out, had a ‘number of drawbacks’, most notably the potential cost of the compensation involved (Age, 29 April 1997, p. 1). The obdurate opposition of the Nationals in their determination that native title be extinguished outright suggested either that they were inept in pursuing their own interests or their resistance was staged deliberately by the Howard government so as to present the Ten Point Plan as a compromise between two opposed camps and not, as it really was, a capitulation to the pastoralists and mining companies. Because the Wik judgment had espoused a non-market based form of discrimination, for once of a positive kind, it had greatly affronted corporate prejudices; Geoffrey Blainey, for example, insisted that the Wik judgment was unacceptable because it gave special consideration to one particular racial group: indigenous Australians (Age, 29 April 1997, p. A3; Herald Sun, 17 June 1997, p. 6). Neo-liberal rhetoric was brought to bear upon the matter: white business interests pleaded equality of opportunity—for themselves. Howard’s legislation met with broad corporate approval for its containment of ‘unfair’ competition from indigenous native title-holders (Age, 29 April 1997, p. A7; Weekend Australian, 28–29 June 1997, p. 4; 13 September 1997; Age, 31 July 1997, p. A2; Australian, 30 July 1997, p. 2). The Native Title Amendment Act 1998 secured unfair advantages for those who were insisting loudest about the importance of equal treatment of all before the law. Howard’s legislation has the effect of converting the limited leaseholds that pastoralists acquired at a price to match into something akin to freehold title. ‘For this,’ according to Patrick Wolfe (1998, p. 19), ‘they would pay nothing. Moreover, any compensation accruing to Aboriginal people would come out of the public purse—Australian taxpayers could foot the bill for the massive unearned windfall that this bill would deliver to pastoral leaseholders.’ Peter Yu, Kimberley Land Council executive director, described the prospect as ‘a whole new round of Aboriginal dispossession’ (quoted in Thompson 1997, p. 3).


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Reconciliation, the stolen generations and the ‘s orry’ debate The impetus for what has become known as the Reconciliation movement was the Report of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, tabled in federal Parliament in May 1991.

The Labor governments and reconciliation This inquiry investigated the causes of 99 recent cases of Aboriginal deaths in prison. In tabling the report, Aboriginal Affairs Minister Robert Tickner declared that it constituted a scathing indictment of white Australian society’s treatment of indigenous Australians and the far-reaching adverse consequences, in matters such as education, housing and health, of their ‘dispossession and subordination’ (Hansard, vol. 177, 1991, p. 3415, quoted in Ellis 1001, p. 4). In asking why indigenous Australians were overrepresented in Australian gaols and why indigenous offenders were driven to suicide in such significant numbers, the report provided a vivid profile of the socio-economic situation facing these 99 offenders. The conclusions of the inquiry, according to Clare Ellis, ‘held up a mirror’ through which white Australians could begin to view the vast range of problems concerning their treatment of the indigenous population. The Royal Commission recommended a process of ‘reconciliation’, a ‘maturing of relationships between both sides’ which, according to Commissioner Mick Dodson, would require a ‘deeper understanding’ of how each side sees each other (and why this is the case) in order to establish a ‘common ground’ from which the nation could address the significant issues of Aboriginal disadvantage (quoted in Ellis 2001, p. 4). A formal process of reconciliation was initiated by the Hawke government. When introducing the Bill in June 1991, Tickner claimed it would ‘signal the beginning of a decade of reform and social justice’ (Hansard, vol. 177, 1991, p. 4498, quoted in Ellis 2001, p. 5). The decade was to culminate in 2001, the Centenary of Federation. He sought and gained bipartisan support for the idea; Tickner and his shadow counterpart, Michael Wooldridge, shook hands over the dispatch box on the passage of the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation Act. This Act established by unanimous vote the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation as a statutory authority. Its task, according to its first annual report, was to ‘improve the relationship between Aboriginal and Torres Strait


The Aboriginal movement 85 Islander peoples and the wider Australian community’. Its vision statement described what it would like the Australian political and social landscape to reflect in the year 2001: ‘A united Australia which respects this land of ours, values the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander heritage and provides justice and equity for all’ (cited in Ellis 2001, p. 7). When the Council was established, it was criticised by Charles Perkins, who said its goal of reconciliation reflected the government’s reluctant attitude towards any kind of treaty between black and white Australians (Australian, 5 March 1999, p. 2). But many other indigenous leaders embraced the idea, or were at least willing to see how the process developed. Indigenous leaders who accepted appointment to the Council included Evelyn Scott, Gatjil Djerrkura, Pat Dodson, Galarrwuy Yunupingu, May O’Brien, Ray Robinson, Jackie Huggins and Djiniyini Gondarra.5 However, Dodson and Yunupingu—despairing of the Howard government’s attitudes—resigned from the Council at the height of the Wik debate. At the outset of the formal process, Pat Dodson argued: ‘To have the type of race relations that are based on understanding, respect and mutual action, all levels and sectors of Australian society need to be involved. To be involved requires knowledge’ (Dodson 1993). Reconciliation, according to one of the Council’s Key Issue Papers in 1994, was an ‘anti-racist’ strategy ‘to promote better community relations’. Better community relations depended on an understanding of institutional and ideological racism, to be gained through a committed dialogue (Bourke et al 1994, p. 40). Under the Hawke and Keating governments, the Reconciliation movement was largely a top-down process. Because those governments were in favour of reconciliation, citizens who cared let them get on with it. In May 1995, the Keating government established the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC) inquiry into the past practice, carried out until the 1970s, of forcible separation of Aboriginal children from their families. It was headed by former High Court judge Ronald Wilson and indigenous leader Mick Dodson. It became known as the ‘Stolen Generations Inquiry’ and was seen by the Keating government and the Council for Reconciliation as an important part of the reconciliation process.

The Howard governments and reconciliation The extraordinary upsurge of grassroots mobilisation in support of reconciliation only really started in response to the Howard government’s obvious hostility to many aspects of the reconciliation process. In his very first week


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in office, Howard attacked both the operations and personnel of ATSIC. In response to the sittings of the HREOC inquiry, Howard conceded in October 1996 that the policy that forcibly removed tens of thousands of children from their parents ‘caused immense trauma and immense unhappiness to the people concerned’ but, as Pat Dodson noted, Howard seemed incapable of making the connection between the forced removal of children and ‘people’s present circumstances’ (Australian, 9 October 1996, p. 2). On 26 May 1997, the HREOC report, Bringing Them Home, was tabled in parliament. It recommended that a formal apology be made to the stolen generations and called for all Australian parliaments to apologise to Aboriginal children removed from their families (HREOC 1997). Howard refused, insisting that the ‘general community’ did not believe in ‘intergenerational guilt’. Hopes for a bipartisan resolution to mark the thirtieth anniversary of the 1967 referendum were dashed by Howard’s refusal to include Labor’s reference to the referendum being passed with the intent that the power conferred could ‘only be used for the benefit’ of indigenous people and a specific apology to Aborigines ‘for what has been done in the past’ (Australian, 27 August 1997, p. 5). As Colin Tatz (1998, p. 3) observed: ‘the past is not a foreign country’ to the vast majority of indigenous communities and individuals who continue to experience tragedy, inequality and disorder in their lives. A few days later, at the May 1997 National Reconciliation Convention, Howard’s speech admitted past injustices and expressed personal sorrow, but insisted that ‘Australians of this generation should not be required to accept guilt and blame for past actions and policies over which they had no control’ (Australian, 27 August 1999). When sections of the audience turned their back on Howard in disappointment at the inadequacy of this ‘apology’, Howard adopted a ‘hectoring’ tone and, with clenched fist, defended his government’s policies that had eroded the gains that had come with recognition of native title in the early 1990s. As Haydie Gooder and Jane Jacobs (2000, p. 230) comment, for the federal government of Australia, ‘an apology to Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders was virtually unsayable’. Robert Manne (2001) argues that the Stolen Generations report, with its emphasis on giving indigenous Australians a space to tell their stories, had the ‘power to change forever’ the way non-indigenous Australians saw their own country’s history (2001, p. 17). However, an ‘Australian version of historical denialism’ prevailed (2001, p. 105). Instead of rising to the challenge posed by the report, significant right-wing political and intellectual figures attacked the report as a product of the ‘guilt industry’ or a ‘sorry


The Aboriginal movement 87 industry’ set up by white intellectuals who live off indigenous suffering, exploit guilt and deprive the bulk of non-elite white Australia of their own national history (Hayden 2000, p. 16). As Matthew Ryan (2001, p. 2) notes, what can we make of a nation that can revel in the defeat at Gallipoli, but which is still able to gloss over its most terrible and far-reaching victory—the invasion of this land and the dispossession of its inhabitants? ‘Perhaps this partly repressed past remains irreconciled because it is not our past at all— it lives in the present. The attack continues via other means.’ Clare Ellis (2001, pp. 17–18) suggests that the debate surrounding the Stolen Generations is yet another example where landmark historical issues relating to questions of race, dispossession and assimilation evaded the reconciliation process. It indicated a failure of the reconciliation process to permeate the national consciousness, to the effect that ‘understanding’ rather than ‘unfair!’ becomes the order of the day. In December 1997, the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation presented to federal parliament a strategic plan outlining the following principles essential to the development of a Document of Reconciliation: Constitutional recognition and protection of indigenous rights; recognition of traditional customary law within the Australian legal system; the development of an agreed document on Australia’s history; symbolic protocols recognising the special status of indigenous people within the Australian nation; the establishment of a substantial long-term capital fund that compensates indigenous people for past dispossession and provides for economic security; the establishment of regional indigenous governance arrangements as a key mechanism in a new political relationship between indigenous people and Australian governments; and the establishment of a national funding formula that delivers community infrastructure and services on an equitable basis (Yu 1998, p. 15). In response to the recommended ‘symbolic protocols’, it has become common practice since the mid-1990s for public meetings and ceremonies to commence with either an indigenous Australian providing a ‘welcome to country’ and/or a non-indigenous Australian giving an ‘acknowledgment of country’. The Council encouraged people and organisations to acknowledge on public occasions that the land on which people were gathered belonged traditionally to the members and elders of local communities and their forebears, who were custodians for many centuries, that the land was the place of age-old ceremonies of celebration, initiation and renewal, and that the people’s living culture had a unique role in the life of the region. These protocols, which resemble those in Canada and New Zealand, are now


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common practice for special events or meetings in many organisations (Reconciliation Australia website). However, Howard has persistently refused to make an official government apology to the stolen generations. In this way, he stands with those Australians who have responded to the call for an apology with an intensification of resentment towards indigenous Australians and the special benefits they are seen to receive. Yet, as Gooder and Jacobs (2000, p. 232) note, in the absence of a ‘proper national apology’ there has been a proliferation of ‘minor’ apologies—‘an unprecedented outpouring of popular sympathy towards indigenous Australians’. For example, Jennie George, when president of the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU), issued an apology on behalf of the Australian trade union movement. During 1997 all state parliaments, the Senate and the ACT Assembly passed formal motions of apology (Australian, 27 August 1999, p. 2). On 26 May 1998, the first anniversary of the tabling of the HREOC Report, which became the first National Sorry Day, there was still no apology forthcoming from John Howard. After the federal election on 3 October 1998, Howard’s victory speech said: ‘I also want to commit myself very genuinely to the cause of true reconciliation with the Aboriginal people of Australia’. Ever optimistic, Charles Perkins confessed: ‘I was quite encouraged by that. It felt really good. It looked like we were going to go on a new tack and develop good relations’ (quoted in Brearly and Nason 1998, p. 25). However, it was just election night talk. Immediately afterwards, Howard refused to revisit the apology issue and vowed to pursue reconciliation in his own way. He reappointed John Herron as Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, a move criticised even by Gatjil Djerrkura, the moderate indigenous leader whom the government had made ATSIC chairman. Howard also appointed Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock as a ‘special envoy for reconciliation’. Within two weeks of re-election, Howard told Aboriginal people they should see themselves ‘as part and parcel of a harmonious Australian community’ (quoted in Yu 1998, p. 15). In the words of Peter Yu, executive director of the Kimberley Land Council, Howard ‘again showed himself to be part of that awful Australian ignorance that has so marred the path to reconciliation in the past few years’. Under the heading ‘Past truths are essential to future harmony’, Yu explained the issues from an indigenous perspective: We are not just another minority ethnic group: we are the first people of this land, and we continue to have our own internal


The Aboriginal movement 89 systems of law, culture, land tenure, authority and leadership . . . Attempts by indigenous people to assert and protect legally recognised rights to native title, to seek justice for the indecencies that resulted in the stolen generations, to plan, through selfdetermination, a future for our children that will overcome the tragedies of the past, have all been shoved aside in a climate of racial intolerance and hostility . . . The 10-year statutory reconciliation process enjoyed bipartisan support when it began in 1991. It is the Prime Minister who has created a political hostage out of reconciliation, not indigenous Australians. To put reconciliation back on the path of possible success, Howard must both heal the wounds of recent years and reinvigorate a national commitment to the process. Underpinning the former is an apology for stealing Aboriginal children from their families (Yu 1998, p. 15). Mick Dodson believes the real yardsticks that matter on the road to reconciliation are socio-economic: ‘We can’t say we have reconciliation when our life expectancy is 20 years less than other Australians.’ However, he also called for ‘internal decolonisation’ in the way Aboriginal affairs are administered. Referring to the Ten Point Plan, he commented: What I seen now is the spectacle of two white men—John Howard and Brian Harradine—discussing our native title while we’re not even in the room. How symbolically colonialist is that? Until our lives cease to be controlled by government and its agencies, there can be no true reconciliation (quoted in Brearley and Nason 1998, p. 25). With Howard still declining to offer the recommended apology, the Governor-General, Sir William Deane, issued a public statement on 16 October 1998, in which he argued that: the achievement of a just and lasting reconciliation between the Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders and the Australian nation as a whole is one of the most significant issues we face as we move towards our second century as a nation. To achieve such reconciliation, we must address the problems of the spirit and of lack of self-esteem as well as the appalling problems of material disadvantage in health, housing, education and employment where,


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Power, Profit and Protest on virtually every measure, indigenous people are far worse off than other Australians (Deane 1998, p. 17).

With the average Aboriginal baby having a life expectancy 20 years less than that of the average non-indigenous Australian, he maintained that progress towards the goal of true reconciliation depended on real progress towards the position where the future prospects of the average Aboriginal baby were comparable to those of the average non-Aboriginal one. ‘For how can we be truly reconciled while our children’s hands cannot touch?’ (Deane 1998, p. 17). Howard responded, insisting an apology to the stolen generations was off the agenda, not because of any fear of the possibility of compensation claims, but because of ‘common sense’. He explained to The 7.30 Report in late October 1998: ‘I have a very genuine belief that you express collective regret for things for which you are collectively, in a direct sense, responsible. I don’t think it applies to the current generation of Australians.’ He argued the importance of not ‘dwelling too much on past deeds and events’. Australian columnist Cathy Prior declared: ‘It pains me to listen to the man who will lead this nation into the twenty-first century . . . Injustices have indeed been committed by members of current generations of Australians, whether through direct involvement or silence. An apology recognising collective responsibility is not such a big ask’ (Prior, 1998, p. 13). In July 1999, Pat Dodson, who had resigned as chair of the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation, called for Aborigines to abandon their long and bitter quest for Howard to apologise: It’s a waste of time to keep asking John Howard to apologise. He’s not capable of doing it, so let’s get on with the real business. I am not so immobilised by the Prime Minister’s refusal that I think reconciliation has to be stalled because of it. Dodson argued that the critical task was to lobby for federal legislation to extend the reconciliation process for another decade and that the outstanding issues for stage two were: apology and compensation for the stolen generations; clarifying the rights of native title holders; reforming government funding arrangements responsible for welfare dependency of many Aboriginal communities. Dodson added that the Howard government’s approach to reconciliation was marked by ‘deliberate campaigns to attack individuals and push them to the sidelines’ (Australian, 12 July 1999, p. 1).


The Aboriginal movement 91 Many non-indigenous Australians have heeded Pat Dodson’s call to carry on the reconciliation process despite and without the Howard government. The strong grassroots movement in favour of reconciliation is a clear response of disapproval and disavowal of the Howard position on indigenous rights: a backlash against the backlash. The failure of the federal government to deliver a ‘proper’ version of an apology, according to Gooder and Jacobs (2000, p. 232), has brought together large numbers of settler Australians—whom they dub the ‘sorry people’—in a collective expression of sympathy towards Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders. The Howard government’s response to the Wik judgment was also fuel to the grassroots movement for reconciliation. By March 1998, according to Wendy McCarthy, the convenor of Wik Ed, the movement was spreading like wildfire. Historian Henry Reynolds had spoken to hundreds of reconciliation groups across the country in the previous eighteen months. Aden Ridgeway, then executive director of the New South Wales Land Council, was addressing up to a dozen reconciliation meetings a fortnight (Wahlquist 1998, p. 26). In addition to the growth of community-based reconciliation groups, there were dedicated websites, bulging Sorry Books and Aboriginal flags flying from local government buildings (Brearley and Nason 1998, p. 25). The Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation’s Annual Report 1997–1998 (1998, p. 4) declared the Council had been: inspired and invigorated by the rapidly growing people’s movement for reconciliation . . . Just over a year ago, some 20 Australians for Reconciliation groups existed throughout the country. At 30 June, this number stood at more than 260. Many other reconciliation groups are based in churches, workplaces, educational and professional institutions, and national and local community organisations. These groups operate independently of the Council. Support was also forthcoming from ethnic community associations. For example, the annual general meeting of the Australian Arabic Council in Melbourne on 19 November 1998 acknowledged the contribution of recent immigrants to ‘the process of dispossessing Aboriginal people of their land, their culture and heritage’ and pledged ‘full support for the Aboriginal community’s inherent right to self-determination’ and support for ‘the process of reconciliation as a way to heal the wounds of the past and work together towards a just and equitable future’ (Moreland Courier, 30 November 1998, p. 5).


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Jackie Huggins, University of Queensland academic and indigenous spokesperson, believes mainstream Australia is ready and willing to heed what indigenous people are saying: listen, hear, act, apologise, reconcile and move on together. ‘However, the stumbling blocks remain a minority of politicians who should find it in their hearts to admit they might be wrong in their reading of the situation and what mainstream Australia is saying’ (Huggins 1999, p. 9). In March 1999, the Council produced ‘Ten steps to reconciliation’, drafted by Huggins and novelist David Malouf: 11. Speaking with one voice, we the people of Australia, of many origins as we are, make a commitment to go on together recognising the gifts of one another’s presence. 12. We celebrate the fact that the Aboriginal culture is the oldest living continuous culture on the planet. That culture is still alive. It is sacred, spiritual and practical, a unique way of living in harmony with the land. Through the land and its first peoples, newcomers to this country may taste that spirituality and rejoice in its grandeur. 13. We acknowledge that Australia was colonised without the consent of the original inhabitants. 14. Our nation must have the courage to own the truth and heal the wounds of its past so that we can move on together at peace with ourselves. 15. We hereby take this step: as one part of the nation expresses its sorrow and profoundly regrets the injustices of the past, so the other part accepts the apology and forgives. 16. Our new journey then begins. We must learn our shared history, walk together and grow together to enrich our understanding. 17. Until all Australians have an equal chance to achieve their aspirations, and an equal voice, we will be a diminished nation. 18. We pledge ourselves to stop the injustice and address the disadvantage that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples face in their lives. 19. We respect the right of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples to remain responsible for their own destinies. 10. We can stand proud as a united Australia that respects this land of ours, values the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander heritage, and provides justice and equity for all (Australian, 5 March 1999, p. 1). Critics have pointed out that the wording of Step 5 puts the ‘A word’ not in the mouth of those delivering it, but in the mouth of those receiving it, and that there is no use of the term ‘self-determination’ because Howard thinks it implies the notion of a separate nation.


The Aboriginal movement 93 On 26 May 1999, Senator John Herron was 80 minutes late for the Journey of Healing ceremony between black and white Australians at Parliament House during the National Day of Healing. When invited to get up on stage and sing the Journey of Healing song, he would not and was silent. When the bucket went around to help pay for the ceremony, he held out empty hands. Age columnist Tony Wright asked: ‘Can anyone imagine the Industry Minister standing up a meeting of 1000 business leaders . . . Yet this was the biggest single reconciliation event since the last election’ (Wright 1999, p. 3). Moreover, the government was continuing to spend millions of dollars opposing the court case in Darwin of two stolen generation victims suing for compensation. Democrat Senator Aden Ridgeway made his maiden speech on 25 August 1999, in which he called for an apology to express deep and sincere regret. The following day, as a result of negotiations between Howard and Ridgeway, the federal parliament passed a motion of reconciliation, that this House: a. Reaffirms its whole-hearted commitment to the cause of reconciliation between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians as an important national priority for all Australians; b. Recognising the achievements of the Australian nation, commits to work together to strengthen the bonds that unite us, to respect and appreciate our differences and to build a fair and prosperous future in which we can all share; c. Reaffirms the central importance of practical measures leading to practical results that address the profound economic and social disadvantage which continues to be experienced by many indigenous Australians; d. Recognises the importance of understanding the shared history of indigenous and non-indigenous Australians and the need to acknowledge openly the wrongs and injustices of Australia’s past; e. Acknowledges that the mistreatment of many indigenous Australians over a significant period represents the most blemished chapter in our national history; f. Expresses its deep and sincere regret that indigenous Australians suffered injustices under the practices of past generations, and for the hurt and trauma that many indigenous people continue to feel as a consequence of those practices; and g. Believes that we, having achieved so much as a nation, can now move forward together for the benefit of all Australians.


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In his address, Howard conceded: ‘Without any doubt, the greatest blemish and stain on the Australian national story is our treatment of the indigenous people.’ However, he insisted on proceeding thus: The present generations of Australians cannot be held accountable for the errors and misdeeds of earlier generations . . . The Australian people do not want to embroil themselves in an exercise of shame and guilt. Australians know that mistakes were made in the past; know that injustices occurred and that wrongs were committed. But for the overwhelming majority of the current generations, there was no personal involvement of them or of their parents. An unsuccessful Labor Opposition amendment called on parliament to ‘unreservedly apologise’ and to compensate Aborigines who had been forcibly removed from their families. The motion was carried without a formal vote after the Opposition remained silent. Senator Bob Brown of the Australian Greens voted against it in the Senate, because of its inadequacy (Australian, 27 August 1999, pp. 1–2). Senator Brown’s position accorded with a subsequent statement by Land Council heads, including Pat Dodson and Murrandoo Yanner, which condemned the motion as a ‘hasty and disgraceful pretence’ and said nothing but the word ‘sorry’ would be acceptable. It was criticised, too, by Pat Dodson and Yunupingu who, with eight other indigenous leaders, signed a statement condemning both the wording and process behind the motion and insisting: ‘We should not forget that the separation of indigenous children from their families is an act of genocide.’ Ronald Wilson stated publicly that the motion fell short of his inquiry’s recommendations: It is the healing of the heart that was the concern of the inquiry, and this apology, I am afraid, goes nowhere towards meeting that need. It is putting the emphasis on what a great nation we are and then, incidentally, it talks about the injustices to Aboriginal people with no mention of the forcibly removed children. It just fails to recognise the personal pain still being suffered by indigenous people today because they never knew their mothers and families (Australian, 27 August 1999, pp. 1–2). Ridgeway defended exclusion of the word ‘sorry’, saying ‘regret’ was more appropriate: ‘you don’t go up to a person at a funeral and apologise, you


The Aboriginal movement 95 express some deep regret about a sad loss’ (Australian, 27 August 1999, p. 1). His position was supported by Gatjil Djerrkura, Evelyn Scott and Lowitja O’Donoghue. Scott conceded that some indigenous people, and the federal opposition, did not believe the motion went far enough in expressing regret: ‘Personally, I believe that the expression of regret in effect amounts to an apology and in the context of the last two years is of great significance.’ She added that, without agreed strategies to advance the lives of indigenous people, the finest words will mean little for indigenous Australians. ‘Much remains to be done by all Australians of goodwill if we are to make reconciliation a reality’ (Scott 1999, p. 2).

The final stages of reconciliation On 28 May 2000, as part of ‘Corroboree 2000’, an estimated quarter of a million people took part in the ‘People’s Walk for Reconciliation’ across the Sydney Harbour Bridge. During the rest of 2000 there were substantial turnouts for Reconciliation Marches in the other state capital cities. The Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation’s Final Report in December 2002 insisted: ‘Reconciliation has begun to enter the hearts and minds of the Australian people creating one of the most determined and vibrant people’s movements ever seen in the history of the nation. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and other Australians are increasingly working together to recognise and help heal the wounds of the past and move on together.’ It estimated that there were 396 local reconciliation groups dispersed throughout the country. ‘The people’s movement has played an important role in shaping a more inclusive Australian identity.’ It claimed that the acknowledgment during the Sydney 2000 Olympics and Paralympics of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and the recognition of their cultures and contributions could not have occurred without the Reconciliation process. However, while the Council claimed there was majority support for the concept of reconciliation, it also admitted that: ‘Ignorance, apathy, resistance and opposition still exist in parts of the wider community about reconciliation and the need to overcome Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander disadvantage’ (Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation Archives website; Reconciliation Australia website). In the 2000 Wentworth Lecture, Pat Dodson expressed his doubts that many indigenous people will experience the rewards of their struggle for ‘freedom and dignity in their own lifetime’ (quoted in Ellis 2001, p. 23). The Council for Reconciliation acknowledges that indigenous Australians ask why they should reconcile when they’ve done nothing wrong—the wrongs


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have been done to them. ‘Some Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples also remain unconvinced about how reconciliation can improve employment, education and housing outcomes and make a difference to their daily life circumstances’ (Reconciliation Australia website). Clare Ellis (2001, pp. 19–20) contrasts the ‘bureaucratic inertia’ which many indigenous leaders blame for the enduring tragedies within their communities with the grandiose plans for Reconciliation Place in Canberra, a $5 million mound on a pedestrian pathway linking the National Library and the National Gallery, ‘where visitors will be able to sit and contemplate reconciliation’. Announcing the plans in June 2001, Reconciliation Minister Philip Ruddock maintained that Reconciliation Place ‘physically and symbolically signifies the importance that we all attach to this process of reconciliation’ (Ellis 2001, p. 18). With $5 million wasted on a monument, while indigenous people suffer daily the continuing legacy of destruction, discrimination and disadvantage, it is hardly surprising that many Aboriginal Australians agree with Isabell Coe, long-time indigenous activist and caretaker of the Aboriginal Embassy: ‘Well, the reconciliation process, there’s nothing there for Aboriginal people—it’s just a feel good exercise for nonAboriginal Australia’ (Coe 2000). Other indigenous activists continue to hope for more from the Reconciliation process. As with all social movements, there are enduring divisions and significant disagreements within the Aboriginal movement. Yet it is this movement, and only this movement, that represents the aspirations of Aboriginal Australians to formulate their own demands and run their own affairs independently of those who dispossessed them against their will. This autonomous social movement provides the strongest pressure for some improvement in relations between indigenous and settler Australians. In the face of Howard government attacks upon Aboriginal Australians, the movement is all the more necessary. According to Jackie Huggins (1999, p. 9): ‘We have been disempowered in overt and covert ways, with cuts to ATSIC, Abstudy, bilingual programs and universities, and with racial vilification, attacks on native title, stolen generations and so on.’ Marcia Langton, Foundation Professor of Indigenous Studies at the University of Melbourne, describes the atmosphere created by the Howard government as appalling: It’s probably the worst it’s ever been. I don’t think there’s ever been such ill-will about the administration and policy development in Aboriginal affairs ever in the 20th century, having due regard to


The Aboriginal movement 97 previous historic periods and different ways of thinking. I mean, these blokes are reinventing the 19th century (quoted in Attwood and Markus 1999, pp. 355–56). These comments point to the immense difficulties currently faced by the Aboriginal movement in a political climate shaped by both socially regressive and neo-liberal values, which refuses to acknowledge the connection between past injustices to indigenous Australians and their continuing disadvantage and the urgent need for compensation and redress in order to work towards the possibility of greater equality between indigenous and nonindigenous Australians. Despite the reality that indigenous Australians do not even receive equality of treatment, the neo-liberal obsession with strict formal equality of treatment conveniently ensures the perpetuation of actual inequalities. Harping on the ‘unfair’ advantages supposedly given the poorest and weakest, right-wing commentators show no embarrassment about the truly unfair advantages perpetually dished out to the richest and strongest. The Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation concluded in its Final Report that continuing acute disadvantage, discrimination and racism suffered by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples remain the biggest challenge for reconciliation. In short: ‘Reconciliation requires overcoming differences in social and economic outcomes between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and other Australians’ (Reconciliation Australia website). How? Gary Foley maintains: ‘There needs to be some sort of drastic change to society, change of significant magnitude to shake society to its foundations and make them realise that inequity is not the way to go’ (quoted in Ellis 2001, p. 41).


3 The women’s movement

In March 1965, Merle Thornton and Ro Bogner chained themselves to the bar at the Regatta Hotel in Brisbane in protest at the exclusion of women from public bars. They had previously presented their case for equal drinking rights in a deputation to the Minister for Justice, but without result. In parliament and the newspapers, Thornton and Bognor were accused of having abandoned their children to stage this stunt (Thornton 2000; Lake 1999, pp. 214–15). In 1969, in Melbourne, Zelda D’Aprano—mother, longtime factory worker, trade unionist and communist—chained herself to the front doors of the Commonwealth Offices in Treasury Place to publicise women’s campaign for equal pay. D’Aprano had decided that ‘something more than just talking was needed to draw attention to the pay injustice meted out to women’ (D’Aprano 1995, p. 171; Lake 1999, p. 218). As Marilyn Lake (1999) observes, the style of these protests invoked the tradition of the English suffragettes, though the demand to be allowed to drink in public bars alongside men represented a sharp break with the


The women’s movement 99 first-wave feminist tradition that had been closely allied with the temperance movement and had cultivated the respectability expected of exemplary citizens (1999, pp. 214, 217). While the content of feminist demands differed from that of first-wave feminism, the form in which these demands were posed harked back to the militant styles of the early decades of the century. Media-oriented and dramatic, the resort once more to non-violent direct action was very much in tune with the strategies then developing amongst new social movements in general. In December 1969 in Sydney, some pioneering women’s liberationists handed out a pamphlet at an anti-Vietnam War demonstration that declared: ‘We, like the Vietnamese, can only be free from oppression when the profit makers no longer have the power to determine our lives.’ It announced the inaugural meeting of the Women’s Liberation Group on 14 January 1970 (Women’s Liberation Group n.d.). Back in Melbourne, D’Aprano and other women formed the Women’s Action Committee (WAC) in March 1970. It held its first public meeting in August 1970, to encourage women to join the women of England and America ‘to protest against exploitation and discrimination’ (Lake 1999, p. 223). From this point on, the movement that became part of an international phenomenon known as ‘second-wave’ feminism developed rapidly.

Earlier waves The first-wave women’s movement in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries had directed its efforts towards the redressing of formal genderbased inequalities. Women had no vote, but were compelled to obey the laws. If married, they had no property rights; they were compelled to promise obedience to their husbands, who could administer ‘chastisement’; they were denied guardianship of their children, which was vested solely in the husband; and they were subjected to divorce laws that refused them (but not men) access to divorce except in extreme instances of severe cruelty, and which normally awarded custody of children to the fathers. If single, they were required to pay taxes to support governments that did not recognise them. They were denied the facilities for obtaining higher education, as universities and colleges were closed to women. In opposing these injustices, first-wave feminism had insisted that the achievements of liberal democracy enjoyed by men be extended also to women. Like the international current of which they were the antipodean


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expression, Australian first-wave feminists were demanding an increased freedom of personal choice for women and an extension of the rights of women within the system as it was—that women should be allowed options other than marriage through better education and access to a wider range of jobs. Mostly, they did not criticise society’s expectation that marriage and motherhood should remain the usual career path for women, but they objected to the way this career was an enforced one and not one chosen by them as free individuals and equal citizens. They also opposed the double standard of sexual morality by maintaining that men should be strictly faithful to their wives just as men insisted their wives be faithful to them. In their emphasis on individual male purity, they were asking: ‘Why can’t a man be more like a woman?’ In campaigning for votes for women, first-wave feminists argued that women had a right to vote as equally rational human beings, subject to the laws of society, and that such a reform would be in the interests of the political system itself. A female influence brought to bear upon the affairs of the nation would achieve ‘moral’ legislation that would protect women and their children from male vices and male-inflicted injuries of various kinds: drunkenness, venereal diseases, sexual assault and domestic violence. And what was good for women and children was good for society. Arguments for the enfranchisement of women were not merely that women had a right to a say in the formation of the government under which they lived, but that the feminisation of political life would enhance social purity. In Australia, the movement was responsible for securing the vote for women: first in South Australia in 1894, in Western Australia in 1899, in New South Wales and in federal elections in 1902, in Tasmania in 1903, in Queensland in 1905, and finally in Victoria in 1908. The use of the terms ‘first-wave’ and ‘second-wave’ implies there was not much motion in between, which is rather unfair on those women caught between the waves. In this period, there were small but determined organisations that aimed to advance the position of women. First-wave feminist organisations such as the National Council of Women and the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union were joined by new groups from 1909 in the various states and, in 1921, the Australian Federation of Women Voters was formed, to which these existing state groups and subsequent ones, such as the United Associations of Women in New South Wales, were affiliated (Lake 1999, pp. 9–10). Amongst their achievements were: the right to sit on juries; mothers’ custody rights; maternity benefits and child endowment; infant and maternal welfare centres; women’s hospitals; age of


The women’s movement 101 consent legislation; the appointment of women JPs, police and magistrates; and the removal of formal barriers to the employment of married women (Street 1966, p. 129; Lake 1999, esp. p. 15). In 1921, Edith Cowan was elected to the Western Australian parliament, the first woman in an Australian legislature. In 1943, Enid Lyons (Liberal MHR) and Dorothy Tangney (Labor senator) were the first women elected to federal parliament. In the immediate postwar period, the Union of Australian Women, established in 1950 by Communist Party women, campaigned for higher child endowment, more kindergartens and government subsidies for child care centres (on the UAW, see Curthoys and McDonald 1996). The Union also claims the establishment of Family Planning Clinics in infant welfare centres as one of its notable achievements. And it proudly records a lessening of the ‘blatant sexism’ used by TV advertisers of ‘foundation garments’ after 1967, when the Union organised protests and established a Better Standards Committee to interview the Broadcasting Control Board, the Association of Advertising Agencies and the manufacturers concerned (Curlewis 1974, p. 4). By this stage, however, a new generation of women was making new demands, often to the anguish of older feminists. In particular, the initial association of early second-wave feminism with the ‘sexual revolution’ and its championing of women’s sexual rights was disconcerting to earlier activists. Both waves and those in between opposed the double standard of sexual morality. However, the earlier generations had followed Mary Wollstonecraft’s advice, in A Vindication of the Rights of Women published in 1792, that men had to be persuaded to behave as chastely as women. Now, second-wave feminism, on behalf of the first generation of women who had access to effective woman-controlled contraception, was demanding to know: ‘Why can’t a woman be more like a man?’

The development of the contemporary women’s movement Marilyn Lake argues that feminism’s resurgence from the late 1960s was underpinned, amongst other things, by the increased demand for female labour, the expansion of tertiary education, the limits of male radicalism, and the Pill (Lake 1988/89, pp. 8–10). The increased demand for female labour was crucial. The postwar boom had seen a rapid expansion of employment in manufacturing and service industries—sectors that employed a lot of women. The needs of the capitalist


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economy for more and more people to employ offered a greater number of women options other than housewifery and challenged the old belief that a woman’s place was in the home. Married women’s employment rates climbed, facilitated by new methods of birth control, which helped bring about a decline in the number of children each woman produced. In 1921, only 9.2 per cent of women in the paid workforce were married; by 1970 the figure was over 53 per cent (Grimshaw 1988, p. 82). In 1963 in the United States, Betty Friedan’s influential book The Feminine Mystique described the boredom and frustration felt by women under house arrest, which Friedan termed ‘the problem that has no name’. In 1970, Germaine Greer described in The Female Eunuch the ways in which the modern nuclear family produced a wife who was ‘a designing doll, disillusioned about her husband, confused and embittered by her own idleness and insignificance’ (Greer 1971, p. 223). A few years later, Anne Summers’ Damned Whores and God’s Police analysed the situation of Australian housewives, the ‘suburban neurotics’, locating the ‘problem that has no name’ in postwar developments that undermined the importance of the work women traditionally did in the home, and thereby their self-esteem. She attacked the way women themselves were blamed for their own neuroses: ‘It is the structure of sexism and its supportive institution—‘the family’—which requires renovation and not the hapless women who are caught in its mesh’ (Summers 1975, pp. 454–55). It was the possibility of escaping house arrest and finding rewarding paid work that stimulated young women at this time to promote new social and political agendas. The higher educational qualifications gained by many more women in the course of the postwar boom in tertiary education increased many women’s chances of finding work that was more, rather than less, pleasant than unpaid domestic labour. As the women’s movement gained momentum, material realities and feminist ideas were mutually reinforcing. For instance, the demand for female ordination expresses the desire of tertiary-educated religious women to pursue a career path in religion, but feminist ideology also has been partly responsible for the fact that increasing numbers of women inside the church have heard the call (Clark 1989, p. 17). The economic and social impetus for the women’s movement came along at the same time as a favourable political climate caused by the radicalisation of Western society during the Vietnam War. In January 1970, the Sydney Women’s Liberation Group acknowledged that ‘the ideas and reasoning behind women’s liberation reflect traditional themes of the radical socialist left’ and explicitly located women’s liberation within the context of 1960s radicalism:


The women’s movement 103 There is an increasing self-awareness on the part of the powerless and the manipulated of all societies. Third world struggles against imperialism, black demands for power, student demands for shared control of the university, rank and file workers’ opposition to union bureaucrats as well as bosses and community demands for control of environment all share the same idea of combatting particular repressions and injustices where they occur. And the same goes for Womens Liberation (Women’s Liberation Group 1970). However, it was not just the wider society these radicalised women saw as problematic, but also their own political milieu. Many had been active in leftwing political movements and had become critical of the way they were male-dominated and operated on sexist assumptions (see D’Aprano 1977, p. 136). Joyce Stevens told the National Anti-War Conference in Sydney in February 1971 that women had been confined to an ‘auxiliary role’ within the anti-war movement, ‘serving on various working committees, typing the “big deal” reports, licking the stamps, warming the beds of movement “leaders” or keeping “her” children quiet while he ponders the great theoretical problems of our times’ (Stevens 1971). Just as the sexism of the anti-slavery movement in the middle of last century inadvertently helped to spawn the autonomous first-wave women’s movement, so too did the sexism of left-wing organisations in the 1960s and 1970s encourage the development of second-wave feminism. A certain amount of tension developed between the women’s movement and the ‘male left’, as it was termed by the women’s movement. The Pill was crucial to second-wave feminism. Birth control effectively enabled women to bear children only when they wanted to. Women were freer to explore their own sexual needs, without fear of pregnancy. However, the sexual liberation made technically possible by the Pill was unable to be fully realised by women in a society where sexual attitudes and practices were still far from egalitarian. Arguably, it was men who most clearly benefited from the Pill, not women. Lake recalls how the Pill promised women new sexual freedom but that ‘this new freedom was offered on masculine terms and all too often experienced by many women as a new confinement, a further means of exploitation’. Women’s liberation can be seen as both a product of, and reaction against, sexual liberation (Lake 1988/89). As it developed, the women’s movement became highly differentiated, both theoretically and organisationally. At the public level, however, the movement maintained coherence through the raising of demands upon which all currents within it could agree. These included: equal pay; equal


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opportunity in employment; access to affordable, good-quality childcare; access to safe and legal abortion; equal opportunity in education; and an end to sexism and sex-role stereotyping in society generally. Internally, however, the women’s movement was deeply divided. These divisions can be understood in two ways: as ideological divisions and as organisational divisions. They did connect in some ways, but not always neatly.

Ideological divisions in the 1970s and 1980s During the heyday of second-wave feminism in the 1970s and early 1980s, ideological developments in the international women’s movement increasingly called upon women’s movement activists to identify themselves as liberal feminists, radical feminists, Marxist feminists or socialist feminists. During the later 1980s and 1990s, a new ideological expression—postmodern feminism— developed. Although postmodern feminism flourished only in academic circles, its impact was felt further afield, precisely because it queried—and thereby destabilised—feminist politics. The original forms of feminism also underwent reformulation and faced new challenges. These developments are discussed below under the heading ‘Feminism in the 1990s’.

Liberal feminism Liberal feminists demand equal rights for women and argue that equality for women can be achieved without major alterations to the economic and political structures of contemporary capitalist democracies. They believe that the barriers to women’s emancipation are incidental features of the political system and not fundamental to it, that with the dismantling of these barriers—whether institutional or attitudinal—equality for women will ultimately prevail. Thus women should be able and enabled to ‘get on’ in all aspects of life, to compete on equal terms with men for social rewards— notably power, prestige and money. In keeping with liberal values, they tend to emphasise the importance of women’s achievements as individuals: at the ‘bourgeois’ or ‘corporate’ end of the liberal feminist spectrum are the kind of feminists who dress for success and nominate for businesswoman of the year, who want equality not with men in general, but with rich and powerful men. Other liberal feminists are more committed to sisterhood, to advancing the position of women as a whole, through feminist fine-tuning of the liberal


The women’s movement 105 political order. Thus liberal feminism can be identified not just by individualist strategies, but also by an emphasis on gradual change within prevailing structures. Beatrice Faust, a founding member of the Women’s Electoral Lobby, insisted that the moderate feminists who sought to reform existing institutions could and were achieving more than those who attacked the family frontally. Men, in her view, were not irremediably sexist; men, too, could benefit from a society with less stereotyped sex roles. She also argued that women should behave more like men in sexual relations, to ‘unlearn their inhibitions and enjoy perving on men’. She accused radical feminists of being more interested in liberation from sex than for sex, commenting they were so hostile to men they were prepared to give up sex with ‘pathological ease’ (Faust 1970, pp. 17–20). It was liberal feminism which had the greatest impact on mainstream society, appealing to many women who did not see themselves as part of the women’s movement but who identified with its liberal ideas of equality of rights for women as individiduals. Chilla Bulbeck argued in 1997 that liberal feminism had been the most enduring brand of feminism in the Anglophone West, because feminisms are influenced by the societies which host them: ‘Individualism imagines a society of more or less equal opportunity, a conception of the world which denies deep-seated divisions between groups of people’ (Bulbeck 1997, p. 213). Liberal feminism’s higher profile was also facilitated by the fact that it was the least challenging of the feminisms—the least offensive to men, the one whose demands could be met with least upset. It was accordingly given the most public recognition and support, while the agendas of other feminisms were characteristically represented as the unreasonable demands of a monstrous bra-burning regiment who wanted to abort every second baby and leave the other one in twenty-four-hour-a-day childcare. By such means, media portrayed other feminisms as antimotherhood, effectively reducing their appeal to many women.

Radical feminism Radical feminism is the feminism that most celebrates femaleness; its values are most antipathetic to what it alleges men stand for. Typically, it emphasises personal-political issues such as sexuality rather than campaigns for equal pay. For many radical feminists, this is the only true feminism. Judith Allen, who was Australia’s first Professor of Women’s Studies (at Griffith University in Brisbane), argued that feminism has one central claim, that ‘the oppression of women, as a sex is in the interests of men as a sex’. Feminism,


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therefore, cannot be modified by other positions such as liberalism or Marxism, and still remain feminism (Allen 1990, p. 22). Radical feminism proceeds from the assumption that the domination of women by men is the most fundamental form of oppression in society: the oldest form of oppression, women being the first oppressed group historically; the most widespread, existing in all societies; and the deepest form of oppression in that it is the hardest to eradicate. The term used by radical feminists to describe this dominance of men over women is patriarchy, first coined by American feminist Kate Millett in her ovarious text, Sexual Politics, in 1970. Radical feminists disagree about the precise origins of patriarchy. Some locate it in the differing reproductive roles of men and women, causing the first division of labour, and consider the mode and relations of reproduction, not production, to be the driving force of history (Firestone 1970). Some argue further that oppressing women was men’s compensation for the fact that they could not give birth—an attempt to counteract the alienation of their reproductive consciousnesses (O’Brien 1981) or an attempt to control the felt power of women over men through their ability to reproduce the species (Rich 1976). An alternative explanation claims that the origins of patriarchy lie in the fact that men have always been able to rape women which, even if only occasional and only carried out by a few men, performs an important social function on behalf of all men, ‘a conscious process of intimidation by which all men keep all women in a state of fear’ (Brownmiller 1975, pp. 14–15). Radical feminism emphasises that all women are oppressed by all men, regardless of other considerations such as class or race. In doing so, it closely investigates the construction of sexuality under patriarchy, the eroticisation of women’s subordination and the ways in which this inegalitarian sexuality underscores patriarchal power relations in general. Radical feminists, for instance, generally insist that all forms of pornography degrade women and construct women sexually in ways that reflect and promote male interests (Pringle 1981, pp. 3–10; Gross 1981, pp. 16–21; Wills 1981, pp. 22–25). Radical feminism itself underwent a transformation in the late 1970s, marked by the publication in the United States of Mary Daly’s Gyn/Ecology (1978), which embraced patriarchy more determinedly as an anti-class, rather than cross-class, theoretical position (1978, esp. pp. 343–46, 386–89). Daly visited Australia in 1981, a tour that raised the profile of radical feminism within women’s liberation but alienated feminists critical of the direction in which radical feminism was now moving. Speaking from a socialist feminist perspective, Ann Curthoys was surprised that her radical feminist friends responded warmly to ‘this apolitical manhater’, who believed that:


The women’s movement 107 no men are oppressed: all women are. Colonialism, imperialism, class exploitation—all cease to exist or matter. Militarism is a product only of male aggression and power play. So too are the ecological disasters of the modern world. Curthoys left the Refractory Girl collective (Curthoys 1988c, pp. 62, 90). Scarlet Woman referred in this year to the ‘hardening of some of the differences that exist among feminists’, noting that this was happening at the same time as the movement was experiencing more concerted attacks from government and anti-feminist forces (Editorial, Scarlet Woman no. 13, 1981, p. 1).

Marxist feminism and socialist feminism Marxist feminists insist it is the capitalism system, and not men, that causes the subordination of women: women within the nuclear family provide invaluable services ‘for free’ for capitalism, caring for their menfolk in the paid workforce and providing the future workforce by reproducing human beings. Moreover, their position within the family ensures that, when women enter the paid workforce, their labour is especially cheap and vulnerable—a further benefit for capitalism. Only socialism, achieved by men and women workers acting unitedly, can restore equality between the sexes. Early in 1971, the Worker–Student Alliance for Women’s Liberation explained the connection between capitalism and sexism from a Marxist feminist perspective: Attitudes of male chauvinism are promoted by the Capitalist system because they provide the exploiter with an immediate and permanent division in the Working Class . . . It fosters male feelings of superiority and helps to perpetuate disunity. This disunity not only helps to keep the women’s wages lower, it forces men’s wages down because all workers are then in a position of weakness in the fight for wage justice due to this division (Worker–Student Alliance n.d.). Radical feminism, according to Marxist feminism, isolated the women’s struggle from the class struggle and overlooked the ‘manipulative powers of capitalist society’ (Gillett 1972, pp. 9–10). Australian Marxist feminists were concerned to build links between the left and the women’s movement, to transmit feminist principles into left-wing


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political and organisational practice and, by engaging in broader women’s movement struggles and arguing a Marxist feminist perspective, to win feminists over to a Marxist critique of capitalism. However, as other women’s movement activists disapproved of Marxist feminists’ continuing commitment to the ‘male left’ and membership or association with organisations such as the Communist Party and other socialist parties, many Marxist feminists felt obliged to choose between their Marxism and their feminism. Never an easy position to maintain in practice, adherence to Marxist feminism became more difficult still as the wider women’s movement became increasingly antagonistic towards Marxist and class analytical perspectives during the 1980s. Socialist feminists argue that capitalism and patriarchy together explain the subordination of women to men; both the capitalist system and men— even male workers—benefit from this subordination. Heidi Hartmann, an American socialist feminist, asks: Who benefits from women’s labor? Surely capitalists, but also surely men, who as husbands and fathers receive personalized services at home. The content and extent of the services may vary by class or ethnic or racial group, but the fact of their receipt does not. Men have a higher standard of living than women in terms of luxury consumption, leisure time, and personalized services. A materialist approach ought not ignore this crucial point (Hartmann 1981, p. 9). Socialist feminists argue that, while Marxist feminism can explain why capitalism requires the existence of a sexual division of labour, it cannot explain why women and men are assigned their respective roles. The theory of patriarchy is also needed to explain the precise falling out of the sexual division of labour that facilitates capital accumulation. Upholding as they do the importance of both class and gender, the necessity of confronting both capitalism and patriarchy, socialist feminists often find that the logic of their position demands hyper-activism: fighting equal pay cases in the morning, joining in a childcare protest at lunchtime, campaigning against sexual harassment in the workplace in the afternoon, and working in a women’s refuge in the evening. Within the women’s movement, it was socialist feminists who raised the importance of class and capitalism to an understanding of women’s lot, contributing much to the analysis of how the economy and the state detrimentally affect the position of women. In particular, socialist feminists


The women’s movement 109 opposed radical feminism’s increasingly anti-class perspective. For Ann Curthoys, the increasing unpopularity of class analysis within the women’s movement reflected its middle-class base. She argues that: the demand for social justice for women as an independent demand can lead to a situation where relatively privileged women seek to advance their own position further over that of relatively unprivileged men . . . Only a feminism deeply aware of forms of oppression and exploitation other than gender can avoid this pitfall (Curthoys 1988, pp. 87, 93–94). In the course of a heated debate on the relevance of socialist feminism, Pauline Johnson insisted that feminism could best be reconstructed by affirming its practical, socialist demands for a changed social life, incorporating equity, democracy and social justice. She also envisaged a vital role for socialist feminism in ‘the radical reconstruction of a socialist tradition helping to remake it into a truly democratic social movement’, no longer masculinist but recognising a plurality of life experiences, needs and choices (Johnson 1988, esp. p. 179).

Organisational divisions The main organisational division during the 1970s and 1980s was between the militant women’s liberation movement and the more moderate Women’s Electoral Lobby. Broadly speaking, the women’s liberation movement contained both radical feminists and socialist feminists, in increasingly uneasy proximity, and the Women’s Electoral Lobby was largely the preserve of liberal feminists. Marxist feminists tended to work primarily within leftwing political organisations, such as the Communist Party of Australia, the Socialist Workers’ Party (now the Democratic Socialist Party) and the International Socialists.

The women’s liberation movement At the International Women’s Day March in 1975, a broadsheet written by Joyce Stevens summarised the reasons why women had responded in large numbers to the emergence of women’s liberation over the previous six years:


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Power, Profit and Protest Because our work is never done and underpaid or boring or repetitious and we are the first to get the sack and what we look like is more important than what we do and if we get raped it’s our own fault and if we get bashed we must have provoked it and if we raise our voices we’re nagging bitches and if we enjoy sex we’re nymphos and if we don’t we’re frigid and if we love women it’s because we can’t get a man and if we ask our doctor many questions we’re neurotic and if we stand up for our rights we’re aggressive and unfeminine and if we don’t we’re typical weak females and if we want to get married we’re out to trap a man and if we don’t we’re unnatural and because we still can’t get an adequate safe contraceptive but men can walk on the moon and if we can’t cope or don’t want a pregnancy we’re made to feel guilty about abortion and . . . for lots of other reasons we are part of Women’s Liberation (Wills 1983, pp. 312–13).

The women’s liberation movement, as we have seen, began with women chained to public buildings in Brisbane and Melbourne. Its militancy in

An International Women’s Day March in Melbourne in the early 1980s (courtesy University of Melbourne Archives, copyright Lyn Beaton).


The women’s movement 111 tactics paralleled the far-reaching nature of its aims. In January 1971, the first issue of the Brisbane women’s liberation newsletter Shrew explained that the role we see the Women’s Liberation Movement playing is that of challenging what are historically our limits and thereby questioning the present roles of the male and female, and so exposing the exploitative nature of society (Introduction, Shrew, vol. 1, no. 1, January 1971, p. 1). The women’s liberation movement aimed at more than mere equality for women with men: it desired the liberation of women from the myriad of social pressures and structures that oppressed. Lake argues that women’s liberation was revolutionary in at least two senses: it called for an end to the inequalities of capitalism and for the overthrow of patriarchy. But the transformations had to begin within women themselves. However, there was ‘fierce political debate’, according to Lake, ‘about whether men or capitalists were the real enemy’. Generally, she concludes, it was agreed that capitalism and patriarchy created a ‘double oppression’ for women, locking them into ‘woman’s role’ (Lake 1999, pp. 231–36). The development of ideology was therefore an important feature of the women’s liberation movement: patriarchal capitalism or capitalist patriarchy had to be comprehended in order to be changed. The intellectual creativity and vitality of the women’s liberation movement is revealed in the proliferation of publications: newsletters, newspapers, magazines and journals. Most capital cities and many campuses had a women’s liberation newsletter by the early 1970s, such as Mejane in Sydney, Vashti’s Voice in Melbourne and Liberation in Adelaide. Consciousness-raising groups were an important part of the women’s liberation movement. They were groups of about a dozen women who shared their ideas and feelings with each other, enabling women to comprehend the social and collective nature of their individual problems. Consciousnessraising groups also connected individual enlightenment with efforts to transform social structures. They enabled women to understand themselves and the male-ordered nature of the world around them, to achieve a consciousness of their real interests as women and their need to work in sisterhood to combat the gender order that constrained them. As Di Heath wrote in an early pamphlet on consciousness-raising: ‘C.R. is an end in itself for the individual, it is a commitment to the praxis which connects thought and action and it is a means to social change’ (Heath n.d.).


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Power, Profit and Protest A front cover of Melbourne’s women’s liberation newspaper.

Women’s liberationists believed in living out in daily practice the sororal and egalitarian values of the envisaged future society. They were hostile to formal organisational structures, elected leaders, hierarchies of office bearers, committees and executives, and official spokeswomen. Within a few years, however, some women within the movement were beginning to complain about the ‘tyranny of structurelessness’.1 They believed that the absence of official structures was no guarantee against the appearance of unofficial structures and self-selected leaderships that were more subversive of egalitarian ideals than official structures and leaderships, because they could never be held accountable nor properly contested. They pointed out that de facto hierarchies had developed within the movement and would continue to do so. In response to this controversy, the autonomous women’s groups that made up the women’s liberation movement adopted various strategies to guard against the emergence of de facto hierarchies and engaged in a kind of collective watchfulness against the tyranny of structurelessness. By the early 1980s women’s liberation had clearly fractured along ideological lines. The debates that had long raged concerning the relative importance of class and gender in determining women’s oppression were no


The women’s movement 113 longer being resolved by a cheerful agreement to stress the importance of both. Radical feminists and socialist feminists could no longer cooperate politically to the extent necessary to sustain the movement that had been built on the energies and convictions of both streams of feminism. Reflections of women’s liberation remain in a wide range of autonomous women’s groups and organisations. Occasionally it can regroup, for example when abortion rights are threatened. However, as a social movement, women’s liberation no longer exists, powerful though it remains as an idea. And its influences are legion.

Women’s Electoral Lobby If women’s liberation was home to radical feminists and socialist feminists, the Women’s Electoral Lobby (WEL) was the natural space for liberal feminists, who were sometimes termed ‘bourgeois feminists’ by their more revolutionary sisters. According to Lake: ‘Women’s Liberationists barely concealed their scorn with WEL’s desire to engage in conventional politics, while members of WEL professed impatience with the radicals’ preoccupation with theory and self-knowledge’ (Lake 1999, p. 239). In essence, the distinction between women’s liberation and the Women’s Electoral Lobby was between those who believed revolution was needed for women to achieve equality and those who insisted substantial reform would be sufficient. The organisational bifurcation of the women’s movement in Australia only happened in February 1972 with the formation in Melbourne of WEL by eleven women, ‘mostly thirtyish, married and with children, and mostly with professional jobs’ (WEL, newsletter c. July 1972; Grimshaw 1988, p. 68). Within a couple of months, Melbourne WEL had 1000 members and branches in every state capital. The direct inspiration for WEL was the American National Organisation for Women, which had scrutinised the feminist credentials of the 1972 American presidential candidates. At the December 1972 federal election, WEL sent a questionnaire to every parliamentary candidate and then ranked the candidates for every electorate in the country, enabling women voters to bring their feminist opinions to bear upon the electoral process. WEL’s slogan was: ‘Think WEL before you vote’ (WEL leaflet c. Dec 1972). Its first pamphlet pointed out that there were no women in the House of Representatives, though women had had the vote for 75 years. And: Women are discriminated against at work, at school, and in the home. Married women suffer many anomalies in tax benefits,


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Power, Profit and Protest medical and welfare payments. Single women are discriminated against through credit, home loans and insurance. All women suffer from laws which deny them the right to control their biological destinies by adequate sex education, inexpensive contraception and elective abortion—THESE THINGS MUST CHANGE (WEL leaflet c. November 1972).

WEL argued that the talent of women was being disregarded to the detriment of the nation; where women’s liberation was concerned primarily about the deleterious effects on women, WEL emphasised also the injury to the wider community from sex-based discrimination. WEL was unaware that feminist organisations in Australia had been using such tactics throughout the twentieth century, testimony to the extent to which the exertions of previous generations of feminists had been hidden from history. According to Lake, WEL ‘acquired an image of moderation and respectability’ and regularly held discussions on what comprised an effective lobby group. Operating in the long-established tradition of non-party politics—even if unaware of the tradition—WEL’s professionalism made it ‘an extremely effective political organisation’ (Lake 1999, pp. 13, 241). Early in 1974, Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser asked WEL to supply him with a detailed and comprehensive statement of WEL’s objectives and requested a meeting. The WEL Newsletter commented pointedly: ‘It remains to be seen if there has been any radical change of views on feminist issues within the Liberal Party, but it seems certain there has been a change of attitude towards the importance of women’s votes’ (WEL Newsletter, April 1974, p. 5). WEL had formed the first electoral lobby group that did not represent a minority. WEL’s activities then and now clearly reveal its predominantly liberal feminist leanings: the state, though currently dominated by men and masculinist in significant ways, is not necessarily patriarchal but can constitute a site of struggle. WEL lobbies, mobilises public opinion, and pushes for the employment of feminist policy-makers within the bureaucratic structures of power: the appointment of women’s advisors to governments, federal and state. It argues for anti-discrimination legislation and for equal opportunity programs. Much of the partial feminisation of some sectors of government and bureaucracy which occurred during the Whitlam Labor governments, and which has been retained to varying degrees, is attributable to the determination of WEL within—and women’s liberation without. However, with the revolutionary feminist moment apparently over and


The women’s movement 115 women’s liberation no longer in existence in any meaningful way, WEL’s organisational endurance was marked in February 2002 with its thirtieth anniversary celebrations.

Making demands: winning some, losing some In July 1975, Hecate maintained that the strength of the women’s movement was ‘obvious’: [It has] become an important social force in our time and has succeeded in providing services and support for some of women’s immediate needs. Thousands of women see themselves as part of the movement and a vaguely defined ‘women’s consciousness’ has been widely diffused through consciousness raising groups, demonstrations, action projects, counter-institutional activity and through the mass media. Women in the movement have a growing understanding of common oppression and the imperative of collective solutions (Editorial, Hecate, vol. 1, no. 2, July 1975, p. 4). Though much of the élan of the early 1970s was to dissipate over the succeeding decade and a half, the women’s movement continued to make important feminist inroads, both in terms of practical achievements and by changing ideas about the contributions and capabilities of women. Yet there are many ways in which, despite the significance of advances made by the women’s movement, the majority of women are still not much better off. In assessing the impact of the women’s movement, it is helpful to look at how the movement has attempted to translate its specific demands into practice.

Equal pay In the postwar period, women performing exactly the same work as men were typically paid about 75 per cent of the male rate, an advance upon the 54 per cent that had prevailed before World War II. Feminists and female trade union activists—notably Muriel Heagney—had campaigned relentlessly for decades for equal pay, and this demand was raised anew by the second-wave women’s movement. The demand for equal pay was not only a demand for equal rights, but also a demand that aimed to contest the ‘dual labour market’, whereby the jobs done by women are characterised by


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lower pay and poorer conditions than traditionally male areas of the labour market (Outhwaite 1989, p. 197). The dual labour market is a vicious circle for women: if women earn less than men, it makes economic sense for fathers to be the primary breadwinners, but working full time in the paid workforce takes men almost permanently out of the home, so women take primary responsibility for child-rearing and are grossly handicapped in their pursuit of job promotion and higher wages, and more generally in access to betterpaid employment. Zelda D’Aprano and other women workers sat through the 1969 Equal Pay Case hearings, when four learned male judges decided there were good reasons not to grant ‘equal pay for work of equal value’ but only ‘equal pay for equal work’ to the few women who did exactly the same work as men in male-dominated occupations: There we were, the poor women, all sitting in the Court like a lot of cows at the sale yards, while all the men out front presented arguments as to how much we were worth . . . I felt humiliated, belittled and degraded, not for myself but for all women (D’Aprano 1969, p. 13). In response, Melbourne Women’s Action Committee (WAC) organised a mass tram ride where women insisted on paying only 75 per cent of the fare, ‘as a protest against women receiving lower salaries and paying full price for all commodities and services’. WAC activists also ‘visited’ several hotels to challenge the refusal to serve women in the public bars, pointing out that women, on less pay, were obliged to pay more for their drinks in the ‘ladies’ lounges’ of hotels (WAC annual report, March 1971, p. 1; D’Aprano 1977, pp. 134–35). The 1969 ‘equal pay for equal work’ decision was extended in 1972 to women working in predominantly female industries, with the Arbitration Court decision to award ‘equal pay for work of equal value’. In 1974 another significant victory was achieved when the court replaced the male minimum wage with an adult minimum wage, thus abolishing the ‘family wage’ that had long been used to justify lower pay rates for women. Feminist activists and feminist organisations were important in urging the official organisations of the labour movement to present these cases and in presenting the cases themselves. These decisions between 1969 and 1974 did effect significant improvements in female earnings, up to a point. By November 1985, adult ordinary time earnings for women were 82.46 per cent of those for men. In


The women’s movement 117 1986, the Australian Council of Trade Unions identified some of the possible reasons for the difference in wages as being the concentration of women in a small range of occupations and industries which had relatively low earnings; the predominance of women in the lower grades of many occupations; and the incomplete application of ‘comparable worth’ or ‘equal pay for work of equal value’ in Australia (Cretkovic 2001, pp. 4–5). The problem with equal pay for equal work is that, due to the existence in the first place of the dual labour market, most women work in occupations where men are conspicuously absent—on all-female process lines, in the clothing trade, as secretaries, clerks, sales assistants, child care workers and nurses. Traditionally under-paid, these female-dominated areas of work continue to be poorly paid, as equal pay provisions simply mean that the few men in these areas of work receive equally poor pay with the women. Only in mixed or male-dominated occupations where women perform exactly the same work as men, such as teaching and the public service, have women benefited significantly from equal pay for equal work. But, even in these areas, women continue to earn less on average than their male counterparts, because they are less likely to be promoted and are more likely to have taken time off work to bear and rear children. The more far-reaching demand of equal pay for work of equal value has repeatedly come up against convictions that the work performed in femaledominated occupations is not of equal value to that performed typically by men. In 1984 the ACTU endorsed a Program of Action for Women Workers, involving a commitment to extend in practice the principle of ‘equal pay for work of equal value’, which was proving an elusive goal. This program aimed to secure the principle of ‘comparable worth’ in industrial awards: that female-dominated occupations should be paid the same as a similarly skilled male-dominated occupation (Simms 1987, p. 307). However, the increasing deregulation of the labour market from the 1990s has rendered such policing difficult, if not futile. By 1990, figures showed average female full-time earnings were still no more than 83 per cent of average male full-time earnings (Australian, 9 August 1990, p. 2; Neales 1990, p. 22). During the 1980s, the gender gap closed to its narrowest point, but real wages for both male and female workers also declined during this period. In the 1990s the downward trend in real wages and salaries continued, except for employees in the highest income brackets. Thus female participation in the paid workforce, which the women’s movement encouraged, has now become an overwhelming necessity for most women for most of their lives—for most families nowadays, two


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incomes are required to avoid poverty or maintain reasonable living standards. ‘Compulsory house arrest’ for women has been replaced by enforced hard labour, both paid and unpaid, as ‘working’ women still bear a disproportionate responsibility for domestic duties. The average working week for women, paid and unpaid labour combined, is longer than the average working week for men, paid and unpaid labour combined (Age, 12 October 1993, p. 14). Moreover, the gender gap of 83 per cent achieved by 1990 has turned out to be the high point of women’s aspirations to receive equal pay. By 1999 the Affirmative Action Agency reported that full-time women workers earned on average 79.5 per cent of full-time male earnings and were heavily concentrated in traditionally low-paid sectors (Age, 9 March 1999, p. 16). The comparative position of women’s wages in relation to men’s deteriorated during the 1990s due to changes to the industrial relations system, introduced to make Australia more ‘competitive’ in the global economy. Labor governments in the early 1990s initiated the moves away from centralised wage fixing towards enterprise bargaining: this has had deleterious effects on women workers, who are clustered in service industries, the public sector and low value-added manufacturing areas, where their bargaining power is clearly weaker than it is for most men’s jobs. Howard Coalition government changes then made it even more difficult for women in weak bargaining positions to receive the ‘flow-on’ benefits from wage increases won by workers in stronger positions, which the earlier centralised award-based wage-fixing system had ensured. At the 1999 International Women’s Day Rally, ACTU president Jennie George claimed the Howard government’s industrial relations approach was having ‘a disastrous effect on women’s wages and the gender gap’. She released an ACTU report, Equal Pay: A Union Priority, which recorded evidence that the gap was widening: ‘This is of major concern to women workers and to the unions who represent them’ (Age, 9 March 1999, p. 2). In 2001 the Australian Taxation Office released statistics for 1998/99 showing that the average taxable income for men was $34 460, more than 46 per cent higher than for women, on $23 599; the gap had widened from previous years. ACTU president Sharan Burrow said the figures reflected the predominance of women in part-time, casual and low-paid jobs, as well as gender inequities in the pay of those performing full-time work: ‘Today’s figures show the pay gap between women and men is continuing to grow’ (Workers Online, 20 April 2001). Burrow succeeded Jennie George as president of the ACTU and presides over an ACTU Executive that is more


The women’s movement 119 than half female. There has been a significant feminisation of the trade union movement hierarchy in the past decade, which commenced in 1989 when ACTU secretary Bill Kelty publicly committed himself to the notion of there being 50 per cent female representation on the ACTU Executive by 1999, which was attained with room and time to spare. Will a more feminised labour movement be better equipped to respond to signs that employers aim to entrench further the dual labour market through the increasing exploitation, via worse pay and conditions, of female part-time and casual labour? In Australia, the proportion of such jobs in the overall jobs market has increased since the late 1980s and women have disproportionately taken these jobs. The World Trade Organization seeks to remove ‘rigidities’ such as equal pay for equal work, as an important aspect of its campaign for more ‘flexible’ labour markets (Greenfield 1998, p. 186). Developments such as these suggest that the neo-liberal policies associated with globalisation are undermining many of the women’s movement’s achievements.

Feminist activists draw connections between the feminisation of poverty and corporate globalisation at the S11 protest, Melbourne, September 2000 (Susan Hawthorne, copyright 2000).


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Equal opportunity in employment A major achievement of the women’s movement was the enactment of the Affirmative Action (Equal Employment Opportunity for Women) Act 1986, which required not only public-sector but also private-sector companies to institute affirmative action programs for women. In responding to women’s movement demands and enacting this legislation, the Labor government aimed to confront systemic discrimination against women in the workplace, because it was concerned about ‘industrial inefficiency, the welfare costs, the inefficient use of human capital and just as importantly the social injustice of the facts’ (quoted in Cvetkovic 2001, p. 16). In raising the demand for affirmative action, or equal employment opportunity (EEO), in employment practices, the women’s movement was demanding real equality of employment opportunity as opposed to mere formal equality. Affirmative action was regarded as the only effective remedy for the persistent disadvantage suffered by women in the labour market; it was the means to achieve equal opportunity. The legislation was grounded on the principle of merit in appointment and promotion; it was previous practices, the movement maintained, where men were often appointed or promoted over

Some feminist additions to an S11 banner, Melbourne, September 2000 (Susan Hawthorne, copyright 2000).


The women’s movement 121 women when they should not have been, that flouted this principle (University of Melbourne Equal Opportunity Unit 1988, pp. 1–4; n.d., pp. 7–9; University of Melbourne 1988, p. 1). Affirmative action was not a form of positive discrimination in favour of women; it merely aimed to develop means by which women had the chance to be appointed on merit equally with men, by encouraging women to apply for jobs or for promotion, and alerting employers and selection committees to the possibility that they might be unconsciously favouring men, and that women may be experiencing indirect or systemic discrimination. In its application, however, the affirmative action legislation handled employers gently. The targets for increasing female participation in jobs dominated by men were to be set by the employers themselves. All employers of more than 100 employees were obliged to set themselves ‘forward estimates’, aiming to improve the proportion of women employed, but the target was for them to determine and there were no sanctions against employers who refused to cooperate other than the (hardly dreadful) threat of being named in parliament. Furthermore, these large organisations employed only 25 per cent of the Australian workforce (Braithwaite and Bush 1998, p. 117, cited in Cvetkovic 2001, p. 27). Some employers were clearly hostile to the program and resisted the notion of putting numbers or percentages on such matters as recruitment, promotion or training targets for women, despite the fact that they put numbers and percentages on all usual business objectives such as profit margins, profit increases and production levels (Ronalds 1990, p. 114). But there is evidence also of cooperation on the part of employers who believed women’s talents had been under-utilised because of past discrimination and that it made good sense to remedy this situation. According to Braithwaite and Bush, many organisations have shown both capacity and willingness to rethink work practices. The legislation, initially supported only by a minority, was eventually accepted by an influential government and business elite (Braithwaite and Bush 1998, pp. 115–16, quoted in Cvetkovic 2001, pp. 17, 46). Zelda D’Aprano had predicted in 1977 that: ‘Industry will inevitably accept women into the ranks of management if this will in turn lead to more profits’ (D’Aprano 1977, p. 198). As early as 1984, Lesley Lynch noted that the new professional managerial ethos was ‘deeply influencing the style and perceptions of feminist bureaucrats through the EEO programs in the public sector’. Equal employment opportunity was regarded as ‘simply efficient human resource management’ (Lynch 1984, p. 43). By 1990, Affirmative Action Agency director Valerie Pratt claimed: ‘There is recognition that


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issues affecting women at work must be addressed on both moral and economic grounds’ (quoted in Cvetkovic 2001, p. 45). Anna Yeatman has noted that equal opportunity came to be reframed in terms of what it could do to improve management, not what it could do to develop the conditions of social justice and democratic citizenship in Australian society (Yeatman 1990, p. 16). This became startlingly evident with Howard government changes to the legislation. The Labor government legislation was replaced by the Coalition’s Equal Opportunity for Women in the Workplace Act 1999; at the same time, the Affirmative Action Agency (AAA) was replaced by the Equal Opportunity for Women in the Workplace Agency (EOWWA). What’s in a name? Firstly, these changes expressed the Howard government’s desire to distance its programs for women from the combative vocabulary of ‘affirmative action’ which had come from within the women’s movement and which had been sponsored by femocrats during the late 1970s and 1980s as the means to gain equal opportunity. Secondly, the previous legislation had identified inequality of opportunity in employment as a serious problem warranting attention on both economic and moral grounds; the Howard legislation emphasises the undesirability of lingering forms of discrimination by arguing simply that discrimination is bad for business. In its 1998/99 annual report, the EOWWA stressed that numerous Australian businesses had come to realise the ‘bottom line’ benefits of providing equal opportunities for women, but that the agency aimed to speed up the rate at which organisations reached best practice, because ‘companies that take action now will gain a competitive edge’ (Cvetkovic 2001, p. 30). The EOWWA’s Mission Statement is: To inspire Australian employers to take action to improve equal opportunity outcomes for women in the workplace by developing a pragmatic and solution-orientated approach as well as developing strong business/organisational relationships so that they fully capitalise on their female talent and improve their business competitiveness. With women representing the fastest growing group in the labour market, the agency stresses that employers must recognise women as an asset in the achievement of increased productivity, flexibility and global competitiveness (Cvetkovic 2001, p. 29). The Howard government legislation also weakened the initial Act in


The women’s movement 123 significant ways. As Glenda Strachan and John Burgess (2000) observe, technical changes in the new Act mean that management is given more choice and power in interpreting what is needed or can be done for women workers; the collective elements of consultation with employees and trade unions have been removed; the amount of assessment material made public for research has been greatly reduced and therefore public scrutiny of the actions of companies has diminished; and the lack of prescriptive guidelines in the report forms means that data collection of policies and the position of women in organisations will be well-nigh impossible. They believe the Act needed strengthening and extending, not watering down and further restricting. ‘This becomes more necessary in the light of workforce and industrial relations restructuring that leave more women workers vulnerable’ (Strachan and Burgess 2000, p. 61). How has affirmative action profited women? In February 2000, the labour force included 633 400 managers and administrators, of whom 77 per cent were men and 23 per cent were women. Reports compiled by other government agencies showed that the proportion of women executive directors had increased from 1.3 per cent in 1998 to 2.9 per cent in 1999. The proportion of women on private sector boards had increased from 4 per cent in 1995 to 8.3 per cent in 1999 to 10 per cent by 2000 (EOWWA) 2000, p. 3; Cvetkovic 2001, pp. 41–42). These are small yet significant gains for women in the higher echelons of the labour market. Yet the evidence nonetheless suggests that women often hit a ‘glass ceiling’ when they reach a certain point in many workplace hierarchies (Bulbeck 1998, p. 5). One group of women who benefited especially from equal opportunity legislation were those employed to administer equal opportunity for other women. As Lake notes, the legislation led to a proliferation of job opportunities in the field of equal opportunity (Lake 1999, p. 264). But what about women in general? Chilla Bulbeck’s research concludes: While many young professional women in the workforce today may only substantially confront the challenges of their gender when they decide to have children, women in so-called traditional areas—which cover a range of skilled and unskilled pursuits— experience harassment and discrimination (Bulbeck 1998, p. 210). Equal opportunity legislation has very differential class effects. Even in its stronger manifestation prior to 1999, the majority of women in the paid workforce were little affected by the affirmative action program. In general, its ambit is restricted to the more prestigious end of the labour market—to


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the sorts of jobs men actually desire and where the women are too few. It benefits mainly professional and business women—women who are already privileged amongst women, the fortunate few who have already advanced well beyond most other members of the disadvantaged sex. Only women who already possess the skills and education required for positions valued by men are able to reap its benefits. For the less skilled and less well-educated women, affirmative action offers little in the way of equal opportunities, for men have always been happy to leave jobs such as chicken-gutting to women. Though limited in their ambit and achievements, affirmative action and equal opportunity programs have nonetheless provoked the patriarchy at work. Although equal opportunity policies in Australia have never argued that a less well-qualified woman should be appointed or promoted in preference to a better qualified man, there has undoubtedly been ‘male resentment of affirmative action’ (Age, 1 September 1989, p. 6; Burton 1987, p. 295). The resistance which some men exhibit towards policies, programs and initiatives undertaken by organisations to prevent discrimination against female employees has been described as ‘backlash’, a notion popularised in the United States by Susan Faludi (1991). In 1994, Beatrice Faust claimed there was no evidence of a backlash in Australia (Faust 1994), but other feminists disagree (Bulbeck 1998, p. 216). Inasmuch as a backlash is evident, it focuses on affirmative action more than any other aspect of women’s movement politics. Nancy Fraser explains why affirmative action encourages a male backlash, at the same time as its achievements for women are so limited. ‘Affirmative redistribution’, she notes, attacks neither the gendered division of paid and unpaid labour nor the gendered division of masculine and feminine occupations within paid labour. ‘Leaving intact the deep structures that generate gender disadvantage, it must make surface allocations again and again.’ Women thus become recipients of perpetual special treatment (though only professional women generally benefit), so this strategy fuels a backlash at the same time as it fails to achieve anything for the vast majority of women (Fraser 1995, p. 89). The clearest obstacles to achieving equality of opportunity in employment remain the related problems of the sexual division of labour (women doing most of the housework and child care, which for many reasons adversely affects their career prospects in the paid workforce) and the dual labour market (women disproportionately occupying jobs in sectors of the workforce where no ceilings exist, glass or otherwise). However firmly affirmative action policies might be applied on behalf of women, it is the broader structural problems that are generally out of the reach of affirmative


The women’s movement 125 action policies, which adversely affect the fate of the majority of women in the paid workforce. An important struggle ahead for the women’s movement involves persuading society to embrace the principle of equality of opportunity for men in the domestic sphere. Feminists have long argued that the emancipation of women requires fundamental changes in the way the world of paid work is organised. Not only must women be freed from the imposed single option of homemaking and child-rearing, but men must be given greater freedom from the constraints imposed upon them as compulsory breadwinners relentlessly pursuing an unbroken employment record and experiencing an empty paternity as providers only. Until men perform a more equitable share of unpaid domestic labour, women will have traded in one exploited job for one and a half. This issue strikes at the heart of the problem for women: the demand for female labour for the paid workforce in the postwar period suggested that capitalism no longer viewed the full-time unpaid labour of women at home as functional for the system; domestic labour had become simplified to the point where parttime unpaid domestic labour could keep most households operating smoothly and servicing the adult wage or salary workers of both sexes. Women lost out, because they enthusiastically entered the paid workforce in response to this demand, but employers have been reluctant to consider ways of enabling and encouraging men to share more equitably in unpaid domestic labour. As Marian Sawer notes, working conditions and career structures still are not geared to the fact that workers have responsibilities outside the paid workforce: ‘The assumption is that the typical male employment pattern of the past of full-time, continuous employment is still the norm’ (Sawer 1990, p. 52). This discriminates not only against women, but also against men who desire more equitable domestic arrangements, to the detriment of their womenfolk. Feminists have now turned their sights on achieving more ‘familyfriendly’ workplaces. Paid maternity leave for government employees was achieved in 1973 and unpaid maternity leave for up to twelve months for most employees was awarded in 1979. In January 1989, in response to years of feminist lobbying within the labour movement, the ACTU lodged a claim in the Industrial Relations Commission for optional, unpaid parental leave for up to 52 weeks any time before the child’s second birthday. In July 1990, the Federal Commission ruled that fathers should have access to the minimum standard of twelve months’ unpaid leave following the birth or adoption of a child, rather than requiring that such leave be taken by the mother only. Yet, as with many achievements of the women’s movement,


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the gains are most clearly felt by relatively privileged women: only couples in which the woman’s salary is higher than or comparable with the man’s would be likely to avail themselves of this provision. However, in the new millennium, concern that the birth rate has dropped well below replacement level has reignited debate about paid maternity leave. With less than onethird of female employees entitled to any sort of paid maternity leave, in 2002 federal Sex Discrimination Commissioner Pru Goward initiated moves towards a universal system. In arguing for more family-friendly workplaces, feminists have been reluctant to change gears from arguing that women should be treated equally with men in employment opportunity because they are the same, to arguing that women should receive special consideration because their needs are different. According to Barbara Pocock (2000), the ‘family-friendly workplace’ discourse is an example of the suppression of women’s differences at work. With its implication that men and women equally share the work of family, it conceals the gender realities: It is women who bear children, breast feed them, and undertake most housework in relation to the care of children, partners and the extended family. But the family discourse is surprisingly ungendered, in that specific claims for women and their differential claims are buried under the ‘family’ cloak. She argues that, in a country still sporting Third World standards of paid maternity leave, feminists need to provide a stronger critique of ‘familyfriendly’ discourses and their ungendered nature (2000, pp. 18–19). Moreover, many employers now present their long-favoured ‘flexibility’ in work practices as family friendly. For some time now, employers have been manipulating feminist demands for more flexible forms of employment that would enable both men and women to combine paid work with domestic responsibilities. While denying male workers the flexibility that would allow them to pursue equality of opportunity in the domestic sphere, employers are utilising feminist rhetoric to suit their own purposes, to casualise or restructure their female workforce and, in so doing, to bring about further deterioriation in the conditions of employment for many women. A 1999 report, Choice and Coercion: Women’s Experiences of Casual Work, casts doubt over the claim that women prefer casual work so they can attend to domestic duties; rather, the report notes the way employers prefer hiring workers as casuals to evade paying workers’ various entitlements (cited in Frankel 2001, p. 139). As


The women’s movement 127 Martina Nightingale notes, employers are exploiting the pressures in women’s lives in the interests of capital. The rhetoric of ‘flexibility’ implies greater individual choice and control, but in practice it means increasing the freedom of employers to do whatever is considered necessary to increase profits, by avoiding payments such as overtime and penalty rates, and maximising the use of plant and equipment (Nightingale 1995, esp. pp. 126–27). Casualisation— presented as ‘flexibility’—needs to be understood in this context. The number of women in the part-time workforce has increased at a greater rate than the number of women in the full-time workforce. Women comprise just over one-third of the full-time workforce, but almost threequarters of the part-time workforce. While the vast majority of men in the paid workforce are employed full-time, for women the numbers are not so unbalanced: 57 per cent of female labour force participants are full-time and 43 per cent are part-time (Cvetkovic 2001, pp. 40–41). The trend to increasing casualisation, or ‘flexibility’, is a hallmark of deregulated labour markets and is one of the most important ways these new-style labour markets offer declining real wages and inferior working conditions. Though women in the upper echelons of the labour market have benefited somewhat from greater equality of opportunity in the workplace, in most sections of the economy women have disproportionately borne the brunt of the trend towards casualisation. Employers are thus ensuring that, for most women—but not all women—the dual labour market is alive and well, in the name of equal opportunity. As a result, class inequalities between women in the paid workforce are increasing.

Access to affordable, good-quality child care It is women’s perceived primary role as homemakers and their actual role in bearing the brunt of the joys and burdens of child rearing that ensure they cannot compete equally in the world of paid work. Adequate provision of child care places, in addition to parental leave provisions, is an important part of the solution for women wishing to enter or remain in the paid workforce during their child-rearing years. In late 1998, of partnered women with children under five, 17 per cent were in full-time work and 32 per cent were in part-time work (Chan 1999). Neither the women’s liberation movement nor WEL took the position that all women ought to take paid employment and use such services; rather, they maintained that child care provision was necessary to enable women to make a choice about the matter (‘Free Mum, Free Dad, Free Me, Free Day-Care’


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leaflet, n.d.; WEL NSW Newsletter, no. 26, September 1974). In arguing for government funding for child care centres, the women’s movement stressed that child care was not a private consumption item but a public good. It argued against the prevalent social attitudes that children are solely the responsibility of individual nuclear families; that the best environment for the small child is home with mother, all day, every day; that all women have the ability and temperament to be good mothers full-time; that it is reasonable to expect them to give themselves up to full-time mothering to the exclusion of all the rest of their human potential. They maintained instead that children are in a very real sense the children of the whole community and that, as with school-age children, the responsibility for providing these children with a good education and opportunity for social development should be a community responsibility; that the total dependence of a child on her mother is not healthy and that interaction with other caring adults and other children is valuable for the child’s development; and that all women have the right to choose how to combine mothering with other activities (McCaughey n.d.). It was a Coalition government that enacted the Child Care Act of 1972, allowing federal funding of child care for the first time, in acknowledgment of the needs of industry for increased female participation in the workforce. But it was the Whitlam government—under feminist influence—that massively increased the amount allocated for child care, though traditional preschools initially received most of this funding. Under the Fraser governments, this balance in spending shifted away from preschool education. Between 1973 and 1980, about 30 000 new Commonwealth-subsidised child care places became available (Lake 1999, p. 257). The Hawke and Keating governments were also committed to continuing expansion of child care places and ‘equity of access’ to these. By the end of the 1980s, a clear majority of preschool-age children were in some form of child care (Franzway et al 1989, pp. 71–75, 79–83; O’Donnell and Hall 1988, pp. 65–68; Dowse 1988, pp. 210–21). However, despite the considerable expansion of child care places, demand was still clearly exceeding supply. Rather than expanding public-sector child care provision, in 1991 the government extended subsidies to users of private, for-profit child care centres. Deborah Brennan (1998, p. 24) notes that this ‘represented a profound shift in government policy’. Equally profound was the shift around this time to linking child care access to labour force participation. Support for statesubsidised child care was informed by research that had shown that child care expenditure, by increasing women’s workforce participation, cuts the pension/ benefits bill while simultaneously boosting the number of taxpayers (Melvin


The women’s movement 129 1989, p. 40). In Keating’s maiden speech in 1970, he had deplored the number of ‘working women’; when Prime Minister, he argued that increased child care provision was essential to facilitate women’s ability to contribute to the restructured Australian economy (cited in Johnson 1996, p. 181). It was apparent that government funding for child care was being maintained because the arguments in favour were persuasive in neo-liberal, as well as feminist, terms. However, the premises of neo-liberalism have also undermined commitment to subsidised child care. The argument that child care is not a private consumption item but a public good had to be remade during the 1990s, a decade in which lobby groups promoting the interests of the ‘child free’ began to mobilise. These groups, reiterating the user-pays values of neoliberalism, argued that any form of subsidies towards the cost of having and rearing children is unfair on tax-paying adults who have chosen not to have children. They depict having children as a ‘lifestyle choice’ that should not detract from the capacity of others to make different lifestyle choices, such as having overseas holidays. Apart from the fact that perpetuating the human race amounts to rather more than a lifestyle choice, and consumption items such as overseas holidays cannot suffer from deprivation, one wonders whether these child-free militants will revise their prejudices as they become increasingly dependent on the children of others, who will care for them—for example, as doctors, nurses or chefs—and pay the taxes that keep society functioning. That neo-liberal imperatives can also threaten child care funding, despite the fact that it reduces welfare payments, has become glaringly evident during the Howard years, which have seen a dramatic deterioration in access to affordable child care. On top of changes to the taxation system that introduced disincentives for women to be in the paid workforce, the first Howard government restructured the child care sector and instituted cuts of $40 million in subsidies to community child care (Chan 1999, p. 11). These federal government cuts to community-based child care forced up fees and made it uneconomic for many women to remain in the workforce, most obviously those whose earning power did not sufficiently outstrip increased child care costs (Age, 9 March 1999, p. 16). In 1999, the federal government underspent the child care budget by about $100 million, due to the fact that people were pulling out of child care because they could no longer afford it (Age, 9 March 1999, p. 2). In 2001, Belinda Probert analysed the effects of the Howard government changes: ‘In a move that can only be described as contradictory, the same government that wished to discourage sole parents from staying at home introduced the family tax initiative and increased the costs of child care in


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such a way as to make it harder for low income families to use it’ (Probert 2001, pp. 22, 27). Subsequent Howard government initiatives introduced a tax refund for a parent who chooses to leave work to care for their first child, or for the first child born after 1 July 2001 if the parent already had children. This provides parents with a minimum of $500 and up to $2500 a year for five years, to help with the cost of child-rearing (election brochure, 2001). This policy favours people on higher income levels because it is delivered as a tax refund on work income in the year of, or prior to, the birth of the child. There has been a long-running debate within the women’s movement about the issue of tax deductibility of child care expenses. In the immediate postwar period, the Union of Australian Women argued that child care expenses should be tax deductible. WEL takes a similar position. However, other second-wave women’s movement activists concerned with child care have insisted that tax deductibility would favour those who have decent salaries in the first place and that the money should instead be used as government subsidies to child care centres and to provide fee relief for poorer parents. Carol O’Donnell and Philippa Hall argue that the major costs of child care should be borne primarily by the whole community through the taxation system, as with all other areas of education and with health care: ‘Equity necessitates low fees for the great majority of child care users and not tax deductions or rebates, which only benefit some users and give the greatest benefit to those with the highest incomes’ (O’Donnell and Hall 1988, p. 72; see also Brennan and O’Donnell 1986). The level of child care provision in Australia constitutes a significant achievement of the women’s movement. Deborah Brennan claims that the harnessing of relatively high levels of public resources into a nationally organised, high-quality system that provides opportunities for parental involvement is unusual in international terms. She notes that services are generally of a high quality, and access to publicly funded care is not restricted to very poor or malfunctioning families: ‘Australian women, many of them feminists, have played key roles in shaping both the public debate about child care and the nature of government involvement.’ However, she warns also that child care remains a highly contested issue and is exceedingly vulnerable to changes in the political and economic climate (Brennan 1998, pp. 19, 24–25).

Access to abortion The Women’s Abortion Action Coalition (WAAC), formed in 1972, was the principal offshoot of the women’s movement that campaigned for a woman’s


The women’s movement 131 right to choose. Contrary to the impressions conveyed in the media and by antifeminist organisations, which usually characterised the women’s movement position as ‘pro-abortion’, WAAC did not regard abortion as positive but merely as a step women had the right to take if they felt the circumstances warranted such action. Its newspaper was called Right to Choose. WAAC argued that the prevailing anti-abortion laws gave foetuses rights that living people did not have: ‘No human’s right to life includes the use of another human being’s body and life-support systems against that individual’s will’ (‘Right to Life’, Women’s Liberation Newsletter, n.d.). The emphasis of the campaign was on repeal of the misconceived laws that made criminals of women who did not continue with unwanted pregnancies. To this extent, the demand was a classically liberal one: that the state had no right to decide for women that they had to continue an unwanted pregnancy, especially in circumstances where contraceptives were expensive and difficult to obtain. (The luxury tax on contraceptives in Australia was not removed until 1973.) The campaign also stressed that abortions occurred in any case and that their illegality encouraged police corruption; condemned women to using the services of ‘backyard abortionists’, to the risk of their health and future fertility; and discriminated against those who simply could not afford the illegal abortions available to richer women. And, in order to render abortions as unnecessary as possible, the campaign coupled its demand for ‘the repeal of all existing abortion laws’ with the demand for ‘freely available safe contraception and universal sex education’ (Vashti’s Voice, Summer 1974/75, p. 10; Revolutionary Communist Bulletin no. 8, p. 1). Despite the clear majority support accorded the right-to-choose position in opinion polls, the introduction of liberalising legislation in the federal parliament in 1973 was aborted by Right to Life campaigning, which frightened many politicians into changing their minds and opposing the Bill. WAAC responded by calling on women to step up the campaign, declaring: Women continue to suffer in our society because they are denied control over their own fertility and subsequently their lives. The lack of control over their bodies is used to discriminate against women in schools, universities, and in the work force. Thus the present abortion laws are instrumental in maintaining women’s second class status (WAAC, ‘Abortion: A Woman’s Right to Choose’, leaflet n.d. [1973]).


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Between 70 000 and 80 000 unwanted pregnancies are terminated each year in Australia. One in three Australian women has had an abortion (Kissane 1998, p. 4). By 1998, opinion polls showed up to 80 per cent approval for a woman being able to choose to have an abortion (Price 1998, p. 19). Despite this overwhelming support for the pro-choice position, abortion remains in the criminal code in all states except Western Australia. In the World Health Organisation’s Western Pacific region, out of 36 member nations, only two still have abortion in their criminal codes: Australia and the Philippines (Kissane 1998, p. 4). Lenient interpretation of the laws by police and legal authorities means it is routinely carried out, but this situation is precarious for women, because abortion rights that rest on common law rulings are subject to legal challenge (Powell 1998a, pp. 19–20). The Sunday Age editorialised in 1998 that: ‘This unfortunate situation leaves many abortions open to legal doubt and hazard’ (Sunday Age, 5 April 1998, p. 20A). Lack of uniformity between states is also perplexing for women. In New South Wales, Victoria and the Australian Capital Territory, abortion is illegal, but from 1969 defences have developed through precedent and abortion is considered legal when a doctor believes on social, economic or medical grounds that the woman’s physical or mental health is in danger.2 In Queensland and Tasmania, abortion is illegal but defensible when performed for the preservation of the mother’s life; performed in good faith and with care and skill; and/or reasonable given the circumstances and mother’s state of health.3 In South Australia and the Northern Territory, abortion is illegal except as defined by statutory provisions. It is lawful when performed in a hospital; when two doctors say continuing the pregnancy involves more risk to the physical or mental health of the woman than an abortion; or when the foetus is deformed (Australian, 3 April 1998, p. 4). In May 1999, the West Australian parliament passed legislation that removed abortion from the criminal code entirely and moved regulation of abortion into the Health Act. This decriminalisation of abortion enables Western Australian women up to 20 weeks pregnant to obtain abortions, and doctors to perform such abortions, without fear of prosecution so long as the woman concerned is giving her informed consent after being offered counselling. Under the pre-existing legislation, termination of a pregnancy was a criminal offence that could lead to a prison sentence of up to seven years. In February 1998, two doctors were charged under this century-old legislation with procuring an unlawful abortion, and prosecuted for performing a procedure that, despite the extremely restrictive letter of the law, had become routine in practice. The charges against the doctors were dropped


The women’s movement 133 in July 1998 but these prosecutions, the first of their kind for 30 years, caused ‘medical chaos, wide-spread protest and public confusion’ (Price 1998, p. 19)—and highlighted the archaic nature of the existing legislation. In the midst of the furore, a newspaper poll showed 82 per cent support for the legalisation of abortion (Age, 23 March 1998, p. 3). Longtime prochoice campaigner and Left faction Labor MLC Cheryl Davenport’s Bill to repeal all criminal sanctions against abortion was complemented by a separate abortion law reform Bill sponsored by the Liberal Court government’s Attorney-General, Peter Foss. On both Bills, MPs voted not on party lines but according to their individual consciences (quoted in Price 1998, p. 19). Opposition leader Geoff Gallop spoke in favour: ‘Unless the feelings, interests and rights of women are part of the equation here today, we will not have law that is supported and sustainable’ (Australian, 18 March 1998, p. 2). The Association for the Legal Right to Abortion declared that the new legislation banished the days of backyard abortions, but an anti-abortion activist abused MPs from the public gallery after the Upper House finally voted 24–9 in favour of Davenport’s decriminalisation Bill, and vowed to picket abortion clinics (Australian, 22 May 1998, p. 6; Le Grand 1998, p. 29). At the height of the debate, a survey of two marginal state electorates revealed 89 per cent of swinging voters supported abortion law reform (Australian, 31 March 1998, p. 3). The Pope warned Western Australian parliamentarians that the state would have ‘no real future’ if they liberalised abortion laws (Australian, 17 March 1998, p. 1). While the Western Australian legislation was being debated, women in the east stepped up their protests. In Melbourne, about 400 pro-choice protesters, mobilised by the Prochoice Coalition, rallied in the city on 4 April and conducted a ‘die-in’ at the corner of Swanston and Bourke Streets, which involved drawing the outlines of people on the road to signify women who had died from backyard abortions. They organised a weekend of action to reform Australian abortion laws. With the success of the legislation in Western Australia, women’s groups including the Women’s Electoral Lobby, the Family Planning Association and Emily’s List decided to sound out politicians in the eastern states to see if any were willing to put up Private Members’ Bills to remove abortion from state criminal codes (Sunday Age, 5 April 1998, p. 3). The Sunday Age commented that the Western Australian achievement ‘marks the triumph of . . . realism over legal ambiguity, political cowardice and social hypocrisy’ and maintained: ‘Politicians in other states now should pluck up their courage—preferably in unison—to emulate Western Australia’s enlightened reform of abortion law’ (Sunday Age, 5 April 1998, p. 20A).


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Equal opportunity in education The La Trobe University Women’s Liberation newsletter, Women Arise!, argued around 1970 that: The process of training a woman for her female role begins in her early years, when the basic patterns of her identity are being established . . . The education system is crucial in training for femininity. As she goes through school she learns that subjects which teach mastery and control over the world, such as science and maths, are male subjects; while subjects which teach appearance, maintenance or sentiment, such as home economics or literature are female subjects (Women Arise! n.d.). The Socialist Youth Alliance Women’s Liberation Group complained that this sex-stereotyping of subjects: not only prepares us for our future roles, but teaches us not to compete with men, that men are stronger than us in every way— physically, mentally and emotionally. We accept this, and in adult life we rely on men to give us material and emotional security while we become unpaid cooks, cleaners, nursemaids, and companions. This is defined as our proper realm (Socialist Youth Alliance Women’s Liberation Group n.d.). In 1972, WEL publicised the results of Dr Don Edgar’s research, which reported that the education system produced women who were incompetent, dependent and self-denigrating, because Australian society was sexist and this was reflected in the education system. The girls surveyed were less self-confident and had less self-respect than the boys; teachers and parents expected less of girls academically; and the girls had lower expectations than boys of their academic potential and desirable levels of achievement (WEL broadsheet, October 1972). All sections of the women’s movement challenged the gendering of education (e.g. see WAC Annual Report 1 March 1971; WAC ‘Women’s Action Committee Policy’; Shrew, vol. 1, no. 1, January 1971, p. 2). The problems most commonly identified were: the relative absence of powerful role models for girls in schools, because few principals were female even though there were many female staff; that schools engaged in sex role


The women’s movement 135 stereotyping in the traditional range of subjects girls were encouraged to take and the extent to which they were not encouraged to take certain subjects; and that girls were not encouraged to think seriously about careers (e.g. Sampson 1983, pp. 240–46). Policy changes were initiated as a result of feminist analyses of the education system. For example, in March 1990, Prime Minister Hawke announced a three-year $3 million review of school curriculums to ensure courses promoted equality of opportunity. Policies promoting girls’ education have been startlingly successful: with the removal or reduction of most of the impediments to girls’ academic achievement, girls are now outperforming boys. In 2001, the retention rate to Year 12 was 79.1 per cent for females and 68.1 per cent for males (ABS 2002c, p. 2). Moreover, far more boys than girls are now scoring badly and boys account for the bulk of the bulge at the bottom of the mark range. Ironically, analysts have concluded that it is now boys rather than girls who are suffering most obviously from the hidden injuries of gender. There is considerable evidence that stereotypical ideas of masculinity are limiting the ability of boys to discover their full academic potential. This is especially true for boys from working-class backgrounds. As R.W. Connell and others have argued, working-class notions of masculinity primarily emphasise physical toughness, thus excluding intellectual activities, whereas middle-class notions of masculinity are more consistent with academic success, because they also emphasise power to control other people, to make significant decisions and to accumulate wealth (Connell et al 1982, esp. pp. 93–111, 173–83; Connell 1995). Many of the programs developed to assist girls to perform better are now being adapted to assist boys to perform better. Long-time femocrats, concerned still about equality of opportunity in education, are now working on behalf of boys. Questions are being asked about whether policies to promote boys’ education threaten the improved performance of girls. Most conclude that the answer is ‘probably not’: girls can only benefit if boys are taught to value learning over toughness. In the meantime, girls’ success at secondary level is translating into tertiary achievement. By 1989, more females than males in the 15–24 age group were participating in higher education. By 1999, women made up 58 per cent of students commencing undergraduate degrees at university and 52 per cent in postgraduate studies (Cvetkovic 2001, p. 42). However, certain fields of study remain bastions, relatively speaking, of male dominance. In 2000, females comprised 76 per cent of enrolments in


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education, 75 per cent in health and 70 per cent in arts and humanities, but they were only 15 per cent of enrolments in engineering, 38 per cent in architecture and 42 per cent in science (DEST 2002). Moreover, certain groups of women are much more likely than others to enter university: a study of women in science found the field dominated by middle-class, AngloCeltic women (cited in Kaplan 1996, p. 182). Feminists’ demands have also had success at tertiary level in terms of educational content. Commencing at Flinders University in 1973, by the early 1980s women’s studies courses were offered in almost all tertiary education institutions, often against concerted resistance from the male academic hierarchy. The development of women’s studies courses aimed to sensitise intellectual inquiry to feminist analysis, ‘to force an awareness in all those who presume to write about society that the world is not composed entirely of men’. The first editorial of Refractory Girl complained: It is difficult to discover a single example of a comprehensive piece of writing in literary criticism, history or the social sciences which is not apparently based on this assumption. The majority of scholarly books ignore women, or where their existence is acknowledged, it is most often in a token fashion, a few pages tucked onto the general scheme . . . we are trying to turn the tide of the entire European tradition (Refractory Girl, no. 1, Summer 1972/73, pp. 3–4). Hecate saw women’s studies as ‘an integral part of an ongoing movement helping to explode the myths which contain and limit the scope for women to change the material and psychological basis of their existence’ (Hecate vol 1, no. 2, July 1975, p. 5). By 1985, the founding issue of Australian Feminist Studies was able to point to the intellectual achievements of women’s studies—the way it had forged links creatively across many disciplines—from a gynocentric perspective: ‘Much feminist scholarship and debate transcends the boundaries established in the world of learning by a patriarchal education industry’ (Australian Feminist Studies, no. 1, Summer 1985, p. ix). Writing in 1998, Lyndall Ryan observed that every Australian university offered at least one course that could loosely be described as ‘women’s studies’, involving more than 50 designated academic staff in the tertiary sector. Nonetheless, the area of women’s studies is less well developed than in New Zealand, Canada or the United States. From this relatively weak position, it has also been vulnerable to funding cutbacks during the 1990s, in a university


The women’s movement 137 climate which favours courses and research able to attract fee-paying students and corporate funding and which tends to punish those that cannot. In Australia it has been the ‘femocrat’ rather than the feminist academic who has become the public face of feminism, yet feminist scholarship—as Ryan stresses—has set new directions in many traditional areas and has been a spearhead for new ideas in teaching, research and scholarship (Ryan 1998, pp. 365–66, 369). However, many activist feminists fear that women’s studies courses have become increasingly remote from the movement that inspired them. Anna Yeatman notes that academic feminism distanced itself from both the liberating and the reforming political demands of the women’s movement (Yeatman 1990, p. 68). Julie Stephens regrets especially the hegemony of French feminist theory, for its postmodernist rejection of universal categories of thought, of values and principles, and its contempt for activists’ concerns with the political problem of how to effect social change (Stephens 1988, p. 142). In 1997, ecofeminist theorist Ariel Salleh took issue with postmodernism for drawing a generation of students ‘off the streets and into the salons’ (1997, p. xi). The depoliticisation of women’s studies is revealed in the fact that, by the end of the millennium, women’s studies was rapidly being renamed ‘gender studies’ in most universities. In part this was a response to pressures from ‘the enterprise university’, but there was little resistance and much enthusiastic compliance. Susan Hawthorne analyses this development: the active person at the centre is displaced and removed by tricks of language. The broader term is defended on the grounds that it is more useful, inclusive and unifying, when in fact it disguises the ruling relations of the most powerful by putting them at the centre (Hawthorne 2002, p. 89).

An end to sexist attitudes Measuring changes in attitudes is always problematic. Undoubtedly, the ideas of the women’s movement have affected the attitudes of wider society, but in ways severely circumscribed by the continuation of patriarchal capitalism. The movement has succeeded in reducing levels of endorsement or approval of blatant sexism, yet the battle is not over. For example, the women’s movement has protested in various ways about the attitudes to women expressed in advertisements, especially those that use female bodies unnecessarily and those that reinforce traditional sex roles by portraying the provision of household services as a purely female responsibility.


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Advertisements are now much more likely to avoid sex-role stereotyping. They often, in fact, indulge in reversal of stereotypes, because this now constitutes clever marketing. However, gratuitous use of sexually alluring female bodies is as ubiquitous as ever. In the context of public outcry over ‘sexist’ billboard advertisements, the Victorian government announced in 2002 the introduction of an outdoor advertising charter with guidelines for the ‘positive’ portrayal of women. Women’s Affairs Minister Mary Delahunty stated: ‘Women believe they should be presented as more than just cute, curvaceous and compliant.’ Though the charter is voluntary, the Australian Association of National Advertisers described it as an alarming move towards censorship (Age, 19 June 2002, p. 3). An important step towards changing social attitudes was the official adoption of non-sexist language in government publications and its increasing use and acceptability generally. Feminists have critiqued the gendered nature of language and asserted the importance for feminist politics of insisting on a language in which the female occupies positive rather than negative ‘semantic space’ (Spender 1985, p. 31). This has been contested by anti-feminists. When the Commonwealth Style Manual removed its ‘genderspecific terminology’ in 1988, there was much anguish on the part of linguistic conservatives: ‘Australia is fast becoming a banana republic run by feminists,’ one wailed. Another predicted: ‘Insidious influences could be the result, as conditioned responses are readily achievable through language’ (A. Barren and Tony Winder, letters to Age, 11 October 1988). This was precisely why feminists were concerned with the issue of language. By the same token, the Howard government signalled from 1996 onwards that it preferred language to remain gendered and it restored the term ‘chairman’ in favour of ‘chairperson’ in government practices and publications. WEL members were influential in shaping the 1975 Family Law Act. This provided for divorce on the basis of irretrievable breakdown without charges of infidelity, which at last placed women on the same footing as men in access to divorce, a demand of the first-wave women’s movement that had remained unrealised. It also asserted that the value of women’s domestic work must be taken into account in the distribution of assets on the breakup of marriage (Lake 1998, pp. 240–41). However, small numbers of men—especially noncustodial fathers—have mobilised angrily against such developments. In 2002, for example, the public became aware of the ‘Blackshirts’: aggressively anti-feminist men who, in the name of ‘family’ and ‘morality’, harass and intimidate women for having extra-marital relationships and attend hearings of the Family Court in groups wearing their trademark black shirts. The


The women’s movement 139 Victorian government announced it would prosecute members guilty of stalking offences (reported on ABC radio news, 25 July 2002). Feminists have also challenged the way in which war is memorialised in our society, its inculcation of a nationalism that is both masculinist and militarist and its marginalisation of the suffering of women. Probably no action of the women’s movement outraged society more than the Women Against Rape (WAR) demonstrations during Anzac Day ceremonies in the 1980s. Their determination to ‘mourn women of all countries raped in all wars’, ‘to publicly raise the issue of rape’ and ‘to oppose the system that creates rape and wars’ was taken as a slur on the marchers and the memory of the digger. On Anzac Day 1983 in Sydney, 162 women were arrested for registering such a non-violent memorial; the courts, the police and the media treated them abruptly, as intruders at a funeral to which they were not invited (Erika 1984, pp. 17–20). During the 1990s it became apparent that feminist critiques of militarism—and indeed all critiques—had been marginalised by the reinvigoration of Anzac Day parades. In response to feminist pressures, in 1983 the Hawke Labor government ratified the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women. Following legislation in South Australia in 1976 and in Victoria and New South Wales in 1977, this government also passed the Sex Discrimination Act 1984, which outlawed discrimination on the grounds of sex, marital status and pregnancy in employment, education and the provision of services, and also made sexual harassment unlawful in employment and education (Lake 1998, pp. 261, 263–64). Official campaigns against domestic violence and sexual harassment in the workplace represent responses to the concerns long felt by activist feminists about these problems. The National Domestic Violence Education Program, a federal government initiative funded over three years from 1987 to 1990, aimed to raise awareness of and provide information about the extent of the problem; encourage community, including non-English speaking and Aboriginal and Islander, participation; and change attitudes that cause domestic violence. And in July 1990, the federal government launched an official campaign to combat sexual harassment in the workplace, entitled SHOUT (Sexual Harassment is Out) (Osborne 1990, p. 33). In 1999 Sex Discrimination Commissioner Susan Halliday released a document, Harsh Realities, which outlined a series of case studies on the ‘unsavoury and at times quite appalling circumstances’ which had led to complaints. ‘There are some people who seem to have been locked away and have not heard the message. If you choose to be an employer then you need to adhere


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to employment law in this country.’ She warned employers to expect fines of up to tens of thousands of dollars if they tolerated sexual harassment at work (McDonald 1999, p. 2). Some feminists argue that the women’s movement has suffered a severe setback in its struggle for a less sexist society, because the ‘sexual revolution’ of the 1960s, with which many feminists initially identified, resulted in a dramatic loosening of the laws against indecent publications. Subsequently, a multi-billion dollar international pornography industry has exploited men’s interest in pornography and, in pursuit of further profit, has positively cultivated and encouraged that interest. Prominent American feminists, notably Andrea Dworkin and Catherine McKinnon, have campaigned relentlessly against pornography, viewing it as a form of censorship of women, because it is patriarchal ideology, which silences the authentic voices of women. The burgeoning of the pornography industry is a serious problem for feminism, according to Sheila Jeffreys, because pornography ‘is predicated upon the inequality of women and is the propaganda that makes that inequality sexy’ (Jeffreys 1990, esp. pp. 62, 254, 259). The women’s movement in its early libertarian days, when it identified with the ‘sexual revolution’, was generally uncritical of pornography, anxious not to be associated with ‘puritan’ opponents. It was not until the second half of the 1970s that sections of the women’s movement commenced concerted mobilisation against this development, and many feminists now oppose pornography, seeing it as a potent force for the continuing subordination of women, for their objectification by men, and for the association of sex with domination and often violence by men. Other feminists have maintained a more libertarian stance. For example, in 1980 liberal feminist Beatrice Faust, in Women, Sex and Pornography, argued for a permissive approach by feminists towards male access to pornography. From a postmodernist perspective, in 1997 Catherine Lumby’s Bad Girls: The Media, Sex and Feminism in the 90s constituted ‘a libertarian welcoming of all forms of sexual representation’ (Sheridan 1998, p. 291). That the women’s movement has changed attitudes is apparent from the emergence of a ‘men’s movement’ from the mid-1980s. While this movement is complex and sections of it pose a potential to turn towards the defence of men’s privilege and position, it mostly expresses the heartfelt desire of men to acknowledge and overcome the effects of gendering—in other words, to accept the ramifications of the feminist critique of masculinity. Why do men join? Researcher Michael Flood answers: ‘Men’s realisation of the hollowness


The women’s movement 141 and corruption of traditional masculinity is a common path to the men’s movement.’ Through this movement, men come to understand ‘the toll taken on their own emotional, physical and spiritual wellbeing, and the damage done to their relationships, families and communities through violence, selfcenteredness, isolation and addiction’. Some men in the movement even come to an expressly pro-feminist position (Flood 1996, pp. 14–16). Undoubtedly attitudes have changed, but not to the extent that women who manage to penetrate traditional bastions of male power can safely go unnoticed. In 1986, Janine Haines became the first leader of an Australian political party, the Democrats. In 1987 Mary Gaudron became the first female judge of the High Court. Early in 1990, Dr Carmen Lawrence became Australia’s first female premier, in Western Australia. In 1995 Jennie George became the first female president of the ACTU. In 2001 Christine Nixon became the first female police commissioner, in Victoria. Late in 2001, Jenny Macklin became Deputy Leader of the Australian Labor Party and therefore the first female deputy leader of the opposition. All these women are white, English-speaking and tertiary educated. By the end of the twentieth century, which opened with the enfranchisement of women, only 25.1 per cent of Commonwealth parliamentarians were women (the international average is 13.8 per cent—see Cvetkovic 2001, p. 42).

The women’s movement and lesbianism Lesbians were very important in the early days of women’s liberation. Arguably, they were the conscience of the movement: unlike heterosexual women, they were not in any way hostage to the male enemy; they were what lesbians termed women-identified-women. Gisela Kaplan argues that lesbians in the women’s movement ‘often served as role models for the independence for which some heterosexual women strove’ (Kaplan 1996, p. 98). One activist explained the benefits of lesbianism within the context of feminist politics: ‘It’s a really good political move. If you can lose your dependency on guys, you strengthen women as a group’ (quoted in Brown 1972, p. 33). For many women, lesbianism was not simply a sexual state of being but a political statement, a rejection of patriarchal sexism for its subjection of women and its insistence on clear and rigid sexual identities conforming to heterosexual ‘norms’. American lesbian theorist Jill Johnston maintained that the word ‘lesbian’ signified ‘activism and resistance and the envisioned


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goal of a woman committed state’ (Johnston 1974, p. 278). The American Radicalesbians, from whom the Australian formation took its name, argued that a lesbian was a model for any woman seeking her freedom: a lesbian was ‘the rage of all women condensed to the point of explosion . . . she has not been able to accept the limitations and oppression laid on her by the most basic role of her society—the female role’ (Radicalesbians 1988, p. 17). However, the women’s liberation movement did not always appreciate having its consciousness raised by its lesbian sisters. While individual women and groups within the women’s movement were sympathetic and supportive, others felt that the publicly acknowledged presence of lesbians would harm the movement as a whole (Kaplan 1996, p. 98). There were always tensions within the women’s movement between lesbians and heterosexual women. Lesbians had to confront attempts to ignore and exclude lesbianism as an issue and lesbians themselves from the movement. Lesbian activists interviewed in Melbourne in 1972 complained that the local women’s liberation groups were ‘very unsympathetic to gay women. They’re sick of being labelled camp just because they belong to Women’s Lib’ (Brown 1972, pp. 33, 35). As the American Radicalesbians pointed out, accusations of lesbianism against feminists can be seen as a form of ‘sexual McCarthyism’. In ‘The Woman Identified Woman’, they argue: ‘Lesbian is the word, the label, the condition that holds women in line. When a woman hears this word tossed her way, she knows . . . that she has crossed the terrible boundary of her sex role’ (Radicalesbians 1988, p. 18). A Melbourne feminist recalls that, in 1972: My car was parked in Toorak Rd last week, with Women’s Lib. stickers on it. ‘Sisterhood is Powerful’ and so on. When I came back to it, someone had written ‘I am a dyke’ on the top (quoted in Brown 1972, p. 33). The practice of lesbian-baiting was designed to contain the women’s movement, just as ‘red-baiting’—hurling accusations of communism—was used to tame the labour movement. It was a strategy of divide and conquer: if heterosexual women, under lesbian-baiting pressure, attempted to purge lesbians from the women’s movement and to insist on its heterosexual character, the aims of the lesbian-baiters would be achieved, because the women would be acquiescing in a concept of the women’s movement less threatening to its male detractors (discussed in Eisenstein 1984, pp. 49–50).


The women’s movement 143 It was the Hobart Women’s Action Group which most forcibly raised the issue within the women’s liberation movement by presenting a paper on ‘Sexism and the Women’s Liberation Movement’ at the Women’s Liberation Conference in country Victoria, held 27–29 January 1973. It made a thought-provoking analogy: Just as women in left-wing movements became dissatisfied with waiting in the wings until the socialist revolution solved everyone’s problems, lesbians have become increasingly dissatisfied with the women’s liberation movement that demands the same of them. It alleged lesbians were being told to keep out of the movement because ‘some women won’t come if lesbians are there, and those women shouldn’t be put off because W.L. is for all women’. It recalled a meeting that discussed the problem of how to cope with being called ‘that horrible name’. The paper suggested that feminists needed to examine why being called a lesbian hurt them: ‘Why do straight sisters sometimes cry when they are called lesbians?’ It argued that the women’s movement aimed merely at a Betty Friedan world ‘with the biggest perks for the most intelligent, but with sex roles basically only renovated’; that it represented ‘a heterosexual desire to combine sexual, family love with participation in the main stream of the world’s work’. The women’s movement only confronted patriarchy, the domination of men over women, but not ‘sexism’, defined as the way society categorised people according to ‘sex and sexual behaviour’: the women’s movement should acknowledge the relevance of sexism to both the oppression of women and the persecution of homosexuals, and fight both. Sexism underpinned patriarchy, not the other way round. ‘Without sexism, patriarchy is deprived of its organizing principle and of its ideology of consent’ (Hobart Women’s Action Group 1973, pp. 8–12). Yet many sections of the women’s liberation movement strove consciously to meet lesbian challenges. Even WEL, whose respectability might have prompted caution, made a public stand in support of lesbians at its 1974 conference. It issued four recommendations: that all statutes dealing with female and male homosexuality be repealed; that federal and state governments should ensure homosexuals were no longer discriminated against in the public service; that sex education courses should not present homosexuality as abnormal; and that homosexuality should not be considered cause for loss of custody of children (cited in Kaplan 1996, pp. 99–100).


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When a printing firm refused to print an issue of Refractory Girl because its lesbian contents were considered obscene, Refractory Girl vented its fury, drawing broad analogies between this act of censorship against lesbianism and the subordination of women in general: Sexual acts are obscene only if one considers those acts to be obscene and it is here that a sexist society’s oppression of lesbians is manifested . . . The taboo against free expression of sexuality generally as well as the specific taboos against lesbians have conspired to prevent women from discussing their sexual feelings for each other. We feel that it is time to break this taboo. Lesbians exist. Lesbians have sexual relations. Are these obscene? Refractory Girl rejected the idea they were (Refractory Girl, April 1974, editorial). It argued that, as long as homosexuals are oppressed, the sexist society prevails: ‘The thrust of the women’s movement, as we see it, is the fight against sexism, whether it is manifested as gender sexism or sexpreference sexism.’ But, Refractory Girl added, it was opposed to Jill Johnston’s ideal of a ‘lesbian nation’ that would exclude men and heterosexual women, condemining it as a form of ‘sexual apartheid’ (Refractory Girl no. 5, Summer 1974, p. 2). Ultimately, the withdrawal of many lesbians from the women’s movement reflected differing interests. One woman described the response of herself and other lesbians to the movement: ‘Most of them are heterooriented—aiming to get baby creches together and so on. We formed a lesbian women’s club’ (Brown 1972, p. 35). While it would be a serious mistake to assume that issues such as abortion and child care are not relevant to lesbians—lesbians do sometimes need abortions, many lesbians are mothers and lesbians within the women’s movement have often been at the forefront of activities around these issues—it is true that these major concerns of the women’s movement are generally of less pressing concern to lesbians. While direct discrimination against lesbians has been the exception rather than the rule within the women’s movement, indirect discrimination, the unthinking assertion of heterosexual women’s interests as the principal items on the movement’s agenda and the relegation of specifically lesbian concerns to the bottom, have certainly happened. Lesbian interests within the women’s movement have lost out to the dominance of heterosexual feminist concerns, prompting many lesbian activists to join those lesbians who had organised separately from the outset.


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The women’s movement and Aboriginal women Women’s movement activists were expressly anti-racist, yet contact with indigenous women was very limited and, as Gisela Kaplan maintains, these tokenistic efforts often turned into reverse racism (Kaplan 1996, p. 196). The failure of second-wave feminism to incorporate and attract indigenous women was hardly surprising, for the women’s movement was an expression—albeit a radical one—of white Australian female society. For a start, it largely failed to appreciate the fact that the position of Aboriginal women was not directly analogous to that of non-indigenous women. Marcia Langton and Kristen Barry argue: The social power of women in Aboriginal societies has been largely invisible in a male-dominated, Eurocentric Australia. Aboriginal society has been resilient in the face of brutal colonisation, largely because of the social and economic contributions made by Aboriginal women to their own and settler societies (Langton and Barry 1998). In feminist ways, the women’s movement made the racist mistake of thinking that it knew what Aboriginal women should want. But, in researching indigenous women’s responses to the women’s movement in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Meredith Burgmann found abundant evidence of ‘their sense of alienation from yet another white-organised, white-dominated movement with white values and white concepts’ (Burgmann 1984, p. 39). Roberta Sykes admits to some ‘mutually beneficial exchanges’ with the white women’s movement, but says that the exchanges were nonetheless lopsided—that the whites were in the position of ‘helper’ and she in the position of ‘helped’. The power relationship that exists between the white community and the black community exists also in the relationship between white women and black women . . . Black women, sensitive to the feeling of embarrassment which always being the inferior party in the helper/helped dyad creates . . . practise politically motivated avoidance of the women’s movement (Rowland 1984, pp. 63–65). The white women’s movement, to Aboriginal women, was a struggle between the two white sexes that both oppress all Aboriginal people, for indigenous


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women naturally regard their race rather than their sex as the principal source of their exploitation and oppression. According to Jackie Huggins, they feel solidarity with their menfolk against white people of both sexes rather than a sisterhood with white women (Huggins 1987, p. 78). As Roberta Sykes observes: in comparison to both black women and black men white women are extremely powerful and have control over many resources . . . White women own land, and stand to inherit land—land of which the black community has been dispossessed. White women have gained from every massacre of black people, whether directly or indirectly (Rowland 1984, p. 68). For Eve Fesl, white women are far greater oppressors of indigenous women than indigenous men have ever been (Rowland 1984, p. 110). Some of the demands of the white women’s movement conflicted directly with the interests of indigenous women—for instance, Aboriginal women have long been struggling against enforced sterilisation and abortion from white doctors. In fact, WAAC included ‘no forced sterilisation’ in its list of demands, noting that in many areas of Australia, Aboriginal women were sterilised without their consent (WAAC leaflet n.d. [1975]). However, this aspect of the campaign was insufficiently stressed and black women’s understanding of the women’s movement was refracted through the media, which presented the movement as ‘pro-abortion’ rather than ‘pro-choice’. As for the demand for sexual freedom, Roberta Sykes pointed out that black women had so-called sexual freedom forced upon them for centuries—and by white men, not by black men (Burgmann 1984, p. 42). Likewise, the women’s liberation slogan of ‘smash the family’ was especially offensive to Aboriginal women, who had battled for many decades against the white authorities who wished to remove Aboriginal children from their families. In contrasting second-wave feminism with first-wave feminism’s record on indigenous rights, Lake argues that it was the radicalism of women’s liberation in attacking motherhood and the family that made it inappropriate as a politics for indigenous women, whose families had been systematically smashed for decades: ‘It was earlier forms of maternalist feminism—oriented to affirming the rights of mothers—that had spoken more directly to the specific needs of most Aboriginal women’ (Lake 1999, p. 249). For instance, in the interwar period, feminists were the first organised political group to oppose the removal of indigenous children from their


The women’s movement 147 mothers. The second-wave women’s movement’s efforts to build links with indigenous women were therefore less successful than those of the earlier women’s movement (Lake 1999, pp. 14, 247–50, 110–35). Jackie Huggins has paid tribute to the indigenous and non-indigenous women who worked together to secure the passage of the 1967 referendum but, writing in 1999, she is scathing about more recent generations of white women: I have long been critical of what white women can do for indigenous women until individuals come to terms with their own racism and white-race privilege, instead of pretending it just does not exist. ‘We are all women together—therefore, we understand each other’ is a misnomer. While the power rests with white institutions, politicians, men and women, and does not allow access by indigenous and other culturally diverse groups, we can never embark on any meaningful dialogue, let alone try to find solutions. However, she is optimistic about future relations. Noting that Aboriginal women have always been the educators, carers and nurturers of their communities, she adds: Now I see a resurgence of women’s activity, spurred on by the debates of recent events, such as native title, the stolen generations report and the reconciliation movement. If this continues as it should, the partnerships between indigenous and non-indigenous women should reach a new maturity (Huggins 1999, p. 9). Emblematic of the traditional roles of Aboriginal women as educators and nurturers have been the activities of Yvonne Margarula as the senior traditional owner of the Mirrar clan and Jacqui Katona as the executive officer for the Gundjehmi Aboriginal Corporation and spokesperson for the Mirrar traditional owners. A possible recent example of ‘a new maturity’ in partnerships between indigenous and non-indigenous women is the Women’s Network for Mirrar Women, which describes itself as ‘a broad coalition of individual women, women’s groups and community organisations’ and explains its aims as follows: The WNMW provides support for the Mirrar whose land and culture is under threat from a proposed uranium mine at Jabiluka,


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Power, Profit and Protest located within Kakadu National Park . . . it allows you and other women a unique opportunity to support indigenous women who are working to protect their country and to keep Kakadu National Park a place for all future generations . . . Women throughout Australia are asked to add their voices to those of the Mirrar women to oppose the Jabiluka mine (Women’s Network for Mirrar Women n.d.).

Women helping women: ideology and practice Women’s movement activists established women’s health centres, women’s refuges, and rape crisis centres, which cared for women in important ways which were previously unavailable. The health centres initially encountered serious opposition from the medical establishment; the other centres did not challenge pre-existing services, because there were none, but they clearly intimated that men were inflicting harm on women and society was neglecting to repair the damage. In the heyday of the women’s movement in the 1970s, these services proliferated as women in both WEL and the women’s liberation movement cooperated to supply services to their sisters in the wider community. In making the resources of the women’s movement available to these women at critical moments, women’s movement activists gained insight, experience and confidence. The movement developed, ideologically and organisationally, in ‘the process of mixing theory with practice and from the experience of taking collective action’ (Women’s Liberation Halfway House Collective 1975, p. 1). In 1974, Canberra WEL and women’s liberation established a women’s refuge, to provide ‘a place for any woman with or without children, to go when she has nowhere else: she may be destitute or confused or needing to escape her existing situation for even a short period’. They secured some funding from the Department of the Capital Territory to secure premises, cover establishment running costs and pay one full-time staff member to organise food and transport, manage finances and handle the back-up services referring women to sources necessary for medical aid, employment or counselling, as well as liaising with charities that could help women reestablish themselves. For the rest, WEL and Canberra women’s liberation rostered themselves day and night to act as the support base receiving women into the refuge, assisting these women ‘just by being there, helping


The women’s movement 149 them to realise that they are not alone, to help them make decisions without stress’ (WEL (ACT) Newsletter, no. 19, 20 September 1974). Like other women’s refuges established in other cities, the Canberra Women’s Refuge supplied a much-needed social service: once refuges were established, they worked to full capacity. Femocrats secured federal funding for these refuges established voluntarily by the women’s movement. In 1975, a total of 21 refuges was funded under the National Women’s Refuge Programme; in 1980, the number of refuges was 96, making it one of the few growth areas in Fraser government spending. In 1992 the Women’s Services Network (WESNET 2002) was established as a national women’s peak advocacy body on behalf of women and children, indigenous and nonindigenous, who experience domestic and family violence. With 400 member services, many of which are women’s refuges, it aims to raise awareness of ‘gendered’ violence and facilitate assistance to victims. Women’s health centres increased from one in 1974 to six in 1980 and are now numerous. Femocrats also secured funding for rape crisis centres, which numbered around 30 in 2002 (www.acshp.org.au/sexual_health/assault.htm). It was in the establishment of rape crisis centres—in the analysis of rape and the practical help given to victims of rape—that the connection between feminist ideology and practice was most evident. For instance, in setting up Melbourne’s rape crisis centre, the Rape Crisis Action Group argued, in a similar analysis to Susan Brownmiller’s, but before her book was published: The rapist is the policeman of the patriarchy. Men who would never offer any kind of violence to a woman get the benefits of his activity. Rapists and their cousins, the verbal rapists on street corners and in passing cars, provide a very practical reason for women to want the protection of a man. The terror of rape ensures the final acceptance by women of male dominance. Any move towards independence brings women up against fear time and time again. No wonder that rape is supported by a consensus in the male class (‘Rape Crisis’, Vashti’s Voice, March 1974, p. 1). The analysis maintained that rape laws were designed for men to exact vengeance on the rapists of their wives and daughters and were not concerned with justice for women in general, hence the emphasis in court on the sexual status of the victim: only virgins and married women need expect justice. Misconceptions about rape made the struggle against it difficult, both for individual women and for the movement as a whole:


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Power, Profit and Protest If two men went to the pub for a drink and one man started pouring drink down the other’s throat, no-one would doubt that it was a clear case of assault. But even when a man is forcing sex on a woman, the old preconceptions of a woman as passive, receptive, eternally responsive to men, have to intrude. Women are sex objects to a point where men can’t believe they didn’t invite rape or enjoy rape (‘Rape Crisis’, Vashti’s Voice, March 1974, p.1).

Women had to stand up against ‘the patriarchal bonding of the boys’, asserting an understanding of rape in opposition to the present ‘anti-woman theories’, to ‘change community attitudes about the naturalness of rape’ and at the same time help each other, ‘pooling our women’s jungle lore of self defence, learning judo or karate, practising with weapons to increase our self-confidence’ (Vashti’s Voice, March 1974, p. 1). The establishment of these welfare services provided obvious help to women in need. However, feminists feared that, in ameliorating the problems of women by these practical institutions, they might be helping to contain popular demand for radical change in the wider society. Anne Summers observed that, when feminists uncover important deficiencies and gaps in the country’s social welfare system and step in to meet those needs themselves, their actions can have the effect of absolving the government from having to recognise and take responsibility for those needs. The first issue of Hecate alluded to this problem: ‘band-aidism can be used to deflect or depressurize areas of conflict’ (Hecate vol. 1, no. 1, January 1975, p. 4). Summers noted too that centres run on unpaid volunteer labour are themselves perpetuating a situation feminists have always criticised: of women within the family and within traditional charitable agencies providing unpaid labour for socially necessary work caring for other people and thereby enabling the society as a whole to profit from unpaid female labour (Summers 1977, p. 172). A further dilemma for feminist-initiated welfare projects is the extent to which the women’s movement activists running these important resources can receive government funding without contravening the feminist principles on which the centres run. As Hecate observed: ‘Government funding can be of great assistance, but it can also be used to contain radical demands’ (Hecate vol. 1, no. 1, January 1975, p. 4). These centres: were always vulnerable to funding cuts and so, increasingly, these often became simply bandaid services unable to address politically the basis of the oppression they were working with, either because


The women’s movement 151 of lack of time and resources, or from fear of funding being cut off if they were too outspoken (Hecate vol. xvi, nos 1/2, 1990, p. 5). Defending these centres from funding cutbacks—or the phasing out of funding altogether in the current neo-liberal climate—absorbs much of the energies of the women who run them.

The women’s movement and the state Australia is generally considered to be one of the countries where ‘femocrats’—feminists incorporated into the mainstream political structures, notably the public service, who work on women’s advisory boards, in women’s units and equal opportunity offices—have made most impact on public administration and policy. As Sian Powell commented in 1998: ‘the rise and rise of the femocrats in the 70s and 80s and their extraordinary impact on government and policy was noted with interest by the rest of the world’ (Powell 1998b, p. 15). The Whitlam government established a Women’s Adviser and a National Advisory Committee in 1973. The Fraser government set up the National Women’s Advisory Council and was persuaded by femocrats that new feminist policy units should be established in at least ten federal government departments. The Hawke government replaced Fraser’s Council with the Office for the Status of Women (OSW). In 1988, the Hawke government adopted the National Agenda for Women, which underpins much of the OSW’s work, and whose goals are basically compatible with WEL-type aims: equal opportunity in all aspects of life. These developments at federal level in the 1970s and 1980s were duplicated in state jurisdictions. Lyndall Ryan recalls the furore within the women’s liberation movement when Elizabeth Reid was appointed the first women’s adviser to the prime minister in 1973, an appointment that made her responsible not to the movement, but to the prime minister. Women’s liberationists argued that, in joining patriarchal bureaucratic structures and engaging in masculine decision-making processes, feminists lost their identity and autonomy: ‘Her successors would face similar accusations and become the object of intense scrutiny in terms of personal actions, appearance and clothes from a suspicious women’s movement’ (Ryan 1990, pp. 74, 80–81). Those for whom the personal was political were suspicious of women who dressed for success.


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Many radical feminists, instinctively separatist, shared Mary Daly’s dismissal of women in male terrain as ‘Painted Birds’, who become honorary men serving to mask ‘phallic power’ by their token female presence (Daly 1978, pp. 333–36). Liberal feminists had few serious problems with the femocrat strategy but, as Marian Simms observes: ‘Even WEL’s reformism and instrumentalism . . . was tempered by a degree of wariness about the potential of power to corrupt’ (Simms 1981, p. 230). Jan Mercer, who was involved with WEL, writes that: it became clear to me that the very respectability and credibility we had fought so hard to gain was being thrown back in our faces. WEL was not powerful, as I had so idealistically believed, but was being manipulated into a convenient harmless position in the establishment (Mercer 1975, p. 395). It was socialist feminists who were most seriously ambivalent about the role of femocrats. Indeed, one of the major problems confronting socialist feminism, according to Ann Curthoys, is the role of the state. Its position on the state is paradoxical: denouncing it while looking to it to provide solutions (Curthoys 1988b, pp. 19–23; 1998a, pp. 171–77). Socialist feminists were also highly sensitive to the proposition that femocracy provides a few middleclass women with career aspirations, with a place in the dominant capitalist and patriarchal order, while doing little to advance the position of the average woman (Outhwaite 1989, p. 206). Femocracy raised the serious issue of representation. Femocrats resisted the insistence of women’s liberationists that femocrats account to them, because they considered they must serve the much larger constituency of Australian women (Lake 1999, pp. 258–59). Yet this was a much more difficult constituency to ‘represent’. To what extent can femocrats prosper the interests, even be aware of the problems, of women quite unlike themselves? Femocrats were not representative of most Australian women; how, then, could they represent them? Mary Kalantzis tells this story of the femocrat addressing a meeting of immigrant women: At great length, and in passionate terms, she described how important it was for her to defy patriarchal bonds, to break out of the straitjacket of catholicism into which she had been socialized through an education at the hands of nuns, to leave behind traditional Irish values of family and womanhood and to choose


The women’s movement 153 to be a single independent person. And this to an audience of non-English-speaking women which included Muslim women in purdah who had come along to this meeting to ask for support to change their work practices in order to allow them their traditional prayer sessions; and mothers who wanted their children to be taught their mother tongue and cultural traditions within the state school system (Kalantzis 1990, pp. 40, 58–59). Clearly, any assumption that femocrats represent women because they are women overlooks the extent of significant differences amongst women. In arguing about the relative efficacies of the feminist women’s movement on the ground and the femocracy in the corridors of power, many other important questions were confronted. To what extent is the state a site of struggle? Would feminism’s ‘fandango with the state’ bring capitulations and co-options, or policy gains and new feminist political agendas (Dowse 1988; see also Dowse 1984, pp. 139–60)? Would femocrats absorb the values of the institutions involved and be corrupted? The movement’s very identity was at stake. It had constructed itself initially as a movement that aimed to change the way people related to each other in civil society; its early demands were made as much upon men as upon the state. Now the movement was beginning to be constituted instead by its relations with the state, its negotiations with a patriarchal institution. Many women in the movement were disturbed by this transformation in its very nature. In 1974, Liberaction, the newsletter of the Hobart Women’s Action Group, considered the problem of working within the bureaucracies, ‘the heart of power’, to obtain the interim reforms so necessary. There was a danger that: we ourselves will find that we have been sucked in and will no longer feel the impetus to destroy our own status within that organization . . . Will women, given the chance, be just as revolting as men, just as individualistically self seeking, just as macho? Will women, given increased access to power, become carbon copy coopted members of the existing male members of the power system? Is a paid feminist bureaucrat, who is biding her time, of any more use than anyone else? (Liberaction no. 28, August 1974) Franzway, Court and Connell, in Staking a Claim, consider the problem of the ‘bureaucratisation of feminism’—the adaptation of feminism to an organisational form that contradicts feminism’s own ideals which are


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antipathetic to hierarchy, rules and authority. Moreover, ‘rational’, calculating, detached and objective expertise—a fundamental precept of bureaucracy—is highly problematic for the ‘irrational’, deeply personal, emotional and subjective nature of feminist issues. The objectivity of the bureaucrat is defined in gendered terms: ‘Whether femocrats successfully pass as objective bureaucrats raises political problems about the strategy of trying to do so’ (Franzway et al 1989, pp. 143–46). Anna Yeatman argues that femocrats, including academics teaching women’s studies and feminist theory, constitute a class of their own, sharing neither the privileges of male counterparts nor the ‘disprivileges’ and dependency of most women. Yet their relatively privileged position in relation to other women has come about as a result of their commitment to feminist ideology, a prerequisite for the jobs they hold: ‘Femocracy represents the professionalisation of the ideology of a social movement.’ Femocrats, relatively powerless within state bureaucracies, have been ‘set up’ by the state to be the advocates of women and other disadvantaged groups, to act as the brokers and mediators of the claims of the new social movements to the state in these areas. They have been used by the state to rationalise and modernise social security systems, to ‘target’ (i.e. limit) more precisely recipients of welfare payments. Femocrats, according to Yeatman, colluded with and became profoundly implicated in the more general efforts to roll back the welfare state during the Hawke Labor years (Yeatman 1990, pp. 77–78, 88, 90–97). Marian Sawer’s Sisters in Suits: Women and Public Policy in Australia pays more fulsome tribute to the ‘quiet revolution’ that was the femocrats’ achievement, noting that the long march through the institutions has exacted a heavy toll on the women concerned, who have battled against the odds, dedicated and committed, while understaffed and under-resourced. She outlines the extent of femocrat gains in many areas and insists on the importance of maintaining women’s ‘bridgehead in government’ but concedes nonetheless that, in the course of being translated into public policy and bureaucratic structures, feminism has inevitably been diluted (Sawer 1990, esp. pp. xiv, 250–53). More upbeat is Hester Eisenstein’s Inside Agitators: Australian Femocrats and the State, which presents the femocrats’ story as a largely successful attempt by Australian women to create a womanfriendly state by reforming the bureaucracy from within, rather than battling from the margins. They put women’s issues, such as child care and domestic violence, on the mainstream political agenda, and generated major legislative reforms. In other words, they used state power as an instrument for social change (Eisenstein 1984).


The women’s movement 155 The femocrat viewpoint is clearly put by Sara Dowse, the second women’s adviser, who resigned in 1977 in protest at the Fraser government’s removal of the Women’s Affairs Branch from the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet to the Department of Home Affairs and Environment and its transformation into the Office of Women’s Affairs: We have to decide whether we are going to change society or whether we are going to develop small enclaves of alternative ways of living which will eventually self-destruct through depletion of energy. If we want to be in a position to help all women who need to free themselves from domestic tyranny we have to devise strategies for extending services on a scale large enough to have a genuine impact (quoted in Ryan 1990, p. 81). But she never denied the difficulties femocrats encounter in the bureaucracy and their ability to initiate structural change (Ryan 1990, pp. 80–81). Much of what has been achieved by the women’s movement appears to have come from femocrat pressure. Marilyn Lake views the femocrat project as a continuation and fruition of earlier feminists’ desire to create a womanfriendly Commonwealth and maintains of the femocrats: Their achievements were impressive, establishing as they did the basis of significant feminist programs, securing Commonwealth underwriting of the delivery of a range of new women’s services— women’s refuges; rape crisis centres and women’s health centres; child care; working women’s centres; equal opportunity policies in education, training and employment and housing programs (Lake 1999, pp. 256, 262). However, the running made by the femocrats was possible because of the strength of the movement on the ground, especially in the 1970s: the state used the femocrats to modernise and rationalise itself in the face of the more fundamental challenge to it mounted by the radical feminists and socialist feminists of the women’s liberation movement; capitalist patriarchy was conserved, with certain concessions and adjustments to contain feminist demands. However, the pressure on the state from without—the radical feminism and socialist feminism of the women’s liberation movement—was at least as crucial as that from within. The liberal feminist agenda that has been partially successful has largely been won by the radical and socialist feminists;


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WEL-type reforms were achieved not simply by WEL, but also by the women’s liberation movement. Many of the programs put in place during the Whitlam period came to fruition during the Fraser government because, as Lake notes: Fraser still had to answer to a continuing and outspoken women’s movement. One of the crucial preconditions for the exercise of feminist power in political institutions, as Sarah Dowse perceptively noted, was the continuous pressure from an independent women’s movement (Lake 1999, p. 260). In any case, femocrat influence on policy-making has been limited, and many femocrats realise this. Eva Cox writes: We knew that EEO would not redress class inequalities; that legal changes would not abolish rape; that women’s units would not change policy and the bureaucracy in major ways. We might have been dewy eyed in the early days and made extravagant claims as part of the political process, but most of us recognised that the state and bureaucratic intervention could only achieve limited objectives (Cox 1990, p. 44). There is endless debate about the extent to which the constituency of Australian women has benefited from femocracy. But it is clear that those who have benefited most have been those in a position to take advantage of the consequent widespread recruitment of women personnel into government service. Lake notes: With the proliferation of services and programs for women and the implementation of equal opportunity measures in the public service, the ranks of femocrats swelled . . . Equal opportunities seemed to be within the reach of women—especially if they were white, English speaking, and tertiary educated (Lake 1999, pp. 261–62). Without disputing the value for women in general of the reforms achieved by the women’s movement, femocrats have been the principal beneficiaries of second-wave feminism’s bid to reform the state by working within rather than outside the corridors of power.


The women’s movement 157

Feminism in the 1990s In the late 1960s and 1970s, the women’s movement had emphasised the political and sociological significance of the distinction between sex and gender, sex being the biological differences between male and female, and gender being the socially constructed attributes allocated to the sexes and indeed thrust upon them by society in the form of sex role conditioning, encouraging femininity in women and masculinity in men. This ideological position was accompanied, appropriately, by the political demand that women should be treated equally with men, because they were essentially equal and more like men than society allowed them to be. To this extent, the distinction made between sex and gender was an important part of the political argument of early second-wave feminism. Only in drawing such a distinction could the inegalitarian consequences of social structures be revealed: the way the political order accentuated the natural differences between women and men and accorded male characteristics a higher value. But there were practical problems attendant upon this theoretical position. Equality with men, it was discovered, meant having to compete with men, and competing with men necessarily meant competing on male terms; it was difficult to succeed in this race without becoming an honorary male, without denying one’s femaleness, one’s desire not to be competitive. And the demand for equal treatment was found to disadvantage women, as their special female needs could conveniently be ignored by gender-blind policies pursued in the name of the longed-for equality. A shift in ideological direction occurred during the 1980s. Much feminist theory and ideology started to celebrate femaleness—what was distinctive about women, the difference between women and men. This ‘difference feminism’ is valorising what it sees as the real essence of women: the truly female traits undervalued by a society whose norms are masculinist, characteristics which represent a more truly humane being. This is especially apparent in eco-feminist theory, discussed in Chapter 4. However, for many feminists the new direction was disconcerting and they feared that, in its ‘essentialism’—the belief in an essential femaleness—this feminism could not differentiate itself from anti-feminist rhetoric. Are they not both arguing from assumptions that are biologically determinist? Antifeminists maintain that biology is destiny: that the anatomy and physiology of women’s reproductive processes necessarily confine their social, intellectual and emotional functioning to human nurture and associated tasks; that because


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of women’s reproductive capacities they must accept a lesser place in the world of production and be content with this lesser role because their physiological makeup renders them less well suited than men for engagement with the public world of work, politics and so on. Certainly the lines of conflict between difference feminism and antifeminism have become more difficult to draw, and there are many instances of overlapping concerns and even of joint activity on some fronts, notably against the new reproductive technologies and pornography. In the United States, this strand of feminism has been classified as ‘cultural feminism’, but this is a term rejected by these feminists in Australia. Generally they prefer to remain with the label of ‘radical feminist’, from which camp most of them have come. They remain radical, they insist, because they ‘go to the root’ of the lived experience of women’s lives in patriarchy (Bell and Klein 1996, p. xxiii). Morally conservative anti-feminists oppose pornography on puritanical grounds; latter-day radical feminists agree with Catherine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin that it is a patriarchal weapon for oppressing and silencing women. Morally conservative anti-feminists, especially Catholics, oppose reproductive technology for interfering with God’s prerogatives; many radical feminists confront it as patriarchal science seeking new ways to control women’s bodies. In Australia, Diane Bell, Sheila Jeffreys, Renate Klein, Robyn Rowland and Jocelynne Scutt are identified, to varying degrees, with this development in feminism (see esp. Scutt 1988; Rowland 1992; Bell and Klein 1996). Other feminists, such as Patricia Brewer, have objected to the way such feminists ‘protect’ women from making choices about their bodies, their sexuality and their reproduction in a manner that undercuts women’s autonomy (Brewer 2000, esp. p. 178). At the same time as some strands in feminism came to praise the similarities amongst women that made them truly different from men, feminism also developed an increasing sensitivity to the significance of differences amongst women. Feminism in the 1970s had exposed the gender-blindness of dominant ideologies; in the 1980s, non-white feminists pointed to a similar myopia of race-blindness in much feminist theory and practice. They charged Western feminism with being a place for white, relatively privileged women to celebrate themselves and contested the way in which white feminists had used certain ‘sexist’ practices in other cultures to argue for their own oppression without consideration, for instance, of the problems of imperialist domination. They argued that white Western women claiming some ‘special connection’ with women in the Third World by virtue of a common relationship to patriarchy arrogantly assume that racism is not a more


The women’s movement 159 important, or immediately relevant, issue to many women in the Third World than an imported feminism from the West (Kenny 1990). There is now a greater sensitivity about pronouncing on the problems of non-white women and a realisation of the ways in which non-white women have certain interests in common with their menfolk rather than with white women; and a greater awareness amongst feminists of the significance of differences amongst women—of the way patriarchy is experienced in different ways by women according to their racial or ethnic identities. Influential in this development has been postmodern feminism, sometimes known as French feminism because its major intellectual figures are Hélène Cixous, Luce Irigaray and Julia Kristeva. This strand of feminism reveals postmodern premises in that it rejects any claims by feminism to be an explanatory theory as to why women are oppressed, rejects the notion of feminism as an emancipatory movement and emphasises the importance of differences amongst women. Taken together, these positions suggest women have no common interests and that it is preposterous to view feminism as a viable political project. So how, then, is postmodern feminism a form of feminism at all? Its distinctive contribution to feminism is its argument that, because patriarchal culture has regarded women as ‘the Other’, women have a peculiar ability to critique the norms, values and practices of the dominant patriarchal culture. The ‘otherness’ of women thus puts them in a position of advantage, because it allows for openness, plurality, diversity and difference (Tong 1989, pp. 217–33). However, it was not postmodern feminists who first elaborated such arguments. As Sandra Harding has observed, it was earlier feminist theorists, borrowing from Marxian insights, who first argued that socially advantaged people and their institutions are ‘epistemically disadvantaged’ and that ‘social disadvantage creates a certain kind of limited but epistemic advantage’ (Harding 1996, esp. p. 146). Many feminists are critical of postmodernism for its conviction that political action is unwarranted and pointless. Marxist feminists and socialist feminists also take issue with postmodern feminism on the grounds that, despite its emphasis on differences amongst women, it persistently avoids acknowledgment of the significance of socio-economic differences amongst women; the identities appreciated by postmodern feminism do not include class identity. As Marea Mitchell (1998) has noted, postmodern feminism’s celebration of the proliferation of ‘subject positions’ or identities needs to be put firmly in the context of inequalities of access to those positions: ‘If nattering on the net is some kind of new women’s business, then one is


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still left with the sharp, short question, “which women?” ’ (Mitchell 1998, pp. 276–77). In the 1990s, too, a hyper-individualised version of liberal feminism denounced radical feminism as ‘victim feminism’, which it contrasted unfavourably with its own position of ‘power feminism’. In the United States, this position was championed by young, ‘third-wave’ feminists such as Naomi Wolf. In Fire With Fire: The New Female Power and How it Will Change the World (1993), Wolf accused ‘victim feminism’ of dwelling too much on women’s victim status, the abuse they suffer at the hands of men; of idealising women’s powerlessness as virtue and denigrating money and power as masculinist; of being anti-sex and anti-men; and of putting the collective ahead of the individual. This, she insisted, was why it alienated mainstream women and deterred young women from calling themselves feminist, even though they were. ‘Power feminism’, on the other hand, values individuality, is unashamedly sexual and is characterised by intellectual, political and practical flexibility and inclusiveness. Most Australian feminists were suspicious. In Refractory Girl, Karen Fredericks argued on behalf of all forms of 1970s feminism: This book is an outright attempt to re-route the energies of young, privileged, first world women inclined to fight for equal rights, into strategies which pose no threat to the current economic and political system. She wants to provide a theoretical framework to justify a new generation of co-opted femocrats to themselves (Fredericks 1994, p. 12). However, Australian women provided their own brash and in-your-face version of ‘power feminism’ in what is commonly known as ‘DIY feminism’ or ‘grrrlpower’. In 1996, Kathy Bail’s DIY Feminism rejected ‘institutionalised feminism’ and argued the virtues of ‘disorganised feminism’. Bail insisted that platforms and manifestoes were to be avoided, because 1990s-style empowerment was about ‘individual practice’ and ‘personal challenges’ rather than ‘group identification’ (Bail 1996, p. 16; Bulbeck 1998, pp. 38–39). Yet Helen Garner’s 1995 book The First Stone—about young women seeking police action over sexual harassment at a Melbourne University college—characterised young feminists as anti-erotic and adopting ‘a political position based on the virtue of helplessness’. In the furore that surrounded this book, the young feminists were vigorously supported by many older feminists, especially from the radical feminist camp, who denounced Garner’s position as one trapped in


The women’s movement 161 the late 1960s when feminism confused itself with a sexual libertarianism that facilitated rather than challenged men’s exploitation of women’s bodies. Although Garner framed the book in terms of a conflict between generations, its reception revealed that ideological differences within the women’s movement were stronger than divisions based on age-cohort (Garner 1995, esp. pp. 93, 99; Mead 1997; Bulbeck 1998, p. 37). Generational tensions of a different sort were nonetheless apparent in 1993 when veteran second-wave feminist Anne Summers wrote a public letter to young women asking why they were no longer embracing the women’s movement she fought so hard to build—‘why you seem to reject us and all we stand for’ (Summers 1993). Refractory Girl, which had also denounced ‘power feminism’ on behalf of feminism in general, published an angry reply to Summers by Victoria Nicholson, who argued that young feminists felt increasingly alienated from the institutionalised femocracy Summers represented, believing its members had lost touch with the average woman and the original ideals of an independent liberation movement. She insisted feminism was still strong amongst young women, who were battling in a variety of areas to confront problems like peer sexual harassment, eating disorders, violence against women and sexism in the media: ‘Why would young women seek the counsel of a woman who has become a part, at the very highest levels, of the system we are fighting against?’ (Nicholson 1993, pp. 18–19).

Feminism in the new millennium Gisela Kaplan argues that feminism is greying and the women’s movement baton has not been passed to other runners (Kaplan 1996, p. 205).4 Since Kaplan made this observation, other runners have emerged, but are they feminist? Rather more engaged with broader issues and the problem of social change than DIY Feminism is a 1998 collection of essays, Talking Up: Young Women’s Take on Feminism. In this collection, 21 Australian women aged 17 to 33 write about what feminism means to them and the issues they see as important. One of the editors, Rosamund Else-Mitchell, insists: ‘Young women are putting feminism into their lives and their work, and the fact that nobody knew about them enraged a lot of people and motivated us to do the book.’ Her fellow editor, Naomi Flutter, is similarly belligerent on behalf of third-wave feminism: ‘Women today are more likely to fight for change in their own lives and through non-government organisations and smaller community and political groupings than from behind a banner’ (Safe 1998, p. 11).


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Banners are out of fashion. To this extent, first-wave and second-wave feminist ideals and strategies have largely been cast aside by third-wave feminism, operating as it does in a neo-liberal climate that emphasises individual, rather than collective, self-advancement. In the 1980s, it was observed that there was a ‘yuppie rebuff’ to feminism; it was decreed ‘daggy and unnecessary’ (Milburn 1989, p. 4). Feminism, at least in its DIY mode, appears to have responded to this rebuff by absorbing ‘yuppie’ values of the 1980s, which were the means by which the new generations of young urban professionals were weaned on to the increasingly neo-liberal ideological diet of the 1990s. Anita Harris argues that DIY feminists do care about collective feminist issues, but concedes that they do this in the face of increasing commercialisation and depoliticisation of their agenda: ‘This new grrrlpower feminism has become a saleable commodity’ (Harris 1999, p. 287). To this extent, third-wave feminism bears the same marks of class partiality that inflicted earlier manifestations of feminism, but without the earlier waves’ emphasis on movement. Banners, after all, have their uses. Although feminism in all its many guises remains significant, the women’s movement no longer exists in the way it did in its ascendant phase in the 1970s and early 1980s. Admittedly, there are a range of special-purpose and enduring organisational legacies of the women’s movement, such as rape crisis centres or equal opportunity units within some workplaces, which employ women’s movement veterans as well as younger feminists. There is also a myriad of small-scale feminist groups acting on a range of issues, such as the Women’s Network for Mirrar Women. However, the decline of the allencompassing and all-engrossing movement means that being a feminist is now different and in many ways harder than it was in the heyday of secondwave feminism. Feminist activity in the twenty-first century is more likely to involve repeated minor skirmishes with patriarchy and unspectacular hard work; it is less likely to include collective protest and large-scale joint activities and the exhilaration and political benefits that result from such solidarity. There are dangers in this downturn. Gains for women have often been won by feminists working within locations outside the movement, such as bureaucracies, unions and political parties, but these achievements were made possible by the existence of the women’s movement—and protected from reversal by this movement. Jessie Street warned long ago that the price of liberty for women was eternal vigilance: ‘The world is full of crustaceans waiting to crawl out from under the rocks to again deprive of their rights and liberties, women and all other people who have attained a measure of freedom’ (Street 1966, p. 127).


The women’s movement 163 It appears the crustaceans have arrived. Decreased equity of access to child care, a growing gender gap in income and working conditions and a trend towards low-paid casual employment are some of the significant ways in which women’s progress towards equality has gone into reverse in the past decade. At the International Women’s Day rally in 1999, speakers labelled John Howard a paternalist who sought to impose a template of 1950s husband-dominant family living on 1990s Australia. Eva Cox, convenor of the Women’s Economic Think Tank, declared: ‘I think we are standing still when we should be moving and we’re going backwards when we should be going forwards’ (Age, 9 March 1999, p. 16). Neo-liberalism threatens the interests of the majority of women. A decade ago, Marian Sawer predicted dangers ahead in the increasing influence exercised over the government by ‘unreconstructed economists’. She argued the most serious weakness of the women’s movement has been its failure ‘to challenge effectively the rule of economic paradigms antithetical to the interests of women’. The political environment has become increasingly unfriendly to the feminist enterprise; the whole spectrum has moved to the right and there has been an increasing commitment to the market as the ultimate arbiter of value (Sawer 1986, p. 32; Sawer 1990, p. 253). This weakness of the women’s movement identified by Sawer attests to an even more fundamental weakness. Over and above its racial and ethnic limitations, feminism has overwhelmingly been a middle-class project. Gisela Kaplan’s verdict on second-wave feminism is sombre: ‘The success for some Anglo-Celtic, Australian-born and largely middle-class women has indeed been impressive. But for all the others it cannot be described as anything but a meagre harvest’ (Kaplan 1996, p. 202). Its achievements, such as they are, have more clearly benefited the more socio-economically advantaged women. Its partiality, in class terms, has weakened its capacity to challenge effectively the rule of economic paradigms antithetical to the interests of most women, because these same paradigms are not necessarily antithetical to the interests of career feminists, who mostly enjoy incomes in the top quintile. However, young women—to varying degrees—owe much to the second-wave feminists they often deride. For Lake, the history of Australian feminism over the last century is undoubtedly a record of political achievement leading to major changes in the relations between the sexes: women have succeeded in campaigns for fundamental political, civil and economic rights (Lake 1999, p. 277). On the basis of in-depth interviews


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with 60 women across three generations and across class and ethnic divisions, Bulbeck concedes that an elite minority of women ‘may have harvested the greatest benefits’ and that the women’s movement ‘has not undone the inequalities based on class and ethnicity’. Nonetheless, she concludes: ‘Every woman with whom I spoke could see some advantages from feminism, if not in her own life in the lives of others’ (Bulbeck 1998, p. 225). The manifest achievements of second-wave feminism are testimony to the power of social movement action, notwithstanding the fact that, as Kaplan notes, it ‘suffered all the same problems of racism, classism, ageism, ablism and heterosexism that were inherent in Australian society at large’ (Kaplan 1996, p. 206).


4 The green movement

The green movement claims to contest current power relations on behalf of us all, in the interests of the survival of the human and other species. The theme that emerges in the study of this movement is the struggle of people to achieve influence over decisions that affect their very lives, to limit the power of those social forces perceived to be dangerous to the planet and its inhabitants. It is concerned with preventing the destruction of the world we live in, whether such destruction is deliberate, incidental or accidental.

Environmentalists and the greening of politics While there are disagreements amongst environmentalists about the best organisational methods and strategies to contest environmental damage, there is overwhelming agreement about the problems which exist, grounded in


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scientific consensus about the seriousness of issues such as global warming, pollution and decreasing biodiversity. In July 2001, some 1700 scientists from 70 countries together issued the Amsterdam Declaration, which warned governments that the Earth’s systems were being changed in ways that were ‘serious and potentially irreversible’ (‘Earthbeat’, Radio National, 21 July 2001). It is environmentalists, in what is broadly termed ‘the green movement’, who propagate this scientific evidence within the public sphere and seek solutions to these ecological problems through changes in human behaviour and especially in the way our society is organised—economically and politically. The origins of the contemporary green movement lie in the early 1970s, with the formation of groups such as Friends of the Earth (FoE), Greenpeace and the Tasmanian Wilderness Society; significant mobilisations such as the ‘green bans’ movement and the campaign to save Lake Pedder; and increasing public awareness about ‘the limits to growth’. Earlier ‘first-wave’ environmentalist organisations, such as the Wildlife Preservation Society founded in 1909, were deeply concerned with conservation issues and conducted significant educational work and campaigns. However, they operated in a political environment that paid them scant attention—so much so, in fact, that the contemporary movement is largely oblivious of their efforts (for a history of first-wave environmentalism, see Hutton and Connors 1999, pp. 17–91). In the immediate postwar period, too, those who warned about the finite nature of the Earth’s resources and their rapid depletion, and the extent of pollution and its devastating effects, were prophets crying aloud in a rapidly shrinking wilderness. Few heard them. In the 1970s, the green movement emerged as both a cause and an effect of increasing environmental awareness. By the end of the 1980s, the movement was an important political presence. A poll in May 1989 found that 87 per cent of respondents agreed that: ‘The threat to our environment is real and must be treated seriously’ (Age, 16 May 1989, p. 18). An Age editorial on 12 August 1989 observed that: ‘Hardly a day goes by without a Government or Opposition spokesman at either the state or federal level expressing concern over air pollution, forest clearance, soil degradation, the ozone layer or the greenhouse effect.’ In the 1990s, polls continued to reveal that environmental concern was still widespread and that most people favoured environmental protection over development, when these two options were presented as incompatible. Elim Papadakis (1997) concludes that the environment has become ‘a permanent feature on the political agenda, even if there is occasionally a decline


The green movement 167 in public attention’ (1997, esp. pp. 201–4). Survey data also indicate that, despite mythology to the contrary, working-class people are as concerned about green issues as middle-class people. Nor is level of education a reliable guide: tertiary educated people were more agitated about logging, but people with no post-secondary schooling were more concerned about pollution and greenhouse emissions than were people with university degrees (Tranter and Pakulski 1998, esp. pp. 68–69). Instead of regarding the planet as something inherited from our parents to do with as we like, people from all walks of life are now more inclined to see the planet as something we are borrowing from our children. Green politics has come to occupy a significant public space. Though environmental concern is widespread and many people attempt, in their daily routines, to tread more lightly on the planet, environmental activism remains limited. Caleb Williams (1998) contends that there are three different types of environmental activist: ‘novice’ protesters forced into activism for the first time to defend their communities from violent environmental change; those who become involved in protests on a more proactive basis, including the paid staff and volunteers of green organisations and groups; and those whom the print media call ‘ferals’. The latter are knowledgable and mobile individuals who usually choose to live outside cities where they can practise an alternative lifestyle and from whom many tactical innovations and refinements of existing protest technologies originate (Williams 1998, pp. 7–8). Environmental campaigns frequently involve all types of activists. An impending or already existing environmental problem might initially mobilise many ‘novice’ protesters from the local area, who are then joined by more seasoned campaigners. Examples here range from the less than affluent citizens of Werribee outside of Melbourne opposing a toxic waste dump to the Mirrar people threatened by the Jabiluka uranium mine to the very respectable middle-class anti-M2 campaigners from Beecroft in Sydney. Campaigns in more remote areas, such as those opposing logging and woodchipping in old-growth forests, are often sustained by concerned novices in the local area, together with activists from peak organisations such as Friends of the Earth and the ever-resourceful ‘ferals’. The tactics employed during environmental campaigns are many and varied. These include: stage-managed media stunts; mass demonstrations; legal actions in the courts; petitions and letter writing; political lobbying; blockades, sit-ins, ‘die-ins’ and other varieties of symbolic vigil for the purpose of bearing witness to acts of destruction. For the environmental


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movement is characterised, internationally, by a commitment to ‘non-violent direct action’: the kind of civil disodience or peaceful resistance strategies popularised by Indian independence leader Mahatma Gandhi, then by American civil rights campaigner Martin Luther King (Williams 1998, p. 9). Amongst environmentalists, there is a range of views about the legitimacy of damage to property. While violence towards people is nowhere countenanced, some environmental organisations, such as Earth First!, believe that ecological sabotage—or ‘ecotage’—is warranted on occasions, so long as there is no danger for humans. Established in Australia since 1989, Earth First! has publicly justified such tactics as immobilisation of bulldozers (Williams 1998, p. 10). Non-violent direct action, whether or not it is damaging to property, is especially suitable in an era attuned to the needs of the mass media. Sean Scalmer (2002) has provided a fascinating analysis of the relationship between the political gimmick as protest and the Australian media over the past four decades. The green movement has exploited the spectacle even more than other social movements. Ian Cohen (1997, p. 29) muses in Green Fire: We dangle and perform, often in precarious circumstances, making ourselves and our act irresistible to the press. It is a play, an irreverent game, yet at the same time it provides a vital conduit for messages unable to be transmitted into a monopolistic realm. Lacking financial resources we enter this powerful field as if by magic and in doing so create an alchemy for change. Environmentalists believe that protest is literally necessary for survival. For Brent Hoare: Our silence is our consent. To do nothing when faced with the overwhelming evidence of the irreversible and catastrophic destruction of the natural world amounts to a betrayal of our ageold obligation to future generations and all species. It is also suicidal. The environmental protester, he maintains, is ‘someone who is ignored, ridiculed, disparaged and punished ultimately at the expense of society itself’ (Hoare 1998, p. 21).


The green movement 169

Some important campaigns The green movement has been built around a series of campaigns. The concerns of this movement are well suited to campaign politics. Although ecological degradation is a constant process, and environmentalists work assiduously in unspectacular ways to contest this day-by-day process, the green movement’s public profile is maintained as it reacts to more or less immediate and spectacular threats. Some of the more important campaigns that have built the green movement over the past few decades are discussed below. The green movement is often inaccurately perceived as primarily ‘preservationist’—as a movement more concerned with conserving beautiful bits of nature than contesting more mundane aspects of environmental degradation, especially those experienced in cities (see Eckersley 1992, p. 40; Doyle 1994, pp. 5–7). The selection of campaigns therefore includes a wide range of confrontations in order to suggest that the green movement is broader than common perceptions concede.

The green ban campaign The background to the green ban struggles is the story of the destruction of Australia’s major cities in the 1960s and early 1970s, when enormous amounts of money were poured into property development: giant glass and concrete buildings changed the faces of our cities and beautiful old buildings were razed in the process. The interests of home-buyers and architectual heritage lost out before ugly, and often purely speculative, construction. In the midst of a serious domestic housing shortage in the early 1970s, there were 370 000 square metres of unlet office space in Sydney and 24 per cent of CBD office space was unutilised (Financial Review, 3 August 1973; Burgmann and Burgmann 1998, p. 38). In 1971, the New South Wales branch of the Builders Labourers’ Federation (NSWBLF) decided that this destruction should stop, even though they were the people employed to do it. The New South Wales branch was led by Jack Mundey, Bob Pringle and Joe Owens. They argued that: ‘In a modern society, the workers’ movement, in order to play a really meaningful role, must engage in all industrial, political, social and moral struggles affecting the working people as a whole’ (Thomas 1973, p. 3). The union insisted that priorities be reversed, that the construction of flats and houses was more important than piling up empty or under-used commercial


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office buildings. They claimed the right to intervene in the decision-making process, to insist that ‘all work performed should be of a socially useful and of an ecologically benign nature’ (Mundey 1988/89, p. 18). The movement got underway in 1971 when a group of women from the fashionable Sydney suburb of Hunters Hill sought the help of the NSWBLF to save Kelly’s Bush, the last remaining open space in that area, where property developer A.V. Jennings wanted to build luxury houses. They had already been to the local council, the mayor, the local state member and the premier, to no avail. The union asked the women to call a public meeting at Hunters Hill, to show that there was community support for the request for a union ban on the destruction of Kelly’s Bush. Over 600 people attended the meeting, which formally requested a ban. Jennings reacted by declaring that it would build on Kelly’s Bush using non-union labour, but building workers on a Jennings office project in North Sydney sent a message to the company which said: ‘If you attempt to build on Kelly’s Bush, even if there is the loss of one tree, this half-completed building will remain so forever, as a monument to Kelly’s Bush.’ This had a sobering influence on Jennings, and alarmed property developers generally. The first green ban was successful—and Kelly’s Bush is still there as an open public reserve. After this, resident action groups concerned about destruction in their local areas rushed to ask the NSWBLF to impose similar bans. Mundey coined the term ‘green bans’ in May 1973, arguing that this was more appropriate than ‘black bans’ because they were specifically in defence of the environment and were distinct from black bans, a union’s action to protect the economic interests of its own members. Indeed, in applying green bans, the union was going against the immediate economic interests of its members for the sake of a wider community and environmental interest (Canberra News, 23 May 1973; Mundey 1981, p. 105). By 1974, a total of 42 green bans had been imposed, holding up well over $5 billion worth of development (for details, see Burgmann and Burgmann 1998). Some people argued that the union was denying workers employment; the union replied that they did want to build buildings, but useful buildings such as kindergartens, homes for the aged, hospitals and housing for ordinary people—not the superfluous buildings for get-rich-quick developers that were destroying the built environment. Mundey writes: ‘What would we have said to the next generation? That we destroyed Sydney in the name of full employment? No, we wanted to construct buildings that were socially useful’ (Mundey 1988, p. 177). On Australia Day 1974, Australian of the Year Patrick White said he wanted to use the opportunity to salute Jack Mundey:


The green movement 171 ‘the first citizen of our increasingly benighted, shark-infested city of Sydney who succeeded effectively in calling the bluff of those who have begun tearing us to bits, ostensibly in the name of progress, but in fact for their own aggrandisement, with little regard for human need’ (Sydney Morning Herald, 26 January 1974; Australian, 26 January 1974). Over 100 buildings considered by the National Trust to be worthy of preservation were saved by the green bans. And the green bans led to the New South Wales government bringing in tighter demolition laws and to the federal government legislating to protect sites of ‘aesthetic, historical, scientific, social, cultural, ecological or other special value’ (Burgmann 2000, p. 94). Some of the areas saved by the green ban movement include: The Rocks, the birthplace of European Australia, where over three million tourists go each year; Centennial Park, which was to be turned into a concrete sports stadium; the Botanical Gardens, slated to become a carpark for the Opera House; and Woolloomooloo, proposed site of $400 million worth of high-rise commercial buildings. The Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) published a tribute to the NSWBLF, ‘a group that has achieved more for urban conservation in Australia than many a government’, thanks to the powerful combination of ‘resident action and worker power’ (Hardman and Manning n.d.). Ultimately, the green ban movement collapsed in 1974 when the federal branch leadership of the BLF under Norm Gallagher removed the New South Wales branch leadership. This intervention was carried out to the cheers of property developers, conservative politicians and the media, who had tried unsuccessfully in so many ways to intimidate the New South Wales branch into dropping its green bans. Mundey argues that the political significance of the green ban movement, while it lasted, was that it forged a winning alliance between environmentalists and trade unionists. As 90 per cent of the population resides in urban areas, success in preserving the built environment is vital, and trade unionists are especially well placed to influence its construction: The task of achieving a sustainable society, with a human face, an ecological heart and an egalitarian body, requires a massive joint effort by environmentalists and the organized working class (Mundey 1988, p. 180). It is not generally well known that the political designation ‘green’ owes its origin to this Australian union action (Allaby 1983, p. 234). When leading


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German environmental activist Petra Kelly visited Sydney in the wake of the green bans, she was most impressed with the linkage achieved between environmentalists and a progressive union movement, so she adopted the terminology when she founded the German Green Party a few years later. It was in this way that ‘green’ became part of the world’s political idiom (Bob Brown, speaking in the Senate, 21 March 1997).

The campaign against uranium mining Mining and export of Australia’s large uranium reserves began in the late 1960s and opposition developed into a significant political mobilisation from 1975. The opponents of uranium mining pointed out that: uranium mining causes radioactive contamination of the surrounding environment and is dangerous to the health of those required to mine it; the normal waste from nuclear power stations cannot safely be stored or disposed of in any way and an accident in the workings of these reactors could be lethal on a large scale (the accidents at Three Mile Island in the United States in 1983 and at Chernobyl in the former Soviet Union in 1986 confirmed these fears); and there were no reliable guarantees that Australian uranium would not be used to make nuclear weapons, with all the capacity for destruction these represented (MAUM 1984, pp. 2–3; Age, 28 July 1989; Socialist, December 1990, p. 16; Weekend Australian, 23–24 September 1989, p. 8). The reports of a national inquiry into the mining of uranium, released in October 1976 and May 1977, offered scientific expert support for the arguments against uranium mining. Opposition campaigns developed simultaneously in all states, loosely coordinated overall by the National Uranium Moratorium Campaign. By 1977, there was a vast network of local groups and frequent demonstrations occurred: the campaign had become a mass movement. Michael Muetzelfeldt concedes that the anti-uranium forces were not well organised: ‘Yet support for the campaign grew despite this—in many ways it appeared that the groups and organisations followed the campaign rather than led it’ (Muetzelfeldt 1981, pp. 7, 19). In 1979, the Movement Against Uranium Mining (MAUM) replaced the National Uranium Moratorium Campaign. MAUM was a national umbrella organisation, and there were some variations in the name used by its state affiliates—in South Australia, for instance, it was known as Campaign Against Nuclear Energy and in Queensland as Campaign Against Nuclear Power. Many trade unions were involved in the movement from its very earliest stages. In Global Fission: The Battle Over Nuclear Power, Jim Falk (1982)



An anti-uranium protest in Brisbane in June 1978.

identifies four characteristics of the nuclear debate in Australia that made it unusual in the context of global opposition to nuclear power, one of which was ‘the central role played by the labour movement’. Falk claims that it was the threat of escalating union action on uranium that pressured the Fraser government into delaying plans for exporting uranium (Falk 1982, pp. 257, 261). Sigrid McCausland’s extensive study of the anti-uranium movement reveals that it was unionists on the ground who forced the issue, but they lacked support from the higher echelons of the union movement and from certain strategically located unions, notably the Australian Workers Union (AWU), which covered workers crucial to the uranium industry (McCausland 1999). In May 1976, the Australian Railways Union (ARU) held a nationwide stoppage because a Townsville shunter had been sacked for refusing to marshal wagons bound for Mary Kathleen; he was adhering to ARU policy, which was opposed to its members contributing in any way to the mining of uranium. The shunter was reinstated. The ACF welcomed the strike because it focused public attention on uranium mining and FoE applauded ‘the action of railway workers in sacrificing pay and standing up against the nuclear


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lobby which is prepared to put all future generations at risk so as to create profit for a few’ (McCausland 1999, pp. 175–76). In June 1977, some waterside workers and seafarers tried to stop the first shipment of uranium in ten years from leaving Sydney, but subsequently—in accordance with the ACTU’s ambivalent policy—were obliged to handle it. On 4 July 1977, Melbourne waterside workers called a 24-hour strike of the entire port in response to the arrival of the Columbus Australia, which had loaded yellowcake uranium in Brisbane. The Melbourne Branch of the Waterside Workers’ Federation (WWF) defied the union’s federal leaders by imposing a complete ban on the Columbus Australia and on future work on ships carrying uranium (McCausland 1999, p. 190). In December 1981, the Seamen’s Union and the WWF in Darwin maintained a seven-week blockade of a shipment from Mary Kathleen Uranium Ltd, despite an ACTU Executive order that the ban be lifted. There were repeated bans by unions on the transport and handling of uranium products, but uranium mining continued to be carried out by non-union labour and also by the pro-uranium AWU and the Miscellaneous Workers Union (Nette 1988, pp. 34–39, 44, 53, 56–62). In 1977, the ALP conference passed a motion favouring an indefinite moratorium on uranium mining, so the movement threw itself wholeheartedly into supporting the Labor Party to regain government. A massive setback for the movement therefore occurred in 1982 when the ALP conference overturned its anti-uranium policy in favour of a ‘one mine policy’. In 1984, the ALP conference voted in favour of a ‘three mine policy’. Richard Tanter in Peace Studies wrote of the ‘sordid’ spectacle of ‘seedy (and mostly male) power-grubbers destroying the not-all-that impressive repository of official nuclear resistance’ (Tanter 1984, p. 29). So uranium mining was allowed to continue under a Labor government. Muetzelfeldt (1981) argues that the initial adoption by the ALP of an anti-uranium policy had contributed to ‘the defusing of social movement action against uranium’ (1981, p. 299). The campaign came to rely too little on sustainable activism and too much on the return of a Labor government. Moreover, when Labor betrayed this trust, the movement was left somewhat dazed. When a Coalition government was elected in 1996, it was relatively easy for this pro-uranium government to countenance expanding the number of mines from the three decreed by Labor’s compromise. Activists in Western Australia formed the Anti-Uranium Coalition of Western Australia (AUCWA). It opposes the mining of any of the west’s uranium deposits held by various ‘radioactive corporations’ and insists: ‘The world doesn’t need


The green movement 175 another gram of this poison: it will take all the creativity and care the human race has got to deal properly with the amount of waste we’ve already created’ (AUCWA 1998). The campaign against the proposed mine at Jabiluka is discussed below.

The Franklin River campaign The alliance of environmentalists and trade unionists that occurred in the green ban struggles did not happen in the case of the campaign to save the Tasmanian wilderness from the over-energetic activities of the HydroElectric Commission (HEC). Indeed, in several important respects, the green bans stuggle and the campaign to save the Franklin were mirror images of each other. One was concerned with the built environment, the other with the natural environment; one was based on working-class activity, the other was opposed by working-class activity; one was hounded by governments all down the line, the other received government support at the federal level. The campaign to prevent the damming of the Franklin River reached its peak between late 1982 and March 1983. The HEC works were blockaded by more than 2000 people committed to non-violent direct action; with 1440 people arrested, the blockade constituted a major act of civil disobedience. Back in 1979, the HEC had announced the damming of the Franklin, which would destroy large areas of internationally famous and stunningly beautiful wilderness. From this moment on, the activists, coordinated mainly by the Tasmanian Wilderness Society, mounted a skilful media campaign. Unlike the NSWBLF members, it was very difficult to dismiss them as ‘ratbags’. Dr Bob Brown, the leading figure in the campaign, conformed absolutely to middle-class notions of respectability: he was well dressed and well spoken. He sounded reasonable (Murphy 1988, pp. 254, 256). At a subsequent conference in 1990, Brown argued: ‘Appearances are vital.’ He confessed that The Wilderness Society had a ‘camouflage cupboard’ of assorted suits, ties, dresses and shoes for activists to don when ‘going lobbying’ or facing a TV interview: ‘It seems absurd but it works. It is a small price to pay to help save the wilderness, ancient landmarks, or for that matter, kindergarten or refuge’ (Brown 1990, p. 179). John Murphy argues that the campaign managed to maintain its effectiveness even though the campaigners had very different cultural and political values: some saw the dam as a case of inappropriate technology; some defended the wilderness as an absolute value in itself; for others, the dam was symptomatic of a patriarchal desire for domination over nature;


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for many it was irresponsible ‘boom or bust’ development. The campaign attempted to highlight the fact that the Franklin dam decision was a perfect example of political decision-making behind closed doors, without free and public discussion, and to raise the question of the public accountability of bureaucracies such as the HEC. Bob Brown believes the Franklin campaign showed that ‘an ideal can be fought for by a community and fought successfully . . . that people can change things, not only for the better now but for the better for the long term’ (Brown 1981, p. 303). Despite being a government statutory authority, the HEC—which had already given Tasmania 36 dams, 26 power stations and one of the highest per capita energy consumption rates in the world—acted as an apparently autonomous body beyond the control of parliament. The HEC was the state’s largest employer, which may explain its political power: every HEC proposal for development between 1929 and 1980 had been approved by parliament, usually without even a debate. As Murphy notes, there was a widespread belief that the HEC’s technical expertise allowed it alone to decide what was best for Tasmania. Unfortunately, in the rush to save the wilderness, the opportunity to argue for public, democratic accountability was lost. For the issue was ultimately resolved by using the federal government against the Tasmanian state government (Murphy 1988, pp. 256–59). The federal Coalition government had earlier declared the Franklin River a World Heritage area and the High Court had ruled that the international obligations this involved were also binding on state governments. Soon after, with the election of a federal Labor government that briefly made the issue its own, the dam was stopped and the campaign forces dissolved. But, as Murphy points out, the power of the HEC had not really been contested: ‘The limited aim of stopping the dam was achieved, yet the status quo was scarcely ruffled’ (Murphy 1988, p. 259).

‘Stop the drop’: fighting for a nuclear-free Pacific For several decades, French authorities have periodically tested nuclear devices in the Pacific Ocean. In 1972, when a series of French tests commenced, unions declared a boycott on ships and planes bound for Tahiti. In 1973, as testing continued, the ACTU declared a complete boycott of French products as well as trade, transport and communication with France, and called on the government to impose maximum economic and diplomatic sanctions against France. As a result, all postal, shipping and airline links with France were cut, including communication between France and French


The green movement 177 diplomatic staff in Australia, until the test series ended (Muetzelfeldt 1981, pp. 63, 74–76). The issue again erupted in the mid-1990s with the decision by the French government to resume a series of nuclear tests, of eight bombs, between September 1995 and May 1996. This prompted angry protests from many sections of Australian society. The public response, according to Damien Grenfell, was marked by a particularly strong level of vehemence and indignation: ‘Rarely had so many different organisations—green, antinuclear and peace movements, unions, the media, business and public institutions—coalesced in Australia so quickly to collectively demonstrate their antipathy towards an issue’ (Thakur 1995, pp. 21–37 cited in Grenfell 2001, pp. 219–20). The ‘vehemence and indignation’ was testimony to the extent to which the green movement had increased people’s awareness of the environmental dangers posed by nuclear weapons testing, for in the early 1970s the trade union movement had been almost alone in opposing the tests of that period. Large public marches were held. Petitions were organised through ‘green’ retailer The Body Shop and ABC Shops and Centres. The ACF delivered 2000 protest postcards to French President Jacques Chirac. Public letterwriting campaigns, organised through schools, community groups and activist networks, resulted in 30 000 letters of protest being delivered to the French government in just two months. Advertising firms joined with the Australian Medical Association and the Royal Australian College of Physicians to fund a full-page advertisement in Parisian papers. There was a ‘Fax the French on Fridays’ movement, a nuisance campaign to block the communications capacity of French government departments. Consumer boycotts were mounted against French goods, affecting car sales of Peugeots and Renaults, French wines and foods, and even restaurants with French names. Union bans were placed on French planes and ships entering Australia. Qantas flight attendants refused to serve French products, unions interrupted French trade with Australia, rolling bans were used against Air France and French Air Cargo. The NSW United Fire Brigade Employees Union decided not to fight fires on French property. The Australian Manufacturing Workers Union told Australian businesses they faced industrial action if they did business with French companies. In breach of Vienna conventions, mail was suspended and telecommunications interrupted at the French Embassy (Grenfell 2001, pp. 219–20; Thornton et al 1997, pp. 158–67). Ultimately the force of public opinion persuaded the Australian government to make official objections. The French government called off


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the testing four months early and agreed to a moratorium on future testing. However, Grenfell (2001) argues that the potential of this campaign to focus debate on the environmental consequences of uranium mining and nuclear weapons was weakened by the degree of anti-French sentiment that was expressed during the campaign. Encouraged by a sympathetic media, the protests in Australia were ‘remarkable for their infantilism and racism against the French, rather than an anti-nuclear agenda’. The term ‘frog’ was continuously used, berets and croissants were spat upon, manure was dumped on the driveway of the French embassy, Bastille Day was renamed ‘Bas-tard Day’, French cars were vandalised, French restaurants and businesses were damaged and the French consulate in Perth was firebombed (Grenfell 2001, pp. 220, 226–27, drawing on Alomes 1998). Other than condemning acts of violence, the government did virtually nothing to discourage even the most racist overtones of the movement. Not only did this serve to distract the arguments of the movement from the core issues of nuclear testing, the mining of uranium, and Australia’s alliances with nuclear powers, but it also served to promote a nationalistic ethos in its attack on the French; the antithetical other (Grenfell 2001, p. 231). According to Grenfell, the nature of the campaign was exemplified by the fact that there was little public pressure for an adequate verification process to ensure the site was dismantled, the atoll safe and radioactive waste disposed of; and little effort to ensure independent health monitoring within Polynesia over the longer term (Grenfell 2001, p. 231, drawing on HamelGreen 1998). Due to increased environmental awareness, Australians were adamant that nuclear weapons testing in their vicinity was undesirable. However, once the testing was over and the winds had passed by, they were relatively unconcerned about the fate of the Pacific Islanders whose islands were damaged by the test series. Their environmentalism, in the final analysis, was essentially nationalist.

‘Stop the chop’: fighting over the forests Environmentalists argue that our timber needs should be met by ecologically sensitive plantation development; the timber industry, which can only see the trees for the wood, prefers to log old-growth native forests (Age, 18 October 1989, p. 20). According to Conservation News:


The green movement 179 The forest industry’s plan is to cut down Australia’s old growth forests while the Japanese market for woodchips remains strong. There is money in this high-volume, low-value turnover only because our public forests are priced too low. The forest industry gets the timber for next to nothing and sells it in bulk for a small profit at a low unit value (McIlroy 1991, p. 6). By 2002, destructive clear-felling was destroying 200 000 hectares of old-growth forest each year. Although the public is told this is being done to supply the building and construction industry, most construction timber in Australia now comes from plantation forestry; so the vast majority of the oldgrowth forest wood is exported (ACF letter/leaflet, 10 May 2002). Yet peer-reviewed scientific research here and overseas suggests clear-felling has serious, long-term and negative ecological effects. Furthermore, this destruction of old growth forests is subsidised with taxpayers’ money (Miller 2002, p. 11). How has this situation come about? Late in 1986, the National Association of Forest Industries (NAFI) decided to spend over $3.5 million in a nationally coordinated attempt to discredit conservationists as irrational fanatics operating against the national interest and threatening employment opportunities, so it established the Forest Industries Campaign Association (FICA). It published literature that complained about the power of the environmental pressure group ‘to exploit us’ with ‘irresponsible’ claims that would sap the nation of badly needed growth, jobs and investment (FICA 1989, pp. i, 1; FICA 1988; Christoff 1987, pp. 23, 26). The forest industry also funded the Forest Protection Society (FPS), which portrayed itself as a conservation group, though it was openly pro-logging (Hutton and Connors 1999, p. 258). Fierce battles began to be waged between environmentalists and the logging and woodchipping activities of the timber industry. In 1989, over 500 protesters were arrested in the southeast forests of New South Wales. Late in 1989 and early in 1990, similar confrontations arose in Victoria’s East Gippsland forests. In Fighting Over the Forests, Ian Watson (1990) analysed those struggles as a cultural battle between traditional forest industry practices and green strategies (1990, p. 17). The forest industry has enlisted the support of timber industry workers, always anxious about employment prospects, in the industry’s confrontation with environmentalists. The principal union involved is the Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) forestry division, which covers loggers, forest workers and mill workers. At the Maryvale mill in


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1991, the huge paper manufacturing company AMCOR incorporated the union into its structures through the creation of an ‘A Team’, made up of 35 CFMEU forestry division members whose task it was to counter environmentalist challenges and espouse ‘the benefits the corporation were delivering the community and the surrounding eco-systems’ (McNaughton 2000, p. 27–28). However, it is the forest industry’s ‘downsizing’ tendencies which have made workers insecure and susceptible to arguments that environmentalists threaten employment. John Dargavel’s (1995) extensive research reveals that, since restructuring commenced in the 1970s, employment in the timber industry has decreased dramatically while production has increased, exacerbating the plight of many rural communities. For instance, logging crews made up of three men using chainsaws have been replaced by a single man in a machine; and, in the mills, the workforce needed to make 1000 tonnes of paper has been reduced from 10 to 4.6 (Dargavel 1995, pp. 122, 126–27). As Dargavel points out: the full extent and real nature of unemployment was masked from the public eye by the media, which depicted job losses almost exclusively in terms of ‘environment versus jobs’. This deceit was fostered by the industry lobbyists and forest services . . . they conveniently ignored the far greater effects of the incessant, slow grind of capital on labour, ‘structural change versus labour’ never gained media billing (Dargavel 1995, p. 112). With the mainstream media focusing on what differentiates loggers from environmentalists, Colin McNaughton argues that it has been relatively easy for the industry capitalists to blame environmentalists for job losses, despite the reality that declining employment opportunities are caused primarily by restructuring (McNaughton 2000, p. 27). When forestry workers besieged parliament in Canberra during 1995, demanding that Prime Minister Keating reverse his decision to set aside 509 forest areas for possible protection, they thought that defending the industry would guarantee their jobs. However, of the 25 000 timber jobs lost in the previous fifteen years, 98 per cent were due to mechanisation and restructuring and only 2 per cent due to environmental demands (Latham 1998, pp. 1–2). The Labor government could have stopped logging in native forests and guaranteed jobs by implementing an industry transition plan from old growth forests to plantations, but that would have meant confronting the


The green movement 181 timber companies and spending money to guarantee jobs for timber workers. Instead, public money has poured into the timber industry to sustain environmentally damaging logging practices, while the logging companies slash their workforces. In 1995 it was revealed that State Forestry Commissions had lost money every year for the previous 20 years through native forest logging, because of the low log prices and subsidies on roads and haulage, so that total debt on native forest logging was then over $5 billion (Latham 1998, pp. 1–2). As McNaughton (2000) observes, the mainstream media representation of the forest conflict is depicted as the timber workers’ demand for jobs versus the environmentalists’ demand to save forests and ecosystems. The following from the Herald Sun in 1999 is typical of media reporting: Logging protesters are lopping hundreds of dollars from the wages of Otways timber workers . . . The seasonal workers who are paid by the log, say their wages have been chopped to $150–$250 a week by protesters who block access to the coupes and sabotage equipment (Herald Sun, 23 January 1999, p. 14). McNaughton notes that, while the article is blaming environmentalists for timber workers losing income, it inadvertently alludes to real structural reasons for the conflict. Workers being ‘paid by the log’ is part of the restructuring of the timber industry, which subcontracts out work so that subcontractors take all the risk, while corporations make enormous profits when they receive their product (McNaughton 2000, pp. 26–27). Against the combined power of the forest industry and governments, environmentalists passionately persist in their defence of Australia’s remaining old-growth forests. In the hope of pressuring the Keating government to promote transition to a plantation industry only, a National Day of Action took place on 11 September 1994 and a Forest Embassy was set up on the lawns of Parliament House on 4–8 November the same year. The Wilderness Society organised blockades at threatened forest areas in Western Australia, New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland. A Newspoll in December 1994 found that 80.3 per cent of Australians supported an end to woodchipping in wilderness and high-conservation value forests. In 1995, the Keating government signed an agreement with the states to assess forests collaboratively in order to achieve Regional Forest Agreements. Outcomes have varied from state to state, but have generally revealed a lack of political responsiveness on the part of the major parties, because they constantly


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sought solutions that did not meet public expectations that logging and woodchipping in old-growth forests would cease (Hutton and Connors 1999, pp. 255–57). In Victoria, for example, forest destruction for woodchips has increased dramatically since Regional Forest Agreements were signed, beginning in 1997. Environmental groups fear that as much as 50 Melbourne Cricket Ground-sized football fields are logged in Victoria every day (Wilderness Society et al 2002). So blockades continue to occur around the country. A seasoned campaigner in defence of rainforest in northeastern New South Wales describes the feelings of those whom the media frequently disparage as ‘tree huggers’: participating in a forest blockade is to place oneself at the cutting edge of a colossal, yet insidious global holocaust. The lines of battle are very clearly drawn, and the often virtually inevitable defeat of your defence of your ‘territory’ is then followed by the death of awe-inspiring and ancient forest beings, along with a myriad of interconnected webs of organisms and life-sustaining physical cycles . . . Combined with an understanding of the wider symbolic importance attached to the attempt to draw a line in the sand over one particular area, and the almost unspeakably sad knowledge that your tiny band of comrades is the last group of people to ever know this place as it has been for perhaps many thousands of years, feelings of overwhelming sorrow are impossible to suppress (Hoare 1998, pp. 22–23). One of the most contentious areas in recent years has been in southwestern Victoria. The Otway Ranges Environment Network (OREN) campaigns against clearfell logging of this forest area not only because it destroys a valuable area of native vegetation but also because the area is within water catchments for towns such as Lorne and Geelong, and logging in water catchments adversely affects both the quality and quantity of water produced. Indeed, OREN protesters were vindicated in 1998 when the Geelong Magistrate’s Court found they had no case to answer, because the Department of Natural Resources and Environment was illegally logging water catchments and council land. Against those who argue about jobs, OREN replies that five times more jobs in the tourism industry are threatened by continued destruction and degradation of the Otway Ranges. Apart from the inevitable arrests and fines


The green movement 183 for blockading forestry operations, in the summer of 1998/99, OREN maintains two members were ‘hospitalised after being attacked by an axewielding member of the timber industry’ and sixteen members were held hostage by the timber industry for five days: ‘They suffered constant abuse of their basic human rights, including sleep deprivation through the continual running of chain saws and flood lights within feet of the protesters, and threats of physical and sexual violence’ (OREN c. 2001). Environmentalists have made concerted attempts to establish better relations with timber workers, stressing that their argument is with those who make profits from logging and woodchipping and not with those who have little alternative but to work for these companies. A promising recent development is the Wombat Forest Society near Daylesford, comprising both local timber workers and environmentalists with a common desire to create a sustainable timber industry in their local area and with a real commitment to their communities working together on a common agenda. According to McNaughton, it illustrates what is possible and indicates that the common interests of environmentalists and workers can be recognised and a powerful force for social change unearthed (McNaughton 2000, p. 32). The unsustainability of current practices was highlighted early in 2002 when the Victorian government accepted the findings of an independent report on logging levels in the state’s forests: this report found that the Department of Natural Resources and Environment’s data was inadequate and that most of the state’s forests were being logged at unsustainable rates. The situation was most drastic in the Wombat Forest, where logging rates were five times the amount the forest could sustain. However, community expectations that logging would slow down, if not stop, have been disappointed. One of the many activists battling to protect the Wombat by daily incursions into the logging area observed: ‘After Bracks’ announcement about reduced sawlog quotas we witnessed an escalation rather than an ending’ (Fyfe 2002, p. 15). The ‘Rally for the Forests’ in Melbourne on 18 May 2002—organised by The Wilderness Society, Environment Victoria, the ACF, the Victorian National Parks Association, FoE and fifteen rural environment groups— announced: The environmental movement has a vision for job growth in a vibrant timber industry utilising, and creating sustainability in, Victoria’s huge plantation resource. Present and past governments’ forest policies have led to massive job losses yet increased logged


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Power, Profit and Protest areas. This is not sustainable . . . The Rally for the Forests will launch a campaign to protect the best of what’s left of our forests, and will push for a sustainable, plantation based industry that has an emphasis on job growth, and taking full advantage of manufacturing opportunities both in Australia and overseas (The Wilderness Society et al 2002).

Jabiluka Action Group The election of Labor to government in 1983, with its commitment to limiting uranium mining to the existing three mines (Roxby Downs in SA, Ranger and Nabarlek in the NT), prevented PanContinental Mining proceeding with the exploitation of the uranium deposit it had discovered at Jabiluka in the Kakadu National Park. In 1992, PanContinental sold the Jabiluka lease to Energy Resources of Australia (ERA), which was controlled by North Limited. After the election of the Coalition government in 1996, the Jabiluka mine was approved by both the federal government and the Northern Territory government. Morgan polls conducted in 1996 revealed that 55 per cent of Australians opposed any new uranium mines and 82 per cent opposed mining in wilderness areas; nonetheless, construction of the mine site began on 16 June 1998 (Grenfell 2001, pp. 146–47; Ryder 1998, p. 11). Kakadu is legally Aboriginal land, leased to the federal government. In 1981, it became the first Australian place to be registered as a World Heritage site and is one of fewer than 20 sites in the world to be listed for both its natural and cultural values (Jabiluka Alliance 1998). The traditional owners, the Mirrar people, claim they are ‘unequivocally opposed to the project’ (Gundjehmi Aboriginal Corporation 1999a). They insist that the ‘dubiously “negotiated” agreement’ to mining obtained from the Mirrar in 1982 was secured under duress and in any case related to a fundamentally different project proposed by PanContinental (ACF 1999b; Jabiluka Alliance 1998). Having experienced the social and economic consequences for indigenous communities of the Ranger Uranium Mine in their country for 20 years, the Mirrar were determined to prevent the Jabiluka development. They believe that mining and its associated effects (such as the establishment of the mining town of Jabiru) are destroying their culture and society and will directly interfere with sacred sites. They also feel strongly that the development of another uranium mine will have ‘a continuing genocidal impact on Aboriginal people in the region’. As well, they are very concerned about the environmental impact of the Jabiluka mine on the country from


The green movement 185 which they collect food and for which they are responsible (Gundjehmi Aboriginal Corporation 1999b). In a public statement calling for support from the wider Australian community, the Mirrar announced: Mirrar people have fought to protect country and people from uranium mining for many years. Now we are defending our country against the proposed Jabiluka development. We invite you to come to our country to join our struggle to uphold the cultural and environmental values of Kakadu (quoted in Jabiluka Alliance 1998). Senior traditional owner Yvonne Margarula explained that: ‘A new mine will make our future worthless and destroy more of our country. We oppose any further mining development in our country’ (quoted in Jabiluka Alliance 1998). With the strident support of the 25-member Mirrar-Gundjehmi clan, she states: ‘I say no, because it is my country. They going to pull the insides from my country and send it overseas. I got to look after my country’ (Ceresa 1998, p. 23; Ryder 1998, p. 11).1 A major campaign developed in support of the indigenous rights of the Mirrar people and against the environmental threats posed by the proposed mine. The campaign was coordinated initially by the Gundjehmi Aboriginal Corporation,2 headed by Jacqui Katona, and by the ACF. These organisations raised awareness of the issues and disseminated information about Jabiluka at meetings held by environmental groups, such as Students for Sustainability and FoE. By 1998, a Jabiluka Action Group (JAG) had been formed in each state, committed to non-violent direct action. Each JAG formed part of the Jabiluka Alliance, linked to the national campaign office in the Northern Territory, but each worked independently to raise awareness and organise actions within its own state (Grenfell 2001, p. 150; JAG website). A broad range of groups including The Wilderness Society, the ACF, FoE, the Jabiluka Alliance, Doctors and Health Professionals Against Uranium, the Australian Greens, the Uniting Church, the Democratic Socialist Party, the International Socialists, the Maritime Union, the Teachers’ Federation, the Environment Centre of the Northern Territory and the Mineral Policy Institute formed a multi-tiered protest campaign. Musicians and performers lent support and staged free performances (Ryder 1998, p. 11; Robertson and Brien n.d.). By 1999, the ACF claimed that: ‘Hundreds of thousands of Australians continue the campaign to stop Jabiluka—from celebrities and church groups, to trade unionists and business women’ (ACF 1999a).


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To the campaigners, the issue was simple yet urgent. ACF president Peter Garrett argued in 1998: Any fair-minded Australian who has thought through the issue of having 20 million tonnes of radioactive tailings in a World Heritage listed area, in the middle of the most significant national park that we have, on land that belongs to somebody else, will say that this mine is wrong (quoted in Grenfell 2001, p. 171). The Jabiluka Action publication Kakadu—Worth Fighting For maintained: ‘The choices with the Jabiluka proposal are clear. We can respect country and culture or we can allow narrow corporate imperatives to prevail’ (Jabiluka Alliance 1998). The campaign argued that the proposal ‘creates environmental damage, risks worker health, provides no extra jobs, has faulty economic claims, has a flawed Environmental Impact Study (EIS) and will bring the total radioactive tailings buried in Kakadu to 60 million tonnes’. It drew attention to the fact that the nearby Ranger mine had already been responsible for more than 100 leaks and breaches, most of which involved poor water management and the release of highly radioactive tailings. ERA admitted it had seriously misjudged the rainfall in the region and that management was unfamiliar with tropical monsoonal climates (Jabiluka Alliance 1998). The Mirrar people and their representatives toured capital cities and regional centres speaking against Jabiluka. Others took the message to communities and organisations in other countries, including the United States, Germany, Japan and the United Kingdom. In January 1998, the European parliament called on the Australian government not to proceed with the project. Indigenous activist Michael Anderson addressed the German parliament in February 1999, detailing the detrimental effects Jabiluka would have on the Mirrar and on areas of cultural significance in Kakadu. In Australia, JAG activists lobbied politicians, spoke at public meetings, made presentations to a broad range of community and social groups, hosted film screenings, and organised conferences and rallies. The offices, the activities and the shareholder meetings of ERA in Sydney and the parent company North Ltd in Melbourne were targeted (JAG 1999a, p. 1; Jabiluka Alliance 1998; Farrago, vol 77, no. 1, 1998). JAG in Melbourne organised a 24-hours-a-day blockade of North’s offices between 28 March and 2 April 1999, to maintain pressure on North ‘through hampering their daily practices and attracting media scrutiny’ (JAG 1999c). The organisers claimed they ‘successfully caused significant disruption to North’s deadly “business as


The green movement 187 usual”’ (ACF 1999c). On 29 April 1999, there was a National Student Walkout Against Jabiluka, involving secondary and tertiary students, to ‘say no to uranium, say no to reactors and waste dumps, SAY NO TO THE NUCLEAR INDUSTRY’ (leaflet ‘Care About Jabiluka?’ 1999). One of the more spectacular actions included the blockade of the mine site itself, an action which commenced in March 1998 (Ceresa 1998, p. 23). Though staged in a remote location, this blockade attracted around 3000 people—mostly young environmentalists—from around Australia and overseas, camping on Mirrar land at the invitation of the traditional owners. Over 500 people had been arrested by the time of the blockade’s second anniversary (Ceresa 1998, p. 23; email from FoE, 8 March 2000). On 19 May 1998, Yvonne Margarula, Jacqui Katona and Christine Christopherson— Aboriginal women of the Kakadu area—were arrested for trespass on their traditional country and gaoled for ten days after refusing to pay fines (Age, 20 May 1998, p. 3). ‘We are being punished for standing up to a mining company and government, in order to carry out responsibilities which our country demands of us,’ they stated. ‘You are witnessing the Northern Territory use the law to protect economic interests at the expense of blacks— at the expense of our beliefs, at the expense of our culture, at the expense of our land, at the expense of our society’ (JAG 1999a, p. 2). Also arrested later that year were two radical Christian activists from the Ploughshares organisation.3 Ciaron O’Reilly tells their story: We carried out an act of nonviolent disarmament at Jabiluka uranium mine on the anniversary of the bombing of Nagasaki (9 August 1998). In the early hours of that morning we were able to disable a huge excavator . . . then waited for over an hour on top of the machine in prayer to share the experience with ERA employees. We were arrested and have been charged with trespass and two counts of criminal damage and have since been held in Berrimah Prison . . . We ask for your solidarity and commitment to speak truth to power—however grand or petty that power may be (Anarchist Black Cross 1999). In October 1998, a United Nations Education Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) delegation visited the mine site, then called for the mine to be shut down; however, the Australian government denounced its report. In February 1999, a Department of Foreign Affairs document titled International Lobbying Strategy was leaked to the media, which outlined how the


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government was aiming to reverse UNESCO’s position (Grenfell 2001, pp. 163–65). Although a Newspoll indicated that 67 per cent of Australians supported closure of the Jabiluka mine project, the Australian government had spent millions of dollars on its lobbying, which utilised five senior public servants and other staff from a range of departments. However, the World Heritage Committee of UNESCO insisted it was ‘gravely concerned about the serious impacts’ of the mine and that it was the responsibility of the Australian government to regulate ERA to ensure the protection of the World Heritage values of Kakadu. In April 2002 it requested the Australian government report back in relation to a series of proposals it made to reduce the adverse ecological, cultural and social consequences of the mine (JAG 1999b). This proved unnecessary because, in April 2001, Rio Tinto announced that the development of the Jabiluka mine would be postponed indefinitely, due to Mirrar refusal to allow the building of the road linking Jabiluka with the Ranger mine, which would have enabled ERA to reduce costs by using the Ranger milling infrastructure to process the Jabiluka ore. In the meantime, the Beverley uranium mine in South Australia, owned by US company Heathgate Resources, opened on 21 February 2001 against the opposition of environmental, community and indigenous groups. The Honeymoon mine, 100 kilometres from Broken Hill, owned by Canadian company Southern Cross, has been delayed by concerns over the environmental impact (Grenfell 2001, pp. 170–71). In reality, the low cost of uranium on the world market—due to the decline in growth of the nuclear industry worldwide—prevented the Jabiluka mine; it was not stopped by the campaign against it, impressive though that campaign was. According to Grenfell, the fact that the market, rather than the environmental movement, finally determined the fate of the mine confirms how difficult it is for the environmental movement to succeed in the face of the lobbying power, scientific expertise and resources of the state. While demonstrating a capacity to have some influence on policy decisions, the environmental movement has ultimately failed to ensure a ‘greening of the state’ to a degree that would mean that a priority was given to environmental concerns regardless of other factors (Grenfell 2001, pp. 165, 171–72).

Some current organisations A wide variety of green organisations exists, many of them based in one locality and many of them deliberately informal. Examples include the


The green movement 189 Nomadic Action Group, the Rainforest Action Group, the Renegade Activist Action Force and the EcoAnarchoAbsurdistAdelaideCell?! (discussed in Doyle 2000, pp. 23ff ). Even the more formal green organisations—some major ones are discussed below—vary greatly in their political outlook and methods. This variety strengthens rather than weakens the green movement, ensuring that pressure is applied in ways much more diverse and determined than a single organisation could accomplish.

The Australian Conservation Foundation Formed in 1965 as an impeccably respectable organisation, the ACF decided in 1972 not to take action to protect Lake Pedder for fear such activity would be ‘too political’ (Conservation News, July 1990, p. 2). In 1973, control of the organisation passed from the conservative faction which had promoted this position to a grouping much more in tune with the ideas of the moderate sections of the burgeoning green social movement, and therefore progressive within the prevailing spectrum of ACF politics (Muetzelfeldt 1981, p. 101). By 1989, the ACF was signing up 550 new members a month and was attempting to revamp its image, in particular to reach the growing number of young Australians concerned with the environment. Its appointment of Peter Garrett as honorary president in June 1989 was not just because he was a high-profile peace activist, a lawyer who stood for the Senate with the Nuclear Disarmament Party in 1984, but because he was the lead singer with rock band Midnight Oil. By the late 1990s, more than 30 000 Australians were members or financial supporters of the ACF, which described itself as ‘Australia’s longest running and most respected national environment organisation’. Thanks to its origins as a respectable conservation society, rather than a green political organisation, donations to the ACF—unlike donations to Greenpeace and FoE—are tax deductible. It produces a bimonthly magazine, Habitat, with stories on the latest environmental issues; and maintains a website at www.acfonline.org.au. It provides helpful tips on how individuals can reduce their day-to-day impact on the environment and how to participate in ACF campaigns. ACF members have voting rights at ACF council elections (ACF 2000a). The ACF works primarily through conventional political forms rather than engaging in alternative lifestyle experiments or dramatic forms of direct action. It lobbies governments, government departments and industry; educates the public through its various publications; maintains a high media profile; endeavours to expand its membership and support base; and sells


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products such as t-shirts and posters with an environmental theme (ACF ‘What is ACF’, leaflet n.d.). The ACF describes its aims and activities: It takes a solutions-orientated approach to environmental issues, and seeks to form partnerships with community groups, governments and business to achieve ecologically sustainable outcomes. ACF’s primary activities include researching and reporting on natural heritage protection, water resource management and global warming, informing and lobbying governments on environmental policy development and implementation, and raising the level of awareness of environmental issues within Australia (ACF 2000a). The ACF emphasises the responsibility of all people to confront environmental damage, but points to corporations and governments as the principal culprits: ‘Often the worst environmental damage is done behind closed doors: in boardrooms and in the cabinet room.’ By way of example, it points to the current expansion of uranium mining and the woodchipping of more and more of Australia’s native forests (ACF 2000a). In the early 1990s, the ACF sought to popularise the idea of ‘ecological sustainability’—a more thorough-going principle than the ‘sustainable development’ catchcry taken up by business interests. The ACF ‘rejects the current concept of a growth economy in favour of a sustainable economy and recognises that the planet’s resource base must be conserved in order to achieve ecological sustainability’. Material consumption cannot be the only basis upon which quality of life is measured or profitability the key determinant in achieving ecological sustainability: ‘Qualitative not quantitative growth will be the basis for ecological sustainability’ (ACF 1989, pp. 5–6). The ACF does not believe that market forces will come of their own accord to allocate value to conservation. For example, land degradation costs at least $600 million a year, but accountants do not depreciate topsoil. The arguments in favour of ‘green accounting’ are ethical and ecological, outside the concerns of capitalist market mechanisms. Such considerations have to be forced upon business and government by political means, though these means could usefully utilise market mechanisms, placing a value on environmental improvements and exacting a price for environmental damage: ‘ACF takes its protest deep into the industrial and political landscape. It’s our job to make sure the environment has a voice and that decision makers listen’ (ACF June 1990, 2000). Thus the ACF was characterised by an approach that sought to cajole companies into being environmentally responsible, but which also aimed to


The green movement 191 ensure that governments would force such responsibility upon companies if necessary. It saw government as the key agent of change. However, this position has been more problematic for the ACF since 1996 with the election of a Coalition government hostile towards the green movement. The ACF was even regarded by this government with particular suspicion because of its close working relationship with the previous Labor governments (Doyle 2000, p. 90). This situation has prompted the ACF to move in two rather different directions at once. Firstly, it has placed more emphasis on campaigning—a move aimed also at recruiting younger members to counteract its ageing and declining membership. For example, it has been especially active in recent years in building links with indigenous campaigners to ensure, in the words of its 1996/97 Annual Plan, that ‘environmental protection . . . is achieved in accord with indigenous aspirations’. After the 1996 Wik judgment it became vocal in defence of native title on pastoral leases. In the late 1990s, it was prominent in the campaign to prevent the uranium mine at Jabiluka. It no longer sees itself exclusively as a lobby group and its vision for 2025 states: A social movement for fundamental social change will most likely involve the building of many alliances but they cannot be exclusionary. Obvious targets for early alliances or sympathetic relationships beyond the environment movement are—the labour movement, indigenous peoples, human rights groups, green business, local government and local government associations and regional groups and agencies (Doyle 2000, pp. 92–93). Secondly, despairing somewhat of government, the ACF has liaised more directly with business interests, a move that has caused dissension within the organisation. Government regulation remains a fundamental part of the ACF’s vision, but it now also attempts to persuade companies to embrace environmental issues of their own accord, on the basis that environmental sensitivity can be good for business. The ACF’s recently released book, Natural Advantage: A Blueprint for a Sustainable Australia, suggests it can give businesses a competitive edge (Walker 2001, p. 23). Shortly after the launch of this book, attended—at the invitation of the ACF—by captains of industry from BHP, BP, Shell, Rio Tinto and Southcorp, there was intense debate within the ACF about just how closely it should work with corporations. (In the previous few years, the ACF had


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entered alliances with Southcorp, National Australia Bank, Microsoft, Berri and Kyocera.) Early in 2001, the ACF Council held what its minutes describe as ‘a long and robust discussion on corporate engagement, particularly in relation to BHP’. Green groups in Papua New Guinea had urged the ACF not to accept BHP’s invitation to the ACF to join its forum on corporate responsibility, and the majority of Council members opposed ACF director Don Henry’s wish to attend the forum. (Henry formerly worked for the world’s richest conservation organisation, the World Wide Fund for Nature, which actively seeks corporate sponsorships; Steketee 2001b, p. 24). See below, in the section on ‘Corporate power and environmental politics’, for further discussion of this aspect of the ACF. At the same time as such debates about strategy rage within the ACF, its analyses of environmental problems point the finger—more than it has in the past—at corporate power. This is evident, for example, in its recent campaigning against genetically engineered organisms (GEOs), which ‘are in the environment, our refrigerators and our medicine cabinets without public knowledge or consent’. It alleges that GEOs ‘threaten to pollute our environment, damage public health and undermine the rural economy’, and that the desirable alternative is sustainable organic farming. The root of the problem, according to the ACF, is ‘corporate piracy of our food supply’, which tears up nature’s rule book: Global corporate control of food production is intensifying. A handful of agrochemical companies now own 35 per cent of the world’s seed supply. By replacing traditional varieties with genetically engineered (GE) lines and selling the patented seeds and chemicals together, these companies stand to make more profit. Growers are barred from saving and re-sowing seed from GE varieties. New terminator technology, which makes seed infertile, can make it impossible to follow the traditional farming method of growing crops from saved seed, securing farmers’ dependence on multinational seed suppliers. The ‘gene revolution’ will further erode the diversity of food crops, which began during the ‘green revolution’ of the 1950s and 1960s when broad-acre monocultures caused the loss of many traditional plant and animal varieties: ‘Driven by profits, agricultural chemicals and chemical-dependent crops were introduced, accelerating pollution of the global environment and contributing to the greatest extinction of species since the dinosaurs’ (ACF 2000b).


The green movement 193 S11 protesters objected to corporate control of food production, Melbourne, September 2000 (Susan Hawthorne, copyright 2000).

Friends of the Earth FoE is a radical, egalitarian, unbureaucratic organisation, committed to sustainable activism on the ground; it draws explicit connections between the organisation of society, its prevailing power relations, and environmental problems. Founded in California in 1969, FoE was established in Australia in 1971. FoE national groups—there are groups in 61 countries—are organisationally autonomous and politically independent, but bound together as parts of FoE International by a shared name and a common cause. Similarly, FoE Australia is a federation of about ten autonomous local groups within Australia, operating under an agreed set of principles. The pamphlet sent to prospective local groups states: The understanding of the FoE network is that you can’t separate social and environmental issues—both need to be seen in the


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Power, Profit and Protest context of the society in which they occur, and true environmental sustainability will not be realised without the establishement of socially equitable societies (quoted in Doyle 2000, p. 85).

Each group determines its own priorities, funding and campaigns. This degree of local autonomy is important to FoE, as a ‘decentralised organisation’ (FoE website). FoE Australia describes itself as ‘a grassroots, community-based social justice and environmental activist organisation’, and stresses that it ‘operates on a collective, non-hierarchical basis’ (FoE 2001a, 2001b). Its food cooperative is indicative of FoE’s alternative lifestyle culture: The food co-op is an ethical trader providing affordable, low packaged (bulk) food, fruit and veg, health and eco-cleaning products. Stock is locally grown and organic/biodynamic where possible. Our lovely organic food is cooked into delicious cheap vegetarian lunchtime meals. The dynamic volunteer roster makes the co-op a fun community centre where skills and knowledge are constantly exchanged (FoE 2001b). At the same time, FoE is the most radical of the principal green organisations and participated enthusiastically in the S11 movement’s blockade of the WEF Forum. Of globalisation, FoE insists ‘There is an alternative’ and explains that the WEF is ‘committed to a corporate globalisation that increases corporate profits at the expense of the environment and ordinary people’s lives’ (FoE 2000). FoE produces a national magazine, Chain Reaction, but it has not had a high profile as a national organisation because it has traditionally operated through the efforts of the local groups. However, in recent years there has been a greater level of activity at the national level as well as closer contact with FoE groups in other countries (FoE website). In 1995 Cam Walker became FoE’s first national liaison officer when the national meeting decided to adopt a modicum of formalisation at the national level. However, FoE remains distinct from other major environmental organisations due to its ‘grassroots, low budget focus and rich base of non-monetary resources’, which also enabled it to survive the cessation of government funding in 1997 after it criticised the Howard government for linking its environmental commitments to the partial sale of Telstra (Doyle 2000, pp. 84–87). Making a virtue out of this situation, and its resolute refusal even to contemplate corporate sponsorship, it announced: ‘In an era where corporations are



An FoE banner at the S11 protest, Melbourne, September 2000 (Susan Hawthorne, copyright 2000).

offering easy money to green groups, and government funding comes with more strings attached, there has never been a greater need for a strong and independent voice for environmental justice’ (FoE 2001a). FoE first achieved national prominence in the late 1970s during the campaign against uranium mining and it was permanently represented at the sittings of the Ranger uranium inquiry. In practice, FoE’s representations before the inquiry were mostly the work of one activist who hitch-hiked around Australia to keep up with the various sittings and who prepared submissions with the help of a few fellow activists. Yet the group became identified in the media as a major and effective anti-uranium organisation, prompting mining company executives to discuss amongst themselves the problem of FoE’s reaction to particular proposals (Muetzelfeldt 1981, pp. 34–35). FoE’s past campaigns have focused on (amongst other issues): stopping air pollution, particularly ozone depletion and acid rain; fighting nuclear power and promoting energy efficiency, conservation and the ‘renewables’, such as solar power; conserving tropical rainforests; protecting the marine environment and halting pollution; and tackling global warming. It has set


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up various action groups, such as the Hazardous Chemicals Campaign which aimed ‘to prevent the overuse and abuse of dangerous chemicals in the home, workplace and the environment by raising awareness of the problem . . . to promote the use of alternatives to hazardous chemicals’. It was FoE’s Recycling Campaign in the 1980s that popularised the slogan: ‘Reduce, Reuse, Recycle’. FoE, more than any other green organisation, seeks to practise alternative forms of living: simple and ecologically sound, democratic and non-exploitative (FoE n.d.). FoE Australia currently has several national campaigns. The Antinuclear campaign opposes all aspects of the nuclear cycle. It opposes the proposed and existing uranium mines; the proposed Billa Kalina radioactive waste dump in South Australia; plans for a new nuclear reactor at Lucas Heights in Sydney; the proposed irradiation plant at Narangba in southeast Queensland; and the nationwide use of food irradiation. The Trade campaign works on issues of trade and corporate behaviour, while FoE’s Climate campaign uses a combination of direct action, community education and lobbying techniques to generate debate and positive change on this issue. A key perspective is ‘climate justice’, which considers the global dimensions of climate change. For FoE’s Indigenous Land and Rights campaign, many local groups work in partnership with indigenous communities. In 2001, this included shared campaigns over mining in Western Australia and Queensland, a cultural project in the Gulf Country of Queensland, and active involvement with the Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuta—the senior women opposing the Billa Kalina radioactive waste dump in South Australia. In Victoria, FoE is working with the Yorta Yorta people to gain protection of the Barmah–Millewa forest on the Murray River (FoE website). Amongst a wide variety of FoE projects is one concentrating on Environment and Population, which confronts issues of population and immigration, consumption, ecological debt, and immigration and racism. In a statement on 12 February 2002, FoE announced: We believe that there is a danger that ‘concern for the environment’ will be used as an excuse to oppose further immigration to Australia (including asylum seekers currently in detention camps) . . . We feel that there is an onus on the environment movement to engage in this debate in such a way that directly opposes this type of argument. We hope that this project will help in some small way in putting attention on the key factors in environmental deterioration (consumption levels, including greenhouse gases, resource


The green movement 197 extraction levels and land use patterns) and away from a simplistic, ‘population growth is bad’ position (email from FoE Melbourne 12 February 2002). A wide range of other green spokespeople and organisations4 were quick to sign up to FoE’s letter to the newspapers, which deplored the fact that ‘some within the environment movement have argued for lower population levels in order to decrease environmental impacts’. It called for an end to mandatory detention of asylum seekers and reiterated its central position: ‘to argue that immigrants are a potential source of environmental degradation is simply a form of scapegoating, which deflects attention from the real problems—whether social or environmental—facing our society’ (email from FoE Melbourne, 12 February 2002).

Greenpeace Australia Pacific Greenpeace Australia Pacific is part of an international organisation founded in Vancouver, Canada, in 1971 by two Quakers to protest against US nuclear tests on Amchikta Island off the Alaskan coast. It has organisations in more than 41 countries and has 2.65 million supporters worldwide. The most famous incident involving Greenpeace occurred in July 1985 when the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior, which was protesting against French nuclear testing in the Pacific, was bombed in Auckland Harbour by French secret service agents. Greenpeace Australia was founded in 1977 and joined forces with Greenpeace Pacific in 1998. Together they have more than 130 000 supporters who are the backbone of Greenpeace Australia Pacific (hereafter referred to as Greenpeace) (Greenpeace website). Greenpeace describes itself as: an independent campaigning organisation which uses non-violent creative confrontation to expose global environmental problems and to force solutions which are essential to a green and peaceful future. Greenpeace’s goal is to ensure the ability of the earth to nurture life in all its diversity. Its core values are independence (‘We do not accept money from governments, corporations or political parties because it would compromise our core values’) and non-violent direct action (‘We strongly believe that


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violence in any form is morally wrong and accomplishes nothing’) (Greenpeace website). Although Greenpeace now claims that it ‘also works at the grassroots with our local group members’ and that it encourages its volunteers to get involved in its campaigns (Greenpeace website), compared with FoE it is extremely elitist and undemocratic. A small number of highly active individuals, often employed as full-time campaign staff, carry out the guerilla tactics for which it is famous against those who abuse the environment, while its vast membership base provides mainly money, without being involved at all in the making of decisions. Tim Doyle emphasises that its many subscribers are not actually members and claims that there are only about 50 voting members of Greenpeace in Australia, with new members having to be nominated by an existing member (Doyle 2001, p. 81). While critical of this aspect, other environmental organisations nonetheless admire the ‘shock troops’ provided by Greenpeace for green campaigns. Caleb Williams of the Historic Houses Trust notes that Greenpeace has ‘excelled at mounting short, sharp, highly telegenic, expertly choreographed protests that last several hours or a day’ (Williams 1998, p. 8). Some examples tell the tale. In December 1989, Greenpeace activists broke into the high-security industrial plant at the Altona Petrochemical Complex in Melbourne, where seven companies were discharging toxic waste into the air and local waterways, the day before a public hearing on rezoning proposals for the area. As a result, the hearing was held under a blaze of TV lights with local residents, one after the other, denouncing the plant (Age, 13 December 1989, p. 4; Greenpeace, vol 15, no. 2, 1990). During the resumption of French nuclear weapons testing in the Pacific in 1995, Greenpeace’s Rainbow Warrior II sailed into the test zone around the Mururoa Atoll. French navy commandos boarded the ship and Greenpeace activists were arrested, interrogated and deported (Greenpeace website). On 20 October 1997, Greenpeace’s ‘Climate Rescue Team’ climbed on to the roof of the prime minister’s Sydney residence and erected solar panels to advocate the use of solar power rather than fossil fuels. They were arrested and charged, but the magistrate released them on a good behaviour bond, commenting: ‘I accept that you were acting truthfully in terms of your own convictions . . . I guess Australian society would be a lot duller if there weren’t some people who were prepared to say what they think’ (Johnson 1998, pp. 50–51). In June 2000, as part of its campaign against the BP Stuart shale oil project in Queensland, Greenpeace activists gained access to the company’s plant and used bobcats to shovel up mined shale and return it to the earth. When asked


The green movement 199 by police to leave the plant, one activist insisted: ‘I’ve still got work to do’ (Greenpeace website). (Recently, BP informed Greenpeace it had no interest in ‘further purchases’ of shale oil from the Stuart Oil Shale Project (Greenpeace website).) Greenpeace activists are the postmodern equivalent of the ‘Blanquists’, who aimed to inspire revolutionary activity by the power of example. ‘Integrity, bravery, empowerment, confrontation and cleverness are inherent to Greenpeace’, according to its website. Greenpeace talks about its direct actions to protect life as ‘bearing witness’: ‘We follow the Quaker tradition of bearing witness. Philosophically and tactically, our peaceful protests work to raise awareness and bring public opinion to bear on decision-makers.’ Former UK Greenpeace CEO Lord Malchett explains: ‘There’s an extraordinary power in that individual commitment, to take these risks, to put yourself on the line, to risk arrest and imprisonment and sometimes injury’ (Greenpeace website). Non-violent direct action is not Greenpeace’s only tactic: ‘Greenpeace, together with international experts, conducts scientific, economic and political research into the causes and effects of environmental pollution’ (Greenpeace website). Carefully researched briefs are presented to the courts, the press and governments to support Greenpeace campaigns for changes in public and private policies. It participates in meetings from United Nations conferences to town hall gatherings; it produces documentary films and delivers lectures in schools; it sells badges, fridge magnets, stickers, tea towels, t-shirts, sweatshirts, posters and car bumper stickers. Greenpeace aims to educate people and to identify causes and expose culprits. As part of a worldwide organisation, Greenpeace gives priority to campaigns that can be conducted on a global scale. It currently campaigns in five areas of environmental concern. End the nuclear threat by global nuclear disarmament and closure of the nuclear industry, replacing it with non-radioactive alternatives. Save the oceans by bringing an end to overfishing, pirate fishing and commercial whaling. Eliminate toxics by abolishing POPs (persistant organic pollutants), PVC (polyvinyl chloride/vinyl) and chlorine, and promoting alternatives, and by preventing the dumping of waste in developing nations and oceans. Stop climate change by phasing out fossil fuels (oil, coal and gas) and replacing them with clean renewable energy, such as wind and solar power. Save the forests by protecting Melanesia’s ancient


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Power, Profit and Protest forests from wanton destruction and supporting solutions developed and run by village communities (Greenpeace website).

Dramatic instances of ‘bearing witness’ remain an important part of Greenpeace’s political style. Yet, during the 1990s, it adopted a new philosophy aimed at reversing the image of Greenpeace as always oppositional. According to Sharon Beder: They wanted to be able to offer solutions to environmental problems rather than continually criticising governments and businesses for causing them. (Some individuals also saw advantages for their future careers in working with ‘the enemy’.) (Beder 2000, p. 261) Under the heading ‘Market force’, Greenpeace’s website explains: ‘Our lobbyists, political and corporate campaigners regularly meet with governments and industry to ensure environmental considerations are factored into every level of decision-making.’ Tim Doyle also notes Greenpeace’s move towards a position where it ‘no longer sees business as the environmental bogeyman’, because it now considers ‘corporate self-interest’ to be one of the keys to environmental sustainability, not an inhibitor (Doyle 2000, p. 83). Sharon Beder fears that Greenpeace’s new strategy may undermine its traditional work of exposing some of the worst instances of environmental degradation, and that its activists, often committed and genuinely concerned to save the environment, will be caught in the contradiction between ‘bearing witness’ and the compromises that arise in the process of seeking solutions (Beder 2000, p. 261). Indicative of the danger is Greenpeace’s involvement in the ‘greenwashing’ of Australia’s bid to host the 2000 Olympics, where it was cynically used to help secure the Olympic Games for Sydney, then marginalised and manipulated once the bid was successful. Although Sydney claimed to be staging the ‘greenest’ Olympics ever, a massive toxic waste dump lies underneath the fine landscaping of the Olympic site at Homebush Bay—covered, according to Sharon Beder (a professional engineer), by ‘a metre of dirt and a mountain of public relations’ (Beder 2000, p. 247). Despite its long-standing opposition to the disposal of toxic waste by landfill, because it is impossible to prevent toxic material from leaking into underlying groundwater, Greenpeace endorsed the proposals for remediation of the site, even though the proposals were the cheapest and least effective of the possible strategies for reducing contamination (Beder 2000, pp. 247–60, pp. 252, 256).


The green movement 201 Greenpeace argues that, by releasing an Olympic Report every 100 days from 1995 to 2000, it kept environmental issues firmly on the agenda: ‘Our non-violent direct actions increased public awareness and pressured decision makers and stakeholders to reduce the Games’ environmental impact.’ It fought against the use of PVC and ozone-depleting chemicals, as well as rare native forest timber, in Olympic venues. It proudly lists its achievements, including the Athletes’ Village (the world’s largest solar village), reduction of PVC in building materials, an almost car-less Games and an impressive water recycling system. On the contentious issue of the toxic site: ‘The Government’s failure to clean up the Homebush Bay area, near the Olympic site, prompted Greenpeace activists to don protective gear and repack barrels of highly toxic dioxin-contaminated waste themselves’ (Greenpeace website). Beder is nonetheless deeply critical of Greenpeace: Whether it admits it or not, its public acceptance of the ‘remediation’ process on the Olympic site, and its active promotion of the Olympics as green, has been interpreted as an endorsement of landfill as a safe means of disposal of toxic waste . . . The ‘remediation’ at the Olympic site is already being used as a model for other contaminated sites. The greenwashing in this case suits not only the Olympic organizers, but also manufacturers that generate toxic wastes, those that bury them, and developers that seek to profit from the land on which these toxic wastes have been buried. A whole polluting industry that Greenpeace has been trying to phase out has now been given a PR boost by Greenpeace itself (Beder 2000, p. 259). Greenpeace continued to promote the Games as ‘green’ through to mid1999, until scientific information about the extent of the problem embarrassed it into retreat, its credibility adversely affected (Beder 2000, p. 258). Its in-depth investigation, How Green the Games, compared Sydney’s big promises to environmental best practice. In the end, Greenpeace presented Sydney 2000 with a Bronze Medal after the ‘Green Games’ scored a ‘C’ (just six out of ten) on its final report card. Making the best of a blunder, Greenpeace announced: Although the Green Games resulted in both wins and losses for the environment, Greenpeace showed the world that clean, green


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Power, Profit and Protest alternatives are available. You can start incorporating our Olympic solutions into your life right now! (Greenpeace website)

In the meantime, the two principal functionaries involved in the ‘greenwashing’ exercise had left Greenpeace to become consultants to companies seeking contracts to construct Olympic facilities and both participated as paid consultants in preparing Stockholm’s (unsuccessful) bid for the 2004 Olympics (Beder 2000, p. 253).

The Australian Greens and parliamentary politics The Australian Greens were formed in 1992 following a decision by the New South Wales, Queensland and Tasmanian Greens to form a national party. The only state body which is not a member of the confederation of the Australian Greens is The Greens (Western Australia), but close links are nonetheless maintained with this party (Australian Greens website). The Greens have more than 30 local councillors and representatives in state parliaments in New South Wales, Tasmania, the Australian Capital Territory and Western Australia, and two Senators: Dr Bob Brown from Tasmania, who has been in the Senate since 1996; and long-time anti-uranium campaigner Ms Kerry Nettle from New South Wales, elected in 2001. In a spectacular byelection in October 2002, the Greens won their first House of Representatives seat when the ‘safe’ Labor seat of Cunningham fell to the Greens’ Michael Organ, aided by preferences from an independent trade union candidate. Policies to protect the environment are not the normal stuff of parliamentary politics, for most politicians are simply not interested in the welfare of future voters. The green movement raises a principle new to political debate: ‘inter-generational equity’, which insists that it is part of the evolutionary responsibility of the current generation not to leave an impoverished environment for the next generation. According to Conservation News (June 1990, p. 1), it suggests a new moral imperative: ‘Do unto the next generation as you would have the past generation had done unto you.’ In 1998, the Australian Greens’ election slogan was ‘Vote Green to Rescue the Future’. Their current charter explains that they seek ‘to cultivate a global, ecological consciousness and long-range perspective in order to safeguard the interests of both existing and future generations’. One of the party’s general principles is ‘long-range future focus’: to avoid action which


The green movement 203 might risk long-term or irreversible damage to the environment; and to safeguard the planet’s ecological resources on behalf of future generations (Australian Greens website). However, liberal democratic politics’ short-term and arguably shortsighted imperatives makes it difficult for the principle of inter-generational equity to seize the imagination of politicians: Clean air, clean water and ecological sustainability are possible. Yet this is not being done. Worldwide, conservative governments lack the political will to make the necessary adjustments that will bring an end to the conflict, pollution, poor health and social inequity that characterises our time (Australian Greens website). Though widespread concern about environmental issues may prompt politicians to respond in superficial ways to win votes, any deeper commitment to policies signifying significant changes is extremely rare within the confines of the major parliamentary parties. Even so, years of extra-parliamentary activity by environmentalists and their organisations have begun to make an impact on parliamentary politics. The important landmarks in green electoral fortunes were the Tasmanian state election of May 1989, the federal election of November 2001 and the Cunningham by-election on 19 October 2002. However, the Australian Greens keep parliamentary and electoral politics well in perspective: ‘We believe that contesting elections is a necessary step towards the building of an ecologically sustainable and socially just society, but that it is by no means the only step’ (Australian Greens website). To a large extent, electoral activity and parliamentary politics are additional off-shoots of the extraparliamentary activity that remains the real stuff of environmental politics. Nonetheless, there are signs that the Australian Greens will grow at the expense of other parties over the next decade, for several reasons. Younger voters evince greater concern about environmental issues. The perceived ‘convergence’ of the major parties and increasing levels of dissatisfaction amongst their supporters offers opportunities for a party that is clearly different in many ways—and not just in its emphasis on environmental issues. Most importantly, ‘convergence’ has been caused more by the dramatic rightward movement on Labor’s part rather than by the Coalition parties’ rightward shift; this has opened up a significant political vacuum to the left of Labor. The 10 November 2001 federal election was characterised by anxiety


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about asylum seekers and enthusiasm for the American bombing of Afghanistan. The Coalition parties chose to encourage xenophobic responses to asylum seekers and opposition leader Kim Beazley declared that Labor stood ‘shoulder to shoulder’ with the government on this matter. The Australian Greens therefore stood out in this election for their refusal to bow to the popular prejudices of the moment, and they have maintained their opposition to mandatory detention of asylum seekers (Australian Greens, media release, 28 January 2002). The Democrats also stood for a humanitarian response to asylum seekers, but their earlier support for the introduction of the GST made it more difficult for them to retain the loyalty of voters concerned about social justice. Indeed, the Greens’ long-standing commitment not only to peace and humanitarianism, but also to economic equality and social justice, enabled them to capture the votes of many Labor Party voters, who felt the Greens’ program now more closely resembled that of the Labor Party they had once known but no longer loved. On the conventional left–right political spectrum, the Greens are now to the left of the Labor Party. An examination of their principles, policies and parliamentary utterances reveals them to be ecologically concerned social democrats. Like the German Greens, who have been an important inspiration for the Australian Greens, their guiding principles are ecological sustainability; social and economic equality and justice; grassroots democracy; and disarmament and non-violence. For election leaflet purposes, the shorthand summary of their position is: peace, social justice, democracy, environment. This emphasis on issues apparently broader than purely environmental concerns expresses the Greens’ belief that excluding social, economic, political and strategic issues from the environmental debate prevents the opportunity to deal with the cause, rather than just the symptoms, of environmental problems. Since their inception, the Greens have been involved in campaigns promoting public transport, defending Medicare and the rights of welfare recipients, opposing privatisation and a regressive tax like the GST, and supporting the right of unions to strike. In contrast to Labor ambivalence on the issue, Greens have persistently called for government funding to be redirected from private schools to public schools and given voice to community concerns that the social equity benefits of public education will continue to decline if public funding to the private sector is not curtailed. Obviously, too, Greens have been at the forefront of battles against rapacious urban developers and campaigns to save the natural environment. As New South Wales Green MP Lee Rhiannon puts it, the Greens stand ‘for building


The green movement 205 an Australian society free of exploitation of people and the environment’ (Rhiannon 2001, p. 25). The platform taken to the election in 2001 emphasised ‘the interrelatedness of all ecological, social and economic processes’. So, in addition to their hallmark emphasis on ecology, the statement of general principles in relation to social justice declared that the party sought to eradicate poverty by developing intitiatives that address the causes as well as the symptoms of poverty; to provide affirmative action to eliminate discrimination based on gender, age, race, ethnicity, class, religion, disability, sexuality or membership of a minority group; and to introduce measures that redress the imbalance between rich and poor. The Australian Greens aim ‘to break down inequalities of wealth and power which inhibit participatory democracy’ and ‘to encourage, develop and assist work that is safe, fairly paid, socially useful, personally fulfilling and not harmful to the environment’ (Australian Green website). The Greens 2001 election slogans were ‘Humane Treatment of Refugees’, ‘No GST’, ‘No War’, ‘Better Public Education and Health Care’ and ‘Organic Yes! GMO No!’ (election leaflet, November 2001). The party’s statement of Greens policies was: FORESTS. Save old growth forests from wood chipping and wood burning power stations. Protect biodiversity. Reskill forest workers. WELFARE. Support a Guaranteed Adequate Income. End work for the dole, mutual obligation and harassment of recipients. NUCLEAR. No new nuclear reactor for Australia. End uranium mining and support renewable and safe alternatives. WORK. Repeal the Liberal/Democrat anti-union laws and support the right to strike. Create green jobs. GLOBALISATION. Fair trade not free trade. Oppose privatisation of public assets and make corporations accountable. TREATY. Support self-determination for indigenous people and a national apology. Negotiate a treaty (Greens election leaflet, Melbourne Ports, November 2001). The Greens more than doubled their vote for the House of Representatives, to nearly 5 per cent, and outpolled the Democrats in New South Wales, Tasmania and Western Australia. In the Senate, Bob Brown secured a ‘quota’ in his own right for the first time, receiving 14 per cent of


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the primary vote in Tasmania. In addition to Kerry Nettle also being elected to the Senate from New South Wales, the Greens almost secured the election of two additional senators: organic fruiterer Scott Kinnear in Victoria and agricultural scientist Rachel Siewert in Western Australia. The Greens doubled their Senate vote in New South Wales and more than doubled it in Victoria (Australian, 12 November 2001, p. 7; 13 November 2001, p. 4). When it became clear on election night that a significant number of ‘leftleaning Labor voters’ had voted Green, Brown commented: ‘Had the Labor Party taken on Mr Howard over his inhumane policy on asylum seekers, it would be in office today’ (Australian, 12 November 2001, p. 7). According to Mike Steketee: ‘Labor MPs and officials concede privately what the Greens are claiming: that left-wing Labor voters told them they were protesting against Labor’s support for the Government’s policy on asylum seekers and the war in Afghanistan.’ Labor received its lowest primary vote since 1934, and would have suffered even greater electoral humiliation were it not for Greens’ preferences flowing back to Labor (Steketee 2001a, p. 7). In a system of compulsory preferential voting, Labor tends to ignore voters to its left. If it continues to do so, there is a strong possibility that the Greens will continue to grow, primarily at the expense of the Labor Party. Green representation worldwide is growing, with tens of thousands of local councillors, more than 1000 MPs, and participation in coalition governments in Mexico, Germany, France, Italy, Belgium, Finland and Slovakia. Bob Brown asserts that this green tide is the most profound worldwide transformation of politics since the rise of socialism more than a century ago, and he believes it is only a matter of time before the Greens replace one of the main parties (Steketee 2001b, p. 25).

Ideological conflicts Drew Hutton and Libby Connors argue that the Australian environmental movement has never been torn apart by ideological disputes and that major debate and disputation have usually centred on objectives and strategy rather than on theory (Hutton and Connors 1999, p. 262). Certainly, it is true that the Australian green movement could be termed ‘environmentalism without doctrines’ and that most intra-green bickering centres on tactics. It is also true that the relationship between ideological positions and strategic orientations is imperfect. Some environmental campaigners hold moderate environmental views but hold them passionately, and will spend days and


The green movement 207 nights in a forest blockade; others might hold extreme environmental views but prefer to write books than hug trees. Analysis of differing environmental philosophies is nonetheless valuable in understanding environmental politics, because these philosophies constitute beliefs about the causes of ecological damage and therefore the extent to which—and precisely how—society must be transformed in order to forestall environmental degradation. At the very least, there is a correlation between environmental ideologies and long-term strategic orientations. Robyn Eckersley (1996) has suggested that the ecological movement is divided between ecocentric and anthropocentric wings, and that ecocentrism is the logical and necessary position for a critical ecopolitical theory (1996, p. 8). This ecocentric/anthropocentric spectrum facilitates the categorising of those, such as deep ecologists, who insist on the priority of nature over humanity; those, such as the various versions of social ecology evident in ecosocialism and eco-anarchism, which seek a balance between nature and humanity (and often query the value of the ecocentric/anthropocentric distinction, because social ecology challenges the dualistic assumption that nature and humanity are in opposition); and, at the most anthropocentric end, liberal ecologists, who believe human interests and needs take precedence over other forms of life and that nature can justifiably be harnessed for human purposes, so long as this is done in ways that are sustainable.

Deep ecology Deep ecology is the most ecocentric version of environmental philosophy and was formulated initially by Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess in 1973, when he distinguished his own ‘deep’ position from the ‘shallow’ position of mainstream environmental organisations (Naess 1973, pp. 95–100). It is deep ecology—sometimes called ‘biocentrism’—that opposes most vehemently the intrusions of the human species upon the natural environment, disputing the notion that humans are somehow privileged amongst other species and have a right to remould the world around them according to their perceived needs. Humans, according to deep ecology, must cease to dominate nature and seek to live in harmony with it by recognising they are merely part of nature. Its ‘biospherical egalitarianism’ insists that humans are no more important than other species. According to Naess, the well-being and flourishing of human and non-human life have value in themselves, independent of the usefulness of the non-human world for human purposes


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(Mathews 1987, p. 39; Rundle 1989, p. 59). Dave Foreman, the founder of the American deep ecological movement Earth First!, states: This philosophy states simply and essentially that all living creatures and communities possess intrinsic value, inherent worth. Natural living things live for their own sake, which is another way of saying they have value. Other beings (both animal and plant) and even so-called ‘inanimate’ objects such as rivers and mountains are not placed there for the convenience of human beings (Foreman 1991, pp. 26–27). This is the radical aspect of deep ecology. In other ways, deep ecology is conservative in its political implications. It enjoins a return to stability and nature, to a mythologised pre-industrial society, where everyone knew their place and lived in harmony with ‘Gaia’, a concept named after the Greek goddess of the biosphere which postulates that ‘the biosphere, together with its atmospheric environment constitues a single living system’. The Earth is a single, self-regulating superorganism that must be left alone by meddlesome humans in their quest for progress (Goldsmith 1988, p. 161; Manne 1990, pp. 139–42). Gaia, according to some versions of deep ecology, even exacts revenge upon ‘eco-deviance’ through flood, famine and pestilence; the victims of natural disasters should not, therefore, be assisted to survive. AIDS has been seen by some deep ecologists as nature’s way of fighting back against the cancer of population growth (Goldsmith 1988, p. 138). The Gaia hypothesis was first developed by scientist James Lovelock, but has become spiritualised in the hands of deep ecological theorists, who often reveal the influence of eastern religions, especially Buddhism—one of the key doctrines of which is ‘no self’. Australian deep ecologist Warwick Fox claims that deep ecology can lead to ‘transpersonal ecology’, the essence of which is the realisation that ‘things are’, that human beings and all other entities are part of a single unfolding reality (Fox 1990). By taking the domination over nature by human beings as a species as the central problem, deep ecology does not differentiate amongst these humans to determine which are most responsible for environmental degradation. Warwick Fox maintains that an understanding of human hierarchies is irrelevant to an understanding of the domination of nature (see Casey 1995, p. 56). Deep ecology no more implicates individual corporations or bureaucracies that cause or allow large-scale pollution in environmental degradation than the rest of the species. Deep ecology even evinces a neo-Malthusian


The green movement 209 aversion to those humans most crowded and most distressed: seeing excess population as the problem, it often concentrates attention on the poor in the Third World; immigrants from these sectors; the urban poor and marginalised populations of the advanced industrialised countries; and women, because of their childbearing capacities (Rundle 1989, p. 60). In such ways, according to Rob White, deep ecology demonstrates its compatibility with racist fear-mongering and with the continuing oppression of those people on the planet most impoverished by the same processes that pollute the place. Other environmentalists argue that population growth is a consequence rather than a cause of poverty, that economic insecurity is dealt with through producing children to provide support in old age, and that the poverty itself—which leads to desperate over-exploitation of natural resources—is produced by social inequalities. Moreover, these same inequalities ensure that some people consume far more than others. Deep ecologists’ concern with average levels of consumption ignores the fact that consumption patterns are very unequal (White 1990, pp. 21, 25). The poor of the world are not hungry because there is not enough food to go around, but because the capitalist businesses and nations cannot make a profit feeding them (Bloodworth 1990, pp. 35, 39). Deep ecology characteristically lacks a means to achieve its own ends. According to Tim Luke (1988), it lacks a ‘theory of transition’ beyond individual conversions to its own principles. Its utopian ecologism, to Luke, ‘fails to outline practicable means for realizing these ecological moral visions’ (1988, pp. 90–91). Indeed, its own principles preclude the possibility of active human intervention to redress and prevent environmental damage, as humans cannot perform beneficial functions in the natural world.

Eco-feminism Eco-feminism argues that, whereas a world run by men according to male values is bringing us nearer and nearer to the edge of destruction, a female world order could help avert ecological chaos and holocaust. From within the women’s movement in many countries, eco-feminist analyses have emerged that stress the connection between nuclear families and nuclear warfare, between male domination and the destruction of the environment. In Australia, one early eco-feminist analysis maintained: The male dominated woman to his own ego/power satisfaction and then he pursued to do the same with his environment. Man takes


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Power, Profit and Protest the liberty to rape the earth like he has since recorded time taken the liberty to rape women . . . The patriarchal and privatised nature of the nuclear family has facilitated the oppression of women and the exploitation of the environment (Adriana n.d.).

Eco-feminist analyses draw attention to the empirical evidence that women care more about environmental issues (Muetzelfeldt 1981, p. 83).5 However, eco-feminists offer differing explanations for this phenomenon. Important eco-feminist texts include Rosemary Ruether’s New Woman, New Earth; Vandana Shiva’s Staying Alive; Val Plumwood’s Feminism and the Mastery of Nature (1993), Maria Mies and Vandana Shiva’s Ecofeminism (1993), Carolyn Merchant’s earthcare: women and the environment (1996); Mary Mellor’s Feminism and Ecology (1997) and Ariel Kay Salleh’s Ecofeminism as Politics (1997). Eco-feminism is not merely an ecologically aware feminism or a feminist environmentalism; rather, it argues that the exploitation of women in patriarchal cultures runs parallel to the abuse of nature. According to Kate Rigby, ecofeminist thinking is distinguished by the claim that there is some kind of inherent or structural connection between the patriarchal domination of women and the ecologically destructive exploitation of the Earth (Rigby 1998, p. 144). Plumwood, for instance, argues that the Western patriarchal, rationalist tradition has devalued nature to the point of making the exploitation of nature justifiable in much the same way as women have been defined as the ‘Other’ and exploited within the social sphere (discussed in Casey 1995, p. 56). Eco-feminists generally argue that the classic dualisms of Western philosophy—such as nature/culture, female/male, emotion/reason—express the prejudices of a patriarchal society disrespectful of both nature and the female. At a more practical level, Val Brown and Margaret Switzer subjected the Hawke government’s Ecologically Sustainable Development (ESD) working groups to an eco-feminist analysis and concluded that patriarchy continued to exert a constraining influence at the heart of attempts to reform the human–nature relationship. They pointed to worldwide evidence that environmental degradation is increased if women’s activities and interests are ignored (Brown and Switzer 1991, pp. 2–4). Since patriarchy has equated women and nature, and downvalued and therefore exploited both, eco-feminism seeks to revalue both women and nature, but without denying the equation. Thus eco-feminist thought affirms the link between women and nature that many feminists, in their arguments with patriarchal ideology, have sought to sever, precisely because this


The green movement 211 patriarchal binary has justified centuries of oppression of women. As Rigby comments, ‘the risk of a reactionary reinscription of the woman–nature connection is forever hovering menacingly over the ecofeminist project’ (Rigby 1998, pp. 144–45; Edwards 2000, p. 305). Some eco-feminists explain women’s proximity to nature by arguing that patriarchy has distorted the instincts of men and that the sexual division of labour, which removes men from the more natural aspects of life such as nurturing children, has not only encouraged women’s connectedness with nature but has inclined men to see themselves as masters of both women and nature. Other eco-feminists favour an ‘essentialist’ position, which believes there are fundamental biological differences between men and women that naturally incline women to have a more empathic relationship with nature (Heywood 1998, p. 288). Australian eco-feminist Ariel Salleh initially argued for an intrinsic relation between ecology and feminism, for the special character of women’s ecological sensibility, admitting that this involved claiming a biological difference between the sexes. She argued that the female hormone estrogen produces a nurturant life-affirming sense of being, an empathic and receptive attitude to the world and that the act of giving birth encourages the special life-affirming interest of women (Salleh 1984, pp. 9–10). Salleh was accused by other feminists of the sin of ‘essentialism’, which they saw as dangerously close to the kind of biologically determinist arguments about women’s ‘natural’ functions that inform so much anti-feminist rhetoric. She replied that both nature and women are downgraded to serve a patriarchal need to repress these sources of material existence. To re-value what is called feminine was necessary in order to challenge the patriarchal world order that brings about ecological crisis (Salleh 1991, p. 173). In Ecofeminism as Politics (1997), Salleh argues that it does not matter whether women’s ecological sensibility is grounded in culture or biological difference. She insists that ‘the case for women as historical actors in a time of environmental crisis rests not on universal essences but on how the majority of women actually work and think now’ (Salleh 1997, p. 6, quoted in Edwards, p. 305). Women undertake 65 per cent of the world’s work for 5 per cent of its pay. Honouring women’s frequently invisible ways of knowing nature, she finds the precautionary principle already practised by this global majority, whose labours minimise risk, reconcile differences—and hold together complex living systems—both social and ecological. For Salleh, then, the link between women and nature in the eco-feminist consciousness is based on action. Eco-feminism is crucially significant to the ‘offensive


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against the entire capitalist patriarchal assault to life on earth’. It builds upon earlier feminisms, but combines non-metropolitan and indigenous viewpoints with a ‘womanist’ sensibility that affirms reproduction of life-giving potentialities of all species on Earth (Edwards 2000, pp. 305–6).

Eco-socialism The socialist tradition has long identified the capitalist system as principally responsible for the exploitative relationships between human beings; ecosocialism identifies the capitalist system of production—based on private ownership and the profit motive—as principally responsible for the exploitation of nature. The problem is not so much industrialism per se, but capitalist industrialism. It seeks to identify and combat the social relations of hierarchy and domination that are directly linked to the exploitation of nature. It is a perspective grounded in recognition of different social interests, different forms and types of social power (White 1990, p. 17). Eco-socialism distinguishes sharply between principal perpetrators and principal victims. It argues that, while environmental problems are caused in the main by the profit-making, cost-cutting or growth-oriented concerns of those who own or control the production processes in both capitalist and ‘communist’ societies, the detrimental effect of environmental degradation is borne disproportionately by poorer people. Eco-socialists stress that it is those people least complicit with environmental degradation who experience greater environmental problems and risks; the rich can, to a much greater extent, buy their way out of experiencing many of the environmental problems caused by the system that has granted them their privileged positions. Gross disparities in economic and political power dictate the shape of current production practices, which have an inbuilt preference for ecologically damaging technologies because these technologies provide increases in the productivity of saleable goods per unit of labour. How things are produced is determined by the producers and, in most societies, according to the dictates of private profit-making (White 1990, pp. 9, 23; Democratic Socialist Party 1990, p. 31). American eco-socialist Barry Commoner elaborates the ways in which capitalism and a viable ecology are incompatible. Firstly, it is in the very nature of the capitalist system itself that each individual capitalist is obliged to expand in order to survive in business. Secondly, capitalism is forced constantly to expand economic output in order to contain distributional tensions; economic growth is central to the peaceful


The green movement 213 maintenance of capitalist inequality, buying off discontent and keeping attention away from the divisive issue of relativities. Thirdly, adequate environmental protection would require a level of state economic intervention that would severely undermine private economic autonomy and control, so efforts to push state intervention to such unprecedented levels would be hotly resisted by capital (Bell 1987, p. 6). Within eco-socialist thought, there are differing ideas about how best to confront the problem of resistance by capital. All forms of eco-socialism insist that political solutions can be found to the tendency of capitalism to destroy the environment: they stress the ability of humans to change the world around them. However, there exists a spectrum within eco-socialist thought about the most effective way to utilise state power to achieve green ends and about the usefulness of technology for ecological purposes. According to Eckersley, eco-socialists (and green social democrats) accept the need for some devolution of power from the state to sub-national regional and local communities; but they argue that a democratic state with a range of ‘appropriate’ centralised powers can act as an enabling institution that can facilitate the pursuit of broad green goals such as social emancipation and environmental protection (Eckersley 1996, p. 82). On the issue of technology, a range of eco-socialist viewpoints exists: from those who envisage a green state facilitating technological solutions to ecological problems to those more sceptical of technology and anxious to encourage simpler forms of living that discourage needless consumption. Those on the decentralising and anti-technological end of the eco-socialist spectrum tend towards the ecoanarchist position and believe that more decentralised and simpler forms of living are more likely to produce ecologically sustainable practices. More typical of eco-socialist thought are those who insist on the need for an ecologically enlightened supervisory institution, such as a ‘green state’, to enforce rules ensuring that production and consumption are carried out in ways that are ecologically sustainable. Some eco-socialists envisage an ecostate that will preside over an ecologically sensitive industrial but non-capitalist economy—probably a non-growth or very limited growth economy—such as the ‘steady-state economy’. Martin Ryle, for example, argues that an ‘ecologically progressive “strong State”’ will be needed to challenge the centres of power that determine the economic fate of entire communities or to deal adequately with multinational companies, penalise polluters and so on. A strong eco-state is needed, too, to deal with the problem of poverty and redistribution, on which a better environment depends (Ryle 1988). For André Gorz (1980), the ‘ecological restructuring


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of society requires that economic rationality be subordinate to an eco-social rationality’ (quoted in Schecter 1994, p. 161). This would entail simpler forms of living, with people enjoying shorter working hours and more ‘free time’, because production would be limited to goods that are socially necessary; yet ‘authoritarian technological solutions’ to ecological problems could be utilised where appropriate (Gorz 1980, p. 17). Eco-socialists criticise both capitalism and communism for their ‘productivism’, their inherent faith in the value of technological progress and economic expansion (Bell 1987, p. 9). They acknowledge that the former communist regimes of the world—polluters all—are not models to pursue and that only hitherto untried forms of socialist society could place ecological needs above crude economic imperatives. However, Marxism remains an inspiration in eco-socialist thought. At the same time that the rise of the green movement has caused significant reorientation and even re-groupment on the left, the theoretical challenges of green political theory have prompted reformulations of Marxism to accommodate the ecological viewpoint. Marx’s writings have been pillaged anew to provide proof of his prescience on ecological matters, his warnings that capitalism’s tendency towards crisis is accompanied by a second contradiction: its tendency to destroy even the physical conditions necessary for sustainable profit-making (e.g. Benton 1989; O’Connor 1998; McGarr 2000).

Eco-anarchism Eco-anarchism is distinguished by its argument that links the egalitarian and non-hierarchical principles of nature with an anarchist perspective. Whereas eco-socialists view capitalism as the main force behind environmental degradation and present a range of strategies for confronting or avoiding capitalist methods and relations of production, eco-anarchists see capitalism as a subset of a greater problem, which is an imposed and entrenched social hierarchy (Williams, S. 1998, p. 18). American anarchist and environmental thinker Murray Bookchin argues that there is a clear connection between the ideas of anarchism and the principles of ecology. Anarchists believe in a stateless society, in which harmony develops out of mutual respect and social solidarity amongst human beings; ecologists believe that balance or harmony spontaneously develops within nature, in the form of ecosystems, and that these—like anarchist communities—require no external authority or control. Bookchin likens an anarchist community to an ecosystem, and suggests that both are


The green movement 215 distinguished by respect for the principles of diversity, balance and harmony. He articulates the idea of ‘social ecology’, which draws upon the ‘natural’ principles of balance, wholeness, spontaneity and freedom— principles supplanted by the spread of hierarchy and domination. Social ecology involves the belief that ecological balance is the surest foundation for social stability (Bookchin 1988, pp. 9–29). Indeed, Bookchin attacked deep ecology in Remaking Society (1989), arguing that the biocentrism of deep ecology simply reversed the domination of nature by humanity to the domination of humanity by nature, and that the goal should be balance, not domination. Humans may play the role of ‘managers’ of natural processes as long as they act only to enable the natural and diverse evolution of organisms within the biospherical community (Heywood 1998, pp. 286–87; Eccleshall et al 1994, p. 240; Sargent 1999, p. 242). This is a view generally shared by eco-socialists but rejected by deep ecologists, who assume an extreme ecocentric position. In The Ecology of Freedom, Bookchin describes an ecological society as one that would ‘fully recognize that the human animal is biologically structured to live with its kind, and to care for and love its own kind within a broadly and freely defined social group’. In practice, an ecological society would be radically decentralised and based on participatory forms of democracy; it would have replaced hierarchy with a society that respects each individual and the planet on which we live (Bookchin 1982, p. 318). Eco-anarchist theorists have therefore promoted utopian visions of small-scale ‘ecocommunities’, which would be ecologically sustainable, largely autarchic, communitarian, decentralised, democratic and egalitarian societies living in harmony with nature. Often, too, they urge the replacement of nation-states by geographical bioregions, areas bounded by natural features; this would involve the redrawing of political boundaries to conform to ecological contours. According to Eckersley, ‘they envisage a patchwork of economically self-reliant ecological communities within bioregions, linked together by a loose confederal structure that respects the political and economic autonomy of member communities’ (Eckersley 1996, p. 81). These smaller-scale societies of eco-anarchist theory would be characterised not only by decentralised and locally democratised systems of governance, but also by the use of ecologically benign energy sources and technologies (Williams, S. 1998, p. 18). Rudolph Bahro argues that, ideally, greens are ‘against the concentration of plant and capital, against mergers, in favour of breaking up and decentralization, right down to technology’


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(Frankel 1987, pp. 18–19). It is necessary, according to social ecologist John Clark, to create ecocommunities and eco-technology that can restore balance between humanity and nature and reverse the process of degradation of the biosphere: ‘An ecological community will not attempt to dominate the surrounding environment, but rather will be a carefully integrated part of its ecosystem’ (quoted in Williams, S. 1998, p. 19).

Liberal ecology Liberal ecology believes that the current system is capable of producing solutions to ecological crisis without any fundamental transformation in the nature of production, distribution and consumption; environmental problems can be resolved on the terrain of capitalism. Liberal ecologists insist that all humans, as rational beings, share an interest in ecological restraint; they maintain that, of course, capitalist industry does not wish to destroy the environment. Capitalism and a viable ecology are compatible because it is in the interests of everyone to keep the planet clean; businesspeople are also humans sharing a common concern with clean air and water, and so on. Liberal approaches to ecology assume that the threat posed is so central and so overriding that all other political considerations or forms of possible resistance can be assumed away. Thus they isolate ecological issues from the normal stuff of politics—the unresolved struggles over distribution and the politics of economic change—assuming that environmental protection is a good so universal in its value that it can override vested interests that contend so bitterly over other issues: ‘The liberal approach simply sees ecological politics as a positive-sum game, devoid of resistance and devoid of losers’ (Bell 1987, p. 8). Industries that pollute, according to liberal ecologists, are not rationally pursuing capitalist ends, but are narrow-mindedly ignoring the general interest; they are the ‘bad apples’ to be removed so capitalism can solve environmental problems. Liberal ecological solutions therefore lie in education about the dangers; in environmental regulation of industry overseen by a state sympathetic to the needs of industry to remain profitable, which will provide incentives not to pollute or impose fines for polluting; and in technological improvements that incorporate environmental objectives. The best way to save the environment is to put a market value on it; the system itself, ever resourceful, will then come up with the answers—primarily technological ones—to problems caused by harmful technologies whose use is incidental, not fundamental, to the system.


The green movement 217 Essentially, liberal ecology hopes to persuade capitalists to act in the longterm interests of capitalism. In doing so, it assumes that, even if the short-term interests of individual capitalists are not compatible with a viable ecology, the long-term interests of the capitalist system are because its profit-making activities are dependent on the physical environment. Liberal ecology is the response to ecological crisis most favoured by the enlightened sections of those responsible for the abuses that are being militantly contested. Like liberalism generally, it sees immense advantages for the long-term sustainability of capitalism in conceding a little to the demands of the environmental movement. Popular liberal ecological solutions espoused in Australia have included ‘green consumerism’, ‘sustainable development’ and ‘natural capitalism’, discussed below in the section on corporate power and environmental politics.

The labour movement and the environment Capitalist economies are characterised by ‘under-use’ of labour resources and ‘over-use’ of environmental resources, a tendency exacerbated by the reluctance of governments to tax resource use rather than labour use. Hence unemployment has risen markedly at the same time as the planet is clearly suffering from the ill-effects of our system of production and consumption (Penney 2001b, p. 18–22). Unions clearly have an interest in increased use of labour resources and decreased use of environmental resources. As national convenor in the late 1970s of the ACF-initiated organisation Environmentalists for Full Employment, Jack Mundey campaigned for cooperation between unions, environmentalists and other people who saw the need ‘for much more thought and action on the related questions of Employment, Energy use and the Environment’. Following Barry Commoner, Mundey argued that it was imperative that society found the way to secure socially useful employment for all, the wisest use of appropriate energy and resources and the guarantee of a habitable environment (Mundey 1978, p. 1). Yet, as Mundey points out, environmentalists have never effectively combated the myth that environmental protection exacerbates unemployment—a myth propagated effectively by many corporations, who utilise their wealth and power to persuade many in the general public that environmental concern costs jobs (Mundey 1988, p. 180). Just as the mining industry has stiffened the resistance to Aboriginal land rights demands through expensive propaganda campaigns that pretend that people’s backyards are subject to


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land rights claims, the forest industry and other business groups have countered the claims of environmentalists by arguing that environmental protection will threaten people’s employment prospects (Kerin 1999, pp. 19–20, 42). Employer fronts such as the Forest Industries Campaign Association (FICA), in addition to bold generalisations about the lost economic benefits in ‘pandering’ to greens, stress specifically the danger of job losses as a way to alienate workers from environmentalists and, at the same time, to frighten governments (FICA 1989; 1988). It is difficult for environmentalists to argue against a concerted public relations campaign that pits jobs against the environment, despite the manifest hypocrisy and blatant self-interest of such a campaign waged by those who have little regard for either jobs or the environment. Environmentalists generally take seriously the need to consider the welfare of people employed in the industries they wish to curtail. Greens regard the articulation of alternative employment strategies as an important component in any responsible green political platform, and they argue that no worker can be expected to give up his or her environmentally questionable job if the alternative is to suffer the ignominy of claiming unemployment benefits; they contend that ecological security depends ultimately on the rapid establishment of universal social security (Powell 1990, p. 16). Recently, they have articulated the logical connection between ‘sustainability’ and ‘job security’. On 28 February 2002, as timber trucks converged on Parliament House in Melbourne to protest against reduction in logging in old-growth forests, because these forests are threatened by overharvesting, the ACF supported calls for ‘certainty’ for timber workers and pointed out this would only be achieved by a shift of their industry to sustainable plantation-based forestry (ACF website). That workers’ interests and environmental imperatives can become increasingly compatible is apparent in the various developments worldwide in the expansion of renewable energy sources and methods to increase energy efficiency. Both provide considerable employment opportunities (Renner 2000, pp. 42, 45, 47). In 1991, the ACTU identified green employment as a key issue for the labour movement. In 1993, the ACTU and the ACF joined forces to set up a ‘green jobs’ program, announcing that they ‘recognised that they had a common interest in the creation of jobs which are environmentally beneficial’. The ACF/ACTU Green Jobs Unit (GJU), funded by the federal Department of Employment, Education and Training and the Department of Environment, Sport and Territories, was established in Melbourne to conduct research and training programs, organise job


The green movement 219 placements and promote green jobs throughout the country (Green Jobs Unit website; Penney 2001a, 2001b, pp. 18–22). Tens of thousands of unemployed workers were provided with short-term environmental jobs and training in the years 1994–96 (Commission on Sustainable Development 1996; Crowley 1996, pp. 619–25). As Labor’s green jobs initiatives were wound down by the Howard government, an all-union green caucus called Earthworker was formed in 1997 to respond to this challenge. Based in Melbourne, Earthworker is endorsed and sponsored by the Victorian Trades Hall and answers to the union movement but draws its activists and supporters from a wide variety of union, green and community organisations. It aims to act as a conduit between unionists and environmentalists to work on common projects. The insight Earthworker offers is that the greatest common ground between unions and environmentalists is in economic conversion—creating sustainable alternative industries and sustainable jobs. This process creates what Earthworker calls ‘a jobs and environment dialogue’ (McNaughton 2000, pp. 37–38, 44). To this end, in November 1999 Earthworker launched the ‘Solar Wind and Water Alternative Energy Plan’. This plan brings together unions, alternative energy activists and academics, corporations and local and state governments to create a wind industry in Victoria, cheap access to householders for solar hot water units and potentially thousands of jobs in manufacture, installation and administration. Initiated by Earthworker, the plan is being conducted by the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union and the Electrical Trades Union. It is supported by the CFMEU, the Plumbers Union, the Trades Hall Council, Moreland City Council, the City of Port Phillip, CitiPower, Renewable Energy Australasia Pacific and Everlast Hydro Systems, and is assisted by Energy Efficiency Victoria (Earthworker 1999; Age, 15 November 1999; McNaughton 2000, pp. 44–45). To further its ‘Solar Wind and Water Alternative Energy Plan’, Earthworker facilitated the signing in February 2001 of an agreement between the Victorian government, Siemens and the Electrical Trades Union to start the manufacture of wind generators in the La Trobe Valley. This is creating thousands of jobs in Victoria and boosting the development of sustainable industries (Earthworker newsletters, various). While developments to green the labour market help to build muchneeded links between unionists and environmentalists while diminishing environmental problems, such developments do not confront the problem of the immense power of those who continue to gain from environmental


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damage. While certain employers might well decide that environmentally sound practices are good for business, many other employers persist with environmentally harmful activities in the interests of profitability. While alliances between workers and environmentalists to create green employment are crucial, alliances between unions and environmentalists are also necessary to contest environmentally unsound business activity, for spoilers and polluters are best confronted by workers withdrawing their labour. This is the other side of Earthworker’s activity and the one with the greatest potential to prevent or curtail environmental problems— strengthening links between unions and environmentalists with a view to industrial action in support of environmental objectives. The power of labour to confront those who would damage and pollute the environment is commonly discounted in academic discussions of ecological problems. For example, Ulrich Beck (1992) ignores the role of unions when dealing with the question of how to confront ecological irresponsibility. He writes about the importance of a strong, competent public debate, ‘armed with scientific arguments’, the need for ‘dissenting voices, alternative experts’ and alternatives to be developed systematically, so there would be ‘“discursive checking” of scientific laboratory results in the crossfire of opinions’. He says hazards become public and scandalous through ‘the needling activities of the social movements’. Yet public outrage in the instance he discusses—of a lead crystal factory dropping flecks of lead and arsenic on nearby Altenstadt—and many similar cases, got nowhere (Beck 1992, pp. 119–20, 115–16, 102). If you lived in Altenstadt, would you rather rely on the workers employed in the offending factory refusing to continue working there until the polluting emissions ceased or on ‘discursive checking’? The residents of Sydney in the green bans period had already despaired of ‘public debate’ and had found that ‘dissenting voices’ and ‘alternative experts’ were simply ignored—until the builders labourers entered the scene. In weighing up the benefits of union bans as opposed to ‘needling activities of the social movements’, it is illuminating to consider a series of cases in Melbourne in recent years. In 1998, the residents of Werribee, assisted by Trades Hall’s public support for the campaign and a union movement decision not to cross community picket lines, successfully resisted CSR Ltd’s attempt to establish a major toxic waste facility in their community (Van Moorst 2000; see also Strangio 2002). Early in 1999, a coalition of residents, conservationists and Moonee Valley Council, backed up by the relevant unions, prevented


The green movement 221 Quadry Industries’ plans to fill the 11 hectare disused Niddrie quarry with toxic soil (Age, 22 May 1999, p. 10). On 18 December 2000, building unions announced bans on the removal of contaminated soil from major projects to existing landfills, to apply pressure on the state government to speed up the provision of proper hazardous waste facilities. Trades Hall industrial officer Brian Boyd insisted that properly planned, state-of-the-art, environmentally sound waste disposal facilities must be built immediately, because the disposal of toxic waste was becoming a serious environmental problem (Birnbauer 2000). By contrast, the ‘needling activities’ of the movement to Save Albert Park from staging the Australian Grand Prix were doomed to fail without bans from the unions whose members built the pits and other facilities that made it possible for Albert Park to be desecrated by racing cars (Glanz 1995, pp. 14–17). The ‘dissenting voices’ organised in the Royal Park Protection Group (RPPG) are also very aware that their attempts to protect Royal Park from various developments depend on bans from construction industry unions (Dean 1999; Munro 1999; RPPG, June 1999; Bell 2000a, 2000b). One of the few successes in this campaign, greeted enthusiastically by the RPPG, occurred in April 2000 when the Electrical Trades Union and the Amalgamated Metal Workers’ Union placed green bans on construction of the controversial light towers, until an Environmental Impact Assessment was undertaken (RPPG, April 2000, p. 1). As it turned out, the unions were too trusting and too imprecise in their demands. A Lighting Report by a commercial lighting company was used by the Bracks government to approve the stadium lighting. ‘It’s a bodgie report . . . we’ve been stooged,’ was the observation, after the event, of ETU secretary Dean Mighell (RPPG, September 2000, p. 2). The unconditional withdrawal of labour is the only truly reliable deterrent to environmental vandalism on the part of employers. One of the letters that came flooding in to the NSWBLF office during the green bans had this to say: I don’t like unions. But thank you and your union for what you’ve done. Private people are not able to prevent stupid destruction as you have been able to . . . Thank you for acting for me and others like me (Thomas 1973, p. 114). Workers are not only the class with the greatest capacity to contest environmental destruction, but also the class with the greatest interest in


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doing so, because working-class people suffer disproportionately from ecological problems. ‘After all,’ inquires Mundey, ‘who lives in the least leafy suburbs? Who is subjected to increasing road noise, who has the poorest quality housing, who has least open space?’ (Mundey 1989, p. 19). Climate change affects everyone, but the rich can buy air-conditioning and swimming pools, and better-located real estate. As the group in society which suffers most from environmental problems but is also well placed to challenge them, workers and their organisations have a crucial role to play in the struggle against those who suffer least from environmental problems and are the most culpable in causing them. It is not environmentalists who threaten employment, but those who downsize their workforces—and destroy the environment—in the interests of short-term profitability. Working-class interests and environmental imperatives are not in real or long-term conflict. The capacity for unions and environmentalists to forge constructive alliances has been demonstrated in the mobilisations against corporate globalisation. We have heard about turtles and teamsters being together at last, but steelworkers and Earth First!ers also led the way at Seattle, jointly carrying a banner with the image of a redwood tree and a spotted owl. They are part of the new joint initiative of environmentalists and steelworkers, the Alliance for Sustainable Jobs and the Environment. They have discovered that global capitalism is bringing them together, despite their previous history of conflicts. David Foster of the United Steelworkers of America explained: ‘The companies that attack the environment most mercilessly are often also the ones that are the most anti-union. More unites us than divides us’ (St Clair 1999, pp. 86, 92–93). An Earthworker newsletter reproduced the Houston Principles of the Alliance for Sustainable Jobs and the Environment declared in 1999: Too often, corporate leaders regard working people, communities, and the natural world as resources to be used and thrown away . . . Labor unions and environmental advocates are beginning to recognize our common ground. Together we can challenge illegitimate corporate authority over our country’s and community’s governing decisions. While we may not agree on everything, we are determined to accelerate our efforts to make alliances as often as possible . . . The drive for short-term profits without regard for long-term sustainability hurts working people, communities, and the earth (Earthworker, Spring 2000, p. 11).


The green movement 223 Earthworker’s popular slogan at the S11 protest, Melbourne, September 2000 (Susan Hawthorne, copyright 2000).

Corporate power and environmental politics By daring to confront growth and development as a problem, the green movement has shifted the spectrum of debate towards consideration of both development and the environmental consequences of development, persuading many that the objective of growth needs at least to be balanced against other imperatives. Maarten Hajar has referred to this belief that modernisation only requires a few adjustments to allow for environmental concerns as ‘ecological modernisation’, and considers this the current dominant paradigm in environmental politics (Hajar 1995, p. 249). It is certainly the paradigm preferred by corporate interests, who perceive it as the least threatening form of environmental politics. Although some business interests responded to the green threat by going on the offensive, others took an approach that appeared to respond rationally and responsibly to the green critique. Indeed, these


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business interests presented their case as the reasonable one, in contrast to the too extreme viewpoint of certain green groups.

‘Sustainable development’ and ‘natural capitalism’ Commitment to ‘sustainable development’, first enunciated in a United Nations Report in 1987, has become a hallmark of ecological modernisation. Government bodies and business people concerned with good public relations have advertised loudly their commitment to sustainable development: development meeting the needs of this generation without making it difficult or impossible for future generations to fulfil their own needs. Some of the ramifications of this policy are that products and services must use less energy and less of our natural resources; pollution and waste must be kept to a minimum; and forests must be preserved. The ‘reasonable’ solution of sustainable development is liberal capitalism’s response to the serious threats posed by more intransigent green critiques of capitalist industrialisation; it is the liberal panacea for ecological crisis. Late in 1989, the Hawke Labor government called together industry, conservation, union and rural groups with the aim of reaching agreement on the definition of ‘ecologically sustainable development’ (Age, 9 December 1989, p. 11). The government’s discussion paper, Ecologically Sustainable Development: A Commonwealth Discussion Paper, released in June 1990, was criticised by the ACF, Greenpeace, The Wilderness Society and the World Wide Fund for Nature for giving the impression that ecologically sustainable development could be achieved without basic changes in the economy, ‘that ecological considerations are an optional, “add on” extra to economic policy’ (Toyne 1991, p. 45). They replied in a joint submission on Ecologically Sustainable Development in August 1990 that sustainable development necessarily had to give priority to ecological considerations: ‘It is the placement of ecological considerations at the forefront of decision making on economic and social development that will render those developments sustainable’ (ACF et al 1990, esp. pp. v, 6). Although ‘sustainable development’ does impose some constraints on capital, most green activists regard it as inadequate. For Bill Lines, sustainable development ‘institutionalizes predatory environmental behaviour and favours those destructive economic interests previously enriched by non-sustainable development’. Its assumptions are, still, that growth and development yields benefits, progress and profit (Lines 1990, p. 15). Drew Hutton and Libby Connors note that, during the 1990s, organisations like the Business Council of Australia and the Mining Council of Australia (formerly the AMIC)


The green movement 225 promoted ESD in the business community as a concept that could be used by industry to promote its agenda of technological innovation, free-market mechanisms and industry self-regulation (Hutton and Connors 1999, p. 258). As Sharon Beder has argued, the language of sustainable development is clearly aimed at replacing protest and conflict with consensus by asserting that economic and environmental goals are compatible. In the final analysis, it is acceptable to corporate interests because it does not threaten established power structures, and because it strongly suggests that environmental imperatives and economic development are not in opposition (Beder 1996, pp. xiii, xii). For similar reasons, many corporations have recently embraced the concept of ‘natural capitalism’, which is informed by the same assumptions underpinning the notion of sustainable development. According to Mary Jane Patterson, the central premise behind ‘natural capitalism’ is that we have the technical capacity to use the planet’s resources much more efficiently, allowing us to maintain and even enhance our material well-being while sharply reducing resource extraction, waste discharge and associated damage: ‘The motivation for ecologically sound ways of doing business would be economic rather than altruistic because efficiency measures would save money’ (quoted in Walker 2001, p. 23). For example, the Property Council of Australia’s first Sustainable Development Leadership Summit on the Gold Coast in November 2001 was addressed by the chief executive of the World Green Building Council. He informed the Summit that being green is ‘not about tree hugging’ but about ‘performance, harnessing capital and minimising waste’, with 25 to 40 per cent internal rates of return that would please any investment manager (Australian Financial Review, 13 November 2001, p. 54).

Green consumerism Likewise, ‘green consumerism’ is encouraged by corporate interests because it represents an opportunity rather than a threat to business interests. Green consumerism first became popular in the late 1980s and was heavily marketed as a solution to environmental problems in the press of the time (Weekend Australian, 8–9 July 1989, p. 3; Age Good Weekend, 19 August 1989, p. 26; Choice, January 1990, p. 12). Underpinning green consumerism is the assumption that ecological problems can be solved by utilising the market forces of consumer demand. It suggests that the capitalist system’s concern with profits will force it to adapt its harmful habits, yet these same market imperatives of profit maximisation are those complicit in causing environmental degradation. In green consumerism, the utilising of the profit motive to effect green ends


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reinforces rather than questions this motive, which many environmentalists argue is the reason why capitalism is so bad for the planet’s health. Moreover, the emphasis on individual activity and responsibility accords with the prevailing ethos of capitalism: the salvation of the planet will happen through the actions of rational, utility-maximising individuals, as they vote in the marketplace with their shopping trolleys. Subtly, green consumerism suggests that there is no need to join a green political movement in order to do your bit. Certainly, the producers and the retailers have responded, and seen the rich marketing opportunities open to them. Company reports now devote pages and pages to environmental initiatives, turning trees into pulp to explain how caring they are for the environment. Under the heading ‘GREEN COMPANIES REAP THE BENEFIT’, the Australian reported at the height of the green consumer movement that ‘Corporate Australia is going green’. Companies in tune with the green movement are on the way up, because they ‘gain market share and often higher margins on those sales’ (Australian, 24 January 1990, p. 2). There is a strong implication in such reporting that the companies’ response indicates the advantages of free-market capitalism. Yet companies are not paying the cost of their much-vaunted environmental conscience. We are frequently reminded that we, as consumers, must pay the price of saving the planet. The cost of saving the environment is passed on to the consumers, not borne by the capitalists, and they adjust their advertising to persuade consumers to pay the price happily. In 1999 one of Victoria’s privatised electricity companies presented its green energy initiative as an opportunity for frustrated environmentalists: ‘If you’ve always wanted to do something positive to help our environment, now you can . . . we’re giving you the chance to make your own positive contribution.’ By paying an additional 3 cents per kWh of energy used, households could choose to have their electricity supplied from ‘green resources’, such as methane harvested from landfill sites, solar and wave power: ‘If you choose to make a difference . . . more electricity will come from environmentally friendly sources and fewer greenhouse gases will be released into the atmosphere’ (United Energy Ltd, leaflet, June 1999).

Corporate strategies: confrontation and co-option At the same time as companies ‘greenwash’ their public images, there is also evidence of a renewed counter-attack against green organisations that have


The green movement 227 remained active and committed to protest rather than negotiation with companies. ‘Since the early 1990s,’ according to FoE Australia’s national liaison officer, Cam Walker, ‘we have witnessed front groups, PR campaigns, legal cases and dirty tricks against activists.’ Various authors, notably Bob Burton, have tracked these campaigns (Burton 1994, pp. 16–19; Walker 2001, p. 24). However, according to Hutton and Connors, front groups (such as Mothers Opposing Pollution, sponsored by the milk packaging industry) are less common than in the United States. In Australia, most of the proindustry, anti-green message has come directly from industry sources or closely aligned right-wing think-tanks (Hutton and Connors 1999, p. 258). Walker believes the green movement is witnessing a new stage in the attempts by companies to reclaim public sympathy and support. On the one hand, there is continuing outright resistance against the more radical green groups; on the other hand, there is the ‘work with those you can’ model, engaging in what has become known as ‘greenwashing’. This tactic on the

Anger at the environmental consequences of corporate activity was stressed at the S11 protest, Melbourne, September 2000 (Susan Hawthorne, copyright 2000).


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part of companies exploits and accentuates the divisions between the larger NGOs and the more activist-orientated and politicised networks and organisations (Walker 2001, p. 24). A recent Australian Magazine feature observed: ‘Activists remain suspicious of “greenwashing” by companies who pay lip service to eco-friendliness as a marketing tool, and of former activists who get into bed with business’ (Cosic and Cubbin 2001, pp. 17–20). Even amongst the larger environmental NGOs, there are differences of opinion about the wisdom of cooperating with companies when invited. The most business-friendly environmental organisation in Australia is World Wide Fund for Nature Australia (Steketee 2001b, p. 25). By contrast, The Wilderness Society has no corporate alliances and is critical of the World Wide Fund for presenting itself to major corporations with public relations problems as being able to manage the rest of the environment movement. According to Alec Marr, national campaign director for The Wilderness Society, this is guaranteed to create tension amongst environmental groups, for corporations have a public relations problem because the environment movement gave it to them. The issue for Marr is both complex yet, in the final analysis, simple: Our job is to protect the environment and you can never say that if you have a relationship with a corporation and you can improve its practice, that is a bad thing. But if at the same time that is being used to blunt the level of public pressure which may solve the problem, you become part of the problem rather than part of the solution (Steketee 2001b, p. 25). Bob Brown of the Australian Greens is similarly sceptical about the value of corporate alliances: ‘Any corporation that is looking at its bottom line is going to prefer an advertising campaign to real change [that] bites into its ability to exploit the natural environment for a short-term windfall.’ Brown argues that environmental groups should say to corporations: ‘Clean up your act and we will work with you’ rather than: ‘We will work with you to clean up your act’ (Steketee 2001b, p. 25). The ACF has a cautious approach to relations with business, and there has been intense internal debate over the matter, but corporate alliances have nonetheless flourished in recent years. The ACF’s partnership with Southcorp, for example, is believed to be worth more than $200 000, to fund the ACF’s anti-salinity program. According to Mike Steketee, the ACF has ‘moved increasingly towards corporate alliances that give the conservation body extra resources and make the company look credible from an


The green movement 229 environment viewpoint’. ACF president Peter Garrett argues: ‘We cannot close our ears to the fact that one of the major forces on the environment is corporations and we cannot think that the only way to deal with them is to go after them with a vengeance’ (quoted in Steketee 2001b, p. 25). However, Steketee points out: ‘In an era where large companies can spend more than the ACF’s annual budget in crafting a public relations image, the question is whether this represents the greening of corporate Australia or the corporatisation of the green movement’ (Steketee 2001b, p. 25). Cam Walker from FoE is convinced the latter is the case. FoE—in Australia and internationally—is strictly opposed to corporate alliances, and corporations would have a similar response to working with FoE. Walker deeply regrets mainstream green NGOs’ ‘pronounced tendency to work more closely with corporations over the last four to five years’. This, he suggests, has occurred partly because of reduced government funding since the election of the Coalition in 1996 and partly because of ‘an overall ideological shift . . . a tendency to consciously or sub-consciously operate within a framework that suggests that a “greening” of capitalism will be sufficient to achieve a sustainable and equitable future’. This shift has occurred parallel to ‘a pattern of increased professionalisation of the movement’. Given the upsurge in popular resistance to corporate-defined globalisation, Walker believes this development in green politics ‘marks a dramatic failure of both courage and vision and, in an era of globalisation, effectively relegates the mainstream environmental movement to being a cheersquad for global capitalism’. FoE and the Australian Greens were the only large green groups to support the protests against the WEF meeting in Melbourne in September 2000 (Walker 2001, p. 22). Walker outlines some of the ‘inherent dangers’ in close relations between environmental NGOs (ENGOs) and corporations, even when these are ‘progressive’ ones. Companies use their joint projects with an ENGO in one place to gain green ‘credit’ elsewhere, where they do not deserve it. A classic example is Shell Corporation and its close links with certain green groups. Another danger is co-option, or perceived co-option. Walker gives the example of a recent mining information seminar when a representative of an ENGO gave a glowing analysis of a particular company but neglected to mention that there was a financial relationship between the organisation and the company in question. Even if that connection did not influence the ENGO’s assessment, there is the possibility that people will infer co-option, undermining one of the great strengths of the environmental movement: its reputation for independence. Companies—especially resource companies—have also used green


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groups in developed countries to verify their environmental standards in order to use this verification as a political tool against local communities in developing countries who wish to oppose their activities (Walker 2001, pp. 22–24). Few, if any, groups are actually prepared to name the problem as Walker sees it: growth-based economic systems that are ruled by transnational corporations: Any suggestion that ‘the corporations are the problem’ leads to instant marginalisation. In a quest to be accepted by the big kids, many green groups have quietly lost much of their intellectual and moral bravery. Those who dare to challenge either corporatedefined globalisation or its underlying economic rationalist, neoliberal philosophy are quickly dismissed as fringe dwellers (Walker 2001, p. 23). So, the green movement is at a crossroads. A cursory glance at the activity of many mainstream NGOs would increasingly link the mainstream movement with the ‘progressive’ corporations and a world-view which embraces a benevolent capitalism. This is what some opinion-polling says ‘the public’ wants. But in an era where there is unprecedented power being taken by transnational corporations and, arguably, an equally unparalleled globalisation of resistance to this power, there are some questions the large green groups must ask themselves. Walker believes green groups must not delude themselves. While individual transnational corporations may work with green groups on specific projects, they are ultimately driven by a quest for profits and many of them will actively engage in the processes and forums, such as the WEF, which seek to increase the influence of corporate rule (Walker 2001, pp. 23–24).

A green state? It is arguable that the real long-term interests of business are in safeguarding the environment on which future enterprise is inescapably dependent. Unfortunately, in the meantime, businesses compete with each other to increase profits and reduce costs, and so frequently harm the environment. As Mary Jane Patterson argues, the conditions for ‘natural capitalism’ are unlikely to arise from the market itself: ‘They will have to be imposed by co-operative, collective action—by governments and other organisations of civil society’ (cited in Walker 2001b, p. 23). In other words, as Cam Walker


The green movement 231 concludes, a framework for sustainable societies will be developed through an intensely political struggle, not through a benevolent, green ‘invisible hand of the market’. Market forces cannot be trusted to achieve sustainability (Walker 2001b, p. 23). Is a ‘green state’ in capitalist society possible? Marx has argued that it is precisely because of the competition between capitalists that the state is so necessary and useful to capitalists as a collectivity, to stand apart from any section of them and act in ways that protect their shared interests in perpetuating capitalism. Might not a moderately green state, in enforcing upon companies generally the ecological concerns of the society, be acting in the long-term interests of the capitalist class as a whole by protecting the environment upon which capitalists depend for sustainable profit-making?

The record of Australian governments In 1974, the Whitlam government passed the Environment Protection (Impact of Proposals) Act, to prevent a state government being able to behave again as the Tasmanian government had over the flooding of Lake Pedder. Federal government intervention since that Whitlam legislation prevented mining at Coronation Hill, sandmining of Fraser Island, logging of the Daintree and the damming of the Franklin (Doyle 2000, p. 176). These stand as high points in state action to defend the environment, but this legislation has recently been undone by the Howard government. In 2001 it passed the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act, which transfers back to the states greater power over environmental issues and limits the federal government’s role to six ‘nationally significant’ categories: world heritage; wetlands of international importance; threatened species and communities; listed migratory species; nuclear actions; and Commonwealth marine activities (Grenfell 2001, p. 159). Environmentalists see this as decimating two decades of environmental legislation by handing over large slabs of Commonwealth powers to ‘the resource exploitation-oriented states’ (Doyle 2000, p. 176). State authorities in Australia do not protect the environment, even when charged to do so, according to Drew Hutton: There is often moderately effective environmental legislation across a range of areas but there is little political will for strong enforcement and, despite having a considerable number of able and committed officers, many of the regulatory agencies are characterised by inertia,


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Power, Profit and Protest malaise, under-resourcing and, in some cases, outright ‘capture’ by the very industries these agencies are charged with regulating (Hutton 2000, p. 24).

For example, for the past 30 years the various forestry departments have tended to have too close a relationship with the forest industry, causing a clear conflict of interest. Irrigation-based industries such as cotton and rice growing exert similar influence. Worse still, the 1993–94 Queensland inquiry into toxic waste dumping heard evidence from Mines Department environmental officers that some of the worst environmental problems were being caused by big companies such as BHP and MIM and that regulators on the ground were being officially dissuaded from enforcing the law in relation to these companies (Hutton 2000, pp. 25–26). On 14 January 2002, an FoE press release announced ‘Radioactive Spill Exposes Regulatory Failure’ and demanded stronger regulation of uranium mining in South Australia following another major accident involving radioactive material at the Beverley mine. ‘The spill is one of a series of accidents that show a failure of both state and federal approval processes and regulation of nuclear sites’ (FoE website). As Hutton observes, a major element of the strategy for moving to ecologically sustainable development has to be ensuring that institutional arrangements for achieving this are up to the task; and at the core of these arrangements must be comprehensive legislation backed up by effective enforcement (Hutton 2000, p. 27). Governments also actively support the aims of environmentally unsound industries. Despite their environmentalist rhetoric, the Hawke and Keating Labor governments in fact provided business with greater certainty over decisions concerning resource exploitation. State bureaucracies defend the interests of such industries, especially the forest industry. On 3 May 1993, the New South Wales Forestry Commission closed approximately 100 square kilometres of Bulga State Forest to the public and commenced proceedings in the Equity Division of the Supreme Court, seeking orders preventing people other than loggers from entering the closed area of the forest. The application was refused. Amendments to the Forestry Act introduced in 1994 in Tasmania provide a maximum penalty of $20 000 and/or one year’s imprisonment for interfering with a logging truck; in addition, companies can seek compensation for any loss they may have suffered. On 1 June 1998, the Victorian government passed regulations making it a criminal offence to enter a ‘forest operations zone’. Loggers are exempt (Johnson 1998, pp. 46, 49–50). Assessing the record of governments during the 1990s in making hard


The green movement 233 environmental decisions that are opposed by the major resource industries, Hutton and Connors conclude that Labor governments have ‘mediocre to bad records’ and Coalition governments have been ‘disastrous’ (Hutton and Connors 1999, p. 264). At the Sixth Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change—held in The Hague in November 2000— Australia aligned itself with the United States in fighting hard to avoid making reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. Amongst other concessions, Australia wanted unlimited carbon trading—that is, buying credit for reductions other countries make; to count ‘sinks’ (forests and grasslands which absorb carbon) as being effectively a reduction in emissions; and little punishment for countries that fail to meet Kyoto targets (Settle 2001b, p. 26). In preparation for this convention, the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics had charged $50 000 for any organisation that wished to join the policy defining committee, effectively promoting business input and denying entry to NGOs. Amongst other damaging policies, Howard’s government also ceased funding Macquarie University’s Climate Change Centre, resulting in its closure; abolished the Energy Research and Development Corporation; cut spending to energy-efficient programs by 50 per cent; refused to make retention of native bushland a condition of grants from the Natural Heritage Trust; and continued to massively subsidise the cost of diesel fuel to mining companies (Doyle 2000, p. 178; Hutton and Connors 1999, p. 246). According to Tim Doyle: The government continually advocates free-market, radical libertarian solutions to environmental problems, diminishing the role of active public and community sectors in environmental monitoring, regulation and problem-solving. In contrast, the input of large corporate interests into the shaping of government policy is ever-increasing. This free-market ideology, ushed in by the Labor Party, but in a far purer form under the coalition, now threatens environmental movements directly (Doyle 2000, p. 178). The weakness of the state in relation to environmental regulation is part of a wider problem engendered by globalisation, which has increased further the power of corporations in relation to governments. Although capital flight is hardly at issue, since Australia has key resources that capital cannot exploit elsewhere, the state is nonetheless reluctant to insist that industry be environmentally responsible and should also bear the cost of it. Companies


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frequently avoid the costs associated with rehabilitation of contaminated sites, which means either the rehabilitation does not occur or it is done at public expense (Hutton 2000, p. 26). Inasmuch as government forces industry to behave, it helps to pay for the inconvenience out of taxation revenue collected mainly from pay-as-you-earn (PAYE) wage and salary workers. Much of the increased spending on the environment is financial support for industries adversely affected by green decisions; and comparatively little of this taxpayers’ money is spent on positive environmental initiatives (Age, 16 August 1989, p. 23). Environment spending has become another of the many ways in which the state subsidises private industry.

The limits to greening the state Radical environmentalist critiques suggest that apparent ‘greening’ of the state in the form of environmental administrators in government departments can in fact act against environmental interests. For example, according to Damien Grenfell, the federal government’s environment department played a critical role—along with the mine owners and the uranium industry—in justifying the presence of the Jabiluka mine. The issue highlighted the extent to which the creation and development of a ‘green administration’ within the state can serve to justify government policy on the environment in the face of protests rather than rectify environmental problems (Grenfell 2001, p. 154). Grenfell argues that the concerns of the environment movement have not achieved a significant transformation within the patterns of practice of the state or changes in terms of a general framework in which state policies are made: ‘Instead, projects such as Jabiluka demonstrate a failure of the state in Australia to adapt to the challenges of ecological management, particularly when it would mean that environmental protection would come at significant economic cost’ (Grenfell 2001, p. 146). Former ACF director Phillip Toyne commented regretfully in 1998 that, despite lipservice to environmental concerns, little has changed: ‘Economic growth, particularly in the harder climate of the 1990s, remains the central mantra of government’ (Toyne 1998, p. 17). Government green initiatives have generally been unable to confront and overcome the deep resistance amongst business interests to concerted stateimposed greening. Concerned always that private enterprise should prosper, the state in capitalist society is not good at arguing against the free enterprise values it otherwise upholds. Robyn Eckersley’s arguments about ‘Greening the Modern State’ are ultimately pessimistic, because ‘only the state can tackle the ecological myopia of the market’, and yet:


The green movement 235 any concerted attempt to regulate private investment and management decisions to a point where negative ecological externalities are eliminated (as distinct from merely ameliorated) would be deeply inimical to the interests of private capital and likely to lead to a capital strike or flight. Governments simply cannot risk serious economic dislocation or a cessation of growth, as either of these is likely to bring about their demise. These contradictory imperatives—to appease public concern over the ecological degradation and maintain private capital accumulation—are not resolvable. They can only ever be managed, and usually only at the margins through incremental change. Successful management requires cultivating at least the semblance of consensus while effectively maintaining policies and institutions that appease those groups (capital, labour) whose support is vital for ongoing capital accumulation (Eckersley 1996, pp. 82, 102). In any case, state intervention in general fell from favour in the 1980s and 1990s. As Hutton and Connors note, conservationists’ campaigns were pushing governments to take a stronger regulatory role on the environment, but domestic and international pressures were forcing governments to question the efficacy of regulation itself (Hutton and Connors 1999, p. 259). The radical campaigns and campaigners of the 1970s and 1980s brought about a situation where governments sought to contain dissent by the incorporation of green activists into policy-making roles and by mandatory lipservice to environmental concerns. A prime example of incorporation is the way in which the ACF was drawn into the Hawke Labor ecologically sustainable development (ESD) working group process of the late 1980s and early 1990s. Optimistic at first, the ACF described the process as ‘an attempt to develop environmentally friendly development plans for tourism, mining, fisheries, agriculture, transport, energy use and conservation, and manufacturing’ (ACF annual report 1989–90). However, the ACF soon learnt the dangers of engagement with the enemy, as Blythe McLennan’s research reveals. Between April 1991 and February 1992, the ACF produced a series of newsletters on its involvement in the ESD process entitled ‘Dancing with Wolves’. In these, it complained that the emphasis on consensus meant the most contentious issues were ignored or bypassed and only ‘lowest common denominator’ decisions could be reached, which Sharon Beder has described as ‘the more conservative and


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“safe” policy options . . . rather than more radical, dramatic change’. The ACF was concerned, too, that the process was ‘silent and behind closed doors, alienating, or inaccessible to many’. Not only was the exclusive nature of this corporatist process at odds with the participatory ethos of the environment movement, it also ensured the ACF participants in the process were weakened by separation from their natural supporters, who were left well and truly outside the process. At the same time, the ACF was constrained by its participation in the process, such that civil society was depleted and tensions within the environment movement, between reformers and more militant activists, were accentuated (McLennan 2001, esp. pp. 37, 39, 40, 48; see also Beder 1991, pp. 53–56; Beder 1996). McLennan concludes that the ACF’s experience in the ESD process proved to be an example of ‘cooption’, as defined by John Dryzek, rather than ‘benign political inclusion’ (Dryzek 1996, pp. 475–87). The incorporation of environmentalists into decision-making processes placates public concern that environmental issues need to be treated seriously and encourages the media to depict continuing militant activist environmentalists, such as the anti-logging campaigners and the Jabiluka Action Group, as sore losers in a system that is now assumed to have adequate mechanisms for considering environmental impacts. This fragments the movement, making it even easier for governments and corporations to manipulate lobbyists and official representatives of environmental organisations. Union leaders have long been subject to such processes of incorporation; environmentalists are now a regular target. As with union leaders, incorporation is neither an inevitable nor a permanent condition. Senator Bob Brown is an example of a committed environmentalist uncorrupted by the life of the professional politician, who has effectively used this platform to further environmental and humanitarian issues. Brown also expends considerable effort behind the scenes in negotiating on behalf of the environment, but knows from decades of experience that power to negotiate is enhanced by continuing protest. In September 2000, Brown joined with the S11 protesters, while Victorian Premier Bracks praised the police who were wielding batons against them. According to Brown: In a world where laws are made for money and property, those of us who hold, in even higher esteem, values such as beauty, naturalness and obligation to future generations, are left to challenge the law or defy it. After all, laws are not made in heaven, but in parliaments


The green movement 237 where the vested interests of the wealthy often usurp public interest and commonsense. So laws can end up restricting and snaring the true public interests of the people, of otherwise law-abiding citizens (Environmental Defender’s Office 1998, p. 3).

Ebbing of the green tide? Commentators on environmental issues have referred to the ‘ebbing’ of the green tide and the ‘institutionalisation’ or ‘routinisation’ of environmental issues, due to the acceptance by mainstream society of the importance of environmental concerns and the partial accommodation by governments to the extent of this concern. This is a moment of danger for environmental politics, for people are too easily persuaded that governments now really do care about the environment and are properly responding to the urgency of Greens Senator Bob Brown speaking at the S11 protest, Melbourne, September 2000 (Susan Hawthorne, copyright 2000).


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the situation. Yet there is evidence that environmental problems are becoming ever more serious (see Yencken and Wilkinson 2000, pp. 18, 23, 24, 25), while governments are concerned mainly to appear to be environmentally concerned—to placate environmental organisations while in fact doing very little to confront the real problems. The apparent success of environmentalism—its ‘shift from the new and special to the expected and familiar’—has thrown large sections of society off guard at a crucial moment in the history of the planet. Jan Pakulski and Stephen Crook elaborate the dangers involved in this process of routinisation: Routinisation leads to political-ideological fragmentation, demobilisation, and a shift from a ‘moralistic-normative’ idiom to an ‘interest’ idiom. Protests, demonstrations and other value-laden mobilisations give way to more conventional lobbying and voting. Protest groups and movements transform into parties and quangos, and the polycephaly of charismatic mobilisers gives way to hierarchies of officials and bureaucrats who live ‘for and off ’ politics (Pakulski and Crook 1998, p. 12). There has not, in fact, been an ‘ebbing’ of the green tide, for environmental concerns ‘have spread widely, diversified, and detached themselves from their original social and political carriers’. Rather, the apparent downturn in environmental politics from the high-water mark of 1988–90 is explained by its routinisation: ‘the environment movement has entered the repertoire of “routine” public concerns, that is, concerns that are familiar and normal, and therefore less affected by moral panics, vicissitudes of electoral contests and media fashions’ (Pakulski and Crook 1998, p. 19). Though routinisation is indicative of past successes, it is also the means by which the green challenge is managed by forces resistant to change. If environmental spokespersons representing the major green organisations are routinely consulted and therefore distracted continually by top-level negotiations, the public profile of the movement is reduced and the movement weakened as time, energy and resources are diverted from grassroots activities and campaigning. The perils of incorporation have already been discussed but, most importantly, too much emphasis on lobbying results in less effective lobbying. In the United States too, according to Earth Island Journal, most national environmental organisations are ‘sincerely but futilely attempting to negotiate’ as lobbyists in Washington, where the boundaries of the debate and rules of etiquette are already clearly drawn—by those who do


The green movement 239 not wish to be unduly influenced by lobbyists (Beder 2000, p. 283). Given the reluctance of the state to be green, it is only because of the green movement’s capacity to mount concerted campaigns and mobilise public concern that lobbyists carry any clout.

New wave environmentalism? Sharon Beder argues that a new wave of environmentalism is now called for—‘one that will engage in the task of exposing corporate myths and methods of manipulation. One that opens up new areas and ideas to public debate rather than following an old agenda set by corporations’ (Beder 2000, p. 283). Such is the conclusion of the strong environmentalist component in the anti-corporate globalisation movement discussed in the next chapter. And, as with this movement generally, environmental activism is in the process of being transformed by the use of new communications technologies, in ways that mitigate against the effects of incorporation. Since the late 1980s, according to Brent Hoare (1998), environmental activists have been communicating with each other electronically across the globe, developing networks at very little expense and exchanging ‘incredibly useful resources’. Among the exciting developments in radical cyberspace are the globally connected ‘Critical Mass’ monthly cycle rides (www.nccnsw.org. au/members/cmass). The Sydney Critical Mass ride arose from the momentum gained during the 1995 campaign against the M2 tollway through northwest Sydney. It ‘continues the push for sustainable transportation policies as well as providing an empowering and joyful opportunity for concerned individuals to meet, swap ideas and have some fun in the process of bringing about social change’ (Hoare 1998, p. 25). Use of new technology, or ‘computer mediated communication’ (CMC), has boosted the strength of grassroots groups in relation to peak environmental organisations. Jennifer Pickerill explains how and why: Traditionally, large centralised organisations have wielded significant influence within environmental movements because they had the resources to do so, and resources reflected what actions environmentalists were able to take. With the use of CMC, however, the need for extensive resources and a centralised organisational structure to co-ordinate actions is reduced . . . The


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Power, Profit and Protest use of CMC has disproportionately benefited small, grasssroot groups and individual activists linked only into fluid networks using cellular structures, who often suffer from a lack of resources, making the components within the environmental movement more equal to each other . . . Thus CMC use contributes to the building of a robust network of small environmental groups and the rising importance, and power of, grassroot groups among global environmental movements (Pickerill 2001, p. 1).

She concludes that environmentalists in Britain and Australia have grasped the opportunities of the technology in reducing the possibility of containment by opponents, aiding interactions within their networks, using a variety of tactics in campaigns and distributing their alternative media. These new interactions triggered by the use of CMC are likely to produce new collaborations and new forms of environmental protest, particularly internationally (Pickerill 2001, p. 9). It remains to be seen whether these new forms of environmental protest will amount to a significant and effective second wave of environmental protest. Whatever the form, protest appears a safer and more effective option than to place too much emphasis on engagement with either employers or institutions which almost invariably protect short-term business interests rather than longer-term human interests. Hutton and Connors note that, despite the many international conferences and conventions, all the major indicators show a worsening of global environmental health. For this reason, the environment movement will continue to be a major challenge to modern industrial society. Moreover, it is involved in a conflict that will not be resolved without major social change: In an era when the major ideological response of elites around the world to contemporary economic problems is to resurrect neo-liberalism and to reassert technocratic approaches to decisionmaking, a worldwide movement emphasising the need to limit resource usage and the generation of wastes is a revolutionary challenge indeed (Hutton and Connors 1999, pp. 265–66). While negotiation in the corridors of power might have a role to play at times, sustainable activism is more likely to influence states and transnational agencies, precisely because these institutions are reluctant to confront


The green movement 241 business in the interests of environmental protection. They will only do so at all if a high degree of political mobilisation insists upon it. As Tim Doyle comments: ‘Governments and corporations would not be remotely green . . . without the existence of the more non-institutional parts of the environment movement’ (Doyle 2000, p. xviii).


5 Anticapitalism and anticorporate globalisa tion

On 1 January 1994, the day the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) came into force, the Zapatistas of Mexico declared: ‘Ya Basta! Enough is enough.’ NAFTA banned subsidies to indigenous farm cooperatives. The Zapatistas responded with insurrection, taking control of San Christobel de las Casas and five towns in Chiapas, the country’s poorest provinces, where four million indigenous Mexicans experience grinding poverty and humiliation. Zapatismo demands both indigenous rights and workers’ rights, for millions of Mexicans work for starvation wages for American transnational corporations. In 1996 the Zapatistas hosted the first Encuentro (Encounter) for Humanity and Against Neo-Liberalism. Zapatista leader Subcomandante Marcos insisted that the poverty and desperation in Chiapas was a more advanced version of something happening all around the world (Klein 2000b, p. 25). With neo-liberalism as the clearly defined enemy, the movement constantly opposes multiple oppressions such as race, gender and sexual orientation, while emphasising


Anti-capitalism and anti-corporate globalisation 243 the centrality of economic exploitation and the crucial role of workers in the struggle against neo-liberalism (Roman and Arregui 1998, pp. 133, 139). In late 1995, France was rocked by a huge wave of strikes by around five million workers in protest against reductions to the minimum wage and cuts to welfare, health, education and the public service. Despite the chaos and inconveniences, citizens throughout France supported the action. A British journalist could not find a single traffic-jam bound commuter opposed to the strike (evidence cited in Starr 2000, p. 48). The movement received overwhelming support, according to Pierre Bourdieu, because it was seen as a necessary defence of the social advances of the whole society, concerning work, public education, public transport—indeed, everything which is public: ‘In a rough and confused form it outlined a genuine project for a society, collectively affirmed and capable of being put forward against what is being imposed by the dominant politics’ (Bourdieu 1998, pp. 52–53). In 1998, the OECD scrapped the proposed Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI) it had been negotiating since 1995, due to the strength of the campaign against it. The MAI would have rendered government-funded sectors of the economy, such as public schools and public health care systems, liable to litigation from private enterprises on the grounds that their receipt of government subsidies constituted unfair competition for private providers of such services; it would have stripped governments of their last remaining powers to protect ‘the commons’ against the predatory and privatising predilections of multinational corporations. For the first time, a campaign led by an international alliance of non-government organisations managed to force a neo-liberal proposal off the rails (Goodman and Maguire 2000, p.17). In Australia, many of the individuals and groups who participated in the antiMAI campaign subsequently established the Australian Fair Trade and Investment Network (AFTINET), which focuses on the WTO and reaches across the NGO sector in Australia, encompassing most of the main national organisations. It influenced the ACTU to adopt a more critical position on free trade, and in mid-2000 the ACTU forced the ALP to engage in its first genuine debate on the issue since the early 1980s. ‘The anti-MAI campaign,’ according to Josee Johnston and James Goodman (2001, pp. 11–12), ‘posed a normative challenge to corporate globalisation, and gave rise to powerful generative themes, especially surrounding the need to counter corporate control of economic processes with democratic citizen control.’ Even before the spectacular mobilisation in Seattle late in 1999 (discussed below), these three instances represented some of the important indicators that, during the 1990s, the globalising of the rich and powerful was


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starting to be met with the globalising of resistance. Countless examples reveal that neo-liberalism is beginning to generate its opposite in the shape of an anti-capitalist mood (Callinicos 2000, p. 122). The mounting discontent of the 1990s is surveyed in more detail in the section on ‘Resistance mounts’.

Naming globalisation and its discontents As the Introduction stressed, the term ‘globalisation’ really requires a qualifying adjective—such as ‘neo-liberal’, ‘corporate’ or ‘free-market’—in order to depict more accurately its true nature. This qualification is necessary, too, to comprehend the opposition to globalisation.

Rejecting the ‘anti-globalisation’ label It is not globalisation in the obvious sense—the greater interconnectedness of the world economy—that is being contested, but the way in which this interconnectedness currently operates. The harmful aspect of globalisation is the neo-liberal emphasis on the market as lone arbiter. For Noam Chomsky: Globalisation is a real power play on the part of concentrated corporate power. It is trying to develop a particular form of global integration which is in the interests of financial institutions. What happens to the population is incidental (quoted in Glanz 2000, p. 8). For radical critics of globalisation, it is the neo-liberal form of globalisation that constitutes its defining feature, its driving force, and explains its lamentably inequitable consequences. As Friends of the Earth anti-corporate activist Carolyn Welch puts it: We are not anti-globalisation. What we are opposed to is unregulated, unfettered globalisation, because it is eroding the power of the poor. It serves the needs of corporations and doesn’t help people in poverty or prevent the destruction of the environment (Age, 22 April 2000, p. 7). The protesters see themselves as internationalists aspiring to transnational solidarity in order to challenge not global connectedness, but rather the


Anti-capitalism and anti-corporate globalisation 245 exploitative and undemocratic nature which they claim globalisation under neo-liberal auspices necessarily assumes. The S11 movement, which organised the protests against the World Economic Forum (WEF) meeting in Melbourne 11–13 September 2000—hence the term S11—argued that capitalism, with all its pretences to universalism and globalism, continually plays people off against each other on the basis of ‘the nation’. For instance, people are forever being urged to punish themselves by accepting lower incomes and living and working conditions for the sake of the ‘national economy’: In short, the kind of globalisation the WEF participants want is one on their terms. Their globalisation is one where people are confined but capital can move freely. Their globalisation is one where boundaries and divisions are used against us to keep us segmented, repressed and fighting among ourselves. With a rallying call to extend globalisation to include the free movement of people and a universal guarantee of liberty and freedom, a ‘revolutionary globalisation from below’, this S11 leaflet concluded: ‘We are the real globalists’ (‘Think Globally, Act Locally’ leaflet, September 2000). S11 organiser David Glanz objected to the characterisation of the S11 protesters in Melbourne as backward-looking, insular and nationalist: Nothing could be further from the truth. S11 was an internationalist mobilisation. We welcome the free movement of peoples, above all of refugees. We welcome the sharing of culture and knowledge. We welcome the growing solidarity between US unionists, European environmentalists and Third World farmers. But we are bitterly opposed to a system that guarantees only one kind of global freedom—the freedom of corporate capital (Glanz 2000, p. 7). S11 is discussed in more detail later in this chapter. However, no matter how much the critics of corporate globalisation explain the real nature of their objections, their opposition is most commonly branded in the media and by politicians as ‘anti-globalisation’. As Canadian journalist and anti-corporate campaigner Naomi Klein observes, this term makes the movement vulnerable to stock dismissals like: ‘If you are against trade and globalization why do you drink coffee?’(Klein 2001c, p. 87). Antonio Negri insists it is ‘comic’ to talk of the ‘anti-globalisation’ forces:


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The S11 mobilisation outside Melbourne’s Crown Casino, 11–13 September 2000 (Susan Hawthorne, copyright 2000).


Anti-capitalism and anti-corporate globalisation 247 As a good Marxist, I have never been against globalisation, merely against the current capitalist regime that dominates globalisation . . . I am a person who struggles against the capitalist command over globalisation (quoted in Smith, D. 2001, p. 39). Champions of neo-liberal globalisation prefer to use ‘anti-globalisation’ in order to imply that those who oppose them are hostile to internationalism, cosmopolitanism, technological progress and so on (see examples cited in Grenfell 2001, pp. 237, 244; Mier 2001, p. 6). This terminology is convenient to the neo-liberal globalisers, for it enables them more easily to present a false dichotomy: supposedly progressive cosmopolitan embrace of the global market or regressively xenophobic and protectionist nationalism. These are not the only positions available.

Conservative opposition to globalisation: the case of One Nation In Australia, this false dichotomy between forward-looking globalisation and backward-looking nationalism was sustained in the late 1990s by the fact that the most visible opponent of globalisation was precisely the kind preferred by the neo-liberal globalisers: the reactionary politics of Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party. Sections of the vulnerable classes of rural and regional Australia (and some suburban areas of Brisbane and Sydney) turned to One Nation in desperation, expressing their distress about globalisation and their alienation from the mainstream parties by voting for One Nation. There is no doubt that rural areas of Australia have been especially hardhit by many of the policies associated with globalisation, particularly the unleashing of market forces upon the countryside. The deregulation of primary production—the abandonment of guaranteed prices and markets— is reducing the income of many on the land and introducing a new economic insecurity. For example, deregulation of the dairy industry drove many smaller dairy farmers out of business. Market forces not only reduce workers’ real wages and salaries, but also threaten the economic livelihood of smaller employers and primary producers. Such circumstances provided fuel for One Nation, which purported to offer solutions to the discontents of globalisation by scapegoating indigenous Australians and non-white immigrants, appealing to people susceptible to ‘anti-internationalist’ arguments. One Nation supporters predominantly came from the struggling middle classes. A Sydney University anthropologist, Ghassan Hage, talking closely


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with Hanson supporters in the western suburbs of Sydney, found they were not workers or the unemployed—those whose jobs had ostensibly been ‘taken by Asians’—but the classic supporters of Fascism: those among the petty bourgeoisie who felt disgruntled, even though they were doing far better than most workers (McCalman 1998). Research published in 2001 confirmed that One Nation’s support base was overwhelmingly amongst traditional Coalition voters, especially in rural areas, who tend to be less economically secure than average Coalition voters (Goot and Watson 2001, esp. p. 183). In the mid-to late 1990s, it was the Hansonite response to globalisation that made the running, rather than any radical internationalist critique. This was due, in large part, to the near-disappearance of any identifiable left faction within the Labor Party and the debilitation of the left intelligentsia caused by postmodern inertia or the ceaseless distractions of attacks on higher education. Conley observes of the late 1990s: Hanson’s Right-wing attack on the globalisation project was more effective than Leftist protests, which had been unable to mobilise popular support despite the extent of public antipathy towards economic liberalism. Critics within the union movement had been marginalised by the union leadership’s co-optation to the globalisation agenda. And, in general, Leftist opponents of globalisation have not had the simple and vestigial message that Hanson generated. Indeed, progressive anti-globalisers were deeply concerned that they were being touted as ‘Hansonites’ (Conley 2001, pp. 225, 233). The lack, until recently, of a startlingly visible left critique of corporate globalisation not only bolstered One Nation’s position as a resort for those suffering its effects, but permitted One Nation-style prejudices to be seen as the characteristic hallmarks of dissent from globalisation. One Nation was therefore good publicity for globalisation, because it enabled the globalisers easily to demolish their most visible opponent as ignorant, anti-cosmopolitan, unsophisticated and bigoted.

The new internationalism: ‘anti-capitalist’ or ‘anti-corporate’? Since the Seattle protests late in 1999 raised the profile of the radical critics of globalisation, the globalisers have been obliged to wrestle with the


Anti-capitalism and anti-corporate globalisation 249 evidence and arguments of the internationalist critiques of corporate globalisation emanating from North American, European and other sources. A small number of Australian scholars have also played their part, against the general trend identified by Conley. The new wave of radical protests against corporate globalisation contradicts and circumvents conservative responses to globalisation. This book uses both the terms ‘anti-corporate’ and ‘anti-capitalist’ to describe the radical internationalist critique of neo-liberal globalisation, but acknowledges that ‘anti-corporate’ is less contentious and more inclusive than ‘anti-capitalist’. In Europe and Australia, ‘anti-capitalist’ is used by the movement’s most energetic participants and is understood to embrace anarchists as well as socialists, and all manner of people who are neither but who share a critical attitude towards capitalism. In Britain, too, ‘anticapitalist’ has entered normal media usage.1 However, ‘anti-corporate’ is the more common term in the United States.2 (Another emerging term in North America is ‘global justice movement’.) Amory Starr (2000) explains that ‘corporate’ refers to the operating principles typical of such enterprises, ‘such as prioritizing profit and growth over all other values; profiting on uncosted externalities, such as the environment, quality of life, workers’ health, stable jobs, and community; and pursuing the homogenization and increase of consumption in order to maximize markets’ (Starr 2000, p. xiv). All participants in the movement would object to these ‘operating principles’, whereas some might not insist they were ‘anti-capitalist’. Some are objecting only to the neo-liberal excesses of capitalism and especially the behaviour of transational corporations, while others are more revolutionary and wish to rid the planet of capitalism altogether. ‘Anti-corporate’ describes the orientation of all, but many would go further. Most importantly, ‘anti-corporate’ and ‘anti-capitalist’ are not the preferred terms of the globalisers, who deliberately brand their opposition as ‘anti-globalisation’. This new movement has also incorporated and subsumed many of the orientations and practices of radical new social movement activism; and elements of new social movement activism have even dissolved themselves into this new anti-corporate movement, inspired by its capacity to make connections between issues and build alliances between movements where previously there were none. It is clearly affected—and strengthened—by the new social movements. However, the new movement against corporate globalisation also represents a dramatic re-emergence of the project to abolish or ‘civilise’ capitalism, commenced by the labour movement but


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abandoned in recent times by labour and social democratic political parties around the world. It clearly builds on traditions laid down long ago by the various expressions of the labour movement which, for more than a century, asserted the need for international links between the world’s exploited, in order to overthrow or at least reform capitalism.

The old ‘anti-capitalist’ social movement At the end of the nineteenth century, the working class—primarily through the trade unions—founded Labor Parties in the various parts of Australia to represent working-class interests. Thus the industrial wing of the labour movement, the trade unions, is chronologically and logically prior to the political wing, the Labor Party. At Federation in 1901, the state-based Labor Parties assisted the formation of the Australian Labor Party (ALP) to operate in the federal sphere as the representative of the trade unions and workers generally. The Australian labour movement today is still understood to consist of these two wings: the industrial and the political. In general, the industrial wing, while suffering decline in the past two decades, has not aroused the strong feelings of resentment and betrayal that the political wing has, especially in recent years. It was the early labour movement’s anti-capitalist rhetoric and redistributive aims, which prefigure the assumptions and arguments of the new anti-capitalist movement, that enabled the labour movement to operate effectively as a social movement. It was able to encourage feelings of working-class identity and to mobilise workers on the basis of perceived common needs and interests in opposition to those who were more affluent. The pursuit of a greater share for workers of the wealth created by labour constituted the defining mission of the social movement of labour. As the Introduction notes, new social movement theorists from the late 1970s onwards pointed to the process of labour’s decline as a social movement, a gradual development that commenced during the second half of the twentieth century and, in Australia, had become glaringly apparent by the time of the Labor governments of the 1980s. By 1997, in his mammoth survey of contemporary social movements worldwide, The Power of Identity, Manuel Castells effectively dismissed the labour movement as a social movement. His rationale was that, by comparison with the power of identity, ‘the labour movement fades away as a major source of social cohesion and workers’ representation’ (Castells 1997, p. 354).


Anti-capitalism and anti-corporate globalisation 251 Castells’ comment is revealing, because it assumes that class cannot be a form of identity. The Introduction emphasises the extent to which the politics of identity encouraged by the rise of the new social movements did indeed preclude class from its considerations. Many labour movement and left responses to identity politics have implied that the politics of identity is in itself problematic. On the contrary, it is not identity politics per se that is problematic, but the comparative absence within contemporary political culture of a politics of class identity—an absence for which the political wing of the labour movement shares responsibility (for elaboration, see Burgmann 2001a). If the basis of a social movement lies in the acknowledgment of a common interest between a specific group of people against another group of people, then the labour movement’s retreat from a politics of class identity is a crucial aspect of its decline as a social movement. The decline of workingclass identity politics in the past two decades has ensured that, although the reality of class inequalities has become more stark, perceptions of this reality have become less clear-sighted. The labour movement is not entirely to blame for its own decline. Circumstances well beyond the control of the labour movement, such as technological changes and gentrification of inner-city areas, have also served to undermine the politics of class identity. Nonetheless, approximately twothirds of the Australian population are blue-collar and white-collar workers who sell their ability to work to employers and who exercise no substantial degree of control over their own labour or the labour of others; dependants of workers; unemployed; or dependent upon government benefits (Fieldes 1996, p. 23). Despite much talk of the rise of the ‘aspirational’ middle class, middle-income groups are declining as a proportion of the total population and are even projected to experience negative growth over the next five years, while lower level occupations will continue to grow (Shah et al 2002). It does not seem especially contentious, then, to assume that the majority retains a material interest in greater rather than less socio-economic equality. In other words, there remains a strong electoral base for redistributive politics and appeals to ‘working-class’ interests. Ignoring this—and even moving in the opposite direction—is one of the important ways in which the labour movement has pursued policies which have aided its own decline as a social movement. Until the mid-1980s, critics of Labor’s rightward drift tended to blame Labor misrepresentation of working-class interests on fear of electoral repercussions (e.g. Burgmann and Macintyre 1988, pp. 128–29). However, from the mid-1980s, Labor promoted neo-liberal policies to assist ‘globalisation’ in the interests of


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dominant Australian corporations, despite the fact that these reversals of traditional Labor policies actually threatened electoral repercussions because they were not popular with most voters, and certainly not with working-class voters (Bramble 1996, pp. 31–62; Sklair 1996, pp. 1–30). Labor became the alternative party of capital rather than the party of labour. This process of ‘desocial-democratisation’ has occurred in labour and social democratic parties elsewhere, suggesting that global capitalism has transformed social democracy more than the latter has transformed capitalism (Moschonas 2001). Tom Conley (2001) provides a useful summary of the Hawke and Keating governments’ ‘love affair’ with neo-liberal globalisation. Over its 13 years of office, the Labor government increasingly saw economic liberalism as the most appropriate response to the combination of world and domestic political economic pressures. The initial and comprehensive liberalisation of finance, the shift to macroeconomic restriction, the turn to tariff liberalisation and support for free trade, the gradual but eventually substantial liberalisation of labour relations, the corporatisation and privatisation of state enterprises and functions, the streamlining and targeting of social security arrangements, the decreases in taxation for business and the wealthy, the myriad of other microeconomic reforms—all were argued to be fundamental components of effective adjustment to global economic changes and to building a more competitive economy and productive society. As economic liberal policies were adopted, particularly in finance and trade, pressures for further economic liberal policy changes intensified (2001, p. 225). Labor saw its task as being ‘to force change against the wishes of many in its own constituency’ (Conley 2001, p. 230). The consequences for working-class voters were dire. During the first six years of these Labor governments, between 1983 and 1989, labour’s share of national income fell from 74 per cent to 64 per cent, with a corresponding rise in capital’s share from 26 per cent to 36 per cent (Stilwell 1993, p. 19). Between 1982 and 1990, the share of the top 20 per cent of income earners increased from 48 per cent to 53 per cent, while the share of the bottom 40 per cent fell from 8 per cent to 6 per cent (Raskall, cited in Mendes 1998, p. 34). Between 1985 and 1994, the Hawke and Keating governments presided over Australia becoming the fourth most unequal society in after-


Anti-capitalism and anti-corporate globalisation 253 tax income out of 21 leading Western countries (for comparative figures from the Luxembourg Income Study, see Frankel 2001, p. 3). In the fifteen years to 1996/97, the earnings of full-time employees on low wages fell by an average of $4 per week, while the earnings of those at the top rose $229 per week (Australian, 17–18 June 2000, p. 1). In a 1993 speech, Investing in the Nation, Keating boasted that corporate profits were higher than in the 1970s and that wage restraint was a major factor in lifting the corporate profit share in GDP (Paul Keating, quoted in Johnson 1996, p. 184). To the injury of declining living standards for wage-earners was added the insult of a Labor prime minister bragging about the situation. Also remarkable was the fact that, despite continuing support for the arbitration system amongst most employers, the Labor governments chose to cooperate with the extreme neo-liberal employers’ agenda, abolishing wage indexation from 1986 and making wage increases dependent on productivity increases and the elimination of so-called ‘restrictive work practices’. When the ALP government went even further, supporting the ‘militant minority’ of employers with the adoption of enterprise bargaining, the move met with at best lukewarm support from many employers and employer associations. Incredibly, and again with ACTU blessing, the 1993 Industrial Relations Reform Act allowed the Industrial Relations Commission to broker non-union enterprise agreements. As Peter Sheldon and Louise Thornthwaite (2000) point out, this provided employers with their first real opportunity to develop a distinct non-union sector similar to that which employers have carved out in the United States. In the run-up to the 1996 federal election, the major parties’ polling discerned a strong undercurrent of resentment. While John Howard capitalised on this research, with his conservative appeals to the sentiments underpinning One Nation’s popularity, the Labor Party chose not to speak to this discontent. In an acute observation, McKenzie Wark notes: The resentment the public heard about during the election was resentment of dole bludgers and welfare cheats. The resentment the public didn’t hear about, because Labor neglected to articulate it, was resentment of big business paying itself huge bonuses while downsizing the work force (Wark 1999, p. 129). In terms of first-preference votes, the 1996 election result was the Labor Party’s worst result since 1931, because it was deserted by much of its traditional working-class base (Battin 2000, p. 41; Scott 2000; Conley 2001, p. 228).


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This was hardly surprising. In government, Labor’s consistent ideological message was adjustment to globalisation and the market: ‘The private sector was increasingly argued to be the only legitimate creator of economic growth and praise for the market was accompanied by a downgrading of the role of the public sector’ (Conley 2001, p. 240). In singing this tune, along with the changes to the industrial relations system, the labour movement was aiding its own demise. Although much of its working-class base returned to Labor in 1998, after several years of Coalition government and a short period (1996–98) in which the Labor Party in opposition moved back to some of Labor’s policy traditions (Scott 2000, p. 256), working-class disenchantment has become increasingly apparent since 1998 as voters have, in different ways, expressed their impatience with a Labor Party that cannot capitalise on the discontents of globalisation, because it agrees with too much of the neo-liberal agenda. Since 1998, according to Scott, there has been an influx back into the ranks of ALP parliamentarians and advisers of individuals from the neo-liberal right: ‘Rather than adopt more interventionist and redistributive economic policies to consolidate and further extend Labor’s support, they prefer to promote punitive and regressive social policies.’ Under Beazley’s second term as leader, the ALP nationally shifted back towards rhetoric which repudiated Labor’s policy traditions as mere ‘sentimentality’ rather than recognising them as ‘the essential ideological fuel which the party in fact needs to keep on running’ (Scott 2000, p. 257). Philip Mendes considers that the ALP is unlikely to abandon its neo-liberal agenda because of ‘the extent to which free market ideas have become entrenched in ALP philosophy over the past two decades’; thus any movement back towards social democratic ideas would require a radical break with the party’s now dominant assumptions (Mendes 1998, p. 36). In responding to a 2001 survey that showed increasing support for unionism, a WorkersOnline editorial commented on Labor MPs’ sorry record: The tragedy is that too few of them are prepared to make a public stand for unions, instead treating them like an embarrassing, but thankfully, distant relative. When was the last time you heard a Labor MP really stand up for unions? When was the last time someone put their head up and paid tribute to the hundreds of officials, organisers, delegates and rank and filers who fight for the rights of workers day in day out? When was the last time a Labor MP proudly spoke of the unions’ thankless work in taking on giant


Anti-capitalism and anti-corporate globalisation 255 corporations or amoral small businesses to ensure that workers are not trodden all over? WorkersOnline was also quick to point out the irony in the fact that the survey had revealed the electorate displayed more sympathy for unions than did Labor MPs (WorkersOnline no. 103, 20 July 2001). Simon Crean marked his assumption to leadership of the Labor Party at the end of 2001 by embarking on a campaign to reduce union influence in party affairs. The left of the ALP did not fight against the neo-liberalisation of the Labor Party in any meaningful way. Nothing in its response suggests it could be relied upon to turn the tide in the future. From the perspective of the new anti-capitalism, Tony Dewberry and John Tully conclude: The Hawke and Keating ‘reforms’ put the ALP on the side of the corporate assault on the postwar gains of the labour movement. In this process, the labour parties have been agents of change, but not of progressive social change. They have been the staunch allies of the likes of Reagan and Thatcher in their implementation of the neo-liberal agenda. Opponents of that agenda have now taken the political stage worldwide, with Melbourne’s S11 protests the latest manifestation of a global wave of protest that is feminist, ecological, internationalist and anti-capitalist . . . Rebuilding the labour movement, and cutting ties with a party that is Labor in name only is essential if neo-liberalism is to be dealt the kind of historic defeat that is needed for our children to have a decent future (Dewberry and Tully 2000, pp. 23–24). In embracing the neo-liberal agenda from the early to mid-1980s onwards, the Labor Party’s abandonment of even the muted social democratic form of anti-capitalism to which it previously adhered has encouraged the emergence of a new anti-capitalist movement. The anticapitalist movement represents both a rebuke to the labour movement for discarding its role as social movement of the economically exploited, but also a resumption of that traditional role. In the new movement, unions could perform an important role, as recent developments show; unions could also choose to side with Labor politicians against anti-corporate protesters. The ambivalence of the trade union movement is strikingly evident in its response to the new protests. It is to these radical arguments against globalisation that we now turn.


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The case against neo-liberal globalisation The writings of anti-capitalists chart both the emergence of neo-liberal globalisation and its inequitable consequences.

Globalisation and the ascendancy of neo-liberalism Globalisation espouses and practices a distorted version of free-market capitalism that contradicts the work of those often cited as authorities by neoliberals: Adam Smith and David Ricardo. Smith’s Wealth of Nations (1776) insisted the market could produce beneficial results when capital was ‘rooted in place in the locality where its owner lived’, when ‘no buyer or seller is sufficiently large to influence the market price’ and as long as governments did not subsidise economic elites and defend the rich and propertied against the poor. Ricardo’s 1817 theory of ‘free trade’ maintained that trade between two countries could be mutually beneficial, but only if the participating countries both had full employment, if the total trade was balanced, if capital was prohibited from travelling between high- and low-wage countries, and if the countries could each produce an item at comparative advantage (Korten 1995, pp. 74–78). Free trade, as practised nowadays, is far from the mutually beneficial interactions envisaged by Smith and Ricardo. In 1997, US President Clinton justified free trade policies thus: ‘This is how 4 per cent of the world’s people can continue to hold 22 per cent of the world’s wealth’ (quoted in Mann 1998, p. 100). As Martin Khor of the Third World Network observed in 1997: ‘free trade always benefits the stronger partner’ (quoted in Starr 2000, p. 20). Free trade is one of the most significant components of globalisation. The 1994 Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade institutionalised ‘the right to free trade’ as having precedence over human, civil, environmental, workers’ and governmental rights (Starr 2000, pp. ix, vii). Any regulations that restrict market access or increase the costs of doing business are deemed barriers to free trade and must be rescinded. Thus free trade agreements provide no sanctions against labour and environmental infractions, but rather criminal sanctions against pirated compact disks (US Congressman David Bonier, quoted in Starr 2000, p. viii). The new regime of ‘free’ trade requires transnational agencies such as the WTO to enforce this freedom on those adversely affected by it. Free trade is really forced trade, in which local control over economies is superseded by the most


Anti-capitalism and anti-corporate globalisation 257 powerful global interests and subjected to their law (Starr 2000, p. 17). The ‘hidden hand’ of free market forces requires an iron fist. This distorted version of classical liberal economic theory, starting from a position of marginality in economics faculties prior to the 1970s, became accepted wisdom in most of these faculties during the 1970s. From here it spread to government departments and political parties, to newspaper editorialists and columnists. Starting from the premise that the market is invariably good and state intervention is usually bad, governments across the world experimented with varying doses of deregulation of capital and labour markets, liberalisation of trade and privatisation of public assets. Such ‘deregulation’ has in fact entailed extensive ‘re-regulation’ of the economy, via mandatory micro-regulations, in order to open it up to market competition (Grenfell 2001, pp. 237, 102). At first such policies were designated as ‘New Right’ but, as parties on the left of the mainstream political spectrum embraced these policies in a generally rightward movement, this nomenclature lost its meaning. Australians commonly use the term ‘economic rationalism’ to describe free-market ideas and policies, but in the international arena the accepted term is ‘neo-liberalism’. Ann Capling, Mark Considine and Michael Crozier detail the process by which neo-liberalism came to be ascendant in Australia, its penetration from the late 1970s onwards via the ‘dries’ in the Liberal Party (like John Howard), ‘a new generation of ALP members, who . . . began to look to markets for answers to some of Australia’s problems’; how, by the 1980s, neo-liberal think tanks and interest groups were flourishing, supported by mining and pastoral companies and the financial sector, ‘which all stood to benefit from a broad program of deregulation and liberalisation in Australia’ (Capling et al 1998, pp. 53–54). Michael Pusey has examined the extent to which most of Canberra’s leading public servants became committed to economic rationalism during the 1980s, and persuaded most politicians to think likewise (Pusey 1991; see also Nevile 1998). Mark Davis has detailed the money provided by companies in Australia to neo-liberal think-tanks and itemises the support offered in the media by economic leader-writers and influential free-market editors, and by newspaper columnists and radio talkback hosts; and ‘the uncanny knack of the new right for taking third-rate failed academics and turning them into a major cultural force’ (Davis 2001, pp. 7–8). Boris Frankel’s When the Boat Comes In (2001) provides a comprehensive and penetrating analysis of how Australia has been transformed in the age of globalisation. Globalisation is generally presented as inexorable and relentless, as progress and as something happening to capital, but it is a strategy and a


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rhetoric actively pursued by capital to increase profit levels: ‘Global economic integration is by no means a natural process; it is consciously driven by a single-minded policy’ (Martin and Schumann 1996, p. 8). Warren Magnusson argues that globalisation needs to be understood as the current project of the capitalist social movement. Although capitalism’s power is rarely understood as the effect of a social movement, the evidence easily supports such an understanding: Capitalism has its ideology, its exponents, its true believers. It rouses millions of people in its support, generates hundreds of political parties . . . It is a way of life that attracts fierce loyalty, and appears to offer people a means of solving all their problems . . . In terms of sustained activity, it is hard to think of anything that rivals this effort (Magnussen 1994, p. 637).

The consequences of neo-liberal globalisation Jeremy Brecher and Tim Costello identify the globalisation process as a planned international project on the part of corporations to achieve ‘downward leveling’—to drive all wages down by pitting workers everywhere against each other (Brecher and Costello 1994, pp. 4–5). The term ‘world best practice’, popular in globalisation rhetoric, could be renamed ‘world worst practice’ as far as the vast majority of people are concerned—employees, dependants of employees or unemployed people dependent on welfare systems constantly threatened by declining public expenditure. Federal Treasurer Peter Costello claims that in the twentieth century the poorest quarter of the world’s population became almost three times richer, therefore free trade is good for the poor (Costello 2001, p. 15). Unfortunately for Costello’s argument, this progress was made during the first threequarters of the twentieth century, especially the third quarter, when Keynesian policies reduced wealth and income disparities. The tendency for ‘increasing immiseration’ of the working class was restrained for much of the twentieth century, especially in the period between 1945 and 1975, when strong trade unions, social-democratic governments and Keynesian economic policies, and the bipolar world order, tempered somewhat the power of capital to have everything its own way. During the last quarter of the twentieth century, the embrace of neoliberalism has weakened the restraints upon capitalism that for a time ameliorated its tendencies to make the rich richer and the poor poorer. The


Anti-capitalism and anti-corporate globalisation 259 capitalism against which the anti-corporate movement defines itself is a highly manoeuvrable global capitalism characterised by its dynamic capacity for the destruction of non-market forms of social organisation. Andrew Milner and I argued in 1996 that globalising corporate capitalism is surprisingly like the nineteenth-century capitalism Marx and Engels described in the Communist Manifesto (Burgmann and Milner 1996, esp. p. 127; see also Cassidy 1997, pp. 21, 24). Though originally published in 1848, it rings very true in this era of globalisation, the internet and rampant commodification: The bourgeoisie . . . has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his ‘natural superiors,’ and has left . . . no other nexus . . . than callous ‘cash payment’ . . . All fixed, fastfrozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air . . . The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all . . . nations into civilization (Marx and Engels 1967, pp. 82–85). Martin and Schumann (1996, p. 8) argue that a counter-reformation of historic dimensions is opening up: ‘the move into the future is a backwards movement’. In the last few years, considerable evidence has accumulated about the deleterious consequences of unfettered and unregulated corporate globalisation on the lives of billions of people, east and west, north and south, across the entire planet (e.g. Potter 2001; Chossudovsky 1997; Sassen 1998; Hurrell and Woods 1999; Pieterse 2000). A notable feature of the current global economy is increasing polarisation between rich and poor and a growing impoverishment of economies left on the margins of globalisation (Wood 1998, p. 5). All countries have experienced slower growth during the era of globalisation (1980–2000), compared with the previous 20 years, but the most devastating results have been those for the poorest nations. Eighty countries in the world today have per capita incomes lower than they had 30 years ago, and the number of countries meeting the United Nations definition of ‘least developed’ has almost doubled since 1971, from 25 to 41. Between 1960 and 1980, Latin America experienced a growth of per capita income of 73 per cent and Africa of 34 per cent; by contrast, between 1980 and 2000, per capita income in Latin America grew by only 7 per cent and


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Africa experienced a devastating decline, with per capita income plummeting downwards by 23 per cent (McNally 2002, pp. 45–46). Between 1988 and 1993, the share of world income going to the poorest 10 per cent of the world’s population fell by over a quarter, whereas the share of the richest 10 per cent rose by 8 per cent (Wade 2001, p. 74). The ratio of the top 20 per cent of the world’s income earners as against the poorest 20 per cent grew from 30:1 in 1960 to 80:1 in 2000 (Pronk 2000, p. 42). According to a United Nations report in 1999, the assets of the world’s 200 richest people are greater than the combined income of 41 per cent of humankind (McNally 2002, p. 91). The World Bank has admitted that the dismantling of trade barriers poses a threat to jobs and wages; has the potential to increase the gap between rich and poor; has done nothing to reduce world unemployment; and has increased risk and insecurity worldwide (World Bank 1995). Severe indebtedness and other consequences of the new world order are crippling Third World economies, because globalisation empowers corporations to drive local businesses out and to move production operations constantly. Deregulation, privatisation and investment liberalisation hand these economies over to multinational corporations. Staple traditional crops such as cassava and taro, which once provided food for millions, have been replaced by crops such as coffee or mangoes for the export market. Structural adjustment conditions imposed on Third World countries by the IMF and the World Bank from the 1980s, when it took over the debts owed to private banks, include: freezing the minimum wage at current levels and sometimes cutting wages; repressing labour organising; cutting social services; devaluing the currency; privatising any state-owned industries and services; and enacting free-trade policies. There is now a net outflow of capital as well as natural resources from the Third World to the First World (Starr 2000, pp. ix, 15). However, in these more affluent economies, only a small proportion of the population benefits from globalisation. As Walden Bello argues, the First World is also undergoing ‘structural adjustment’ in the interests of corporations, equivalent to processes experienced in the Third World: cutting social expenditure, privatisation, rolling back regulations and their enforcement, undermining wage rates and other labour gains (Bello et al 1994). Pierre Bourdieu’s mammoth collection, The Weight of the World, offers a picture of the suffering of people and communities in France, as a result of the economic and social processes associated with globalisation, especially those regulating the labour and educational markets: ‘these mechanisms that make life painful, even unlivable’ (Bourdieu 1999, p. 629). Even the heartland of globalisation can suffer its detrimental effects.


Anti-capitalism and anti-corporate globalisation 261 Between 1979 and the mid-1990s, real wages in the United States declined 12 per cent, despite a productivity increase of 21 per cent in that period (Moody 1998, p. 60). Moreover, full-time employees in the United States in 1997 were working a full workday per week more than in 1969 (Henwood 1998, p. 22). According to Michael Zweig in The Working Class Majority, Clinton’s America experienced greater poverty and lower real wages than Nixon’s: Our society’s growing inequality of income and wealth is a reflection of the increased power of capitalists and the reduced power of workers. In the last two decades the working class has experienced lower real incomes, longer hours at work, few protections by unions or government regulations, and inferior schools (quoted in Guardian Weekly, 17–23 August 2000, p. 14). During the 1990s, 64 per cent of all financial gains went to the wealthiest 1 per cent of the population. Similar differences are apparent in Canada, Britain and Australia (Clarke and Clegg 1998). In Australia, the discrepancy between the most affluent quintile and the least affluent has increased dramatically. Between 1994 and 1999, the household income in money terms of the top 20 per cent of the population increased by $387 a week to an average of $1996 a week; over the same period, the household income of the bottom 20 per cent increased by less than $8 a week (a marked drop in real terms) to an average of $159.62. In the fourteen years to 1999, the real incomes of the bottom half of the population fell in real terms by 7 per cent (Milburn 2001, p. 13). The proportion of Australians living in poverty, defined as those receiving less than half the average family income, rose from 11 per cent in 1990 to 13 per cent in 2000.3 By 2000, the top 20 per cent of income units received 48.5 per cent of all income, the middle 60 per cent shared 47.8 per cent and the bottom 20 per cent got just 3.8 per cent. According to an Age report, ‘the official view is that all is well’, because this represented little change from the previous five years, though the top gained slightly at the expense of the middle (Age, 24 October 2001, p. 10). (Wealth disparities, it should be noted, are much starker.) Official attitudes are evident in the fact that the ABS summary of 2001 census results declined to reveal the customary information about the bottom 20 per cent and offered instead information about the second and third lowest deciles. While this now makes comparisons over time difficult, the ABS justified its unprecedented decision thus:


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Power, Profit and Protest The lowest 10% have been excluded from the measure because of concerns with the fact that the extremely low incomes (close to nil and sometimes negative) recorded for some households in this group do not accurately reflect their living standards . . . If households with very low recorded incomes had been included this would have substantially lowered the average income values in a way that gave a misleading impression of the economic wellbeing of the most disadvantaged households (ABS website, ‘Measuring Australia’s Progress’, pp. 1–2).

Have neo-liberals captured the commanding heights of the ABS? By contrast, Work Rich, Work Poor, produced by Victoria University of Technology’s Centre for Strategic Economic Studies in 2001, documents the increasing inequality in the Australian labour market and maintains that the massive changes in the distribution of jobs and earnings over the past two decades are creating deep social divisions within the Australian community (Borland et al. 2001). The imposition of market criteria often brings inefficiencies and the provision of an inferior product, as well as other undesirable outcomes. For instance, the abolition of conductors from Melbourne’s now-privatised tramway system has resulted in unemployment for conductors; the employment of many more inspectors; increased fare evasion nonetheless; increased grafitti and damage to the rolling stock; vandalism of the ticketing machines, which regularly do not work; and loss of patronage due to decreased frequency and reliability, decreased safety, increased difficulty in purchasing tickets and increased powers of intimidation and accusation on the part of inspectors. This once great tramway system stands as example in microcosm of the damage inflicted by neo-liberal policies. In Britain, the privatisation of British Rail has enriched a small number of individuals but produced a service that is much less efficient because it is no longer a single system, is less reliable and more expensive, has dirtier and more crowded carriages, and is considerably more dangerous.4 In The Global Trap, Martin and Schumann paint a depressing picture of the future ‘20:80 society’ brought to us by globalisation, where only one-fifth of the population in any country enjoys secure and well-remunerated employment while the remaining four-fifths struggle to survive at all (Martin and Schumann 1996, pp. 1–11). Previously cited statistics suggest it is possible that 80 per cent of Australians are worse off than their direct counterparts of two decades ago. Even Mark Latham, an enthusiast for globalisation, claims that only 30 per cent of Australians benefit from it (Latham 1998, p. 86).


Anti-capitalism and anti-corporate globalisation 263 Prior to the 1970s, the power of workers to withdraw labour counteracted somewhat the natural inclination on the part of employers to pay their employees as little as possible. However, increasingly since the 1970s, it is has been capital rather than labour that has utilised the threat of its own withdrawal. While harsher industrial relations legislation restricts further the capacity of labour to strike, greater capital mobility in the global epoch has brought us the phenomenon of ‘capital flight’, which is equivalent to a strike by capital. Time and again, workers across the world are threatened with the alternative of plant closure if wage demands are pressed. High unemployment has augmented this increased bargaining power of capital. The threat of capital flight is also used by corporations to extract handouts from governments—for example, the $85 million paid by the South Australian and Commonwealth governments to Mitsubishi to keep its South Australian car operations open (Australian, 26 April 2002, p. 1). In the meantime, governments are unable or unwilling to fund public education and public health to adequate levels. Kenneth Davidson observed at the end of the twentieth century: It is globalisation that justifies halving the capital gains tax, which will give a $12 billion tax cut to Australian shareholders without any effort on their part. The consequent erosion of the tax base will be used to justify further cuts to education and health funding . . . The widening income differential is not only obnoxious, it is a threat to democracy . . . governments . . . have taken equity off the agenda . . . and want to roll back the welfare state in order to create a tax regime attractive to the managers of global finance (Davidson 1999, p. 15). The increased power of globalising capital fuels upwards redistribution, the widening gap between rich and poor (Wood 1998, p. 8). The promised ‘trickle-down effect’ never happens, but this simply incites neo-liberals to press for more of the same. Tim Battin notes that Australians are still being told by neo-liberals that the policies of the past fifteen years, with significant acceleration, will eventually bear fruit. ‘If things are not working, they say, we obviously have to implement the theory even more strictly’ (Battin 2000, p. 48). Mark Davis describes the feelings on the ground: Having waited two decades for the promised prosperity of the deregulated, free-market economy to flow through to their lives,


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Power, Profit and Protest many people are dismayed to discover themselves working longer hours, with less job security, higher health, education and childcare costs, reduced access to services, and few electoral alternatives, in an economy that takes as its touchstone the needs of business, not the needs of citizens.

Davis touches on a central contradiction in neo-liberal rhetoric. During the Keynesian postwar consensus period, it was appropriate to assume that corporate profits would be of indirect benefit to all, because they created jobs and government revenue via taxes. However, this is no longer so, despite neo-liberal rhetoric pretending that it is. ‘In the new labour efficient, tax minimized free market, wealth circulates in an increasingly self-contained world’ (Davis 2001, pp. 5, 8). In other words, there is no point waiting for neo-liberalism’s trickle-down effect; it is a logical impossibility.

Mounting resistance in the 1990s During the 1980s, many people were lulled by the promises of neo-liberal rhetoric that the pain would be short and the prosperity imminent. When the prosperity came only to those promising the trickle-down effect, and the pain continued for the majority waiting for the trickle, the mood of many turned sour. Neo-liberal globalisation, according to Cecelia Lynch, has generated a widespread reaction to the economic well-being that it promises but fails to deliver (Lynch 1998, p. 150). During the 1990s, disaffection with neoliberalism has been expressed most obviously in community-based actions and a noticeable increase in levels of militancy amongst rank-and-file unionists across the world. Often, too, creative alliances have been formed between community activists and unionists.

Rising from the ashes: the union movement Despite attempts by new-style Labor and similar parties to discourage class awareness and conflict, by the mid-1990s the austerities of neo-liberal globalisation were producing new critics and contestants identifying common class interests across national boundaries: As assembly lines have stretched across the globe and production processes sufficiently flexible to make it easy to exchange one


Anti-capitalism and anti-corporate globalisation 265 workforce for another nearly anywhere, unions have recognised the need to build global organizing capacity . . . Labour’s new awareness has overcome the divide that formerly positioned first world workers’ standard of living as dependent on third world workers’ cheap labour . . . It has enabled workers to challenge the logic of ‘international competitiveness’, recognizing that such a logic will drive all wages down . . . Unions are widely recognizing the need to bring the standards of all workers up in order to make all workers safe (Starr 2000, pp. 88–89). Efforts to enforce core labour standards—prohibition of forced labour and child labour; freedom of association and the right to organise and bargain collectively; equal remuneration for men and women for work of equal value; and non-discrimination in employment—are producing alliances between trade unions in both the developed and the developing world, despite the globalising rhetoric that suggests workers in developing countries have an interest in the continuation of poor pay and conditions (Sutherland 2000). Peter Waterman argues that, in the twenty-first century, it is both possible and necessary for the labour movement to replace its twentiethcentury emphasis upon taking power nationally, within each nation-state, with an alternative concept. This concept draws sustenance from the nineteenth-century Marxist presentation of the labour movement as an anticapitalist internationalism and sidesteps the twentieth-century statist strategies, which created societies marked by an extreme statism but which in no way surpassed capitalism (Waterman 1998, pp. 1–2). Waterman’s optimism is unusual. The customary diagnosis of the 1980s and early 1990s was that the working class was a thing of the past, unable to overcome paralysis due to globalisation, fragmentation and flexibilisation, and that trade unions were being permanently bypassed by a high-tech age of nonstop, worldwide business mobility (Moody 1997, p. 9). However, by 2000 there were very definite signs of renewed labour activity across the globe. ‘The first reaction of fear and insecurity in the face of the forces unleashed by globalization,’ according to Ronaldo Munck, ‘has given way to a new more settled and even confident mood’ (Munck 2000, p. 90). The roots of labour’s reawakening lie in the trends allegedly responsible for its downfall. For Kim Moody: All the forces routinely called on to explain labor’s decline— industrial restructuring, downsizing, lean production, racial and


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Power, Profit and Protest gender recomposition, and, of course, the mother of all explanations, globalization—have forced workers and their organizations to seek new ways to act and organize (Moody 1998, p. 60).

Some of the features of this process of change include the toppling of national and local union leaderships, movements for greater union democracy, and a return to militancy and direct action in several corners of the labour movement (Moody 1998, p. 60). Moody’s study of the rise of ‘social-movement unionism’ in the 1990s charts a growing union-based rebellion against globalisation, occurring as the direct result of the fact that ‘the pressures of lean production, neo-liberal austerity, and international competition bore down on more and more sectors of the working classes of more and more nations’ (Moody 1997, pp. 269, 271). Union regroupment and remobilisation are obviously important to the emerging opposition to corporate globalisation, because the erosion of the working class’s bargaining power due to union-busting, deregulation of the labour market and capital mobility has been a crucial cause of the increasing polarisation and inequalities now being contested from below (see Henwood 1998, p. 19). In Australia, the continuing capacity of the industrial wing of the labour movement was revealed in the maritime dispute in 1998. As one of the many Victorian Trades Hall leaflets on the dispute declared: At stake on our waterfront: THE RIGHT OF WORKERS TO ORGANISE . . . All working people must recognise this attack for the naked state union-busting it is. The right to organise in unions is ours: we must fight to defend it! (ACTU et al 1998). Shaun Wilson notes that the attempt to demonise the union as an unrepresentative institution alien to the experiences of ordinary people ‘largely failed’ and that the public demonstrations of solidarity were a critical influence on legal outcomes and public opinion. Workers’ solidarity ensured the strategic paralysing of Patrick Stevedores both internationally, through the International Transport Workers’ Federation and the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, and through the well-conducted and successful pickets in Australia, which included high attendance levels from white-collar unions as well as blue-collar ones. The level of mobilisation reached historically significant proportions, indicating the strength of union activism in Australia. Considering the renewal of labour activism worldwide, Wilson considers that the widespread pessimism about the future of labour


Anti-capitalism and anti-corporate globalisation 267 movements is not justified: ‘The worldwide resurgence of May Day protest indicates the extent to which labour is prepared to act in defiance of neoliberal restructuring’ (Wilson 1998, pp. 33, 23–24, 35). The maritime dispute also revealed the advantages to the labour movement of a politics of class identity. This campaign adroitly emphasised class difference and consequently drew on rich resources of working-class resentment—‘us’ and ‘them’ images were constantly invoked. Wharfies turning up to work (‘us’) were confronted by the employers’ hired thugs in balaclavas (‘them’). The internal rifts in the Corrigan family were reconstructed along class lines. The unionised father and sister remained loyal to and part of the working class; the upwardly mobile Chris joined the employers and became an object of contempt, because he became one of ‘them’—and an especially devious one at that. Derek Corrigan told a picket line: ‘This particular family has two sides. One is at the top end of town and the other at the working class end of town.’ According to Helen Trinca and Anne Davies, Derek’s attack on his rich brother helped to define and simplify the debate for many people: ‘The divided family seemed to symbolise the divisions in the community over the Patrick issue’ (Trinca and Davies 2000, p. 192). The Maritime Union of Australia dispute, in its hard-hearted approach to the wharf labourers, suggested to many that we face a world of brutal choices. Pamela Cawthorne describes the resulting mood: the pressures of globalisation leave no time or opportunity for the kinds of humane reconstruction of the processes postulated. Such pressures also render states less and less able to support the social safety nets that this humanity presupposes. If this is the case, we must either ‘go with the flow’ of this process, irrespective of its human costs, or we must exit completely the economic system whose increasing efficiency requires ever greater indifference to its human consequences (Cawthorne 1998, p. 21). An alternative to the stark choice indicated above would lie in a capitalism obliged to consider ‘humane reconstruction’ by those whose labour remains crucial to sustainable profit-making. To this extent, the continuing existence of capitalism might best be served by stronger rather than weaker unions. Union membership declined dramatically from 50 per cent of the Australian workforce in 1980 to 25 per cent in 1998, encouraged by casualisation of the workforce, decline of manufacturing industries, conservative union leadership and union amalgamations during the Labor


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government years, as well as industrial relations legislation that reduced the role of unions (Robinson 2001; Carney and Green 2001 cited in Grenfell 2001, p. 88). Yet membership rates have started to improve again, and support for trade unionism in Australia has increased in the past five years. A nationwide poll of 1100 people, carried out in 1996, 1997, 1999 and 2001 by Sydney University’s Australian Centre for Industrial Relations Research, shows a firm upward trend in positive attitudes towards trade unions. The 2001 survey discovered that 52 per cent of people agreed with the proposition ‘I’d rather be in a union’ (up from 44 per cent two years earlier) and only 14 per cent agreed that ‘Australia would be better off without unions’ (down from 23 per cent in 1999) (WorkersOnline, no. 103, 20 July 2001). Opinion polls, like socio-economic statistics, are now registering an incontrovertible fact: not only are the poor always with us, they are also increasing in number and in levels of anger. Such figures indicate that unions are regarded as important avenues of resistance by many non-unionists. For example, a coalition of church and community groups, together with the Textile, Clothing and Footwear Union, launched the Fairwear Campaign to end the exploitation of Australia’s 300 000 fashion industry outworkers, who work from home for up to eighteen hours a day for as little as $2.00 an hour. The aim of the campaign was to force companies to sign the Homeworkers’ Code of Practice, which means they can be monitored by the union to ensure workers receive entitlements (Global Action Forum leaflet 2001). The industrial resources of the union, combined with the moral resources of the church and community groups, were mobilised jointly to resist unacceptable employment practices. On the ground, there are many instances of unions regrouping to more adequately oppose downward pressures on wages and working conditions. An example is on the Pilbara, where Bradom Ellem’s research has discovered ‘a revitalised grassroots unionism challenging BHP’s individual contracts bulldozer’. New union structures have been built: a delegate structure, combined union meetings; a pointed and powerful weekly newspaper, Rock Solid; industrial campaigns over the issues of most concern. New tactics, too, are important in raising workers’ morale: wearing union stickers and shirts; making bonfires of the letters and publicity blurbs offering them contracts; issuing warning cards, first yellow then red, to overly persistent suspervisors who try to talk them into signing contracts; sending letters to BHP refusing to sign a contract at any time, saying ‘Which part of NO don’t you understand?’; and running two successful candidates in the Port Hedland local council elections (Ellem 2001, pp. 6–7). Resistance has


Anti-capitalism and anti-corporate globalisation 269 occurred in unlikely places, such as the seven months of lockouts, picket lines and strikes at the Joy Mining Machinery plant at Moss Vale in country New South Wales, in late 2000. The workers expressed their solidarity, as well as their frustration at aggressive downsizing and cost cutting and management attempts to close the unions out of the enterprise bargaining negotiations (Cahill 2002, pp. 1–20). Apart from signs of remobilisation amongst manual workers, and of increasing anger on the part of rank-and-file unionists (Weekend Australian, 14–15 July 2001, p. 4), an especially interesting development has been the awakening of collective consciousness amongst workers traditionally untouched by union ideology and organisation. Thomas Barnes documented the first Australian information technology (IT) professionals’ strike action in April 1999. The software engineers at Sydney’s Software Systems Centre, part of a large Japanese multinational corporation, ‘downed mouses’ in response to management’s refusal to negotiate a collective enterprise agreement to replace individual contracts, and succeeded in securing a collective agreement of sorts. While this action remains an isolated one, it shows what is possible and, as Barnes stresses, shatters the myth propounded by Mark Latham and others that IT professionals do not need unions and that they even have a natural aversion to unions (Barnes 2001, pp. 34–42). Also, in October 2001, the IT Workers Alliance website—an international ‘virtual union’—was launched at the Sydney offices of Social Change Australia. Within 48 hours, this site had received 1895 visitors, signed up 70 members and received 22 applications to join one of the real unions with a stake in the industry via the site’s electronic Join-a-Union form (http://itworkersalliance.org/home/join.html; WorkersOnline no. 115, 12 October 2001). Capitalism, as Peter Meiksins stresses, has never generated a homogeneous working class; rather, ‘it has consistently created a varied, highly stratified working class, and capitalists have had an inherent interest in making sure that it is as divided as it possibly can be’. The fact that unions have long been confronted with a diverse workforce, and have had some success in the past in organising it, is reason for optimism (Meiksins 1998, pp. 35, 32–33). Moreover, the labour movement has become more rather than less sensitive to the importance of counteracting divisive ideologies and practices, such as racism and sexism. The explicit inclusivity of the contemporary labour movement, especially its more militant expressions, is a source of strength both strategically and numerically. The inclusivity of the new class politics has enabled and encouraged labour movement organisations in recent years to construct alliances with new social movements and community groups.


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Defending ‘community’ David Studdert has observed that ‘community’ has become ‘an iconic word, epitomising all virtue . . . a code-word for caring and sharing’ but, while everyone from Howard to left-communitarians uses the word with gay abandon, the very social elements that sustain a community continue to disappear (Studdert 1999, pp. 28–29). The ‘Third Way’ politicians who now control the ALP and the British Labour Party are especially fond of the term but, as John Hinkson argues, when they speak of the need to rebuild community, they disregard its structural underpinning and the circumstances under which rebuilding might be possible (Hinkson 1999, p. 121). Rather than advancing community as an alternative, and in opposition to the commodity form and its logic, Chris Scanlon notes that proponents of the Third Way have sought to reinvent community through the structures and logic of the market itself (Scanlon 2000, p. 59). As Andrew Scott suggests of British Labor Prime Minister Tony Blair, there is a clear contradiction between his proclaimed desire to rebuild community values and his simultaneous commitment to a freer market, given that the incursions of free-market forces are a primary reason for the break-up of communities (Scott 2000, p. 256). The closure of services, public and private, under the pressure of declining government spending and market forces is sapping the life of many local communities, most notably in rural and regional Australia, where the tyranny of distance and low population densities make decisions based purely on ‘bottom-line accounting’, regardless of the social consequences, a permanent threat to community. Banks, schools, libraries, infant welfare centres, hospitals, medical centres, employment centres, courts and fire stations are typical of the services that all too frequently disappear. Declining public sector spending in rural Victoria under the Kennett Coalition governments prompted the closing of 178 schools with 2500 teachers, eleven hospitals, and six passenger rail services (Australian, 22 June 1998, Melbourne Extra, p. 4). Amongst private sector services, the imperatives of profit ensure that genuine services such as banks disappear, while poker machines multiply. In the five years to 2001, bank branches around Australia closed at an average rate of one per day. The frequent absurdity of bottom-line accounting was manifest in the increasingly affluent Melbourne suburb of Elwood by 1998, when the four major banks— presumably unbeknownst to each other—had all closed their branches. Like many rural and regional centres which experienced a similar fate, Elwood now has a flourishing community bank branch, opened in July 1999 and


Anti-capitalism and anti-corporate globalisation 271 the first in an urban area of the country. In June 2001, the Ipswich Council in Queensland responded to the closure of the local branch of the Commonwealth Bank by withdrawing its $11.5 million and depositing that money in a new community bank (ABC News, 8 June 2001). People in country Australia know that a fully privatised Telstra will be less likely than one in which the government retains a majority share to offer equivalent services to areas where the costs of providing such services are higher. For example, with the privatisation of Victoria’s electricity supply the traditional cross-subsidy from urban to rural customers is being phased out (Energy Action Group 2001). Essential services under public ownership are largely immune from ‘redlining’ (price/service discrimination in markets) because of universal service obligations and cross-subsidies, but deregulation and privatisation of essential services encourage redlining in the interests of shareholders, so priority and benefits flow to attractive customers whilst unattractive customers are left unserviced, under-serviced or find themselves in residual markets in which the poorer the service is, the more expensive it becomes (Sharam 2002). Moreover, privatisation of essential services once owned, in effect, by everyone represents a form of direct redistribution from everyone to the minority who can afford to buy and sell shares. And, while profits are being privatised, losses are all too frequently socialised when taxpayers, in various ways, bail out private companies that collapse—for example, the $10 ticket levy to assist Ansett workers’ entitlements. At the same time as services, public and private, have disappeared from communities due to neo-liberal pressures, remaining small businesses rooted in locality are imperilled by the intrusions of externally located large enterprises. Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations (1776) insisted the market allocates efficiently as long as all costs are internalised. According to Starr (2000), communities are increasingly insisting on the need to prohibit cost externalisation on the operation of local businesses by enforcing the values of the community. Small businesses are ‘turning against larger capitalists . . . defining business as in service of a community’, because small businesses are amongst corporations’ prey—via market competition, the exploitation of niches developed by small businesses, exclusive agreements with distributors, refusing to give patent licences, and so on. This process has an adverse social impact on communities as small businesses collapse and as an increasing proportion of economic activity is conducted by enterprises located outside the communities in which they operate and with no reason to be concerned about the welfare of those communities (Starr 2000, pp. 190, 145, 164). For example, as Domenica Settle (2001a) informs us, when Starbucks


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arrived in Sydney and Melbourne, it deployed its usual strategy of the ‘cluster’ expansion model: bombarding a city’s major café strips with a cluster of stores so as to squeeze out smaller coffee shops. While the farmers who produce the coffee face destitution and the coffee pickers are paid a daily wage equivalent to the price of one cup of coffee, Starbucks registered a $2 billion profit in 2000 and opens around three new stores a day globally. Starbucks now owns 20 per cent of American coffee shops, so Melbourne’s Lygon Street and other street traders in Australia had good grounds to fear its arrival and mobilised in protest. In 2001, stickers appeared across Melbourne: ‘Starbucks is coming to eat away your street’ and ‘No one has ever looked sophisticated sitting in a franchise store’ (Settle 2001a). In the Blue Mountains west of Sydney, not just small traders but also many residents have mobilised to resist the establishment of McDonald’s outlets in the area.5 Starr has detailed the way in which one of the important ‘modes’ of the new anti-capitalist movement worldwide ‘articulates the pleasures, productivities and rights of localities’ against the corporations that appear ‘as threats to locality’. She documents many examples of ‘relocalization’, whereby communities have successfully resisted the encroachments of corporations upon their local space and reclaimed and rejuvenated the local economy (Starr 2000, pp. 111–47). In Australia too, people have rallied time and again to defend their local communities from the effects of neo-liberalism, whether those effects were disastrous in environmental or social terms. The previous chapter considered community mobilisations against the ecological consequences of economic irrationalism; also increasingly significant are mobilisations against its adverse social consequences. Increasing social problems attendant upon neo-liberal globalisation have agitated Victorian local governments in recent years and prompted them to perform a more powerful advocacy role on behalf of local communities, in response to demands from those communities. Mike Hill argues that the restructuring of Victorian local government that replaced 210 local governments with 78 larger and, ultimately, stronger councils has coincided with increased community understanding about the impact of globalisation: ‘As state and national governments around the world downsize and reduce their regulatory role and become more authoritarian, people begin to expect their local government to stand up for them’ (Hill 2000, p. 61). (This new role of these larger councils is ironic, given that the restructuring was a Kennett government initiative.) Gambling is a case in point. The gambling industry is one of the greatest beneficiaries of globalisation. It is flourishing, partly because governments


Anti-capitalism and anti-corporate globalisation 273 have withdrawn from traditional regulatory functions that once curtailed it and partly because it enjoys greater government protection as governments become increasingly addicted to gambling revenue as other forms of taxation revenue decline due to the policies associated with globalisation. Convenience gambling (pokies) is also, as Mike Hill stresses in the Victorian context, an iniquitous form of regressive taxation, robbing the poor to enhance the amenity of the rich, and to provide showcase major events and stadiums in which to house them. It is also regressive spatially, in that the poorest communities lose most to this industry and therefore suffer most from the consequences of gambling, and also receive least back from the taxation revenue from gambling. Accordingly, local councils—in response to community concerns—have started to challenge and confront this industry, and assert the rights of local government authorities to limit and control the industry at a local level by taking social planning and community needs assessment functions to a higher plane (Hill 2000, pp. 63–65). The extent of community feeling against neo-liberalism is also evident in the emergence of movements such as the ‘Purple Sage Project’, a coalition between various groups to confront threats to the community and public sectors ([email protected]) and to the institution of democracy itself

Graffiti indicative of the increasing resentment of privatisation and cutbacks to local services (Susan Hawthorne, copyright 2000).


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(Hill 2000, p. 61). One of these groups is ‘Now We the People’, aimed at promoting ‘community-wide discussion’ and forging links between local and community activists. It deeply regrets that, since the early 1980s, marketbased philosophies have dominated public debate in Australia and worldwide: ‘In Australia, unfettered market philosophies are leading to a radical transformation of society in which relentless competition and individualism are displacing notions of the common good or the public interest.’ Societies struggled for over one hundred years to reject the law of the jungle of laissezfaire capitalism. Now the social contract of full employment and a welfare system is being deliberately eroded by unbridled focus on the bottom line: ‘The corporate world, never known for its idealism, is becoming even more ruthlessly devoted to the narrow and short-term considerations of share price.’ Now We the People rejoices that many people have started to resist: Opposition to bank closures in the bush, to higher fees for university students, to exploitation of the natural world, to privatisation and cuts in public services, to marginalisation of Indigenous Australian rights . . . have generated powerful protest movements both within the established political and trade union organisations and in broad community movements and coalitions. From these protests we need to forge a constructive new vision for Australia, one which focuses on celebrating ideas of the common good, not sectional, market-based solutions (www.nowwethepeople.org; see also McRae-McMahon 2000, pp. 25–27).

Union–community coalitions If the increasing convergence of interests between small employers and local residents has spawned new forms of community-based resistance, so also has the newfound common interest of employees and local residents in opposing downsizing and closures. The interest of employees in continuing employment opportunities is clearly aligned with local community interests in retaining services. Union–community actions during the 1990s in the United States revealed the capacity of unions to facilitate the mobilisation of local constituencies (Mann 1998, pp. 103–6). In the Canadian province of Ontario in 1996–97, sustained collaboration between labour and community groups resulted in the mobilisation of between two and three million people in the ‘Ontario Days of Action’—five months of strikes, rallies and


Anti-capitalism and anti-corporate globalisation 275 demonstrations as part of a wide revolt against the aggressive neo-liberal policies of the provincial government (Jackson 1998, pp. 5–8). In Britain in 2001, the trade unions spearheaded widespread community-based resistance to the Labour government’s determination to increase private sector involvement in public services, including schools (Financial Times, 1 September 2001). Whether successful or not, such actions indicate a new pattern of alignment that places workers and most people in any locality on the same side of an increasingly sharp divide. They provide examples of how neoliberal policies provoke people adversely affected to coalesce in opposition, a development with implications for future forms of resistance. In Australia, too, the logic of the situation is prompting closer links between groups not traditionally inclined to work together. In April 2001, the Finance Sector Union announced the formation of a coalition of community groups with grievances against the banks, including the Pensioners and Superannuants Federation and the Australian Consumers Association, which was supported by a number of local governments. In addition to its annual wage rise claim, the union’s pattern bargaining claim against all four major banks included a claim for more staff, fewer branch closures and better customer service (Australian, 6 April 2001, p. 2). At a very local level, the tiny country town of Tottenham—the geographical centre of New South Wales—experienced its first industrial action since the shearers’ strike of the 1890s, and one with full-hearted community support. Tottenham’s eleven nurses went on strike and marched down the main street on 18 October 2001 to protest against the understaffing at Tottenham Hospital, which employs only one of the nurses on a full-time basis, the rest being part-time or casual. The townspeople turned out in support, local businesses closed down in solidarity, more than half the population signed the nurses’ petition to parliament—then everyone had a barbecue together (WorkersOnline, no. 118, 2 November 2001). The union in this instance was viewed as the Tottenham community’s best line of attack against reduced services. Concern for community was very evident during the maritime dispute. Against an important backdrop of national events, particularly on the legal front, this dispute was also a collection of campaigns fought on location: of different communities doing battle with their particular set of opponents in the form of local police, scabs, thugs, employers, state governments, and so on. The mood at the docks was at once working-class, but with a strong feeling of defence of community. Leigh Hubbard observes: ‘For a community hit hard in the first two years of the Howard government, the MUA dispute


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provided the first opportunity where everyone who opposed the deregulatory and neo-liberal policies of the conservatives could rally to an issue which confronted that agenda’ (Hubbard 2000, pp. 138–39). The morale and charisma of this campaign was such that it was able to draw on a huge reservoir of community support, of both working-class people identifying actively with fellow workers and of middle-class people siding consciously with these workers as the underdogs. A press conference of seventeen church leaders, who denounced the activities of both Patricks Stevedores and the Howard government, was held at the picket line. Bishop Hilton Deakin became the first Catholic Bishop to speak at a Trades Hall event for at least 80 years. The MUA’s perceived valuable role in defending community was good publicity for unionism. The union movement started to appear, according to Hubbard, as the defender of justice and common sense: ‘the union movement was once again, albeit briefly, in the mainstream, standing up for the core values of fair-go protection for the weak’ (Hubbard 2000, p. 137).

Seattle and S11: case studies of the new anti-capitalism The simmering discontent of the 1990s expressed itself in no uncertain terms late in 1999 at the ‘Battle of Seattle’, which has been described as the ‘coming out party for a new global movement’ (Danaher and Burbach 2000, p. 8). It signalled that the dominant economic forces operating at world level were no longer confronted by an empty space. A new movement had filled a political vacuum created by the rightward movement of most major political parties worldwide; it indicated a desire for alternatives no longer articulated in the mainstream. Not only does the new anti-capitalism resume a battle now largely abandoned by established political parties of ‘the left’, but the rise of this new movement brings into sharp perspective the extent to which these parties have declined as the political expression of working-class interests. The new anti-capitalism, like the old anti-capitalism, emphasises classically social democratic aspirations, but on an international scale: it is concerned with achievement of greater economic, political and social equality. Like social democracy, it seeks in the name of democracy to subordinate the economy to society against the tendencies of capitalism to subordinate the society to the economy. Common to the many strands comprising this anti-capitalism are emphases that also characterised the old


Anti-capitalism and anti-corporate globalisation 277 version. Moreover, this new anti-capitalism also indicates the continuing significance and potential of the industrial wing of the labour movement, or at least of the more militant trade unions. However, the new movement also differentiates itself in significant ways from traditional social democracy, even apart from its status as a social movement rather than a political force aspiring to government. Despite impressions to the contrary, the movement generally is not supporting ‘protectionism’ as an alternative to free trade. Sections within the movement, such as the AFL-CIO contingent at Seattle and the ‘fair trade’ campaigners within the S11 mobilisation, support varying forms and degrees of protectionism, but the more radical participants do not. Indeed, S11 Alliance spokesperson Cam Walker stated clearly: ‘Our movement is internationalist and explicity anti-protectionist’ (Melbourne Indy Bulletin, 11 September 2000, p. 3). The new movement is also more democratically organised and less hierarchical and bureaucratic; it utilises the new technology and carnivalesque styles of protest; it mobilises mainly white-collar workers and students. Yet there are also continuities: blue-collar unions are a component; its anti-capitalist rhetoric serves a mobilising function; it continues to use time-honoured methods of protest and political communication; it faces the problem of state-sanctioned repression; and there are clearly revolutionary and reformist streams within the movement.

The ‘summit-hopping’ tactic During ‘Five Days that Shook the World’, from Sunday, 30 November to Thursday, 4 December 1999, the WTO met in Seattle: By the end of the week, much of Seattle’s shiny veneer had been scratched off, the WTO talks had collapsed in futility and acrimony and a new multinational popular resistance had blackened the eyes of global capitalism and its shock troops, if only for a few raucous days and nights (St Clair 1999, p. 82). By the Tuesday, Seattle was under civic emergency and a 7.00 p.m. curfew had been imposed, but was being flouted by thousands. According to Jeff St Clair, the bravery of the street warriors had its tremendous triumph: they held the streets long enough to force the WTO to cancel its opening day. ‘This had been the stated objective of the direct-action strategists, and they attained it’ (St Clair 1999, pp. 85–86). Activist Vicki Larson reported:


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‘The spirit that makes revolution possible was strong on the streets of Seattle.’ Remarkably, a majority of Americans polled indicated that they sympathised with the rebels in Seattle (McNally 2002, pp. 23, 25). The ‘Battle of Seattle’ was not the first of such events. At the May 1998 Summit of the WTO in Geneva, 10 000 people surrounded the building while simultaneous protests were held worldwide. The regular meetings of the WEF at Davos have also prompted protests since 1998, when the meeting was targeted by 192 organisations from 54 countries, claiming an aggregate membership of 20 million people. Seattle has been followed by significant mobilisations across the world.6 By July 2001, the 200 000 demonstrators in Genoa represented a doubling of the numbers that amassed in Seattle. On 16 March 2002, the media reported 300 000 protesting in Barcelona, and organisers claimed 500 000. In Australia, 20 000 S11 protesters effected a mass blockade of Melbourne’s Crown Casino, preventing around 200 delegates from attending the Asia-Pacific Economic Summit of the WEF, held 11–13 September 2000. Farrago provides a useful diary of the S11–S13 protest: S11 Crowds converged on the Casino around five am. A wire barricade built especially to deter protesters, with about twelve main entrances, meant a large blockade could be formed. When the weather turned ferocious at about nine am, thousands of protesters were blockading: by evening only a third of delegates had entered the casino. The police were fairly restrained on Monday, adopting a wait-and-see attitude. Several prominent figures were turned away from the conference, including Premier Steve Bracks, Opposition leader Dennis Napthine, and West Australian Premier Richard Court, whose car was blockaded for over an hour. A rally of high school students was a highlight of the day, as well as an action by women activists linking arms around the entire casino complex. S12 Police tactics escalated on Tuesday: riot police were used to escort eight buses of delegates into the forum early in the morning. Over one hundred protesters required first aid, and eleven required hospitalisation, after repeated clashes with police throughout the day. Only one-quarter of WEF delegates attended the morning’s opening address, while outside crowds swelled to more than twenty thousand people, as union members marched from Trades Hall to join the blockade. S13 Violence from police continued on the final day of the


Anti-capitalism and anti-corporate globalisation 279 blockade, as most delegates had managed to enter the casino by this stage. The crowd seemed mellow, even tired after the intensity of previous days, but there was still enough energy for a ten-thousand strong celebratory march into the city and along Bourke St, then back to the Casino. Towards the end of the day, the blockade began to break down, and crowds gathered around the main stage to listen to music and speeches, and relax after an exhausting three days (Farrago, vol. 79, no viii, p. 21). The locus of such direct actions is provided by gatherings of supra-national organisations precisely because the movement argues that multinational corporations and transnational institutions have more say in the global order than nation-states—or citizens affected by policy implementation (Stringer 2001, p. 1). Moreover, instead of attempting to resurrect the nation-state as a defence against globalisation, these movements proclaim the need to globalise resistance to confront the structures and agencies that facilitate the globalisation of exploitation. It is a calculated aim at the real sources of power. In Australia, as elsewhere, people are pointing accusing fingers at those they deem to be the architects of grinding Third World poverty and the increasing divisions in the West. The accused are a varied crowd including the World Bank, the IMF, the WTO, the WEF and most multinational corporations (Powell 2000, p. 4). The targeting of the regular meetings of transnational agencies in which the world’s most powerful corporations formulate their business plans overcomes what Starr identified prior to Seattle as ‘the disempowering effects of a totalized vision of the enemy’ (Starr 2000, p. 29). Strategically, the Seattle mobilisation against a WTO meeting was a stroke of brilliance on the part of those forces that have for years battled with an enemy that is all-powerful and impregnable, everywhere at once but nowhere in particular. Multinational corporations value these regular meetings as a form of legitimation for their ideologies and practices; they do not want to hold these meetings in high-security locations such as Okinawa and Qatar. They are disconcerted to be confronted by demonstrators contesting the consequences of their decision-making. Although there is the danger that these protests could become predictable and formulaic, as some participants are already arguing, their eruption and continuation has for the moment seriously disturbed the ‘global capitalist oligarchy’ and galvanised opposition to corporate globalisation.7 In Melbourne, the WEF was obliged to meet behind wire fences and was protected by 2000 police, its participants ferried in by helicopter, while sit-ins


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and sound systems, puppetry and protest mingled outside (Rundle 2000, p. 2). Kurt Iveson and Sean Scalmer, writing about S11, note: ‘Here, protesters tactically transformed Crown Casino into a place from which they could contest corporate capital’s domination of global space’ (Iveson and Scalmer 2002, p. 12). The enemy has ceased to be diffusely everywhere, in a Foucauldian sense, ‘becoming instead hierarchically everywhere through vertical and horizontal integration’ and ever more and in increasing ways, people are made its victims (Starr 2000, p. 223). By providing a vehicle for anger and frustration that confronts the perpetrators, rather than the victims, of neo-liberal globalisation, the movement not only counteracts reactionary One Nation-style opposition to globalisation, but also the general mood of defeat and despair that characterised the public sphere prior to the Zapatistas and Seattle. Its sense of itself as a movement is encapsulated in the repeated practice of abbreviating the date of each mobilisation as a way of labelling that mobilisation—commencing with J18 in Cologne on 18 June 1999. This labelling not only signifies the relatedness of each mobilisation with all the others, but also suggests more to come. In such ways the anti-capitalist movement constitutes a ‘fused group’ 8 capable of making history—or at least capable of ensuring the world no longer talks about the ‘end of history’. Although the events of the other September 11 (9/11) threw the movement in North America off balance for about nine months, momentum gradually returned—especially after the mid-2002 revelations of corporate scandals. Regeneration of the movement in North America was aided by the determination of the movement elsewhere, especially in Europe and South America, not to be disconcerted by 9/11 and to continue with ever-larger and even more concerted mobilisations. Within the movement there is debate about whether the tactic of ‘summit-hopping’ is bringing diminishing returns. There are suggestions that it is time to return to community-based actions and to work more concertedly to express grievances against global capitalism through local struggles against its insidious effects (see, e.g. Klein 2001a, p. 23). However, the spectacular summit protests and purely local campaigns are not mutually exclusive options—indeed, they reinforce each other—and the signs are that both will continue.

The protesters: unity in diversity Starr depicts the new movement as a collection of movements: ‘A number of movements, responding to a variety of conditions . . . are recognizing


Anti-capitalism and anti-corporate globalisation 281 corporations as the enemy and mobilizing to change radically the political economy’ (Starr 2000, p. 223). She uses the term ‘unity of many determinations’—coined by Marx in 1873 to anticipate the kind of movement that would end capitalism—to indicate the way in which the many movements she explores together contribute to building an international anti-corporate movement (Starr 2000, p. 158). It is beyond the scope of this study to impart the scale of the canvas she paints, but it includes movements concerned with land reform, cyberpunk, environmentalism, labour, socialism, anti-Free Trade Agreements, Zapatismo, local sovereignty, small business, sustainable development, anarchy, fighting structural adjustment, peace and human rights, as well as explicit anti-capitalism. Within such movements, there exists a plethora of groups.9 Klein describes the developing resistance to globalisation as ‘a movement of many movements—coalitions of coalitions’. Seattle was ‘a matter of large-scale coincidence’: a lot of groups organised to get themselves there and then found to their surprise just how broad and diverse was the coalition of which they had become part (Klein 2001c, pp. 81, 84). The relationship of movement participants is what Claus Offe has called ‘strange bedfellows’: individuals and groups who find themselves galvanised against a common enemy, but who would not normally be found working together (cited in Stringer 2001, p. 2). Klein argues: Thanks to the sheer imperialist ambition of the corporate project at this moment in history—the boundless drive for profit, liberated by trade deregulation, and the wave of mergers and buy-outs, liberated by weakened anti-trust laws—multinationals have grown so blindingly rich, so vast in their holdings, so global in their reach, that they have created our coalitions for us (Klein 2001c, p. 84). The ‘structural proposition’ in Starr’s phrase ‘naming the enemy’ is the recognition that communities all over the world, urban and rural, First and Third World, face quite similar social, economic and environmental devastation at the hands of corporations (Starr 2000, p. 37). Helena NorbergHodge maintains the narrative of a totalised enemy can be empowering in that, instead of feeling overwhelmed by a plethora of separate social problems, people could realise that these problems have a single source that is damaging social health in many ways. With the return of structure, we should expect a parallel shift in social movements (see Starr 2000, p. 42). Many in the movement identify the ‘single source’ as capitalism (Cooper and


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Lister 2000, p. 30; Hahnel n.d.; Anon. 1999). Others indict corporations. All agree that corporate globalisation stands condemned. The problem of globalisation has taken hold, according to Cecelia Lynch, as ‘a common integrating force and foe for contemporary social movements’ (Lynch 1998, p. 155). For Klein, ability to name the enemy constituted a necessary conceptual leap; for the movement to become effective, its participants had to ‘see the whole problem as the system, to connect every issue to every other issue’ (Klein 2000c, p. 267). Recognising and understanding the enemy was facilitated late in 1999 with the publication of Klein’s No Logo—a bestseller internationally and in Australia—which describes the power and behaviour of transnational corporations, exposes the exploitative methods of sweatshop production and explains the nature of commodification and branding. It consciously uses the language and images of pop culture against itself. She hoped that, as more people discovered the ‘brand-named secrets of the global logo web’, their outrage would fuel the next big political movement, ‘a vast wave of opposition squarely targeting transnational corporations’ (Klein 2000c, p. xviii; Rea 2001; Klein 2001b, p. 12). Written before Seattle, No Logo’s publication coincided with that realisation of her expectations. The diversity of the groups present at Seattle—epitomised in the slogan ‘Turtles and Teamsters: Together at Last’—which nonetheless found a common purpose in opposition to class-based inequalities and inequities, was applauded and celebrated by those involved (St Clair 1999, p. 83; Carlsson 2000). Naturally, spokespeople of corporate globalisation attempted to depict this diversity as evidence of the incoherence of the protesters (e.g. Henderson 1999). Much of the media, too, evinced surprise at the alliances, ‘as if a sort of Berlin Wall existed between the constituencies’ (Charlton 2000, p. 17). Yet in the apparent incoherence, in the breadth of the coalitions, lay the strength and potential to mount a serious challenge. That people often at odds with each other, such as greenies and steelworkers, could be united in resistance to a form of capitalism they now saw as producing inequality, poverty and job insecurity as surely as it guaranteed environmental degradation, was a truly alarming development for the globalisers. S11 evoked a similar response. Even newspaper articles that sought seriously to discuss the fact that S11 was not run by one organisation, with a single manifesto and a coherent agenda, which sought to understand the protest as a collage of activists and organisations, still served to undermine the legitimacy of the protests. According to Damien Grenfell and Anita Lacey, the end effect, no matter the level of sympathy, seemed to turn S11


Anti-capitalism and anti-corporate globalisation 283 into a pageant of ideologically divergent professional protesters: ‘The spectre of plurality and difference became a pseudonym for inchoateness and ineffectiveness’ (Grenfell and Lacey 2000, pp. 9–10). The unifying grievance of the protesters, for Grenfell and Lacey, is precisely what most commentators do not like to acknowledge—corporate power, or at least ‘the absolute priority given to neo-liberal economics within society’. It is for this reason that the protests are presented by the media as incoherent. For those who understand the central objection, it all makes sense: It matters not that some demonstrators during S11 stressed the injustices facing indigenous Australians, that others argued for the removal of Third World debt, and yet others against the use of child labour to make sports shoes. Such seemingly disparate agendas are frequently linked by a common rejection of the exploitation by capital of public space, resources, and the condition of the human body (Grenfell and Lacey 2000, p. 10). The result at S11 was a spectacular political collage, representative of a wide range of community, church and union groups in addition to organisations that only came into existence to challenge the WEF meeting. Though no precise information exists about the sort of people who participated at S11, we have some knowledge of those who organised S11, the M1 protests on 1 May 2001 in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne, and the planned protests against two meetings in October 2001 that were cancelled in the wake of 9/11—the Commonwealth Business Forum in Melbourne and the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Brisbane. Tom Bramble and John Minns interviewed 30 (fourteen females, sixteen males) of the estimated 150–200 who regularly attended organising meetings in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne. The median age was 26 and virtually all lived within 10 kilometres of the city centre. Half (fifteen) were students, four were unemployed, and the rest were employed in white-collar or service industry jobs, mostly not very well paid and with poor conditions. They were disproportionately from middle-class backgrounds (seventeen), although ten had a parent who had been active in a trade union. Although only 27 per cent had ever been active union members, 93 per cent had played some role in support of unionists other than themselves, such as standing on picket lines. Most were experienced activists and the campaigns most commonly mentioned were the MUA dispute, the Jabiluka campaign and the antiHanson movement. Bramble and Minns observe of their political orientation:


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‘They were opposed to the global capitalist system as a whole and tended not to identity themselves as primarily activists committed to this or that issue’ (Bramble and Minns 2002, pp. 2, 8, 9, 12, 14). What of the participants at S11? Tracey Mier distinguishes the principal network groups as S11 AWOL, S11 Alliance, iXpress-Mobile communications, S11 Music and the S11 Legal Observer Team. S11 Student Groups comprised: students from Endeavour Hills, S11-High School Students, Socialist Party-School Students, S11 Wesley Students, S11 Melbourne University, S11 Swinburne, Victorian College of the Arts, Monash University, Chisholm TAFE and Latrobe University. Other S11 groups were: Friends of the Earth, Wiseworld—art, humour + festivity!, Jubilee 2000, Trades Hall, Earthworker, Unions Public First, S11 Tempest— e activists, Xborder, CFMEU, S11 Medical Network, Workers Liberty, S11 Healing Space, Civil Action/Eastalliance, Eastern Suburb Alliance, Food Not Bombs, Socialist Worker, Democratic Socialist Party + Resistance, Unionists Against Corporate Tyranny, Australian Asian Worker Links and Economic Reform Australia (Mier 2001, p. 23). One S11 leaflet distributed was endorsed by the following organisations: Australian Meat Industry Employees Union, Australian Manufacturing Union, Australian Nurses Federation, Communications Electrical and Plumbing Union, Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union, Finance Sector Union, Health Services Union, Maritime Union, Australian Services Union, Rail Tram and Bus Union, Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance, Public First, South Movement, PUMA, Global Action Network, S11 Alliance, Centre for International Cooperation and Disarmament, Campaign for Economic Justice and Womyn for a Basic Income. For Sarojini Krishnapillai: ‘The passion, breadth and diversity of protest participants created an unprecedented on-the-streets alliance’ (Krishnapillai 2000, p. 8). For Jeff Sparrow, the blending of seasoned campaigners with cool new performers—for example, the young and the flamboyant associated with anarchist groups such as the Autonomous Web of Liberation—was a powerful form of chemistry that created compounds of remarkable political efficacy. At the same time, the kind of identity politics in which the celebration of difference leads to disunity almost as a matter of principle proved notable by their absence. Instead, a profound unity of purpose transcended all manner of political styles and positions: ‘I watched a friend sell a revolutionary magazine to a woman dressed as an enormous beetle without either of them feeling any incongruity about the transaction’ (Sparrow 2000, p. 20).


Anti-capitalism and anti-corporate globalisation 285 Iveson and Scalmer note that the ‘range of actors’ who came together at S11 was facilitated by the ultra-democratic methods of organisation: Organization through affinity groups facilitated a wide coalition of old and new political actors, including students, environmentalists, community sector agencies and unions. There were some attempts by the media to talk up divisions between blockaders and the union movement. ACTU Secretary Greg Combet worried about the fact that some Casino workers had been prevented from getting to work by the blockade. But the planned union march to the main stage outside Crown Casino on Tuesday 12 September drew large numbers . . . (Iveson and Scalmer 2000, p. 11). At Seattle, organised unionists provided ‘the bulk for the demonstrations’ (Wolfe and Curtis 2000). Despite the machinations of AFL-CIO bureaucrats to keep the union forces away from the battle zone by forcible detouring of the labour rally, many rank-and-file militants defied their lieutenants to join the troops downtown. By the end of the event, according to the observations of John Charlton, these sections of labour were in a close and apparently harmonious relationship with the ‘natural’ constituency of demonstrators: students, environmentalists of several stripes, 1968 veterans and their children (Charlton 2000, pp. 6, 17). At S11, too, the union contribution to the amalgam of protesters was substantial; and, as at Seattle, a degree of ambivalence of the part of the union movement was also evident. Bramble and Minns depict the trade unions as ‘an occasional part of the anti-capitalist movement rather than an organised part of it’ (Bramble and Minns 2002, p. 16). According to some commentators, the union hierarchy prevented full union support of the S11 blockade; according to others, union leaders also ordered unionists not to prevent delegates attending the WEF meeting. The 7000 strong union contingent marched on 12 September to the Crown Casino Complex, but did not formally join the blockade, though significant numbers of unionists did cross the road to join the blockade at the conclusion of the union rally. Other commentators are more upbeat about union involvement in S11, stressing the significance and novelty of a sizeable and official union presence at an anticorporate protest event (Mier 2001, p. 23).10 According to Tracey Mier, the union movement’s ‘mass display of solidarity added to the inclusiveness and cohesiveness of the S11 alliance’, and proved to be the first time in 20 years that the unions en masse had joined such a project (Mier 2001, p. 36).


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On May Day 2001, in cities throughout Australia, many unions struck work for the first time in half a century and this traditional day of labour was rebranded as the ‘M1 movement’—and thereby added to the growing list of anti-capitalist mobilisations. In Melbourne, placards included: ‘People and Planet Not Profits’, ‘Our World is Not for Sale’, ‘Cancel 3rd World Debt’, ‘The Valley’s had enough’ and ‘Corporate Greed = Less Jobs’. The crowds chanted ‘Human Need Not Corporate Greed’, ‘The Workers United Will Never Be Defeated’, ‘S11. M1. Liberal Party Here We Come’ and, outside McDonald’s, ‘Lies with your Fries’. People wore badges that declared: ‘I was there fighting capitalism’, ‘Capitalism Sux’, ‘Fight Corporate Tyranny’, ‘Open the Borders. Share the Wealth’, ‘Nationalise Banks. Stop Corporate Greed. Defend Jobs and Service’, ‘Workers of the World Unite’ and ‘Eradicate Corporate Parasites’. Amidst the sea of union banners, a gigantic pig represented the private banks, while an agile Robin Hood character leapt from tree to tree and urged the crowds to redistribute from rich to poor (participant-observer research, 1 May 2001). Starr (2000, p. 84) acknowledges that the labour movement, rapidly globalising its capacities, is often positioned as the ‘natural leader’ of ‘globalization from below’. Unlike the political wing of the labour movement, which has clearly made its peace with capitalism, the record of the trade union movement is marked by contradictions rather than determined neglect of working-class interests. While unions have a complicit role in capitalist society through the institutionalisation of conflict between capital and labour, they nonetheless also remain capable of representing concerted resistance to the operations of capital (Anderson 1967, p. 264). A crucial factor in determining the success or otherwise of the anti-capitalist movement—and the future of the labour movement—will be the response of the industrial wing of the labour movement to the anti-capitalist movement.

Anti-capitalism as class identity politics Frederic Jameson’s solution to the temporary absence of class consciousness from postmodern late capitalism was ‘“cognitive mapping” of a new and global type’. This, he explained, was the attempt to learn how to represent ‘the truth of postmodernism—that is . . . the world space of multinational capital’ and so ‘again begin to grasp our positioning as individual and collective subjects and regain a capacity to act and struggle’. Jameson anticipated, too, ‘a process of proletarianization on a global scale’ and explained that ‘cognitive mapping’ is a code-word for class


Anti-capitalism and anti-corporate globalisation 287 consciousness ‘of a new and hitherto undreamed of kind’ (Jameson 1991, pp. 54, 417–18). Jameson published his thoughts in 1991. By the end of that decade, the world was witnessing the first glimmerings of ‘“cognitive mapping” of a new and global type’ and of class consciousness ‘of a new and hitherto undreamed of kind’. Chris Carlsson wrote on the Internet of his direct experience of the N30 mobilisation: ‘the people in the streets of Seattle articulated a sophisticated understanding of the new global political situation, and saw their issues as transcending borders, workplaces, industries and populations’. He insists: Although the idea of class, especially working class, is not widely understood or accepted in U.S. culture, the movement that discovered itself in Seattle is fundamentally a working class movement. The people in the streets may identify themselves more formally with their cause, whether it be ecological or human rights or what have you, but you can be sure that few if any of them are anything in their daily lives but wage workers (Carlssen 2000). Most of the demonstrators, according to William Tabb, ‘had the sort of class analysis which working people intuitively, if inchoately, often have . . . The proposals for confronting transnational capital are in class terms and, for the most part, inclusive’ (Tabb 2000, p. 2). As noted in the Introduction, the concept of ‘identity’ has typically precluded the notion of class as a form of identity, and this assumption is evident in Starr’s observation of the currents comprising the anti-corporate movement: ‘None of these movements is organised as an identity movement’ (Starr 2000, p. 80). Starr maintains ‘identity’ may no longer be the most important organising principle for social movements as they embrace multiple oppressions, confront corporations on many fronts at once and recognise allies who cannot be contained by an identity politics framework (Starr 2000, p. 167). Why can’t class be a form of identity? Why can’t an employee ‘identify’ with other exploited people? In Seattle, according to Jackie Smith, the ‘teach-ins’ were ‘spaces where participants’ commitment and identity with a growing movement and with other victims of “corporate-led globalization” were cultivated’ (Smith, J. 2001, p. 10). The new social movement against neo-liberal globalisation—marked, as Starr notes, by an absence of ‘identity politics’—could be interpreted as identity politics based upon class or at least upon socio-economic disadvantage. To this extent, it is an identity politics to


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end identity politics, because it divorces identity from consumption and therefore from the capacity to flourish within capitalist forms of society. The battle lines are drawn clearly in terms of the rich who rule the world versus the poor who do not. Consider some typical Seattle placards: ‘Capitalism destroys all life’, ‘Keep the sweatshop in the sauna’, ‘Stop exploiting workers’, ‘Think the WTO is bad? Wait till you hear about capitalism!’, ‘Wealth is generated by workers’. Amongst the puppets was a ten-foot square rolling ‘pyramid of corporate power’. The crowds sang, after Pink Floyd: ‘We don’t need no corporations, We don’t need no thought control’ (http://seattle.indymedia.org; Charlton 2000, pp. 4–10). According to Chris Carlsson’s Internet diary: ‘Seattle was many things to many people, but everyone there in opposition to the WTO knew that their interests were opposed to the corporate agenda for unfettered “free markets” and capitalist development’ (Carlsson 2000). S11 literature informs us that, like the WTO, the WEF ‘is a means of promoting global policies aimed at weakening trade unions and environmental protection and intensifying the transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich’ (S11 Alliance 2000a, p. 1). The WEF ‘has actively promoted economic and social policies that increase corporate profits and the wealth of the rich at the expense of the majority of the world’s people and the environment’ (poster quoted in Grenfell 2001, p. 241). The result of corporate-sponsored globalisation is: massive global poverty; ever-increasing inequalities between rich and poor; attacks on workers’ wages, conditions, occupational health and safety standards; and widespread environmental and human rights abuses (S11 Alliance 2000b). ‘Meanwhile, profits are skyrocketing and the global elite grow richer by the day.’ The WEF meeting in Melbourne ‘will discuss ways to increase profits at the expense of the majority of the world’s population—and the environment’. S11 invited people to a disco to ‘Rage Against the Rich’ (S11 Alliance 2000a). Like all successful social movements, the anti-corporate movement is creating new verbal frameworks and articulating inequalities—in this case, socio-economic ones—as oppression. The principal slogans of the S11 protest were: ‘Human Need Not Corporate Greed’ and ‘Our World is not for sale!’ (Bila-Gunther 2001, p. 85). S11 literature explains that increasing socio-economic inequalities have at last goaded disadvantaged people to action. They have had enough of ‘the race to the bottom’ in terms of wages and conditions, and the use of new technologies to displace labour rather than lighten the burdens of those in employment:


Anti-capitalism and anti-corporate globalisation 289 Countries must compete for corporate investment. They must remove environmental protection. They must drive down wages and conditions. They must cut government expenditure and corporate taxes. It’s a race to the bottom and we all lose (S11 Alliance 2000a, p. 2). The organisers insist that there is ‘a growing distaste for globalisation and its running dogs of poverty, inequality and exploitation’ (Powell 2000, pp. 4–5). The nature of the protests—the blockading of the citadels of corporate power—symbolises the socio-economic divide that is being contested. A commentary on S11 observed of the Casino: ‘Inside, the captains of industry, the white collars of corporate elitism, and the holders of high office from around the globe; outside, the malcontents, the marginalised, and “the great unwashed”’ (Grenfell and Lacey 2000, p. 9). One of the small number of ‘critical’ delegates inside the WEF meeting in Melbourne, Indian intellectual and activist Vandana Shiva, who is regularly invited as part of attempts to ‘legitimate’ such forums, read out a statement on behalf of the S11 protesters outside: The reasons for us being here are many but centre on our concern for the increasingly unchecked corporate dominance which defines the world we live in . . . The WEF represents corporate interests— not the interests of the people they employ or displace or the land and resources they exploit for their financial gain (Shiva 2000). Vocabularies and verbal frameworks such as these encourage participants and observers to think about the structures of global economic power in ways that invite class analysis and class resentment—‘“cognitive mapping” of a new and global type’, as Jameson would have it. Indeed, if the rhetoric of globalisation informs the identity politics of the world’s rich, then increasingly anti-corporate globalisation rhetoric is the language sustaining an emergent identity politics of the world’s disadvantaged. Central to this politics is the rhetoric of reclamation, articulated by Toronto Reclaim the Streets: Whether we were reclaiming the road from cars, reclaiming buildings for squatters, reclaiming surplus food for the homeless, reclaiming campuses as a place for protest and theatre, reclaiming our voice from the deep dark depths of corporate media, or


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Power, Profit and Protest reclaiming our visual environment from billboards, we were always reclaiming. Taking back what should have been ours all along . . . ‘not the corporations’ (quoted in Klein 2000c, p. 358).

Class has been put back into the picture—and with it a class identity of sorts. Whatever the working-class component in any particular protest, these mobilisations at least posit a form of identity politics that is recognisably based on socio-economic status. There is a hard economic centre to the rhetoric that sustains these confrontations and builds the necessary links between the participants—even between those whose radical leanings have been prompted by concern for the fate of the planet, the violence of men against women, or discrimination against their racial or ethnic grouping. At the very least, the components of the anti-capitalist movement cannot be seen in a postmodern way as political interests untied to class situations. While the meaning of class is expanded somewhat to incorporate a wider framework of dispossession, class is the structural principle allowing commonalities to be recognised and acted upon by the components of the movement (see Starr 2000, p. 164). For Farrago: ‘S11 was a worldwide call to action for people who are concerned about the violence and greed of corporate globalisation’ (Farrago, vol. 79, no. viii, p. 21). Of course, it is common for those disparaging the new movement to argue that the ranks of protesters include tertiary students, who are not socio-economically disadvantaged. Yet this equation of privilege with tertiary student status is no longer appropriate in an era when a much greater proportion of the age group attends university and when tertiary qualifications are no longer necessarily a passport to well-remunerated and secure employment. The students protesting face prospects probably grimmer than those of their forebears who mobilised in the new social movements and could afford, therefore, to emphasise issues apart from socioeconomic ones. Only a small proportion of today’s student population will be amongst those who benefit materially from globalisation; most will fare significantly worse than their counterparts did three decades earlier and many will experience socio-economic hardship almost as severe as those without tertiary qualifications. Research by L.R. Maglen (2001) has revealed that global labour markets have dealt much more harshly with employees under 35 than with older age groups in Australia. In April 2000, Nike employees in Indonesia were paid poverty-level wages of between US$35.30 and US$36.11 a month. Before S11, Community Aid Abroad, in conjunction with the Textile, Clothing and Footwear Union of Australia, launched the ‘Just Stop It’ campaign, targeting


Anti-capitalism and anti-corporate globalisation 291 Nike for its workplace practices in contrast to its huge executive salaries and payments to sports stars, and the high profit margin on each pair of shoes sold (Grenfell 2001, p. 243). Students in North America and Australia are obviously not as disadvantaged as the workers in the Nike factories of Indonesia, whose material interests are championed by these students in the United Students Against Sweatshops (USA and Canada) and the regular Friday evening blockades of Sydney’s and Melbourne’s Nike stores, which involve ‘lively and creative’ street performance as a means to protest the ‘appalling exploitation’ of workers in Nike factories throughout Southeast Asia (Green Left Weekly, 27 June 2001, pp. 5, 27). Yet today’s protesters are also expressing their own grievances. The demands they pose are as suitable for their situation as were the very different demands posed by the students in the ascendant era of the new social movements. At a time when socio-economic differences have become more rather than less marked, it seems appropriate that the new anti-capitalist movement is choosing to encourage identity in the way the old anti-capitalist movement did and in the manner of the new social movements. Both the old anticapitalist movement (the pre-war labour movement) and the more recent new social movements utilised effectively the power of language to present claims and articulate needs. The new anti-capitalist movement, like its predecessor, is mobilising people by voicing grievances which are primarily socio-economic (Burgmann 2001a). This class consciousness of ‘a new and hitherto undreamed of kind’ is a form of class identity politics and, with the aid of the technology associated with globalisation (Dyer-Witheford 1999, pp. 42–71; Shostak 1999), could well have far greater potential for mobilisation than the burgeoning labour movements of a century ago.

New styles of protest? [A]n advance rather than a retreat from earlier traditions of Australian protest . . . S11 was technologically-wired, decentralized, internationally-connected, carnivalesque, and able to supplement ‘traditional protests’ with a range of electronic and ‘virtual’ interventions.11

The new technology A common theme in denunciation of anti-capitalists is their use of new communications technologies to coordinate their mobilisations. The


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implication is that acceptance and use of this technology ought to entail uncritical appreciation of all aspects of globalisation and gratitude towards capitalism for developing it. The anti-capitalists respond that labour also produced this technology, that its benefits have flowed disproportionately to capital and that its potential for greater social usefulness is restrained by capital’s ownership and control of it. The computer technology that has made globalisation possible could be applied in ways that reduce working hours and/or increase wages and salaries through productivity gains. However, because this technology is undergoing rapid expansion at a time when neo-liberal orthodoxy allows capital uncontested freedom, it is used not only to facilitate global financial speculation but also to downsize workforces and to eliminate or weaken unions, frequently resulting in increased working hours and workloads for those remaining. The benefits of the new technology are not shared with those working with it but used by employers to increase levels of exploitation and control over employees. Ken Hirschkop argued in 1996 that the democratic and liberating potentials of the new technology are fettered by the fact that ‘the form of the network and the structure of computing equipment is determined first and foremost by the needs of the state and capitalist corporations’ and that, for corporations, this new mode of communication is also a new mode of exploitation (Hirschkop 1996, pp. 92–93). Moreover, the new technology will only be rendered compatible with democratic imperatives when everyone has access to a computer. Not only are the power structures of society replicated in cyberspace, but 95 per cent of cyberspace activity is still related to the hold of capital on the human condition (Prince 2000, pp. 2–3). The outcome of the political struggle mounted by the anti-capitalist movement will determine whether the new technology can be used for the benefit of all rather than the enrichment of the few. Technology will have a role in this struggle, but it offers no shortcuts: one cannot download democracy from a website (Hirschkop 1996, p. 98). The new technology is nonetheless proving useful in the struggle against the power of corporations for whom the new technology is primarily a means to increase exploitation. For Ken Hirschkop: The true political claims for the new technologies lie in the belief that they make possible an access to information, and an international form of interaction that is not politically neutral, which is inherently democratizing. For if informed discussion of a more or less unhindered kind is critical to democratic life, then a


Anti-capitalism and anti-corporate globalisation 293 technology that fosters it can only work to the advantage of the forces of democracy (Hirschkop 1996, p. 25). The usefulness of the new technology for the anti-capitalist movement first became evident with the rise of the Zapatistas. Utilising the Web and the Internet, Subcomandante Marcos became a compulsive communicator, constantly reaching out, drawing connections between different issues and struggles. There are now at least 45 000 Zapatista-related websites, based in 26 countries, and Marcos’s communiqués are available in fourteen languages (Klein 2000b, p. 25). The new technology enables the internationalism of the anti-capitalist movement to flourish. Peter Waterman argues that global information capitalism provides ‘favourable terrains’ for internationalist social movements, which utilise these ‘spheres of information’ for truly useful and democratic purposes—unlike their opponents. Moreover, ‘the relational principle of networking is the one appropriate to social movements today, particularly insofar as they are concerned with an international/ist challenge and alternative to capitalist globalisation’ (Waterman 1998, pp. 214–16; 2001, p. 1). Recently, Jonah Peretti’s argument with Nike was spread around the world courtesy of the Internet, becoming one of many tales of individual electronic resistance. As such stories accumulate, they contribute to collective online mobilisation. Nike offered to personalise shoes with an individually chosen word or phrase, stating that this program was ‘about freedom to choose and freedom to express who you are’; accordingly, Peretti sent Nike $50 to stitch ‘sweatshop’ on to his shoes. Nike persistently refused his repeated request that Nike respect his freedom of expression—a refusal that, as one forwarder commented, would go round the world much farther and faster than any of the advertisements for which Nike paid Michael Jordan more than the entire annual wage packet of all their sweatshop workers in the world. The new technology adds a diversity of tactics to a movement already diverse in terms of organisations and individuals. This movement, as Trish Stringer (2001) notes, contains the activist hacker who engages in virtual sitins, clogging access to a website maintained by corporate interests, but also the Indian peasant group that burns a field of Monsanto terminator seed cotton. New technologies such as the Internet, email and fax are greatly strengthening the ability of ‘netwar’ groups to communicate rapidly with each other, disseminate information to target audiences and collect intelligence on their opponents, but these technologies are not simply


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replacing older technologies such as the photocopier, press, shortwave radio, face-to-face meetings and couriers, which still play very important roles. What is occurring is ‘an admixture of different technologies, that allows the group the most effective and efficient communication possibilities’ (Stringer 2001, pp. 12, 4). Cyberpunk techniques have been adopted and practised worldwide by political ‘hactivists’. One of these is adding messages to official websites, such as a hack of China’s human rights agency’s new website in October 1998 which read: ‘China’s people have no rights at all, never mind human rights.’ Another technique is ‘cyber civil disobedience’ or ‘electronic civil disobedience’, which takes the form of flooding or blocking traffic to a given website, an art perfected by the Intercontinental Cyberspace Liberation Army and the UK Electro Hippies, who organised a ‘virtual sit-in’ as part of the Seattle protests, and had over 137 000 participants on 1 December (Starr 2000, pp. 77–78). More conventional ‘e-protest’ takes the form of email and fax jamming, where large faxes (e.g. protest letters written one word per page) and email messages are sent to targets to disrupt routine flows of information (Smith, J. 2001, p. 15). The Internet is crucial in organising each anti-capitalist mobilisation. Susan George notes of the lead-up to Seattle: Throughout 1999, thanks primarily to the Internet, tens of thousands of people opposed to the . . . WTO united in a great national and international effort of organisation. Anyone could have a front seat, anyone could take part in the advance on Seattle. All you needed was a computer and rough knowledge of English (George 2000, p. 53). The eruptions at Seattle appeared like a spontaneous explosion to the outside world; however, it was in fact electronically well-planned and coordinated— evidence of the benefits of the new technologies in organising resistance to those who would monopolise the benefits of those technologies. Although only 5 per cent of the world’s population has access to the Internet, 42 per cent of the Australian population in 2001 had Internet access from home and more, presumably, from their workplace or an Internet café. A ‘key tool’ in the success of S11, according to the Australian (16–17 September 2000, p. 4), was ‘its sophisticated use of the www’ (Iveson and Scalmer 2000, p. 4). Jason Gibson and Alex Kelly maintain that creative applications of Internet technology during the S11 protests demonstrated the


Anti-capitalism and anti-corporate globalisation 295 ability of the Net to function not only as an organisational tool, but also as a form of civil disobedience in cyberspace (Gibson and Kelly 2000, p. l0). For example, in mid-2000, an elegant piece of hacking diverted all those who logged on to Nike.com to the protest site run by the S11 Alliance (Powell 2000, p. 4). Over the next nineteen hours, www.s11.org received almost 90 000 hits. S11 ‘cyber-warriors’ also set up a site using the name ‘Melbourne Festival’, as well as sites that attracted those mistyping ‘Olympics——or searching for the ‘Melbourne Trading Post—<melbournetrading post.com>. ‘In all of these cases,’ record Iveson and Scalmer, ‘surprised browsers were faced with announcements on the protest action, analysis, and links to further information.’ The advance publicity became an avalanche: ‘Net surfers barrelled to the S11 site.’ In the first two weeks of September, the S11 website was the 400th most popular website in the world (Iveson and Scalmer 2000, pp. 6–7). New technology not only provides the anti-capitalist movement with improved organising capacity, but also alternative means of communicating with those outside the movement. Trish Stringer has examined the Independent Media Center sites (www.indymedia.org), a network that has grown from the one original site that opened in Seattle in November 1999. The movement argues that the mainstream media are pawns of corporate interests and that they regularly reveal bias in selection of stories, the omission of important information and the falsification of news information. According to http://www.indymedia.org: ‘The main stream media has consistently lied about the growing wave of anticapitalist protests.’ Stringer notes: While corporate media coverage of the manifestations of this movement focuses on the so-called black-clad anarchists destroying property, the independent media centers give a more holistic view of events, and allow for a more democratic version of the media, where anyone can post news, thoughts, images, analysis. These sites are a central location of the discourse of the antiglobalization movement (Stringer 2001, pp. 4–5). The bulk of the Australian media that covered the S11 protests against the WEF meeting are owned by members of the WEF (Gibson and Kelly 2000, p. 11). As the S11 protesters discovered, the movement could not trust the mainstream, especially commercial, media to report accurately its ideas and actions. There was a stark discrepancy between the protesters’ personal


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experiences at the protest and the media reportage. The media, according to Australian Options, ‘chose to present the protesters as a group of marginalised, wild and radical luddites determined to stand in the way of progress’. Many who participated felt that the media coverage distorted the true nature of the event, encouraging further scepticism about the capacity of the media to report accurately (Australian Options no. 23, November 2000, p. 1). An Adelaide lawyer stated: ‘It would seem that the eyewitnesses and the mainstream media were at completely different events . . . It was like a well orchestrated propaganda exercise.’ The upshot was that the majority of Australians were left with impressions that unruly mobs with no real idea of what they were protesting about were disrupting a lot of respectable people trying to hold an important meeting about how to make things better for everyone, including the world’s poor (Mead 2000, p. 29). New technology provides protesters with a comeback. Recognising the need for independent media coverage of S11, a coalition of individuals and people from different community media organisations formed Melbourne IndyMedia—an online media channel which allowed and encouraged everyone to be a journalist by a simple click on the ‘publish’ button. (Unfortunately, IndyMedia Melbourne worked unfunded, whereas the Seattle IndyMedia Centre had a budget of over US$70 000.) Within minutes, photographs, text, video and audio material could be uploaded for all to see, reply to and add to within the one website: ‘Creating this space for audience control has harnessed the inherent qualities of hypertext—unlike the majority of online news services, which remain overwhelmingly one-way in their transmission’ (Gibson and Kelly 2000, pp. 10–11). Protesters were able to proclaim alternative versions of S11 on the melbourne.indymedia.org website (Iveson and Scalmer 2000, p. 12). An S11 website also carefully articulated the meaning and importance of non-violent direct action. Although journalists and police referred to this website to destabilise the plans for the demonstration, and critics of S11 continually republicised information openly available at www.s11.org as if it were part of a secret, sinister plot, Iveson and Scalmer maintain that the S11 movement managed to use this site to publicise an independent interpretation of the protests and garner advance publicity—even notoriety—both in Australia and overseas. The strategies were varied, but united by a technological aptitude and by a sensitivity to the interests and tastes of the mainstream media for news (Iveson and Scalmer 2000, pp. 5–6). As Gibson and Kelly concede, the old media was important in publicising and drawing attention to the new—highlighting the fact that, although the Net is an


Anti-capitalism and anti-corporate globalisation 297 important new tool, activists still largely rely on coverage in the traditional media and cannot rely solely upon the emerging communications networks (Gibson and Kelly 2000, p. 10). The new technology has provided the movement with novel means to organise, mobilise and communicate its views directly to the public it seeks to influence. However, the new technology has not displaced older forms of organisation, mobilisation and political communication. The organisers interviewed by Bramble and Minns were adamant that the traditional faceto-face meetings were more important for planning the protests than the Internet or email. They also emphasised the role of leafleting, postering, stalls, speaking in university lecture theatres, graffiti runs, press conferences, media releases and benefit gigs—all long-standing methods of building protests (Bramble and Minns 2002, p. 10). Jeff Sparrow disputes the depiction of S11 as ‘a complete break from the traditions of the past . . . a new paradigm of protest, in which computer savvy culture-jammers took to the information superhighway rather than the street’. In fact, he argues that S11’s organising took place in campaign meetings in overheated rooms, where organisations and individuals debated and declaimed and harangued until they hammered out a consensus, a process familiar to the activists of the 1960s. During the Forum itself, blockaders confronted a trifecta of issues the left has long faced: the violent role of the police; the bias of the media reporting; and the Labor government siding with the powerful, even against its own supporters. The significance of S11, he concludes, stemmed not from the novelty of information technology—useful though that technology was—but because S11 ‘forced something of a return to first principles’ (Sparrow 2000, pp. 19–20). The S11 movement also defended itself in the face of this trifecta of problems, not just in cyberspace but also in time-honoured ways like writing letters to newspapers about the misreporting. According to Iveson and Scalmer, it worked the mainstream media with skill, anticipating the conflicts that erupted over police tactics. Legal observers were present throughout the three days, and dozens of protesters carried photographic equipment to capture evidence of police aggression. Video footage was distributed to mainstream television stations (Iveson and Scalmer 2000, p. 9). At least three documentary videos of S11 have been produced (SKA TV 2000; Socialist Alternative 2000; Actively Radical TV 2000). On behalf of S11, the Fitzroy Legal Centre is preparing a response to the Ombudsman’s inquiry into police violence. Perhaps the most far-reaching effect of the new technology is that it


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facilitates the ultra-democratic organisational inclinations of the movement. Writing about the Melbourne IndyMedia coverage of S11, Gibson and Kelly emphasise the importance of speedy feedback for a movement where all protesters are equal: ‘Unlike radio, television or newspapers, where feedback is slow or non-existent, electronic forums such as this ensure quick interaction among all participants’ (Gibson and Kelly 2000, p. 11). This movement, Stringer notes, ‘is composed of small-scale decentralized groups integrated into a network which is supported by dense communication and organized through collective ideologies and ethics about the evil nature of the corporate state and the need to protect citizens and the environment from exploitation through democratic action’. It is organised through non-hierarchical models, and has no central location or leadership (Stringer 2001, p. 12).

Ultra-democracy These mass convergences were activist hubs, made up of hundreds, possibly thousands, of autonomous spokes. The fact that these campaigns are so decentralised is not a source of incoherence and fragmentation. Rather, it is a reasonable, even ingenious, adaptation both to pre-existing fragmentation within progressive networks and to changes in the broader culture. One of the great strengths of this model of laissez-faire organising is that it has proven extraordinarily difficult to control, largely because it is so different from the organising principles of the institutions and corporations it targets. It responds to corporate concentration with a maze of fragmentation, to globalisation with its own kind of localisation, to power consolidation with radical power dispersal (Klein 2000a). The protesters’ emphasis on democracy is a logical corollary of their arguments about the undemocratic nature of corporate power. The statement by the S11 protest movement read out by Vandana Shiva stated: The World Economic Forum (WEF) claims that it is not a decision-making body. We know that this is untrue. The WEF includes the richest corporations in the world, which have a huge and disproportionate influence not only on government decisions but on the food we eat, the air we breathe, whether we have a living wage or not. The WEF doesn’t need to be a ‘decision-making body’


Anti-capitalism and anti-corporate globalisation 299 to affect our lives and the lives of people all around the world (Shiva 2000). The S11 Alliance emphasised that: ‘The WEF exemplifies decision making at its worst—big business and governments making decisions behind closed doors with little or no involvement from the people affected by their actions’ (poster quoted in Grenfell 2001, p. 241). Very different is the protesters’ commitment to participation, transparency and decentralisation. Although the precise manner of organising protests against corporate power has little impact compared with the manner of corporate decision-making, the movement is dedicated to expanding democracy and pursuing means that are in complete harmony with its desired ends of increasing people’s power and control over matters that affect them. Graeber argues that this movement aims to reinvent democracy and that it is not lacking in a coherent ideology, as many detractors claim: Those new forms of organization are its ideology. It is about creating and enacting horizontal networks instead of top-down structures like states, parties or corporations; networks based on principles of decentralized, non-hierarchical consensus democracy (Graeber 2002, p. 70). In practice, mobilisations typically comprise a multitude of ‘affinity groups’. S11 explains that: Affinity groups are small (3–20 people), autonomous groups of people with a common identity or cause, who take part in actions and support each other. Their actions can take place within mass demonstrations or on their own (S11 Alliance/S11–AWOL, n.d., p. 8). Each affinity group is represented at spokescouncil meetings that decide the general plan of action for the each protest; but each affinity group is autonomous and decides collectively for itself the nature of its contribution to the protest. Andrew Ure describes the process: Affinity groups, or clusters of affinity groups, delegate one person to be a ‘spoke’. The ‘spoke’ is not a ‘representative’—someone with the authority to formulate policy on the group’s behalf—but a ‘delegate’—someone whose job it is to enunciate the group’s policy.


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Power, Profit and Protest The purpose of a spokescouncil is to allow the various groups from which it is formed to exchange ideas and to communicate their intentions. It can be a lengthy process, involving continual consultation between the affinity group, its spoke, and the spokescouncil. All ‘decisions’ are by mutual consent; there is no ‘voting’ other than as a means to determine how different groups think or feel about particular proposals. This constitutes one important difference between the spokescouncil and the mass meeting (Ure 2002, p. 5).

According to S11, advantages of affinity group structures include: elimination of feelings, and dangers, of isolation; provision of support (emotional, physical, tactical, etc.); they are harder to infiltrate by undercover police and corporate-sponsored saboteurs; greater flexibility in responding to changing conditions during the action; and they are ‘highly democratic and autonomous’ (S11 Alliance/S11–AWOL, n.d., p. 8). Affinity groups resemble strategies used in earlier movements—notably the late nineteenth-century Spanish anarchist movement (Smith, J. 2001, p. 10; Ure 2002, p. 2). That they are emphasised by the anti-corporate movement as an organisational principle indicates the important contribution of anarchist theory and practice to the new anti-capitalism. Indeed, David Graeber insists: ‘Anarchism is the heart of the movement, its soul; the source of most of what’s new and hopeful about it’ (Graeber 2002, p. 62). The use of computer technology has facilitated and enabled the tendencies of the movement to ultra-democratic organisational forms. However, more than this, as Naomi Klein has argued, the decentralised networking is imitative of the patterns of computer-based systems of communication: Although many have observed that the recent mass protests would have been impossible without the Internet, what has been overlooked is how the communication technology that facilitates these campaigns is shaping the movement in its own image. Thanks to the Net, mobilizations are able to unfold with sparse bureaucracy and minimal hierarchy; forced consensus and laboured manifestos are fading into the background, replaced instead by a culture of constant, loosely structured and sometimes compulsive information-swapping. What emerged on the streets of Seattle and Washington was an activist model that mirrors the organic, decentralized, interlinked pathways of the Internet— the Internet come to life (Klein 2000a).


Anti-capitalism and anti-corporate globalisation 301 Klein’s analysis of the problem—capitalism—is Marxian to a degree and she is insistent upon the crucial role of unions, of workers organising collectively to contest their exploitation: ‘The most important principle in a labour context is the right to form unions’ (Klein 2001b, p. 12). Yet she, too, is heavily influenced by anarchist theory, hence her enthusiasm for the decentralised method of organising, the diversity of the groups working together and the lack of a ‘party line’ (Rea 2001, p. 40). She asks that Marxists involved in the movement meet the anarchist types halfway: ‘I see some groups co-operating with some of the street-level activists, but they’re still waiting for them to see the light, and that’s just co-optation, not co-operation’ (Klein 2001b, p. 12). However, she concedes that the decentralised method of organising has its weaknesses, and recalls a moment during the anti-World Bank/IMF protests in Washington on 16 April 2000 when some affinity groups decided to attempt to maintain the blockade and others decided to join a march elsewhere. The lack of coordination contributed to the weakness of both options (Klein 2000a). Amory Starr has no reservations. She stresses the importance at Seattle of the principle of ‘coexistence’—the acknowledgement that groups with different messages, tactics and skills can coexist without centralised organising: That coexistence was the material of the blockade’s success. Everyone who participated has now experienced the anarchist alternative to bureaucratic top-down systems. We saw selforganization at work and it worked (Starr 2000, p. 16). Anarchism has achieved a new lease of life, aided by new technology suited for realising its organisational inclinations. It is appropriate that the major anarchist presence within the S11 movement—S11-Autonomous Web of Liberation— should choose a name redolent of this technology. It describes itself as a ‘non-hierarchical, decentralised and autonomous network’ (S11 Alliance/ S11–AWOL n.d., p. 2). It is committed to consensus-based decision-making, supporting affinity groups and individual actions, working in solidarity with other S11 groups, opposing corporate globalisation and capitalism, shutting down the world economic forum, and celebrating freedom, creativity and life (‘S11–AWOL’ leaflet; see also www.antimedia.net/s11awol). The cell-like organisational structure of S11 proved, according to Amartya Sen, a successful way of bringing together ‘a convergence of different agendas and ideas together in one forum’ (cited in Mier 2000, p. 27). At S11, affinity groups included: Buddhist Peace Fellowship; Monsanto Clause—jolly


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fat men; Feminist avengers; Snuff puppets; Plant seeds—guerilla gardening; AWOL performance paratroopers; S11 stencil—Stencilling the Eastern Suburbs; Shut Up and Shop; Rapid Response Team—theatre crew; Victorian Greens; Queer; Unite; Revolutionary Valley Girls; Neo-luddites; Critical mass; and Benevolent Action for Neo-Humanism. According to Tracey Mier, the organisation of the WEF blockade via affinity groups, the cell structure and the use of the Internet confirmed the S11 Alliance’s ‘commitment to promoting and adhering to democratic principles and practices, which focus on individual participation and rights’. Had the S11 Alliance not adhered to such democratic principles, ‘one of the core ideologies behind the blockade would have been undermined’ (Mier 2001, pp. 23, 27). Consonance of form with content is indicated here in the insistence that protests affirming the importance of democratic accountability must be organised on the most thoroughly democratic principles possible. Moreover, such consistency of organisational method with political purpose is in fact a prerequisite for practical success, as Mier stresses. If the organisation of the blockade were undemocratic, not only would it defy its own principles, but ‘it would have failed to attract the diverse groups and the number of participants required to undertake the WEF blockade’ (Mier 2001, p. 27). S11, according to Guy Rundle, was the first protest in the anti-capitalist series in which the decentralised affinity group structure meshed effectively with a tightly coordinated marshalling structure throughout the protest. This occurred despite some mistrust between the command-structure organisations (such as the socialist groups) and the decentralised and participatory groups. Many people in the latter groups believed the marshals were overstepping their defined role of keeping the crowd informed as to the balance of forces around the various entrances and exits, and were actively commanding, yet the marshalling system was largely adhered to, which minimised confusion and ensured effective blockading. He believes this ‘clear tactical advance on Seattle’ is due to the lesser degree of hyper-individualism of Australians, who therefore modified the affinity group model that was developed as a way of accommodating the fragmented nature of American identity politics (Rundle 2000, p. 2). Some degree of centralised organisation also overcomes the problem that the affinity group structure discourages and disadvantages unattached individuals who have no affinity group. However, participants on the AWOL side of the S11 movement remain critical of residual ‘vanguardist’ tendencies of those sections of the S11 Alliance that have come from socialist movements with a Trotskyist heritage, such as the Democratic Socialist Party and the International Socialist Organisation (personal communications).


Anti-capitalism and anti-corporate globalisation 303 There is the possibility, too, that dedication might counteract some of the disintegrative effects of anarchic organisation. The true novelty of the ultrademocratic method of organisation is not so much the anarchic methods in themselves but the marrying of these forms of organisation with an urgency of political commitment and anger. The more anarchic and libertarian protests of the 1960s, which Julie Stephens has characterised as ‘antidisciplinary politics’, engaged in a language of protest which rejected hierarchy and leadership, strategy and planning, bureaucratic organisation and political parties; but it was also distinguishable from the New Left of its time—and from the contemporary anti-capitalist movement—by its ridiculing of political commitment, sacrifice, seriousness and coherence (Stephens 1998, p. 4). Nearly three months before the event, on 24–25 June, S11-AWOL ran ‘Direct Action Skill Sharing Workshops’ on ‘urban activism, non-violent blockading and tactics, puppet making, your legal rights, and how to organise with your friends to make an affinity group’. Through such intensive activities, it aimed to facilitate action and provide support and empower people with information and tools to enable them to most effectively shut down the WEF: S11 AWOL is a non-hierarchical, decentralised and autonomous network. We are committed to taking direct action for social and environmental justice through creative resistance to capitalism. (‘S11–AWOL’ leaflet; see also www.antimedia.net/s11awol). One cannot imagine the ‘psychedelic Bolsheviks’ of the 1960s bothering to attend training workshops in non-violence, first aid and legal observation— or even those promoting intensive skills in puppet-making and banner hanging. The greater seriousness amongst anti-capitalists today—flamboyant and theatrical styles and anarchic organisational methods notwithstanding— reflects a heightened sense of despair about the state of the world.

A ‘global carnival against capital’ The movement uses celebration as a form of protest, creating moments in which people control public space . . . There are constant efforts to educate fellow global citizens through fliers, symbolic challenges to corporate franchises, performances and dialogue (Starr 2000, p. 99).


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In mid-2000, in preparation for S11 and to take advantage of the Olympic Games, the Sydney-based Campaign Against Corporate Tyranny United in Struggle (CACTUS) arranged an anti-Nike protest in a shopping mall with a monster papier-mâché head of Juan Antonio Samaranch (with a swastika tie and a dummy) running a race between the demon Olympic sponsors: Nike, Shell and Coca-Cola (Powell 2000, p. 4). Theatrical forms of protest have long been a common feature of social movement action, requiring a kind of cultural analysis known as ‘dramaturgical analysis’ (derived from anthropology, performance studies or literary studies) and applied to the more dramatic or ritualistic dimensions of movements. However, the new anti-capitalist movement appears to have raised the theatrical component to a new level: Guerilla theater played an important role in the Seattle protests and took several forms . . . The Direct Action Network promoted puppet making, contributing to the festive atmosphere while providing opportunities for creative, irreverent, and often humorous activism. Finally activists risked arrest and safety by scaling buildings and scaffolding to display massive banners (Smith, J. 2001, pp. 12–13). S11 protesters, Melbourne 2000 (Susan Hawthorne, copyright 2000).


Anti-capitalism and anti-corporate globalisation 305 I stood in the oil capital of Canada at the world petroleum conference demonstrations and watched as Edmonton’s troupe of gender-bending cheerleaders waved pompons and went about their impeccably choreographed routines, the Queers Against Oil chanted anti-development slogans, fifty activists pulled their pants down spelling out ‘wind power now!’ and later organised Team Earth to play against Team Shell at the base of the company’s glimmering skyscraper in a traffic-stopping hockey game for the fate of the planet (Couch 2001, p. 39). Commentaries on S11 also emphasise the carnivalesque elements of the protest: There were clowns, ten-foot puppets and twenty-foot dragons. There was an effective blockade. Dance music blared from mobile speakers (The World Today, 11 September 2000, quoted in Iveson and Scalmer 2000, p. 4). A mass blockade with street parties, music and performances surrounded crown casino during a week of counter conferences, events and celebrations (Farrago, vol. 79, no. viii, p. 21). The collaboration of community artists for S11 brought a vibrant, creative element to the protests, which celebrated humanity. Cyclists for Sustainability, Valley Girls, giant puppets, percussionists and the Monsanta Claus proved that while S11 protesters were deadly serious about the business going down inside the Casino, they could still have a laugh (Krishnapillai 2000, p. 8). Such stunts and gimmicks have developed in part out of ‘culture jamming’— the practice of using the tools of commercial culture against it, in an effort to raise awareness about the grip that consumerism has on Western culture (Szeman 2001, p. 1). In the United States, mock ads in the quarterly magazine Adbusters have for some time highlighted issues such as the lies of the killer tobacco lobby, the reality behind the destructive body images perpetuated by the media and advertising, and the environmental destructiveness of an automobile-obsessed culture (http://adbuster.org/ spoofads/misc). Kalle Lasn argues that the glut of images and information in the ‘mental environment’ today produces a widespread social malaise that has


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S11 protesters, Melbourne 2000 (Susan Hawthorne, copyright 2000).

to be confronted in order to restore human ‘Being’ to a more natural, harmonious balance (Lasn 1999).12 However, as Imre Szeman points out, culture jamming is a fundamentally aesthetic practice that focuses on the cultural at the expense of the political (Szeman 2001, pp. 7, 9). On its own, culture jamming does not confront the power of those who produce the images parodied; in harness with a political movement that does, the ability of such techniques to encourage people to ponder the nature of the world created by those forces could be more productive. Kevin McDonald suggests that the place of puppet-making in the anticorporate movement indicates it is an ‘experience movement’, where the struggle for subjectivity is at the centre of the struggle for relationship, rather than a ‘social movement’. For McDonald, the new movement defies social movement analysis because it is an experience movement characterised by resistance to deindividualisation—opposition to new uncertainties about the experience of selfhood. He argues that the puppet-making is ‘performative action, constituting and expressing an experience’ aimed at recovery of ‘personal wholeness’, which can be analysed in terms of an experience of connection yet autonomy that allows a process of reconnection with the self and the other (McDonald, K. 2001, esp. pp. 2, 15).


Anti-capitalism and anti-corporate globalisation 307 S11 protesters, Melbourne 2000. (Susan Hawthorne, copyright 2000).

However, puppet-making is a collective and highly political project directed towards achieving social and political change: identifiable social movement ends. Gigantic puppets are created because they contribute to the success of anti-corporate mobilisations. If making them also assists protesters’ psychological well-being, this is partly because the protesters think they are worthwhile creations because they make a political difference. Jenrose Couch argues that art, symbolism and humour are no longer just ornaments, ‘but are now an integral part of contemporary resistance’ (Couch 2001, p. 39). Writing about S11, Damian Grenfell and Anita Lacey explain: Activists frequently create a sense of playful irony in order to undermine the legitimacy of their targets. Light-hearted props and costumes, such as puppets and clowns, are at times accompanied by shoulder-to-shoulder resistance to create dramatic spectacles (Grenfell and Lacey 2000, p. 9). Apart from the intended effect of the images created on the viewing public, the process of making these enormous puppets brings activists together and


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therefore encourages solidarity; they are also a much-needed form of entertainment necessary to encourage participation and sustain protests such as blockades of high-level meetings, which require a degree of fortitude not normally demanded of simpler demonstrations.

Melbourne’s S11 protesters join the global carnival against capital, September 2000 (Susan Hawthorne, copyright 2000).


Anti-capitalism and anti-corporate globalisation 309 Moreover, there is nothing entirely new about such creations and processes of creation as an accompaniment to social movement action. Use of grotesque effigies as protest is centuries old (Rollison 1992). The flamboyant style of 1960s radicalism and its enduring legacies are well documented (Stephens 1998). As Couch notes, if you examine the movement ‘you will find borrowings everywhere’. For social movements do not spring from a void: ‘Ideas and repertoires, however novel they may seem, always grow out of what has gone before’ (Couch 2001, p. 40). For example, the preparation and sharing of food, which McDonald also emphasises as indicative of a novel ‘experience’ movement, has historically been a common feature of strike actions—an important function that both affirms identity/solidarity and is practically helpful to the outcome of the strike. Most recently, at the MUA picket lines and at the S11 protest, the Food Not Bombs collective performed this traditional role. Furthermore, Food Not Bombs offers a more rather than less political inflection to this time-honoured function by announcing: ‘If the Government sends in the Army what better message can we send than Food Not Bombs’ (S11 Alliance/S11–AWOL n.d., p. 4). Serious political activism is contained within the carnivalesque, and these theatrical tactics draw on previous generations of protest. This is illustrated by Jenrose Couch in the following story: Two people dressed in elaborate carnival costumes sat thirty feet above the roadway, perched on scaffolding contraptions that were covered by huge hoop skirts. The police standing by had no idea that underneath the skirts were guerilla gardeners with jackhammers, drilling holes in the highway and planting saplings in the street. The Reclaim the Street-ers had made their point ‘beneath the tarmac a forest’, a reference to the Paris 68 slogan ‘beneath the cobblestone a beach’ (Couch 2001, p. 40). Although a puppet-maker from the Art and Revolution collective insists that the traditional protest, the march, the rally and the chants are ‘bad theatre’ (quoted in Couch 2001, p. 40), in practice they remain part of the anti-corporate repertoire—one of the many ways by which the movement is able to draw in a range of activists, including those more comfortable with the ‘bad theatre’ of earlier styles. Thus the theatrical styles of protest not only have antecedents; they supplement rather than replace more staid forms of mobilisation. Most importantly, the carnivalesque tactics are put to earnest political purpose. Couch notes of the Reclaim the Street incident that to some passers-by this was


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probably seen as kids with nothing better to do cutting up the street, ‘but to others this new era of theatrical DIY politics is distinguished by creativity, selforganisation, coalition building and the will to take on global capitalism’. She argues further that the theatre and dances and music that have punctuated both the Zapatista rebellion and the anti-corporate movement enables maintenance of a movement that will not be compromised (Couch 2001, pp. 39, 41). That earnestness motivates the dramatic is especially apparent when anti-capitalists stage events that are structured around the borrowing of official templates. At Seattle, there was the ‘People’s Assembly’ to parallel official deliberations and the ‘Global People’s Tribunal on Corporate Crimes Against Humanity’ to ‘bring to trial’ corporate practices around the world, with witnesses such as a sweatshop worker from the Philippines and a farmer from India discussing the effects of Monsanto’s seed-marketing practices (Smith J. 2001, p. 14). Such stunts bring to mind feminist parodies of momentous documents, such as Olympe de Gouges’ 1790 ‘Declaration of the Rights of Woman and Citizen’ and the 1848 Seneca Falls Declaration of Independence of the American women’s movement. In Melbourne, Public First, Earthworker, South Movement and the S11 Alliance sponsored ‘The People’s Conference’, presented as ‘The Alternative to the World Economic Forum’, on 9 September from 8.00 a.m. to 5.30 p.m. Its workshops focused on Labour & Trade Union Rights; The Environment; Social Security/Basic Minimum Income; International Issues; Alternative Economics; Gene Ethics/GM Food; Health; Education; Democratic Rights; Public Housing; and Protecting Communities. Its keynote speakers were from the CFMEU, the Gene Ethics Network and the Australian Fair Trade & Investment Network. Now, on a massive international scale, there are the annual meetings of the ‘World Social Forum’ in Porto Alegre in Brazil, which have grown each year since they commenced early in 2000. Seriousness of purpose is in fact generally behind the theatrical and carnivalesque. Iveson and Scalmer note that reporters on the scene at S11 found it difficult to categorise the actions going on around the Crown Casino. ABC journalist Damien Carrick observed: It was like a carnival most of the time. And yet every now and again the atmosphere turns when buses or cars try to enter, and the protest becomes quite serious and the atmosphere changes quite dramatically. And then five, ten minutes later it changes back again, so the atmosphere is really quite strange (quoted in Iverson and Scalmer 2000, p. 4).


Anti-capitalism and anti-corporate globalisation 311 The ‘party-protest combination’, described by Iveson and Scalmer, proved successful in helping to mobilise people for the protest and in keeping them entertained during long days of blockading the Casino (Iveson and Scalmer 2000, p. 11). The press emphasis on the allegedly novel forms expresses media preference for the novel. This much is obvious. Less obvious is the way in which the emphasis on form serves to some extent to enable the media deliberately to pay less attention to the content of the demonstration. For example, the papers reported more fully the content of the speeches at the trade union rally at S11 because its form was, frankly, less interesting. Obviously, the demonstrators do not wish the medium to drown the message. The world might well be watching, but is it able to hear? Amidst the sound and fury of those three days that stirred—if not shook—Melbourne, the protesters’ precise arguments about the iniquitous consequences of neoliberal globalisation scarcely registered in coverage of the events, with the exception of the trade union rally. However, although the protesters themselves could hardly be heard, the issues they raised were nonetheless placed in the public arena. The three days of blockade, protest and carnival made the entire event a contested site, according to Rundle, and ‘filled the newspapers and conversations of the city with discussions of globalisation, labour rights, Nike, the state and civil disobedience, trade unions and social movements’ (Rundle 2000, p. 2). And the spectacular nature of the protest ensured the issue would remain in the public consciousness. To this extent, the theatrical garb in which the messenger was dressed—distracting and disturbing though it initially was— ultimately made it easier for the messenger to be heard, because the messenger could not be ignored. Scalmer and Iveson note that ‘although coverage of the protest itself focused overwhelmingly on the action itself, it also created a new space for discussion and debate about globalization in the wider public sphere’ (Iveson and Scalmer 2000, p. 12). In the final analysis, the theatrical styles are a politically appropriate retort to the extremist parades of neo-liberal capitalism. The images by which capitalism now markets itself as a system and as a way of life are arguably grotesque in their arrogant celebration of the fact that capitalism enriches the few, yet impoverishes the many. Increasingly ostentatious displays of corporate wealth are flaunted without embarrassment; the lives of the enormously rich are the staple fare of uncritical media commentary while the misery of the millions in poverty is either ignored or depicted as somehow their own fault. The fate of share markets is now reported on television news


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in the same manner as the weather, an example of the absurdist way in which the most parasitic and speculative aspect of capitalism presents itself both as a natural phenomenon and as one worthy of broad public interest. The monstrous imagery of the system is necessarily countered with equally fantastic counter-imagery. The global carnival of capitalism has created its own spectacular antithesis in the global carnivals against it.

The problem of police violence There are clear dangers ahead for the movement against corporate globalisation, highlighted by the killing of a protester by a paramilitary police officer at the mobilisation in Genoa in July 2001. Earlier, in Gothenburg in Sweden, live ammunition was fired without warning against protesters whose cause was supported by tens of thousands there in the streets and millions throughout the world. Several people were seriously wounded (Bircham and Charlton 2001, p. 1). At the ‘Battle of Seattle’, the thousands who captured the streets sustained clouds of tear gas, volleys of rubber bullets, concussion grenades, high-powered bean cannons and straightforward beatings with riot batons (St Clair, pp. 82, 85–86). At the same time, a barrage of media condemnation denounced the protesters and associated them with ‘violence’ (McNally 2002, p. 25). Australia had its taste of extreme tactics at S11 on the part of the police guarding the WEF. The S11 website was at pains to explain the benefits and objectives of direct non-violent protests and to emphasise that non-violence not only entails refusal to comply with injustice but also refusal to act in a violent manner (Mier 2001, p. 29). Yet, even before the protests began, S11 was painted as unlawful, reckless and set to engage in an activity that was framed as morally indefensible. Such reporting not only encourages police to get their retaliation in first, but serves to excuse them if they do. Grenfell and Lacey’s analysis of the press coverage of S11 argues it was bound by parameters that served to challenge the validity of the protests (Grenfell and Lacey 2000, p. 9; see also Cahill 2001). ‘SHAMEFUL’, blared the Herald Sun headline reporting of the first day, which went on to explain that police were ‘forced to use their batons during clashes with violent sections of the crowd’ Herald Sun, 12 September 2000, p. 1). The Australian claimed thousands had ‘laid violent siege’ to the Crown Casino and its editorial accused the protesters of ‘hypocrisy’ for their ‘violence and denial of free speech’ (Australian, 12 September 2000, pp. 1, 10). Reality and representation bore little relation to each other. Iveson and Scalmer note that ‘the S11 protest was anything but


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Police at the S11 protest, Melbourne 2000 (Susan Hawthorne, copyright 2000).

the violent, derivative, stupid, incoherent action that the media, the State and business wanted it to be, prophesied it would be, and tried to claim that it was’ (Iveson and Scalmer 2000, p. 12). Thus, while the press played up the possibility of violence perpetrated by protesters, police wielded batons against passive demonstrators. Reverend Dr Peter Matheson of the Uniting Church said he had never witnessed such police ‘brutality’ (Australian, 21 September 2000, p. 29). An eye-witness described the ‘state-sponsored police riot’ that occurred on the evening of the Tuesday, which the newspapers declined to report: Just after sunset some 500 police, mainly in riot gear, and what appeared to be every mounted copper in the State attacked a group of protesters without warning. The police, devoid of name tags, issued no warnings . . . This completely unprovoked assault, with the use of batons to the head and deliberate trampling of people resulted in at least 18 serious injuries, 13 people were taken to St Vincents and the Alfred Hospital (‘S11: Through Their Eyes Only’ 2000, p. 20). A five-foot-three inch nurse who was injured in a similar police charge at dawn, recalls that, without warning, ‘the police had turned on us, the majority of us women, with a sharpness and violence that was terrifying . . . I was dragged


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along Spencer Street by my hair, dodging vicious kicks and thumps to the back of my head . . . from batons and men twice my size’ (Lyell 2000, p. 17). A few empty plastic bottles were hurled by a small number of protesters, but there was no throwing of dangerous objects such as stones. Fewer than

Police at the S11 protest, Melbourne 2000 (Susan Hawthorne, copyright 2000).


Anti-capitalism and anti-corporate globalisation 315 twenty people, including several nude streakers, were arrested. Yet, over the three days, the legal team took over 500 statements from people assaulted by police or witnesses to such mistreatment. One of these lawyers, Damien Lawson, summarised the incidents that ‘shocked’ the legal team: Nearly four hundred people were injured by police with over fifty requiring hospital treatment. Injuries included broken and fractured bones, concussion and people losing consciousness, neck and back injuries, extensive bruising and shock. Actions by the police included charging the crowd with horses, the use of batons to hit and jab people, punching, kicking and even biting. In a number of cases police drove their vehicles through crowds at high speed; in one case police ran over a young woman and then sped off. The Victorian Crimes Act 1958 (s. 462A) allows police to use reasonable force to prevent an indictable offence; it does not give police the right to use force to prevent a summary offence. The people concerned were committing, at most, summary offences; therefore the police action was unlawful. Significantly, the legal team noted ‘the systematic removal of identification badges by almost all police throughout the protest’ (Lawson 2000, pp. 14–15). An ABC television journalist reported: The police say that they have been provoked through the day. They claim that protesters had showered them with urine on one occasion, and thrown ball bearings and things. But at the protest last night where the police charged I saw none of that. A few protesters threw empty plastic bottles, but that was the only protester violence that I saw (quoted in Iveson and Scalmer 2000, p. 9). When commercial media outlets alleged protester violence, the Indymedia site provided a different account, ‘of creative and non-confrontational actions overlooked; of a successful blockade; and of police baton-charges and provocation’. Demonstrators told their own stories: ‘The only thing that I’ve seen that was violent today has been instigated by police.’ According to the Australian: ‘Premier Steve Bracks authorised the crackdown after protesters kept up to 200 delegates out of the conference at Crown Casino on Monday’ (all quoted in Iveson and Scalmer 2000, pp. 8–9). Clearly, Bracks was rattled by the success of the S11 action on the first day and was anxious to present Melbourne as a place where the world’s rich and powerful could meet and


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greet each other without inconvenience. Trades Hall secretary Leigh Hubbard alleged the police crackdown was the result of political pressure following WEF threats to abandon the conference (Iveson and Scalmer 2000, p. 11; Australian, 15 September 2000, p. 26). Notwithstanding the dubious nature of the police action and the restraint of the protesters, Bracks condemned the protesters as ‘un-Australian’ and said they ‘deserved everything they got’. He promised a barbecue to congratulate the officers involved in policing the forum, an idea abandoned after disquiet in Cabinet and condemnation from Labor Party branches (Australian, 21 September 2000, p. 29). New South Wales Labor Premier Bob Carr signalled agreement with the journalist who equated the S11 protesters with Nazi street thugs in 1930s Germany. Federal Labor leader Kim Beazley also stood up for Bracks’ handling of the S11 protests (Iveson and Scalmer 2000, pp. 8, 12). When the Victorian State Conference of the Labor Party voted down a motion to censure Bracks over his praise of police violence and condemnation of S11 demonstrators, the first newsletter of a new organisation called Socialist Democracy insisted: ‘The protest exposed the Labor government as indistinguishable from the Liberals’ (Socialist Democracy 2000). On 12 June 2001, the Report of the Ombudsman, Investigation of Police Action at the World Economic Forum Demonstrations September 2000 generally endorsed the police conduct while conceding individual officers had acted in an undisciplined way. S11 representatives condemned the findings and argued the report effectively gave police the go-ahead to employ violent tactics against demonstrators (Age, 13 June 2001, p. 1). It is also of note that the Ombudsman’s report (2001) described the three-day policing by 24 000 officers as ‘the biggest police operation’ in Victoria for many years (cited in Mier 2001, p. 33). Police wore riot helmets and garb for the first time in Australia’s history (Mier 2001, p. 51). According to Jude McCulloch, globalisation has created a context in which the military capacity of nations has been turned inwards, frequently against dissenters who threaten profits by insisting upon minimum standards for corporate behaviour: ‘To depict anti-globalisation protesters as terrorists or the enemy within suits the interests of multinational capital.’ The use of police paramilitary units in the policing of protests and new pieces of legislation to facilitate the quelling of protests indicate that globalisation involves the danger of a race to the bottom, not just in labour and environmental standards, but also in terms of the value states put on the lives of their citizens (McCulloch 2001, p. 3; McCulloch 2000/01, pp. 10–11). The implications for democracy are profound.


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The behaviour of the police at the S11 protest, Melbourne, September 2000, became the subject of much controversy (Susan Hawthorne, copyright 2000).

Revolution versus reform The real divisions at Seattle and Melbourne were not the ones the media played up to suggest incoherence. The significant tensions were not between participating social movements, but between radicals or revolutionaries on the one hand and moderates or reformists on the other hand. In other words, the real division cut through some of the participating social movements, new and old; and the position of the radicals and revolutionaries within these movements was fortified greatly by the many protesters who now identify themselves primarily as ‘anti-capitalists’ rather than adherents of any preexisting social movement: ‘Many protesters were clearly anti-capitalist and ready to overthrow the system,’ observed Chris Carlsson at Seattle. ‘But a number of organizers and participants seek to reform the system, to the point of beseeching the globalizing technocrats for a seat at the table’ (Carlsson 2000). Jeff St Clair details the machinations of labour leaders as well as the devious smugness of ‘environmentalists in suits’. He emphasises that the events at Seattle made the moderates look silly:


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Power, Profit and Protest In the annals of popular protest in America, these have been shining hours, achieved entirely outside the conventional arena of orderly protest and white-paper activism and the timid bleats of the professional leadership of big labour and environmentalism. This truly was an insurgency from below, in which all those who strove to moderate and deflect the turbulent flood of popular outrage managed to humiliate themselves (St Clair 1999, pp. 84, 89, 91–92, 96).

Specifically, Jackie Smith notes there was no clear consensus amongst the Seattle protesters about whether the WTO should be abolished or reformed (Smith, J. 2001, p. 3). Some sectors of the movement believe the WTO agreements could be rewritten and improved, according to the ideology of ‘fair trade’ rather than ‘free trade’, but most of the movements comprising the anti-capitalist movement eschew negotiation, because coming to the table often means accepting the corporate project; therefore negotiation tends to benefit corporate interests (Starr 2000, p. 157). Prior to the WEF meeting in Australia, James Goodman (2000) charted the rise of dissenting voices within the WEF since about the mid-1990s, when it became apparent that neo-liberal prescriptions had brought unprecedented levels of global inequality and undreamed-of degrees of financial instability, environmental exhaustion and social dislocation: ‘The neo-liberal triumph has created new sources of opposition, the impacts and responses have been unremitting, and advocates have been forced onto the defensive.’ Many of the most powerful players in global capitalism are questioning the ‘dictatorship of the market’; the WEF has left behind its market fundamentalism and is charting a new agenda for corporate globalism that embraces rather than rejects ‘the social’. Crises within capitalism and ‘dramatic public explosions against neo-liberal globalism’ since the mid-1990s are driving these challenges from within the WEF. For the first time in many years, ‘anti-capitalist’ protest has returned to the capitalist heartland, and to the global stage. These protests open up the ideological space for the articulation of alternative guiding principles, putting on the agenda the possibility of transformation away from the current malaise. As the promotion of capitalist discipline is questioned, protest targetted at the agents of neo-liberal globalism gains remarkable political leverage (Goodman 2000, p. 46).


Anti-capitalism and anti-corporate globalisation 319 Goodman notes that reformist organisations, such as the ICFTU, are participating in discussions with the WEF, taking heart in the WEF’s apparent willingness to become an advocate of ‘globalisation with a human face’. He asks, however, whether a forum dominated by corporate interests should be encouraged to take on the role of mapping out future frameworks and granted legitimacy in this agenda-setting process, or whether its role should be challenged and alternative sources of legitimacy asserted (Goodman 2000, pp. 45–47). In Melbourne, the WEF invited ACTU president Sharan Burrow and prominent eco-feminist Vandana Shiva to address the conference. Both spoke in uncompromising terms about the human and environmental costs of neoliberal globalisation. On behalf of a community forum of churches, aid agencies, green groups and unions, Burrow conveyed to the WEF the priority initiatives these groups believed would build ‘a more socially equitable, environmentally and culturally tolerant vision of global development’; these included: faster, more effective debt relief; increased aid; fair trade; a more democratic system of global economic management; a tax on capital flows; a code of conduct for multinationals; and respect for human rights. Burrow informed the WEF that it could play a significant part in reshaping globalisation to ensure that people matter, but it would require ‘reform of international institutions such that the voice of, and the solutions posed by, unions and civil society are heeded’ (Burrow 2000, pp. 2–5). Speaking at the Convergence Conference in the lead-up to the S11 mobilisation, Walden Bello described the new ‘globalisation with a conscience’ or ‘globalisation with compassion’ as follows: ‘instead of being run over by the globalization express, people will be asked to quietly and peacefully roll over and adjust to the constant and unpredictable change wrought by the Transnational Corporations’ search for profitability’. Given the manifest failure of IMF-imposed monetary regimes and structural adjustment programs and the ‘crisis of legitimacy’ rocking the WTO, Bello suggests that, instead of trying to reform the multilateral institutions, it would be more realistic and cost-effective to move to disempower, if not abolish, them and create totally new institutions ‘that do not have the baggage of illegitimacy, institutional failure, and Jurassic mindsets that attach to the IMF, World Bank, and WTO’. But more is needed. He is not suggesting reregulation of the transnational corporations, ‘but of eventually disabling or dismantling them as fundamental hazards to people, society, the environment, to everything we hold dear’. His alternative route to the future is ‘deglobalization’, which is not about withdrawing from the


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international economy but subordinating the logic of the market to the values of security, equity and social solidarity, ‘reembedding the economy in society, rather than having society driven by the economy’ (Bello 2000, pp. 12–15). Within the S11 movement, David Glanz of the International Socialist Organisation argues that a Marxist analysis could cut through the confusion that abounds in the various solutions aimed at reform of global capitalism, whether of the ‘fair trade’ variety or the nostalgia for locally based, traditional economies: ‘While we need to fight every manifestation of injustice or of environmental damage, we must link these local struggles to a global challenge to the system.’ This raises the question of agency. Since the problems flow from a system based on exploitation, even the most militant demonstration outside a WEF summit can do no more than temporarily rally the anti-capitalists and demoralise the capitalists: We have to move beyond protesting against the symbols of the system and begin organising against the system itself. We need to link the vitality, imagination and daring of the new generation of young activists to the power of the organised working class . . . encouraging those horrified by the impact of the market in the developing world to take up struggles here . . . we need to make explicit how every local, partial fight against Howard or the boss forms part of the bigger picture . . . we can put the socialist alternative to a sick system back at the centre of political debate and political life . . . the choice is socialism or barbarism. Our actions now can help determine the outcome (Glanz 2000, p. 9). The record of social movement action in Australia suggests that reforms and concessions are won not by the moderates, but by the militants, through extremist postures and activities and the making of extravagant political claims. By carving out political space for themselves, the more defiant within any movement manoeuvre the less defiant into an advantageous political position. Moderate gains are accordingly achieved not so much by moderate and respectable means, but by militant and disrespectful activity. It has been the more implacable, more truly oppositional sections of social movements—new and old—that have destabilised the prevailing bases of power and challenged conservative ideological certainties to the point where the consensual mechanisms of capitalist democracy accede to the more moderate demands of other


Anti-capitalism and anti-corporate globalisation 321 sections of the same movement. In making these concessions, the system protects itself from political developments which are considerably more dangerous: it reforms and modernises itself and, at the same time, raises the political profile of the least threatening sections of the social movements, further encouraging the interrelationship with the state that has tended, increasingly, to shape the movements themselves. What has been good for the nation-state might also be good for globalising capitalism. In the Australian context, large and angry mobilisations will undoubtedly raise the political profile of reforming coalitions, such as the Fair Trade Alliance. Comprising people involved in unions, churches, aid and community development, human rights and civil liberties organisations, farming and environmental groups, the Fair Trade Alliance seeks to contest the way in which the concept of free trade is used to justify the removal of limitations on foreign investment, changes to quarantine regulations, stronger competition policy measures, the application of market forces to social services, and intellectual property laws which favour transnational corporations. By convening meetings, making submissions and other appropriate actions, the Fair Trade Alliance aims to make proposed trade agreements subject to the requirement of democratic decision-making and subject to wider scrutiny and participation: ‘It is vital for social and economic development and for democratic politics that elected governments retain the power to regulate the economy in the public interest’ (Forum, no 27, September 2001, pp. 4–5). If the moderates within the anti-capitalist movement truly desire to force the hand of governments or transnational institutions to make concessions, they need not be alarmed about the ‘maddies’ misbehaving, as they would see it. At Seattle, there were victories at the table, for what was happening in the streets stiffened the resolve of the African delegates inside the WTO. They refused to buckle to US demands and coaxing. They hung together and the talks collapsed (St Clair 1999, p. 96). The extremist project of rejecting altogether the WTO and similar transnational insitutions constitutes the best means to prompt internal reform, if there is any prospect at all for such a development. In an address to staff and students at the University of Warwick in December 2000, Clinton argued that failure to address poverty in developing nations could lead to ‘rejection of the open economic and social order upon which our future depends’ (quoted in Hill 2001, p. 36). Conversely, perhaps only ‘rejection’ of this order will persuade those in power that issues such as increasing inequality and poverty must be tackled.


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Democracy versus the neo-liberal strong state Against the globalisation of the corporations, the anti-capitalist movement proposes an alternative of ‘globalisation from below’—a democratic rebuff of corporate globalisation. For Klein, the fight against globalisation has not simply morphed into a struggle against corporatisation or capitalism: ‘It has also become a fight for democracy’ (Klein 2001c, p. 83). According to Starr: ‘It is a hopeful vision that assumes the possibility of international, democratic, non-violent revolution to be achieved by the rising up of people’s movements everywhere’ (Starr 2000, p. 83). This approach is consonant with Marxist hopes that the workers of the world will unite and rebuild the world. It is also consistent with the best traditions of democracy, because it upholds the interests of the very many against the very few. ‘The movements of this mode are devotedly democratic, holding Western democratic ideals both as fundamental goals for their movements and as the anvil on which to shatter corporate rule’ (Starr 2000, p. 83). Klein observes: All this activism is so informed by Marx—but it’s also saying ‘You know what, there are other ideas out there, too—older ideas and brand-new ideas. Maybe we can create something that is new and better than anything we’ve had before and deals with some of the failings of the past—that sees us as whole human beings’ (Klein 2001b, p. 12). The phenomenon of ‘globalisation from below’ suggests the possibility of a synthesis of the principles and practices of Marxist internationalism and majoritarian democracy. The S11 Alliance alleges that ‘exclusive, undemocratic’ institutions such as the WEF, WTO, IMF and World Bank ‘have eroded the power of communities and governments to make legitimate decisions’ (S11 Alliance 2000b). The movement can speak in democratic terms because neoliberalism was not popular, even before its worst effects became apparent. Public opinion surveys indicate time and again that policies such as privatisation lack majority support. In Britain in 2001, 80 per cent of the population favoured renationalisation of British Rail, but the Labour government would not consider this option. The neo-liberal changes of the past two decades were imposed on people who were denied choice in the matter, because whichever party was in government pursued neo-liberal


Anti-capitalism and anti-corporate globalisation 323 policies and oppositions declined to offer alternatives. Political choice has been eroded, and those reluctantly chosen are increasingly supine. For Martin and Schumann: if governments, on every burning issue of the future, can do no more than evoke the overwhelming constraints of the international economy, then the whole of politics becomes a spectacle of impotence, and the democratic state loses its legitimacy. Globalization turns out to be a trap for democracy itself (Martin and Schumann 1996, p. 10). Starr argues that neo-liberal policies and corporate operations must be anti-democratic. Corporations are perfectly happy to operate in nondemocratic environments and, when necessary, do their best to manipulate democratic processes to their benefit. One of the ways in which they have done this is to reduce the notion of citizen to that of consumer, whose rights are narrowed to the right to consume; thus the only task for the public sphere is facilitating maximum consumer choice. ‘Illusory product diversity replaces the right to know, to participate, to regulate, to govern’ (Starr 2000, pp. 23–24). With elites on all sides of the political spectrum persuaded by corporations to do their bidding, it matters not what the people think. In any case, consent is irrelevant to the neo-liberal project. The relationship of corporations to democracy and democratic processes is entirely contingent. In Australia, no political party currently capable of forming government is resistant to the neo-liberalism that causes the remorseless trend towards increasing inequalities. It appears that the major parties have agreed not to compete with each other in the articulation of policies that would be inimical to the interests of multinational capitalism, even if they would also be popular with the majority of voters. Time and again, both major parties have indicated they would prefer to maintain the confidence of the markets than the confidence of the people. The range of policies presented across the political spectrum has narrowed considerably in the past decade, leading to increased levels of political alienation within all generational cohorts (for a recent discussion of dissatisfaction with elected representatives, see Burchell and Leigh 2002). Politicians, in Australia as elsewhere, are themselves relatively immune to the effects of the policies they champion; backbench politicians earn more than twice the average personal gross income. ‘The political world has gradually turned inward, absorbed in its internal rivalries, its own problems, its own interests,’ observes Pierre Bourdieu, so:


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Power, Profit and Protest politicians capable of understanding and expressing their constituents’ expectations and demands are becoming increasingly rare . . . Those who govern are prisoners of a reassuring entourage of young technocrats who often know almost nothing about the everyday lives of their fellow citizens and have no occasion to be reminded of their ignorance (Bourdieu 1999, p. 627).

The National Party and the Labor Party have distanced themselves from their natural constituencies. Both are parties whose conversion to neoliberalism necessitates a fundamental break with inclinations and policy traditions. The National Party is now seen by many country people as failing to represent rural interests; the rise of One Nation was indicative of increasing levels of dissatisfaction with the political choices available. The laws of political life also suggest that Labor’s casting aside of its social democratic baggage would bring new players into the field. Enter the anticapitalist movement. Anti-corporate demonstrators express, in the words of Chris Carlsson’s Internet recollections of Seattle, ‘a crucial rejection of a helpless detachment from the real decisions that shape our lives, a new insistence on our right to decide together the limits to the marketization of life itself’ (Carlsson 2000). Carlsson emphasises hostility to market forces and commitment to democracy. The two impulses go together for the simple reason that the market is fundamentally anti-democratic, conferring votes on dollars rather than people. Any system that alters the balance away from democracy and towards the market, such as neo-liberalism, will engender opposition— especially in a system that remains at least formally democratic, because unrestrained market forces are prejudicial to the interests of majorities. Even in non-democratic systems, the compliance of the disenfranchised is less easily secured when majorities are impoverished by neo-liberal policies. The world is therefore witnessing the emergence of a global anti-capitalist movement that finds its supporters in all manner of societies that have been drawn ‘into civilisation’. The immense power and penetration of the enemy provokes widespread protest to reaffirm the principles of democracy. The power of the enemy is therefore a source of strength to the opposition, because the opposition expresses democratic imperatives. For Starr: ‘Knowledge of the multiple oppressions effected by globalization is not disempowering; movements are inspired by the belief that so many people are being screwed in so many ways that the global plebiscite will refuse this system’ (Starr 2000, p. 151).


Anti-capitalism and anti-corporate globalisation 325 The complicity of nation-states with the globalisation project of corporate capitalism is glaringly evident in the fact that it is nation-states which provide the forces to contain or repress the anti-capitalist protesters, to protect globalisation from above against those who would democratise it from below. Nation-states may be losing many functions and options in the face of globalisation, but effective monopoly over the means of coercion in any given geographical area is not one of them. They are showing their enthusiasm for defending the ‘global capitalist oligarchy’ against the social movement that contests its unprecedented and undemocratic power. Preparedness to use force on behalf of multinational corporations, which still rely on such protection from nation-states, is aided and abetted by mainstream media coverage of anti-capitalist protests, as the S11 movement discovered. Repression is in the process of being globalised along with trade and financial markets. Increased international exchanges and similarities between police forces have fuelled an upward move in the levels of force used by police. In 2000, the Australian government passed the Defence Legislation Amendment (Aid to the Civilian Authorities) Act with the support of Labor in the Senate in the weeks before the WEF meeting. These amendments to the Defence Act make it easier for the government to call out the defence forces against protesting citizens, and give defence personnel sweeping powers to intervene in civil disturbances and suppress them with all ‘reasonable and necessary force’ (McCulloch 2001, p. 3; 2000/01, pp. 10–11; Grenfell 2001, p. 248). Despite a disturbing recent record of police shooting people in Victoria, the Bracks government is also introducing legislation to enable it to cope more sternly with anti-capitalist protests (Coady et al 2001; http://workers.labor.net.au/105/news62_bracks.html). In 2002, the Australian government proposed legislation that would allow the Attorney General to ban any organisation deemed ‘likely to endanger the security and integrity of the Commonwealth or another country’ (a member or supporter could receive 25 years imprisonment), allow ASIO to detain people incommunicado, and allow the government to label some union activity, civil disobedience and other activism as terrorist, with life imprisonment as potential punishment (email from Damien Lawson, Federation of Community Legal Centres to Community Alliance of Port Phillip, 29 April 2002). Similar developments are occurring across the world. Increasingly violent repression of counter-globalisation protests on the part of nation-states could be interpreted as a sign of weakness rather than as strength. Antonio Gramsci (1971, esp. p. 238) argued that overt forms of


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social control are the resort of societies where ‘hegemony’ is weak, such as Czarist Russia. In relation to the violence against the S11 protesters, Grenfell (2001, p. 243) comments: States, like capital, have found that the capacity for public agendas to be constructed, and manipulated, either through mass-marketing techniques or carefully scripted rhetoric, has diminished in the face of the increased ability for activists to exchange information via the internet and mass communications systems. Combined with the fact that the nation-state is increasingly seen as an impotent form of government in the face of globalisation, such pressures have reduced the capacity for states to manage protests in non-coercive ways. Yet manage them they must, in order to attract global capital. The police violence at S11 and elsewhere is ‘a likely response by state authorities that are drawn into protecting the interests of global capitalism, as the state is forced to fall back upon its resources of violence to manage protest in the face of decline in its legitimacy’ (Grenfell 2001, p. 233). With an inability to manage, contain and delegitimate global protest to a substantial degree, recourse to violence on the part of the state becomes more central to the management of public dissent against globalisation (Grenfell 2001, pp. 247). Only time will tell whether the extra room for authoritarian manoeuvre provided to Western capitalist states by the events of 9/11 solves this problem for them. The attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon have become convenient excuses for increased suppression of those who have far less in common with militarist, misogynist, fundamentalist religious zealots than those initiating the new repressive measures. ‘Terrorist-baiting’ has become the new McCarthyism: just as any progressive sentiments in the 1950s were branded as ‘communist’, they are now deemed ‘terrorist’. Such baiting attempts to draw attention away from the serious arguments mounted by anti-corporate campaigners and make it more difficult for these opinions to be aired. Yet there is one problem that will always remain with the globalising corporations and the nation-states who do their bidding. That is corporations’ ultimate dependence upon, and therefore the power inherent in, the commodity upon which globalising capital is inescapably dependent for its profit-making: labour. In the final analysis, which side the working class is on will shape the future course of events.


6 Globalisa ti the canceron: stage of capitalism ?

Until very recently, lack of concerted intellectual resistance to globalisation has been an obvious feature of the globalising world order. ‘The intellectuals,’ as Pierre Bourdieu (1998, p. 65) has observed, ‘have remained silent, when they have not simply echoed the dominant discourse.’ Referring to media intellectuals such as journalists, as well as academics, Bourdieu argues:

the strength of the new dominant order is that it has found the specific means of ‘integrating’ (in some cases you might say buying, in others seducing) an ever-growing fraction of the intellectuals, all over the world. These ‘integrated’ intellectuals often continue to see themselves as critical (or simply on the left), according to the traditional model. And that helps to give great symbolic efficacy to their work in rallying support for the established order (Bourdieu 1998, p. 75).


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Bourdieu does not enumerate (‘it would be too long and too cruel’) all the forms of surrender—or, worse, collaboration: ‘I will simply allude to the debates of the . . . postmodern philosophers, who . . . offer a supposedly postmodern but in fact “radical chic” version of the ideology of the end of ideology, with the condemnation of the great explanatory narratives . . .’ (Bourdieu 1998, p. 42).

Absence of critique: strength or weakness? Bourdieu identifies absence of critique as a source of systemic strength for neo-liberal globalisation. Certainly, absence of critique has, in the short term, facilitated the neo-liberal project that has been consciously pursued by business elites the world over. In the long term, however, absence of critique is arguably destructive of capitalism. Despite Fukuyama’s (1992) gloating at the ‘end of history’, at the triumph of free-market capitalism over contending systems, the economic systems of the Western world endured and found acceptance and legitimacy in the period up to 1989 because they were not wholly free-market oriented. The presence of alternative ideas—socialism within and communism without—played an important role in encouraging governments to tame the excesses and to protect people from the worst effects of capitalism. Internally, socialist ideas acted as the conscience of capitalism; externally, ‘communist’ states functioned as a threat of what might happen if capitalism did not meet demands for some degree of security for the most vulnerable. The absence of external opposition, celebrated by Fukuyama, is in fact fraught with dangers for capitalism, according to Zygmunt Bauman: the waning of the communist alternative lays bare the inner shortcomings of the market-centred version of freedom, previously either de-problematized or played down in confrontation with the less alluring aspects of the system of comparative reference. Less can now be forgiven, less is likely to be placidly endured. An immanent critique of the maladies of freedom reduced to consumer choice will be less easy to dismiss by the old expedient of imputed approval of a discredited alternative, and the inanities the critique discloses will be more difficult to exonerate as ‘the lesser of two evils’. Market freedom would need to explain and defend itself in its own terms; and these are not particularly strong or cogent


Globalisation: the cancer stage of capitalism? 329 terms, especially when it comes to justifying its social and psychological costs (Bauman 1992, p. 184). The collapse of the communist alternative has made internal criticism more difficult, according to Bauman. Yet the collapse of the discreditable and easily discredited ‘communist’ alternative should render the life of criticism easier. As Nick Dyer-Witheford (1999) argues, rather than identifying the disintegration of Bolshevism with the end of Marxism, it should be seen as opening a space within which those forms of Marxism critical of and repressed by communism can emerge and blossom (Dyer-Witheford 1999, p. 7). Bauman is right, however, that ‘the world without an alternative needs self-criticism as a condition of survival and decency’ (Bauman 1992, pp. 185–86). John McMurtry (1999) has referred to the present era as ‘the cancer stage of capitalism’, because capital is now engaged in a systematic subversion of the ‘social immune system’. Previously restricted by the communist threat and workers’ movements, capital has now entered a phase of uncontrolled expansion marked by global mobility and the explosion of financial speculation divorced from any productive function. This process is attacking the social institutions that maintain public health and life in a way analogous to the metastasizing encroachments of tumorous cells on a human body. Environmental despoliation, unemployment, the redistribution of income from poor to rich, and the dismantling of public forms of lifeprovision are the symptoms of a malignancy that diverts more and more social resources to fuel its own growth: Indicative of the classic pattern of cancer mutation and spread are the synergistic effects of money capital’s cumulative destruction of the planet’s basic conditions of life (air, sunlight, water, soil, and biodiversity), its increasingly aggressive invasions and assaults on social infrastructure and self-protective systems of life sustenance and circulation, its systemic intolerance of bearing the costs of maintaining social and environmental carrying and defence capacities, and its rapidly escalating, autonomous self-multiplication that is no longer subordinated to any requirements of life-organisation (McMurtry 1999, quoted in Dyer-Witheford 1999, p. 11). According to McMurtry, the host body’s immune system does not respond to the cancer’s advance. In the case of capitalism, this occurs because the communication systems of host social bodies across the world largely reject


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and refuse to disseminate messages that identify the source of the disease, because these communication systems are subordinate to transnational capital (discussed in Dyer-Witheford 1999, pp. 11–12). More precisely, these communication systems are themselves transnational corporations. The academic fashionability of post-Marxism, according to DyerWitheford, is an aspect of this failure of recognition and response. In its refusal to acknowledge the full depth of capitalism’s subsumption of the planet, and in its dismissal of the very political and intellectual tradition that has consistently applied itself to this issue, it is part of a problem of global lifethreatening dimensions (Dyer-Witheford 1999, p. 12).

The collapse of reformism Yet it is not simply the absence of Marxist critique that has become part of the problem, but rather the quiescence of those whom Marxists identified throughout the twentieth century—somewhat scornfully—as labourist or social democratic ‘reformists’. In the current context, a healthy dose of reformism would go a long way to confront neo-liberalism, because it is precisely the reformist gains of the twentieth century—the welfare state, minimum wages, penalty rates for antisocial working hours, job security, strong trade unions, public ownership of utilities and transport, public and universal systems of health and education—that neo-liberalism attacks. While Marxism has tended to consider such reforms inadequate and far short of the socialist ideal, the odium with which these reforms are viewed by the forces of neo-liberal globalisation renders them all the more significant and worthwhile. Yet genuine reform, and persistent defence of still-existing reformist achievements, are largely absent from the mainstream political agenda of Western societies. This is apparent in the degradation of the term itself through its bipartisan misuse. The word ‘reform’ once indicated a policy that was progressive and/or redistributive, and was a term that was identifiably the property primarily of the reformist left. The important changes historically designated as ‘reforms’—the Reform Acts in Britain that extended the right to vote, universal elementary education, the abolition of slavery and the end of child labour, for example—were properly progressive measures aimed at greater rather than less equality (Evans 1998, pp. 3–4). Now, in the absence of real reforms, the word ‘reform’ has been hijacked by neo-liberals and is used by all parts of the mainstream Australian political spectrum and the media to indicate policies that are regressive and/or inegalitarian. Thus


Globalisation: the cancer stage of capitalism? 331 Peter Reith referred to his waterfront ‘reforms’, Peter Costello labelled the GST a tax ‘reform’ and Tony Abbott pursues further industrial relations ‘reforms’. The Labor Party echoes the usage, standing shoulder to shoulder with the Coalition in the debasement of political vocabulary. The genuine reforms once pursued by the ALP and its counterparts elsewhere in the world, and by the Democrats in the United States during the period of the ‘New Deal’, provided capitalism with the vital economic and social infrastructure that gave it stability and acceptance. Bauman argues that social systems such as the welfare state, which focused on the ends which capitalist modernity neglected, ‘enforced corrections which prevented the accumulation of potentially lethal dysfunctions’ (Bauman 1992, pp. 183–84). With the dismantling of much of social democracy’s legacy, and in the absence of social democratic arguments against allowing the market ever fuller rein, neo-liberalism has reshaped capitalist societies to such an extent that considerably fewer systems exist to alleviate the harmful effects on the majority of the increasing prosperity of the minority. Lacking social democracy’s restraint and critique, and many of its practical solutions to ageold capitalist contradictions—such as how to keep workers alive and well and functioning—globalising multinational capitalism appears increasingly to be a threat to itself. The internal opposition to capitalism of the old social movement of labour—especially the unions—had protected people, and thereby the system, from capitalism’s own worst tendencies. New social movements, like the labour movement, played a role in securing legitimacy for the system by prompting reforms of a different kind; they were thus beneficial to the societies that brought them forth. Alberto Melucci (1989), for example, contends that contemporary social movements play a vital role in ‘complex’ systems: social movements affect the dominant institutions by modernising their cultural outlook and procedures, as well as by selecting new elites: ‘Contemporary social movements stimulate radical questions about the ends of personal and social life and, in so doing, they warn of the crucial problems facing complex societies’ (Melucci 1989, pp. 11–12). For Kuechler and Dalton (1990, p. 298), the determining impact of new social movements on modern societies could well be the ‘unintended consequence of securing the long-term stability of the political order’. To some extent at least, this has always been an important consequence of protest. At the time these authors were writing, large sections of the new social movements were well on the retreat into identity politics, abjuring their particular reformative project as obviously as the mainstream labour movement was neglecting its own.


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A crisis of capitalism? Globalising capitalism is now beginning to show signs of a crisis of legitimacy—one clearly of its own making. David Marquand comments pointedly: By eroding the values of the public domain, incessant marketisation has undermined the foundations of the market order itself. It has also undermined the foundations of democratic governance. Citizenship rights are, by definition, equal. Market rewards are, by definition, unequal. If the public domain of citizenship and equity is annexed to, or invaded by, the market domain of buying and selling, the primordial democratic promise of equal citizenship will be negated (Marquand 2000, quoted in Frankel 2001, p. 205). In the latter half of the nineteenth century, Marx identified the state as ‘the executive committee of the bourgeoisie for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie’. Standing apart from any particular capitalist or group of capitalists, the state was able, when necessary, to persuade or force capitalists as a whole to make concessions to subordinate classes that were in the long-term interests of capitalism as a system. It was by the state acting as the executive committee in the interests of the whole capitalist class that the social democratic project notched up such notable gains during the first three-quarters of the twentieth century. However, the rise to power of the transnational agencies of globalisation has annulled the restraining and stabilising roles for capitalism of nation-states—with the exception, perhaps, of nation-states that club together, such as the European Union, which has on occasions demonstrated a capacity to resist transnational corporate edicts. If the transnational agencies—the usual suspects such as the IMF, WTO, WEF and World Bank—are to become truly the executive committee of the international bourgeoisie for managing the common affairs of the whole international bourgeoisie, these agencies must necessarily persuade or force multinational corporations not to imperil continuing opportunities for capital accumulation by threatening the very conditions that make this possible— not just a sustainable environment, but also a satisfied workforce: Far from being a passive object of capitalist designs, the worker is in fact the active subject of production, the wellspring of the skills,


Globalisation: the cancer stage of capitalism? 333 innovation, and cooperation on which capital depends . . . Labor is for capital always a problematic ‘other’ that must constantly be controlled and subdued, and that, as persistently, circumvents or challenges this command. Rather than being organized by capital, workers struggle against it (Dyer-Witheford 1999, p. 65). Most Western Marxists have emphasised only the dominant and inexorable logic of capital. Its accumulative logic, unfolding according to ineluctable—even if finally self-destructive—laws, figures as the unilateral force shaping the contemporary world. The autonomist Marxists rediscovered that Marx’s analysis affirms the power not of capital, but of the creative human energy Marx called ‘labour’—‘the living, form-giving flame’ constitutive of society (Dyer-Witheford 1999, p. 65). The working class is what autonomist theorist Antonio Negri (1988, p. 209) terms a ‘dynamic subject, an antagonistic force tending toward its own independent identity’. Class composition is in a state of constant flux, but since capital is a system that depends on labour, it cannot completely destroy its antagonist. New technology is reducing capital’s dependence on labour, but history reminds us that previous moments of technical innovation have been succeeded by long periods of employment growth. Each capitalist restructuring must recruit new and different types of labour, and thus yield the possibility of working-class recomposition, involving different strata of workers with fresh capacities of resistance and counter-initiative. This process of composition, then decomposition, then recomposition of the working class constitutes a cycle of struggle. For Dyer-Witheford (1999, p. 66), this concept is important because ‘it permits recognition that from one cycle to another the leading role of certain sectors of labor, of particular organizational strategies or specific cultural forms may decline, become archaic and be surpassed, without equating such changes, as is so fashionable today, with the disappearance of class conflict’. Despite the current extent of technological unemployment, the ultimate dependence of capital upon labour is most evident in the case of technologically highly skilled labour. Just as the skilled engineers of the nineteenth century were often at the forefront of labour struggles, because of industrial capitalism’s dependence upon their skills, post-industrial capitalism has also created a new layer of workers upon whom it relies. In Marxist terms, these people are exploited—possibly more so than less wellpaid workers, for the surplus value produced in such sectors of the workforce is immense. As the previous chapter indicated, there are at last signs of


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mobilisation amongst such workers, both in the workplace and as anticorporate Net warriors, based upon the realisation of this exploitation. Moreover, there has always been a fundamental contradiction in capitalism: employers wish to pay their employees as little as possible, but depend on the buying power of employees in general as a market for the products exchanged under capitalism. Is it any wonder that banks are so anxious to press credit cards on people, so that ever greater levels of personal debt can substitute for stagnant wages? However, there is a limit to the capacity of indebted individuals to solve this problem for capitalism—a contradiction that is heightened greatly by globalisation, as whole domestic economies exert downward pressures on real wages in order to sustain competitiveness internationally. Thus, to make themselves competitive, capitalist economies restrict the buying power of the very consumers they are competing to reach. As Ellen Meiksins Wood (1998, p. 8) notes: ‘You can’t get much more contradictory than that.’ For Amory Starr (2000), the fact that economic globalisation is destroying consumer purchasing power is a ‘gruesome paradox’ (2000, p. 16). The universalisation of capitalism means that capitalism, more than ever, is riddled with internal contradictions— ‘a reason for stepping up, not abandoning, anticapitalist struggles’. Capitalism’s strengths are also its vulnerabilities; globalisation may be widening, not constricting, the space for oppositional politics (Wood 1998, p. 9). The basic tendencies of the capitalist economy—generating inequality, insecurity and instability alongside prodigious capital accumulation—are strikingly evident in the current era, as Frank Stilwell (1998) observes. It is because capitalism is rapidly becoming an integrated global system that its inherent contradictory characteristcs are becoming ever clearer (Stilwell 1998, p. 17). Even aside from the potential for wholesale systemic crisis, neoliberalism’s assault on the economic security and the social rights of the workers—on whom capitalism depends—is encouraging new and deeper forms of anti-capitalist resistance that are potentially more dangerous to capitalism than the restoration of the gains of social democracy. As Leslie Sklair (2001) notes, for every act of foreign investment there is a potential for local groups in contact with global networks to expose exploitation of labour, violation of human rights and the degradation of the environment. He cites the Stop MAI campaign and the anti-capitalist movement as examples of resistance. With class disparities widening and absolute and relative levels of poverty on the increase; with whole communities being ripped apart by plant closures and capital flight; and with the previous protective infrastructures


Globalisation: the cancer stage of capitalism? 335 of the state progressively demolished, multinational capitalism appears to be starting to produce its own aspirant gravediggers. According to DyerWitheford, a crisis beckons because: The unleashing of computerization, telecommunications, and genetic engineering within a context of general commodification is bringing massive crises of technological unemployment, corporate monopolization of culture, privatization of bodies of knowledge vital for human well-being and survival, and, ultimately, marketdriven transformations of humanity’s very species-being (Dyer-Witheford 1999, p. 7). At the very least, as international studies of labour movement mobilisation reveal, sharpened degrees of class division have brought with them increased levels of class conflict (see especially Moody 1997; Waddington 1999).

Possibilities for the future It is possible for workers to use the creative capacity on which capital depends for its incessant innovation in order to reappropriate technology. This possibility arises because, in its attempt to technologically control labour, capital cannot avoid creating new types of technologically capable, scientifically literate workers (Dyer-Witheford 1999, p. 71). Antonio Negri’s notion of ‘cycles of struggle’ can be used creatively to interpret the current moment (Negri 1988; 1989). Over and above the potential for such workers to contest their own exploitation, the technology associated with globalisation also facilitates the globalisation of resistance to the neo-liberal form assumed by globalisation. Computer expertise is a recognised feature of the anti-capitalist protest movement. The new forms of knowledge and communication are instruments of capitalist domination, but also potential resources for anti-capitalist struggle. For Hardt and Negri (2000, p. xv): ‘The creative forces of the multitude that sustain Empire are also capable of autonomously constructing a counter-Empire, an alternative political organization of global flows and exchanges.’ This is the first way in which the current system can be observed forging the weapons of its own destruction. The second way is in the increasing conflation of new social movement concerns with those of the labour movement. This situation has not only brought about alliances between the


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radical wings of the new social movements and the more militant sections of organised labour, but has tended towards a reformulation of radical new social movement analysis. One might commence a critique of genetically modified foodstuffs from an eco-feminist perspective, but it is difficult, given the logic of the situation, not to conclude with an anti-capitalist perspective as well—or instead. Boris Frankel maintained back in 1984 that it was time for a new synthesis or form of cooperation between class and non-class analysis (Frankel 1984, p. 137). In theory, his plea fell mostly on deaf ears, the debate within academia continuing to be polarised between Marxists, marginalised and beleaguered, and the supporters of new social movements, whose radical potential was increasingly sapped by postmodernist variants on their position—most notably that of identity politics. However, there were signs by the end of the 1990s that activists had indeed discovered, in the course of struggle, the need for precisely such a synthesis in practice. Not only were class inequalities widening dramatically, but it was becoming apparent that, in the absence of support from organised labour, protest movements were achieving little more than what transnational capitalism was happy to concede. The evidence from community-based protest movements in Australian society in recent years suggests that those with links to organised labour have a better chance of success than those which lack such connections. This has certainly been true of community actions against environmental hazards, as Chapter 4 reveals. However, there are many hazards to community existence short of environmental ones. In this respect, the 1980s and 1990s were perversely illuminating. Any belief that the advent of the new social movements marked a transition from the ‘old’ struggle over social surplus must crumble away in the face of neo-liberalism’s doctrinaire reaffirmation of the market, attack on the welfare state, and unconstrained expansions of commodity exchange (Dyer-Witheford 1999, p. 11). In the 1960s, Herbert Marcuse despaired of the proletariat and looked to more marginalised sectors to provide opposition to capitalism, but the past decade has revealed increasing instances of militant workers linking up with Marcuse’s favoured ‘outcasts and outsiders, the exploited and persecuted of other races and other colours, the unemployed and the unemployable’ (Marcuse 1972, pp. 199–200). The heightened forms of capitalist domination and exploitation have also made it increasingly obvious to new social movement activists and theorists that it is neo-liberal globalising capitalism which most directly frustrates their efforts to protect the environment from the ravages of agribusiness, assert


Globalisation: the cancer stage of capitalism? 337 native title rights against the interests of mining companies, protect women from increasing ‘flexibility’ in employment or trafficking for sexual services, and so on. For example, when gay activists in Melbourne in 2001 dismantled the floral clock in the Botanical Gardens to draw attention to multinational drug companies pricing AIDS medication beyond the reach of poorer countries, they did so as Queers Unite to Eradicate Economic Rationalism (QUEER). Dyer-Witheford remarks: Because capital’s a priori is profit (its own expanded replication), its logic in regard to the emancipation of women, racial justice, or the preservation of the environment is purely instrumental. The prevention of male violence toward women, the saving of rain forests, or the eradication of racism is a matter of bottom line calculus: tolerated or even benignly supported when costless, enthusiastically promoted when profitable, but ruthlessly opposed as soon as they demand any substantial diversion of social surplus. Hence capitalism is antithetical to any movements for whom these goals are affirmed as fundamental, indispensable values (Dyer-Witheford 1999, p. 11). The empirical work of critical globalisation scholars shows how corporations are using all possible opportunities to exploit women and nonwhite people, preferring them amongst their workforces precisely because of their increased vulnerability; and corporations are more likely to poison communities that are both non-white and poor (Starr 2000, p. 166). Starr notes that corporations take particular advantage of people of colour and women: It is the third world ‘other’ who can be dumped on, worked blind at 30, policed by his or her own nation’s military in service of the corporate elite, and starved within view of export crops . . . Perhaps economic globalization is more essentializing than traditional communities were (Starr 2000, p. 214). The increasing penetration of capital, the sweeping away of ancient and venerable prejudices, the pitiless tearing away of non-market-based forms of hierarchy, leaving no other nexus than callous economic relations, has in fact highlighted the points where the interests of capital accumulation continue to coincide with, and therefore raise to a sharper level, the exploitation of subordinate peoples. Cecelia Lynch (1998) concedes the possibility that the logic of capital


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accumulation and unequal distribution always formed the primary obstacle to the realisation of social movements’ goals, but that it is only with the end of the Cold War that the negative effects of this logic have been able to take centre stage. Until the 1990s, the social movements’ inability to critique capitalism abetted ‘the discursive and normative demobilization of social movements’ in relation to the problem of globalisation. Now, by contrast, suggestions that it is the market, capitalism, corporate power, structural adjustment policies of international financial institutions, and various other forms and nomenclatures of globalisation, that hinder social movement goals have begun to abound within social movement and NGO literature (Lynch 1998, pp. 154, 162). In the final analysis, as Carol Johnson (1996) argues, pro-capitalist positions place huge restrictions over democratic control and distribution of economic resources. A pro-capitalist position can advocate individual rights for women, Aboriginal people, gays and lesbians, but will place severe limitations on reallocating resources to these groups—on strategies such as improving wages, which challenge profit levels, or on the degree to which there can be state or other forms of democratic intervention in the private sector to ensure equality for such groups: ‘Right-wing economic policies have tended to have disastrous effects on groups, such as women, which are already disadvantaged in the labour market’ (Johnson 1996, p. 196). The new social movements can be seen, increasingly, not as a negation of working-class struggle, as the new social movement theorists would have us believe, but as its blossoming: an enormous exfoliation, diversification and multiplication of demands, created by the revolt of subordinated and superexploited sectors of labour (Dyer-Witheford 1999, p. 75). ‘If capitalist production now requires an entire network of social relations,’ as DyerWitheford observes, ‘these constitute so many more points where its operations can be ruptured.’ No longer is the undermining of capitalism the operation of Marx’s singular ‘mole’—the industrial proletariat—but rather of what Sergio Bologna termed a ‘tribe of moles’ (Dyer-Witheford 1999, p. 68). Jameson looks forward to a time when a ‘new international proletariat . . . will re-emerge’ (Jameson 1991, p. 417). However, this new proletariat will be an even more inclusive and all-embracing one than the proletariat of industrial society and better suited thereby for the emancipatory role assigned the proletariat in Marxist theory. For a brief moment in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the rise of the new social movements seemed to portend such a mass mobilisation as might effect the revolutionary transformation of advanced societies long assumed impregnable to revolution (Rootes 1984, pp. 4–5). The labour movement, too,


Globalisation: the cancer stage of capitalism? 339 was especially militant at this time. Neither the old nor the new lived up to expectations. As the radical potential of social movements—old and new—waned during the 1980s and much of the 1990s, so too did the hopes of the essential compatibility of old and new, of working-class needs and practices with the aims and desires of emergent disadvantaged groups and those concerned with peace and environmental issues. Mutual recriminations between old and new deepened the extent of the decline of concerted oppositional politics. Yet, at the time, the multifaceted radicalism evident in the 1960s and 1970s seemed to presage even more concerted forms of protest. This potential is now being realised, albeit under very different circumstances—those of increasing economic insecurity, which gives the new multifaceted movement a much greater seriousness and urgency. This tribe of moles is in earnest. The new social movements, like the old, are splitting under the impact of globalisation. On the one hand, there are feminists concerned about glass ceilings, homosexuals into transgressive subcultural lifestyles, green and labour lobbyists wanting a seat at the WTO table—these, to varying degrees, are satisfied with the crumbs from such tables. On the other hand, as revealed in the spate of large and angry anti-capitalist mobilisations around the world, the more radical sections within all social movements—those most immune to the seductions of the market—are coalescing expressly in opposition to neo-liberal globalisation. Commencing with social movement unionism in the early 1990s, the creative convergence of new social movements with the old is an obvious feature of anti-capitalist mobilisations and one that rightfully alarms those who presumed their mutual antagonisms would indefinitely continue. For the demonstrators themselves, it is a source of inspiration and hope: It was absolutely exhilarating to be in the midst of this polyphonous cacophony. For anyone who has been politically active during the long dark era of the past two decades, the events in Seattle were a Rip van Winkle-like experience of awaking from a long somnambulistic slumber. After sleepwalking through the greatest speedup in human history . . . finally the streets were filled with well-informed, committed, self-disciplined, passionate people envisioning a very different life (Carlsson 2000). The contributions to anti-capitalist struggle of those from new social movement backgrounds have encouraged a loosening of the organisational forms of this anti-capitalist moment; they have given it an anarchic,


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ultra-democratic inflection that is reminiscent of the anti-capitalist movement in its ascendant phase late in the nineteenth and early in the twentieth century, but which was largely discarded during the remainder of the twentieth century when labourist and communist practices and styles predominated. In 1987, in their contribution to the debate about the role of workers’ organisations in social change, Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe argued that the more democratic-egalitarian discourses penetrated society, the less workers would accept as natural a limitation on their access to a set of social and cultural goods. Thus, they concluded, ‘the possibility of deepening the anti-capitalist struggle itself depends on the extension of the democratic revolution. Even more: anti-capitalism is an internal moment of the democratic revolution’ (Laclau and Mouffe 1987, p. 103). The project which mattered, therefore, was radical democracy, built upon a plurality of forces— the new social movements between which there were no ‘necessary links’: [through] the construction of a new ‘common sense’ which changes the identity of the different groups, in such a way that the demands of each group are articulated equivalentially with those of the others (Laclau and Mouffe 1985, p. 183). The anti-capitalist struggle, they argued, was only an ‘internal moment’ of this wider project, so the working class could not be assigned the role of central actor in this broader struggle (Laclau and Mouffe 1987, p. 106). The new anti-capitalist mobilisations suggest that Laclau and Mouffe are right to identify the significance of radical democracy built upon a plurality of forces, but wrong to suggest that between the new social movements there are no necessary links and that the working class cannot be assigned a central role in this broader struggle. It is true that participants in anti-corporate struggles have differing views about the degree of centrality of the labour movement in the movement against neo-liberal globalisation; nonetheless, it is the rejection of increasing inequalities between labour (in all its varieties) and capital that binds the participants within this movement. Naming corporations as the enemy not only ensures the movement’s coherence and effectiveness, but indicates clearly that its principal grievance is capitalism— or at least a particular form of capitalism. It is for this reason that it is no longer appropriate simply to ‘add class and stir’—to the other ingredients of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality and so on. Analysis of class and exploitation cannot be deployed eclectically alongside other approaches, but must occupy a central position, because


Globalisation: the cancer stage of capitalism? 341 capitalism is a system based on the imposition of universal commodification. This reductionism of capital today has a totalising grip on the planet. Other dominations too are reductive—sexism reduces women to objects for men; racism negates the humanity of people of colour. But neither patriarchy nor racism has succeeded in knitting the planet together into an integrated, coordinated system of interdependencies. This is what capital is doing today as, with the aid of new technologies, it globally maps the availability of female labour, ethno-markets, migrancy flows, human gene pools and entire animal, plant and insect species on to its coordinates of value. In doing so, according to Dyer-Witheford: it is subsuming every other form of oppression to its logic . . . This is not to say . . . that the corrosive power of commodification necessarily abolishes patriarchy or sexism (although it can sometimes work in that direction). Indeed . . . the capitalist international division of labor often incorporates, and largely depends on discrimination by gender or ethnicity to establish its hierarchies of control. Nevertheless, sexism and racism do not in and of themselves act as the main organizing principle for the worldwide production and distribution of goods. Patriarchal and racist logics are older than capital, mobilize fears and hatreds beyond its utilitarian economic understanding, and are virulently active today. But they are now compelled to manifest themselves within and mediated through capital’s larger, overarching structure of domination . . . because of society’s subordination to a system that compels key issues of sexuality, race, and nature to revolve around a hub of profit (Dyer-Witheford 1999, pp. 9–10). Times have changed since the 1970s and 1980s, when the successes of new social movement activism mounted a serious challenge to the ‘old’ social movements based on the working class, when Karl Werner Brandt argued that the traditional ideological patterns of interpretation, and lines of conflict, had increasingly lost their meaning (Brandt 1986, pp. 60–68). For Alain Touraine (1974) the old conflict between capital and labour was no longer a major contradiction or source of tension; therefore, neither capital nor labour was the chief social actor in the struggle for social power. Opposition could no longer be exclusively economic: ‘resistance must be mobilized in terms of the entire personality’ (Touraine 1974, pp. 75–76, 9, 17, 61, 73, 11). Jürgen Habermas (1981) argued that the ‘new conflicts’ of advanced Western


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societies no longer arose in areas of material reproduction but in areas of cultural reproduction, social integration and socialisation: ‘the new conflicts are not sparked by problems of distribution, but concern the grammar of forms of life’ (Habermas 1981, pp. 33–35). For Claus Offe (1985), the dynamic of social development did not arise from conflict over control of the production process: ‘the predominant social and political conflicts often cut across the distributive conflict between labour and capital’ (Offe 1985, esp. pp. 133–36, 141, 148). Their arguments are now less plausible. Ronald Inglehart (1977) wrote at this time of a ‘silent revolution’ which saw a shift in values away from materialism, as represented by the old politics and the old social movements, towards ‘post-materialism’, with its emphasis on belonging, self-expression and quality of life. This ‘culture shift’ was attributable to the economic prosperity, physical security and political stability of advanced Western societies during the postwar boom, allowing young people in particular the luxury of ignoring material considerations and producing new forms of consciousness (Inglehart 1977; 1990, esp. pp. 371–92). Inglehart’s ‘silent revolution’ has ended. For the vast majority of people, even in advanced Western societies, life has now become more of a struggle and material considerations more pressing. While some respond to the insecurities caused by globalisation with increased forms of parochialism—such as the supporters of Pauline Hanson, Jacques LePen and their racist/populist counterparts elsewhere—others defect leftwards and desert the Labor or social democrat moderates for minor parties intensely critical of neo-liberalism. For example, there was significantly increased support for Socialist Alliance at the 2001 general election in Britain, for the Australian Greens at the 2001 federal election in Australia and for the array of far-left candidates at the presidential election in France, who together outperformed LePen. New forms of consciousness are as likely to be anti-capitalist as conservative. Although Hardt and Negri are overly confident in their assertion that the ‘organization of the multitude as political subject, as posse, thus begins to appear on the world scene’ (Hardt and Negri 2000, p. 411), there are nonetheless clear signs of increasing levels of radical discontent. The mood of anti-corporate protesters has become more sombre since the unfortunate events of 11 September 2001 enabled corporate capitalism to regain much of the ideological momentum it had lost during the rise to prominence of the anti-capitalist movement. However, in the aftermath of the Seattle mobilisation late in 1999, euphoria pervaded radical speaking and writing. At a large gathering in London at Easter 2000 to discuss ‘Anticapitalism after Seattle’, Mark Thomas described Seattle as ‘an incredible


Globalisation: the cancer stage of capitalism? 343 event and a definitive event’ (Klein et al. 2000). It is possible that this euphoria expressed a tendency to view the lone swallow as the longed-for spring, to seize upon every struggle as evidence of the re-emergence of working-class consciousness so fervently desired. It is equally likely, too, that the mobilisation for Seattle really did mark ‘a shift from awareness and attitude to action’ (Charlton 2000, p. 17). Many demonstrations would throw up an activist profile similar to Seattle, yet the best lieutenants cannot build a mass demonstration by themselves. As Charlton (2000) stresses, there must be an ‘army’ ready to respond: ‘That there was speaks of an enormous depth of feeling—a raised consciousness across a significant swathe of society’ (Charlton 2000, p. 16). Jeff St Clair went to sleep on the last night of the days described by New Left Review as ‘Five Days That Shook the World’ with the words of a lockedout steelworker in his head: ‘The things I’ve seen here in Seattle I never thought I’d see in America’ (St Clair 1999, p. 95). Charlton’s interviews with those at the Battle of Seattle record ‘the almost breathless accounts, of people experiencing a birth of the new’ (Charlton 2000, p. 16). The sense of the extraordinary is captured in the title of Carlsson’s Internet diary, ‘Seeing the Elephant in Seattle’, for an old saying from the Civil War and then the huge migration west was to ‘see the elephant’—meaning to see something quite remarkable: ‘As we grope to understand the political and social meaning of our experiences in Seattle, there’s no doubt that we all saw the elephant’ (Carlsson 2000). Those who marched or stood or sat in the streets of Seattle ‘made history, and they knew it’, according to one protester from California, who concluded: ‘Seattle is also a beginning of something greater yet to come’ (Charlton 2000, pp. 17–18). Chris Carlsson (2000) has described the actions in Seattle as ‘an emphatic rebuttal’ to the nonsense that was the ruling class euphoria that we had reached ‘the end of history’: The ruling class ideology of endless prosperity and growth in a democratic capitalist world of ‘free’ countries has suffered a slap across the face in Seattle. History has asserted itself . . . Specifically, history means the inevitable re-emergence of class conflict. He writes that ‘those of us who made Seattle happen . . . understand it as having a deeper meaning than just a confused bump in the road to an inevitable corporate globalization’ (Carlsson 2000).


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While this confidence now seems overstated, a euphoric response to Seattle is arguably less ridiculous than to announce the end of history. As Eagleton has noted, the end of ideology—if not quite of history—was announced by Raymond Aron and Daniel Bell as long ago as the 1950s and, with Vietnam, Black Power and the student movement just around the corner, proved a singularly inept prophecy. As Oscar Wilde might have observed, to be wrong about the death of history once is unfortunate, whereas to be wrong twice is sheer carelessness (Eagleton 2000, p. 174). Just as the old anti-capitalist movements focused their protests on the nation-state, so the new anti-capitalist movements are concentrating their efforts by protesting against the WTO, the World Bank, the WEF and the IMF. In the twentieth century, the old anti-capitalist movements persuaded the state to restrain capital in various ways. So far, the transnational agencies that function as the executive committee of the international bourgeoisie have declined to perform such a role in relation to globalising capitalism, and are consequently reaping the whirlwind. So what can the anti-capitalist movement achieve?

Revolution in the cause of reform? A common criticism of this movement is that, as the name ‘anti-capitalist’ suggests, it lacks a coherent vision of a dramatically different world order. It is a movement that is clear about what it is against, but less clear about what the alternative should be (Rees 2001, p. 7). In its inability to imagine and outline a future, anti-capitalism is possibly a prisoner of globalising capitalism. Zaki Laidi (1999) argues that the temporal experience of global/network culture is one directed to the present. Traditional societies are structured in terms of myth and the past; industrial society is organised in terms of the future (evident in the utopias of socialism); contemporary network society and culture is organised in terms of urgency, simultaneity and the present (discussed in McDonald 2001, p. 12). By comparison with the old anti-capitalism of the labour movement, the new anti-capitalism prefers not to paint any particular fanciful picture in the air, though it perhaps paints many. Is the movement’s perceived imprecision about the future a shortcoming? Perhaps not. The competing utopias of hitherto existing anti-capitalism were both manifest failures: the hopeless pursuit of socialism by legislative means and the totalitarian nightmare of official communism.


Globalisation: the cancer stage of capitalism? 345 But utopias are important, as Russell Jacoby (1999) reminds us. Arguably, the current movement is utopian in its expectation that capitalism can be reformed to the extent that market forces do not rule regardless of other forms of value. If these expectations are disappointed, anti-capitalism could slide from a desire to rid capitalism of its neo-liberal form, which is the dominant position within the movement, to a conviction that capitalism must be rejected in its entirety. As many revolutionary outbreaks have revealed, if grievances that reformers regard as manifestly just and reasonable cannot be solved by the system, these same utopian reformers are easily persuaded to go further. It was not a long distance from the Grand Remonstrance to the execution of Charles I or from the ‘cahiers’ of grievances to the storming of the Bastille. Out of the questions raised and the tensions created by the anticapitalist challenge, more could be forthcoming. It is also possible that, as Immanuel Wallerstein has suggested, whatever disrupts world capitalism ultimately contributes to the transition to socialism (Wallerstein 1984). Certainly, the precondition is there for a socialist world order, of a sort not yet tried, to emerge. The preconditions for a truly communist society consist in the new computer and communications technology that is a defining characteristic of globalisation. At one pole, this technology is an instrument of capitalist domination, a means for the intensification of exploitation and the enchaining of the world in commodity exchange. At the other, it is the basis for the freedom from want and the social intercourse that are prerequisites for a communist society (Dyer-Witheford 1999, p. 42). Capitalist social relations are acting as fetters upon computer technology in particular, preventing the realisation of its true usefulness to society. Owned and controlled by capital, its capacity to increase each worker’s productivity is used simply to return higher profits to the few and increase unemployment (so as further to increase the power of capital), rather than to reduce working hours and increase the remuneration of the many. Short of this utopia, the current movement’s apparent negativity, its anticapitalism, is necessary in the meantime as a desperate effort to prevent capitalism from wreaking further havoc upon the globe as globalisation develops apace. Negativity in this sense is a positive contribution to the planet and its people. A leader of the indigenous residents’ resistance to construction of the Three Gorges Dam in China says: ‘The highest expression of dignity can be summed up in the single word “No!”’ (Korten 1985, p. 294). In any case, Starr insists the movements say more than ‘No’, that they propose a quite radical vision that has already demonstrated its ability to meet needs while protecting diversity (Starr 2000, p. 224). The


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essential challenge for contemporary social movements, according to Louis Maheu, is that they can and must contribute to human survival (Maheu 1995, p. 15). Perhaps the most useful purpose the anti-capitalist movement could serve, short of revolution, is to prevent capitalism from poaching so much from the commons that the ecological and social well-being of the planet and its inhabitants are adversely affected in irreversible ways. Linda Weiss (1999b) alludes to the emergence of a literature that could broadly be described as reformist within the globalising agenda: globalisation does not have to take such a harshly neo-liberal form. Economic openness does not require or compel state retreat from social protection and wealth creation. On the contrary, openness is more likely to be sustained and served by effective governance of such processes (Weiss 1999b, p. 126). A few years ago, discussion started about the competitive advantage of welfare nations. Recently, there has been considerable interest in the introduction of a tax (the Tobin tax) on international speculation in foreign exchange markets, the revenue so raised to be used for progressive measures, domestically and internationally. London’s Independent on Sunday announced on 2 September 2001: ‘TOBIN TAX’ GAINS GLOBAL CURRENCY. French Premier Lionel Jospin responded by declaring: ‘We must discuss the issues [of globalisation] and I am in favour of France taking an initiative so that Europe endorses the Tobin tax’ (Stilwell 1998, pp. 20–21). Considering the extent to which far-left voters declined to support Jospin’s ill-fated candidature for presidency in April 2002, his response to the extent of anti-capitalist sentiment in France was obviously inadequate. Responses to protests against neo-liberal globalisation such as the Tobin tax are couched within liberal frameworks, but are seeking to make the world safer for continuing corporate globalisation by ameliorating some of its worst effects. The reformers acknowledge that capitalism could be undermining the conditions for its own continued profitability and therefore realise that the new world order might need to give a little in the interests of capitalist stability. The now frequent urgings within transnational agencies for such ameliorations will become stronger if extreme protest movements continue to threaten the legitimacy of unreformed globalisation. ‘Even the IMF and World Bank have agreed to meet with anti-globalisation activists,’ reported the international magazine, Marketing, on 30 August 2001. Almost certainly the activists invited to such meetings would be those wanting a ‘seat at the table’ rather than those preferring to overturn the tables, but invitations to anti-corporate reformists are currently more forthcoming precisely because the powerful now have anti-capitalist revolutionaries to fear. Efforts to


Globalisation: the cancer stage of capitalism? 347 reform are at their most effective when accompanied by the hint, at least, of insurgency from below. On 23 July 2001, the meeting of the GO8 in Genoa issued a press release which both deplored the anti-capitalist protests and pledged to do more to ensure the world’s poor shared in the benefits of globalisation (ABC News, 23 July 2001). Without the protests to deplore, there would be no promises to the poor. Without anti-capitalists to threaten revolution or at least query in no uncertain terms the legitimacy of the new world disorder, global civil society would be unlikely to be able to insist upon reforms. Although the contradictions within capitalism that are now heightened by globalisation raise the possibility of systemic breakdown, it is more likely that capitalism will find ways to forestall crisis, as it has in the past. In the present circumstances, conceding a little to the anti-corporate movement would reduce profitability in the short term but ensure the longer-term acceptability and viability of the system. Despite the trauma of 11 September 2001, hundreds of thousands of anti-corporate protesters continued during 2002 to greet each meeting of transnational institutions. For the first time, the operations of global capital, and the effects of its operations, have been subject to critical scrutiny, to fast and furious protest. The Chaser (see p. 1) is probably right that the ‘global capitalist oligarchy’ is not under serious threat, that it will not be toppled by t-shirted protesters, but the best prospects for globalisation with a more human, less neo-liberal, face are continued extremist anti-capitalist protests. Subcomandante Marcos sees: A world made of many worlds opens its space and conquers its right to be possible, it raises the banner of being necessary, it penetrates into the middle of the reality of the Earth to announce a better future. A world of all worlds that rebels and resists the Power, a world of all worlds that inhabit this world opposing cynicism, a world that fights for humanity and against neoliberalism (cited in Grenfell 2001, p. 253). The counter-globalisation movement is a politically necessary and increasingly urgent response to increasing corporate power. As African American anti-slavery and women’s rights campaigner Frederick Douglass wrote in 1849: Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find just what people will submit to, and you have


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Power, Profit and Protest found the exact amount of injustice and wrong that will be imposed upon them; and these will continue until they are resisted either with words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress (quoted in Hoare 1998, p. 19).

And what of the role of intellectuals? Appadurai has appealed recently for a ‘new architecture for producing and sharing knowledge about globalisation’ to create new forms of dialogue between academics, public intellectuals, activists and policy-makers in different societies. This dialogue would be academia’s gift to the new movements challenging corporate globalisation, contributing to new forms of pedagogy (in the sense of Freire) that could level the theoretical playing field for grassroots activists in international fora (Appadurai 2000, cited in Johnston and Goodman 2001, p. 3). Johnston and Goodman (2001) argue for such a dialogue; their central epistemological position is that detachment has to be combined with involvement if research is to have emancipatory or transformative effects. Theoretical reflection is inherently impoverished without practical engagement with the issues at stake on an everyday level; equally, involvement in the absence of reflection can generate a direction-less activism (Johnston and Goodman 2001, p. 3). In Freirean terms, this necessitates a constant dialogue between utopian goals, and the structures and possibilities at hand; any utopian vision must be related to available means: ‘Freedom is not a final end-state or gift, but rather a struggle, which must be pursued constantly and responsibly’ (Johnston and Goodman 2001, p. 9). Emancipation, they note, hinges on informed or reflective agency, grounded in a healthy respect for the power and prevalence of structures. For Johnston and Goodman, the dialogue between structure and agency provides an invaluable reference point when considering struggles against corporate globalisation. Critical globalisation theory must be capable of taking agency seriously, yet not obscure the power and persistance of powerful structures of neo-liberal globalism: Discrediting the importance of agency and bowing down to the power of structural constraints offers no alternative—politically, analytically, or morally. Denying the role of movements acting against the seemingly unshakeable forces of neoliberal globalism not only writes off the possibilities for change, but denies the dialectical logic of capitalist development (Johnston and Goodman 2001, p. 16).


Globalisation: the cancer stage of capitalism? 349

Demonstration, Melbourne, n.d. (courtesy University of Melbourne Archives).

The proponents of globalisation deliberately encourage the notion that corporate globalisation is inevitable in order to wish fatalism upon its opponents. Such fatalism, becoming the typical response of nation-states, is avoided most obviously by the movements contesting globalisation. Freire observes: ‘It is only when the oppressed find the oppressor out and become involved in the organized struggle for their liberation that they begin to believe in themselves’ (Freire 2000, p. 65). Just as objective social reality exists not by chance, but as the product of human action, then transforming that reality is a task for humanity (Freire 2000, p. 51). Agency is limited by structure but humans are active and capable of transforming structures. People make history, though not under circumstances of their own choosing.


Notes Chapter 1 11 The Chaser, vol. 2, no. 21, 17 May 2000, p. 1. 12 A recent issue of Mobilization: The International Journal of Research and Theory about Social Movements, Protest, and Collective Behavior is devoted to consideration of these challenges and contains many useful articles and bibliographies (Mobilization, vol. 6, no. 1, Spring 2001). 13 Cohen and Rai (2000, pp. 8–10) list six such circumstances that alter the nature of social movement action in the global era, such as the rise of transnational institutions and improved communications technology. 14 Civil society refers to the set of institutions, organisations and behaviours situated between the state, the business world and the family. Specifically, this would include voluntary and non-profit organisations of many different kinds, philanthropic institutions, social and political movements, forms of social participation and engagement, the public sphere, and the values and cultural patterns associated with them (Anheier 2000). See also Cohen and Arato (1990, p. ix). 15 Benedict Anderson uses the term ‘imagined communities’ to refer to the process by which nations are experienced and constructed in the minds of those who comprise them. See Anderson (1983). 16 In Power and Protest (p. 168) this reference was accidentally deleted during the production process. 17 Melucci (2000, p. 82) recently reiterated this rejection of the notion of social movements as unified subjects, preferring to analyse them as ‘composite action systems in which widely differing meanings, goals, and forms of solidarity and organization converge in a more or less stable manner’. 18 ‘A Victorious Weekend for the Anti-Globalization Movement in Millau, France’ (http://france.indymedia.org); Guardian Weekly, 13–19 July, 2000, p. 27. 19 For a more detailed discussion of American Functionalist and Pluralist approaches to the study of new social movements, see Muetzelfeldt (1984–85); Burgmann (1993, pp. 7–9). 10 Sartre (1976, p. 386) provides a set of categories to render all collective behaviour intelligible in terms of individual praxis: ‘the basis of intelligibility, for the fused group, is that the structure of certain objectives (communised or communising through the praxis of the Others, of enemies, of competitors, etc.) is revealed through the praxis of the individual as demanding the common unity of a praxis which is everyone’s’. 11 Herbert Marcuse’s One Dimensional Man (1964) represented perhaps the first articulation amongst Marxist-influenced theorists of a suspicion that the class deemed by Karl Marx to be wearing ‘radical chains’ was bearing these fetters lightly and that the working class’s historic mission—to end capitalism—might be better carried out by other sections of society, such as ‘the outcasts and outsiders, the exploited and persecuted of other races and other colours, the unemployed and the unemployable’ (1964, pp. 199–200). 12 The term ‘new social movement’ originated amongst German social scientists


Notes 351 around 1982 (Dalton, Kuechler and Bürklin 1990, pp. 3–20). 13 Lyotard (1984, p. 17) applauded postmodernity’s ‘atomization’ of the social ‘into flexible networks of language games’. 14 Giddens (1990, p. 38) defines ‘reflexivity’ as the way in which social practices are constantly examined and reformed in the light of incoming information about those very practices. 15 For recent Victorian figures, for example, see the Age, 28 May 2002, pp. 1, 8. 16 I am indebted to James Goodman for assistance with this formulation.

Chapter 2 1 2 3 4 5

The video film Lousy Little Sixpence is revealing in this respect. Sykes was then known as ‘Bobbi’. For a more detailed discussion of relations between indigenous women and the women’s movement, see Chapter 3. For details of land rights legislation at state level, see Burgmann (1993, pp. 53–58). Non-indigenous representatives at various stages included: Ian Viner (a former Liberal Aboriginal Affairs Minister), Ray Martin, Daryl Melham, Cheryl Kernot, Sir Gustav Nossel, Normandy Mining boss Robert de Crespigny, former industry leader Ian Spicer and Democrats Senator John Woodley.

Chapter 3 1

2

3

4

This was the title of an article by Jo Freeman, published in the United States in 1970, which found a receptive audience amongst many feminists (Lake 1999, p. 234). In 1969 in Victoria, Judge Menhennit decided that the danger presented by a woman’s pregnancy ‘should not be confined to danger of life but should apply equally to danger to physical or mental health’. Two years later in New South Wales, Judge Levine went further, saying the court should take into account ‘any economic, social or medical ground or reason which . . . could result [in] a serious danger to her physical or mental health’. When appealed, Judge Kirby supported Levine’s decision, adding that doctors should also take into account the effect a continuing pregnancy would have on the woman’s future mental health (Age, 24 March 1998, p. 19; Australian, 9 April 1999, p. 14). Kirby’s interpretation was again reiterated in the Bayliss case in Queensland in 1985, where Judge McGuire interpreted the Queensland Criminal Code to mean that pregnancy terminations were legal if continuation threatened the mother’s physical or mental health. This case, which brought Queensland into line with the other more liberal states, was prompted by a raid on Dr Bayliss’s abortion clinic by police officers goaded by pressure from Right to Life activists. Although the warrants used in the raids were invalid, Bayliss was subsequently charged with unlawfully procuring a miscarriage (Age, 24 March 1998, p. 19; Australian, 9 April 1999, p. 14). Some feminists have attempted to pass on the baton. In Kirner and Rayner (1999), the authors present their book as part of a campaign ‘to empower young


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Power, Profit and Protest women’, to offer practical solutions on how to be powerful without becoming a bloke (cited in Age, 4 April 1999, p. 6).

Chapter 4 1

2

3 4

5 6

Gundjehmi Aboriginal Corporation (1999) explained: ‘there are some individual Aboriginal people who wish to benefit financially from the Jabiluka project. This is to be expected in a community which suffers from acute and chronic poverty . . . Aboriginal people in the region will be “picked off” by Government and industry and used to portray division in the local community. The Mirrar will continue to urge their fellow countrymen to place culture and country above royalty money and dead-end jobs’ (Gundjehmi Aboriginal Corporation, 1999b, #12). An organisation established, managed and controlled by the Mirrar, since 1995, to assist the Mirrar (whose language is known as Gundjehmi) in informed decision-making regarding all matters and activities in relation to their land (Gundjehmi Aboriginal Corporation, 1999b, #3). Named from the advice in the Bible to ‘turn swords into ploughshares’. National Environment Officer, NUS; Environment Centre of the Northern Territory; Mineral Policy Institute, NSW; Victorian Greens; Wilderness Society Victoria; Rainforest Information Centre, NSW; Earthworker, Victoria; North East Forest Alliance, NSW; Red Hot Green Black; Forest Activist Network NSW; Western Region Environment Centre, Victoria. For details of the splits amongst green candidates at this election, see Burgmann (1993, pp. 219–22). A Newspoll survey held on 28–30 June 1991 found 32 per cent of women and 23 per cent of men favoured a complete ban on uranium mining; 43 per cent of women and 35 per cent of men favoured the restricted three-mines policy; and 16 per cent of women and 36 per cent of men favoured unrestricted mining (Australian, 1 July 1991, p. 1). The World Wide Fund for Nature says that twice as many women as men ring to inquire about conservation and three times more women than men put their money where their mouth is (Young 1989, p. 11).

Chapter 5 1

2

3 4

The term ‘anti-capitalism’ first entered headlines on 18 June 1999 with protests against financial institutions in the City of London (Harman 2000, p. 3). Then the Seattle mobilisation, according to John Rees, ‘provided a public language in which it could all be summed up, the language of anti-capitalism’ (Rees 2001, p. 3). Naomi Klein (2001b, p. 13) prefers the term ‘anti-corporate’, because ‘anticapitalist’ suggests nostalgia for a statist, communist regime. This dilemma, she suggests, is part of the reason why so many young people these days are calling themselves anarchists: ‘There’s a profound disillusionment with both systems and with the whole idea of these sweeping ideological-economic systems.’ Poverty rates for single men also climbed ahead of those for single women, reversing the situation of the 1980s (Age, 29 November 2001, p. 6). There has been a serious accident, involving multiple fatalities, every year since privatisation. See Murray (2001).


Notes 353 5

Though one did open in Blaxland in the lower Blue Mountains, elsewhere the campaign has been successful. 6 These include: Quito (Ecuador) 15–22 January 2000, Puerto Rico January 2000, Bolivia April 2000, Washington 16 April 2000, worldwide 1 May 2000, Chiang Mai (Thailand) 7 May 2000, South Africa 11 May 2000, Melbourne 11 September 2000, Prague 26 September 2000, Seoul 20 October 2000, Davos 27 January 2001, Mexico City 26 February 2001, Buenos Aires 6 April 2001, Quebec City 18 April 2001, India April 2001, worldwide 1 May 2001, Hawaii 9–10 May 2001, Papua New Guinea June 2001, Columbia June 2001, Gothenburg 14–16 June 2001, Barcelona 25–27 June 2001, Salzburg 1–3 July 2001, Genoa 16–20 July 2001, South Africa August–September 2001 (developed from McNally 2002, pp. 13–14; http://www.protest.net and www.s11org.au in Mier 2001, p. 26). Bircham and Charlton (2001, pp. 340–41) also list 56 largescale demonstrations and strikes (including one strike involving 7.2 million workers in Argentina) which specifically contest corporate globalisation initiatives such as structural adjustment programs, free trade agreements, privatisations, public sector wage cuts and various other ‘reforms’ pushed by transnational institutions. 7 Shaw and McEachern (2001) argue that the movement is now locked in a ‘cycle of diminishing returns as non-violent mass protest has reached its predictable conclusion’. They advocate moves to explore other tactics and strategies that address the current global moves that attempt to quash and prevent anticorporate protests (Shaw and McEachern 2001, pp. 2, 5). 8 For an explanation of Sartre’s terminology, see the Introduction. 9 Using her index and choosing at least one from the various possibilities for each letter of the alphabet provides examples of groups mostly not otherwise mentioned in this book: AdBusters, Asian Peasant Women’s Network, Baby Food Action Network, Campaign Against Neoliberalism, Campaign for Economic Democracy, Centre for Alternative Structural Adjustment, Community Sponsored Agriculture, Corporate Environmental Data Clearinghouse, Democratic Socialists of America, Electronic Disturbance Theater, Food Not Bombs, Global Exchange, Human Rights Watch, Indigenous Unification Council of the Central Jungle, Joint Action Forum of Indian People Against the WTO, Karnataka State Famers’ Association, Landless Workers’ Movement in Brazil, Mothers of Los Angeles, New Panther Vanguard Movement, Other Economic Summit, People’s Campaign Against Imperialist Globalization, Queers Unite to Eradicate Economic Rationalism, Raze the Walls, Stop Corporate Welfare Coalition, Transnational Resource and Action Center, Unrepresented Nations and Peoples’ Organization, Voice of Cerro Hueco, Workers’ Rights Consortium, Young Lords Party and the Zapatista National Liberation Army (Starr 2000). 10 S11 activist Jeff Sparrow (2000, p. 20) asserts optimistically that, despite the equivocations and hesitations of Trades Hall, S11 forged a much closer relationship between left activists and the organised labour movement. 11 A summary of observations, formulated in Iveson and Scalmer (2000, p. 4). 12 Lasn is the founder of the Media Foundation and publisher of its Adbusters.


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Index Abbott, Tony 331 Aboriginal Advancement League 55, 57 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) 48–9, 86 Aboriginal Development Corporation 48 Aboriginal Health Service 58, 59 Aboriginal Land Rights Act 74 Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 75 Aboriginal Legal Service (ALS) 58–9 Aboriginal movement 49–53 Black Power debate 57–8 development 52–3 land councils 48 problems 49–52 treaty 47, 64–6 see also indigenous Australians; land rights; native title rights Aboriginal Tent Embassy 66, 72 Aboriginal Treaty Committee 47, 64 Aboriginal women and women’s movement 57, 61–2, 145–8, 162 Aborigines’ Progressive Association 46, 53, 54 Aborigines’ Protection Board 47 abortion 130–3, 130–3 advertising, sexist 137–8 Affirmative Action Agency 118, 122 Affirmative Action (Equal Employment Opportunity for Women) Act 1986 120

Allen, Judith 105 Alliance for Sustainable Jobs and the Environment 222 Althusser, Louis 16 American Pluralism 12 Amsterdam Declaration 166 Anderson, Michael 186 Anthias, Floya 26 anti-capitalist 248–9, 291, 321, 322 class identity politics 286–41 and community 270–6 and Labor Party 250, 252–3, 254–5 new 276–321 and reform 344–9 social movement 250–6, 339–40, 344 anti-corporate globalism 248–9, 300 new technology 291–8 ultra-democracy 298–303 Anti-Uranium Coalition of Western Australia (AUCWA) 174 Aron, Raymond 344 Attwood, Bain 53, 56 Australian Aboriginal Progressive Association 53 Australian Aborigines League 53 Australian Black Panther Party 57 Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) 63, 171, 189–93, 224, 228–9, 235–6 Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) 88, 117, 218, 243 Australian Fair Trade and

Investment Network (AFTINET) 243 Australian Federation of Women Voters 100 Australian Greens 202–6, 218, 229, 230, 342 Australian Labor Party Afghanistan 204 anti-capitalism 250, 252–3, 254–5 forest industry 180, 181 neo-liberalisation 252–5, 324 reconciliation 84–5 and reforms 330–1 uranium mining 174 Australian Manufacturing Workers Union 219 Australian Mining Industry Council (AMIC) 73, 74, 224 Australian Railways Union (ARU) 173 Australian Workers’ Union (AWU) 55, 173 Bagguley, Paul 5, 6 Bahro, Rudolph 215 Bail, Kathy 160 Barnes, Thomas 269 Barry, Kristen 145 Battin, Tim 263 Baudrillard, Jean 22, 23 Bauman, Zygmunt 28, 328–9, 331 Beazley, Kim 204, 316 Beck, Ulrich 26, 220 Beder, Sharon 200–1, 235, 239 Beilharz, Peter 20 Bell, Daniel 344 Bell, Diane 158 Bello, Walden 260, 319 Billa Kalina radioactive waste dump 196


386


birth control 101, 102, 103 Black Power 57–8 Blackburn, Justice 71 Blainey, Geoffrey 77, 83 Bogner, Ro 98 Bolkus, Nick 83 Bologna, Sergio 338 Bonner, Neville 50, 58 Bookchin, Murray 214–15 Bourdieu, Pierre 243, 260, 323, 327–8 Bové, José 7 Boyd, Millie 67 Bracks, Steve 315–16, 325 Bramble, Tom 283, 285, 297 Brandt, Karl Werner 341 Brecher, Jeremy 258 Brennan, Deborah 128, 130 Brewer, Patricia 158 Brown, Bob 94, 175, 176, 202, 205, 206, 228, 236, 237 Brown, Val 210 Brownmiller, Susan 149 Bryson, Lois 30 Builders Labourers’ Federation 17 Builders Labourers’ Federation, New South Wales (NSWBLF) 169, 170, 171, 220, 221 Bulbeck, Chilla 105, 123, 164 Burgess, John 123 Burgmann, Meredith 145 Burrow, Sharan 118, 319 Burton, Bob 227 Cabrera, Miguel 8 Calhoun, Craig 25 Campaign Against Nuclear Energy 172 capitalism 31–5, 36 corporate, globalising 259 global 332–5 and liberal ecology 216 natural 224–5 see also anti-capitalist capitalist social relations 345 Capling, Ann 257

Carlsson, Chris 287, 288, 317, 324, 343 Carrick, Damien 310 Castells, Manuel 3, 9, 43, 250–1 Cawthorne, Pamela 267 Central Land Council 48 Charlton, John 285, 343 Child Care Act 128 child care and women 127–30 Chirac, Jacques 177 Chomsky, Noam 244 Christopherson, Christine 187 civil rights movement 53–6 Cixous, Hélène 159 Clark, John 216 class see social class; working class class identity politics 286–41 Clinton, President 256, 321 Cloward, Richard 11 Coe, Isabell 66, 96 Cohen, Ian 168 Cohen, Jean 12–13 Cohen, Robin 4 Collective Behaviour Theory 10 Collins, Les 66 Commoner, Barry 212, 217 community 270–6 union-community coalitions 274–6 computer mediated communication (CMC) 239–40 Conley, Tom 39, 248, 249, 252 Connell, R.W. 135 Connors, Libby 35, 64, 166, 206, 224, 227, 233, 235, 240 Connors, Michael 5, 31 Considine, Mark 257 Construction Foresty Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) 179–80 consumerism, green 225–6 Coombs, H.C. 47 Cooper, William 53, 67 Coronation Hill 231

corporate power and environmental politics 223–6 Corrigan, Chris 267 Corrigan, Derek 267 Costello, Peter 39, 258, 331 Costello, Tim 258 Couch, Jenrose 307, 309–10 Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation 45, 84–5, 87, 90, 91–2, 95, 97 Court, Richard 82 Cowan, Edith 101 Cox, Eva 163 Cox, R.W. 38 Craigie, Billy 57 Crean, Simon 255 Crook, Stephen 238 Crozier, Michael 257 Curthoys, Ann 106–7, 109, 152 Daly, Mary 106, 152 D’Aprano, Zelda 98, 99, 116, 121 Dargavel, John 180 Davenport, Cheryl 133 Davidson, Kenneth 263 Davies, Anne 267 Davis, Mark 39, 257, 263 Deane, Sir William 89 deep ecology 207–9 Delahunty, Mary 138 Democrats 204 Derrida, Jacques 24, 33 Dewberry, Tony 255 Djerrkura, Gatjil 85, 88, 95 Dodson, Mick 84, 85, 89 Dodson, Pat 48, 85, 86, 90–1, 94, 95 Douglas, Frederick 347 Downey, Jim 82 Dowse, Sara 155 Doyle, Tim 198, 200, 241 Dryzek, John 236 Dubet, Francois 20 Dworkin, Andrew 140, 158 Dyer-Witheford, Nick 329–30, 333, 335, 337, 338, 341 Eagleton, Terry 23, 31, 34, 344


Index 387 Earthworker 219, 220 Eckersley, Robyn 207, 213, 215, 234 eco-anarchism 214–16 eco-feminism 209–12 ecologically sustainable development 224–5, 235 ecology, liberal 216–17 economic policies, Keynesian 258 rationalism 22, 43, 257 theory, liberal 257 economy Australian 261 capitalist 334 global 258–64 Third World 260 eco-socialism 212–14 eco-tourism 62–4 Edgar, Don 134 education and equal opportunity 134–7 Eisenstein, Hester 154 Electrical Trades Union 219 Ellem, Bradom 268 Ellis, Clare 84, 87, 96 Else-Mitchell, Rosamund 161 employment and equal opportunity 120–7 and women 32, 101–2, 115–27 Energy Resources Australia (ERA) 184 Enlightenment 23 environment and labour movement 217–23 see also green movement environmental politics and corporate power 223–6 environmentalism, new wave 239–41 environmentalists 165–8 Environmentalists for Full Employment 217 equal employment opportunity (EEO) 120 equal opportunity drinking rights 98–9 in education 134–7 in employment 120–7

Equal Opportunity for Women in the Workplace Act 1999 122 Equal Opportunity for Women in the Workplace Agency (EOWWA) 122 equal pay for women 98, 115–20 equal rights for women 98–9, 104 Fair Trade Alliance 321 Fairweather Campaign 268 Falk, Jim 172–3 Faludi, Susan 124 Family Planning Association 133 Faust, Beatrice 105, 124, 140 Federal Council for the Advancement of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders (FCAATSI) 55–7 feminism 1990s 157–61 eco-feminism 209–12 first wave 99–101, 162 liberal 104–5, 160 Marxist 104, 107–9 new millennium 161–4 postmodern 104, 159 power 160 radical 104, 105–7, 160 second-wave 104, 115, 162 socialist 104, 107–9, 152 third-wave 160 Ferguson, William 54 Fesl, Eve 146 Finaly, Leo 74 Flood, Michael 140 Flutter, Naomi 161 Foley, Gary 49, 57, 68, 97 Foreman, Dave 208 Forest Industries Campaign Association (FICA) 179, 218 Foss, Peter 133 Foster, David 222 Fox, Warwick 208 Frankel, Boris 26, 29, 34, 257, 336

Franklin River and green movement 175–6 Fraser, Malcolm 114 Fraser, Nancy 27, 124 Fraser government 73, 128, 149, 151, 156, 173, 231 Fraser Island 231 Fredericks, Karen 160 Freire, Paulo 13, 14 Friedan, Betty 102 Friends of the Earth (FoE) 166, 167, 193–7, 229 Fukuyama, Francis 33, 328 Fund for Nature Australia 228 Gallagher, Norm 171 Gallop, Geoff 133 gambling 272–3 Gandhi, Mahatma 168 Garner, Helen 160–1 Garrett, Peter 186, 189, 229 Gaudron, Mary 141 George, Jennie 88, 118, 141 George, Susan 294 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) 256 Giddens, Anthony 26, 29 Gibson, Jason 294, 296 Glanz, David 245, 320 global capitalism 332–5 warming 166 globalisation 2, 24, 34, 243, 244–7, 327–49, 335–44 conservative opposition 247–8 and corporate capitalism 259 neo-liberal 14, 256–64, 272, 319, 322–6, 339, 340, 346 and social movements 35–42, 338–9 Goffman, Erving 8 Gondarra, Djiniyini 85 Goodall, Heather 67, 70 Gooder, Haydie 86, 88, 91 Goodman, James 14, 26, 38, 243, 318–19, 348 Gorz, André 213–14


388


Goward, Prue 126 Graeber, David 34, 299, 300 Gramsci, Antonio 16, 325 green ban campaign 169–72 green consumerism 225–6 green movement Australian Conservation Foundation 189–93 and Australian governments 231–4 campaign against uranium mining 172–5 campaigns 169–88 corporate strategies 226–30 deep ecology 207–9 eco-anarchism 214–16 eco-feminism 209–12 eco-socialism 212–14 environmentalists 165–8 Franklin River campaign 175–6 Friends of the Earth (FoE) 166, 167, 193–7 green ban campaign 169–72 Greenpeace Australia Pacific 197–202 ideological conflicts 206–7 Jubiluka Action Grooup 184–8 and labour movement 217–23 liberal ecology 216–17 and native forests 178–84 new wave environmentalism 239–41 and nuclear-free Pacific 176–9 organisations 188–202 and parliamentary politics 202–6 politics 165–8, 230–41 see also Australian Greens green state 230–1, 234–7 Greenpeace 224 Greenpeace Australia Pacific 197–202

Greer, Germaine 102 Grenfell, Damien 177, 178, 188, 234, 282–3, 307, 312, 326 Gundjehmi Aboriginal Corporation 63, 147, 185 Habermas, Jürgen 19, 341 Hage, Ghassan 247 Haines, Janine 141 Hajar, Maarten 223 Hall, Philippa 130 Halliday, Susan 139 Hanson, Pauline 27–8, 43, 45, 82, 247–8, 342 Harding, Sandra 159 Hardt, Michael 32, 37, 335, 342 Hardy, Frank 71 Harris, Anita 162 Hartmann, Heidi 108 Hawke government 47, 74–5, 84, 85, 128, 135, 139, 151, 154, 210, 224, 232, 235, 252–3 Hazardous Chemicals Campaign 196 Heagney, Muriel 115 Heath, Di 111 Herron, John 51, 88, 93 Hill, Mike 272, 273 Hinkson, John 29, 270 Hirschkop, Ken 292–3 Hoare, Brent 4, 168, 239 Hocking, Barbara 81 Hobsbawm, Eric 13 homosexuals 5, 16, 27 see also lesbianism Howard, John 86, 88, 89, 91, 94, 163, 253, 257 Howard government 46, 49, 50, 51, 66, 85–95, 96, 118, 122, 129–30, 194, 219, 231, 233 Huggins, Jackie 61, 85, 92, 96, 146 Hubbard, Leigh 275, 316 Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC) 85, 86, 88 Hutton, Drew 35, 64, 166, 206, 224, 227, 231, 232, 233, 235, 240 Hydro-Electricity

Commission (HEC) 175, 176 identity politics 22–42 versus new social movements 24–8 indigenous Australians children 45, 86, 88, 94 civil rights, 1922–1967 53–6 community survival projects 58–60 ‘Corroboree 2000’ 95 culture 60–2 deaths in custody 59, 84 and eco-tourism 62–4 employment 55 health 90 independence 60–2 Journey of Healing ceremony 93 and mining 63–4, 184–8 Mirrar people 63, 147, 184, 186, 187, 188 National Day of Healing 93 National Sorry Day 88 and reconciliation 50–2, 84–97 rights, 1968–2001 56–66 and the state 46–9 stolen generations 45, 86, 87, 94 and white society 45–66, 87 women 57, 61–2, 145–8, 162, 187 see also Aboriginal movement; Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation; land rights; Mabo judgement; native title rights; Wik judgement Industrial Relations Commission 125, 253 Industrial Relations Reform Act 253 Inglehart, Ronald 19, 342 International Forum on Globalization (IFG) 34 International Monetary Fund (IMF) 2, 35, 42, 260, 279, 322, 332


Index 389 International Women’s day 104, 105, 118, 163 Irigaray, Luce 159 Iveson, Kurt 280, 285, 295, 296, 297, 310, 311, 312 Jabiluka Action Group (JAG) 184–8, 236 Jacobs, Jane 86, 88, 91 Jacoby, Russell 345 Jameson, Frederic 22, 26, 286–7, 289, 338 Jeffreys, Sheila 140, 156 Johnson, Carole 33, 338 Johnson, Pauline 109 Johnston, Jill 141, 144 Johnston, Josee 14, 26, 38, 243, 348 Jospin, Lionel 346 Jubiluka Action Grooup 184–8 Kakadu National Park 63, 184, 186 Kalantzis, Mary 152 Kane, Murray 31 Kaplan, Gisela 141, 145, 161, 163, 164 Katona, Jacqui 147, 185, 187 Keating, Paul 78, 82, 129, 253 Keating government 34, 85, 128, 180, 181, 232, 252–3 Kelly, Alex 294, 296 Kelly, Petra 172 Kelly’s Bush 170 Kelty, Bill 119 Kennett, Jeff 77 Kennett government 34, 270 Khor, Martin 256 King, Martin Luther 168 Kinnear, Scott 206 Klein, Naomi 245, 281, 282, 300–1, 322 Klein, Renate 158 Krishnapillai, Sarojini 284 Kristeva, Julia 159 Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuta 196 Labor governments see Australian Labor Party

labour sexual division 108, 124–7 withdrawal of 263 see also employment labour movement 20, 250–1, 264–9 and the environment 217–23 Lacey, Anita 282–3, 307, 312 Laclau, Ernesto 340 Laidi, Zaki 344 Lake, Marilyn 98, 101, 111, 113, 114, 123, 146, 155, 156, 163 Lake Pedder 166, 189, 231 land rights 1788–1971 69–71 1972–1979 71–5 movement 66–75 significance of 67–9 Langton, Marcia 63, 73, 96, 145 Larson, Vicki 277 Lasn, Kalle 305 Latham, Mark 262, 269 Lawrence, Carmen 141 Lawson, Damien 315 LePen, Jacques 342 lesbianism 141–4 Levine, Andrew 36 liberal ecology 216–17 liberal feminism 104–5, 60 Lines, Bill 224 Lingiari, Vincent 56, 70 logging 179, 180, 181–2 Lovelock, James 208 Luke, Tim 209 Lumby, Catherine 140 Lynch, Cecelia 33, 34, 264, 282, 337 Lynch, Lesley 121 Lyons, Edith 101 Lyotard, Jean-François 22, 23 McAdam, Doug 11 McCarthy, John D. 11 McCarthy, Wendy 91 McCausland, Sigrid 173 McCrann, Terry 39 McCulloch, Jude 316

McDonald, Kevin 17, 306, 309 McGuinness, Joe 55 McKinnon, Catherine 140, 158 McLachlan, Ian 78 McLennan, Blythe 235, 236 McLeod, Don 55 Macklin, Jenny 141 McMahon government 71–2 McMurtry, John 329 McNaughton, Colin 180, 181, 183 Mabo, Eddie 75, 76 Mabo judgement 44–5, 75–80, 82 Maddox, Marion 5 Maglen, L.R. 290 Magnusson, Warren 258 Maheu, Louis 346 Mallett, Serge 17 Malouf, David 92 Manne, Robert 45, 86 Mansell, Michael 48, 51 Marcuse, Herbert 336 Margarula, Yvonne 147, 185, 187 Markus, Andrew 53, 56 Marquand, David 332 Marr, Alec 228 Martin, Hans-Peter 2, 35, 259, 262, 323 Marx, Karl 6–7, 15, 31, 231, 259, 281, 332, 333 Marxism 214, 330, 333 Marxist feminism 104, 107–9 Marxist theory 14–16, 37 Mass Society Theory 10 maternity leave 125–6 Maynard, Fred 53 Meiksins, Peter 269 Melbourne IndyMedia 296, 298 Mellor, Mary 210 Melucci, Alberto 6, 331 Mendez, Philip 254 men’s movement 140–1 Mercer, Jan 152 Merchant, Carolyn 210 Mier, Tracey 284, 285, 302 Mies, Maria 210


390


Miliband, Ralph 21 Millett, Kate 106 Milner, Andrew 32, 259 Mining Council of Australia 24 Minns, John 283, 285, 297 Mitchell, Marea 159 Moody, Kim 265–6 Morgan, Hugh 74, 77 Mouffe, Chantal 340 Movement Against Uranium Mining (MAUM) 172 Mowbray, Martin 12 Muetzelfeldt, Michael 172, 174 Multilateral Agreement in Investment (MAI) 243, 334 Munck, Ronaldo 265 Mundey, Jack 169, 170, 171, 217, 222 Murphy, John 175, 176 Murray Islands 75, 76 Naess, Arne 207 National Aboriginal and Islander Liberation Movement (NAILM) 58 National Association of Forest Industries (NAFI) 179 National Coalition of Aboriginal Organisations 63 National Council for Women 100 National Day of Healing 93 National Domestic Violence Education Program 139 National Farmers’ Federation (NFF) 69, 80, 81, 82 National Party 324 National Reconciliation Convention 86 National Sorry Day 88 National Tribal Council 57 National Uranium Moratorium Campaign 172 National Women’s Advisory Council 151 native forests 178–84

Native Title Act 1993 75–80 Native Title Amendment Act 1998 80–3 native title rights 75–83 Mabo judgement 44–5, 75–80 Wik judgement 78, 80–3, 91, 91, 191 Native Title Tribunal 79 natural capitalism 224–5 Negri, Antonio 32, 37, 245, 335, 342 neo-liberal globalisation 14, 256–64, 272, 319, 322–6, 339, 340, 346 neo-liberalisation and Labor Party 252–5, 324 Nettle, Kerry 202 New Left theories 16, 21–2 New Right 22, 43 new wave environmentalism 239–41 Nicholls, Doug 53 Nicholson, Victoria 161 Nightingale, Martina 127 Nixon, Christine 141 Nomadic Action Group 189 Norberg-Hodge, Helena 281 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) 242 Northern Land Council 48 Nuclear Disarmament Party 189 nuclear-free Pacific and green movement 176–9 O’Brien, May 85 O’Donnell, Carol 130 O’Donoghue, Lowitja 48, 95 Offe, Claus 19, 281, 342 Office of the Status of Women (OSW) 151 Office of Women’s Affairs 155 One Nation party 27–8, 43, 45, 247–8, 253, 324 O’Reilly, Ciaron 187 Organ, Michael 202, 203 O’Shane, Pat 67, 69

Otway Ranges Environment Netwok (OREN) 182–3 Owens, Joe 169 Pacific Ocean, nuclear-free 176–8 Pakulski, Jan 238 PanContinental Mining 184 Papadakis, Elim 166 patriarchy 106, 108, 159, 210–11 Patten, Jack 54 Patterson, Mary Jane 225, 230 Patton, J.T. 54 Pearson, Noel 49, 76, 82 Perkins, Charles 52, 56, 62, 68, 85, 88 Peretti, Johan 293 Pettman, Jan 46, 51 Pickerill, Jennifer 239 Piven, Frances Fox 11 Plumwood, Val 210 Pocock, Barbara 126 politics and women 101, 103, 109, 113–15, 120, 151–6 pornography 140, 158 Porta, Della 41 postmodern ethic 31–5 feminism 104, 159 postmodernism 22–42 defined 22–4 Powell, Sian 151 Pratt, Valerie 121 Pringle, Bob 169 Prior, Cathy 51, 90 Probert, Belinda 129 Pusey, Michael 257 Racial Discrimination Act 79 radical feminism 104, 105–7, 160 Rai, Shirin 4 Rainforest Action Group 189 Rape Crisis Action Group 149 reformism 330–1 Reid, Elizabeth 151 Reith, Peter 339 Relative Deprivation Theory 10


Index 391 Renegade Activist Action Force 189 Resource Mobilisation Theory 10, 11, 12 Reynolds, Henry 91 Rhiannon, Lee 204–5 Ricardo, David 256 Ridgeway, Aden 50, 91, 93, 94–5 Rigby, Kate 210, 211 Robinson, Ray 85 Rowland, Robyn 158 Royal Commission Aboriginal Deaths in Custody 59, 84 Royal Park Protection Group (RPPG) 221 Rucht, Dieter 3, 41 Ruddock, Philip 88, 96 Rudé, George 13 Ruether, Rosemary 210 Rundle, Guy 33, 302, 311 Ryan, Lyndall 136, 137, 151 Ryan, Matthew 87 Ryle, Martin 213 S11 245–6, 276–321 and police violence 312–17, 326 Salleh, Ariel Kay 210, 211 Sartre, Jean-Paul 13 Saunders, Hilary 61 Save Albert Park 221 Sawer, Marian 125, 154, 163 Scalmer, Sean 28, 168, 280, 285, 295, 296, 297, 310, 311, 312 Schumann, Harald 2, 35, 259, 262, 323 Scott, Andrew 270 Scott, Evelyn 85, 95, 254 Scutt, Jocelynne 158 Sen, Amartya 301 Settle, Domenica 271 Sex Discrimination Act 1984 139 sexist attitudes 103, 137–41 sexual assault 139, 148–50 harrassment 139–40 sexuality and women 101, 102, 103

Sheldon, Peter 253 Shiva, Vandana 210, 289, 298, 319 Siewert, Rachel 206 Simms, Marian 152 Sklair, Leslie 334 Skocpol, Theda 36, 39 Smith, Adam 256, 271 Smith, Jackie 41, 287, 318 Snow, David 8 social class 6, 28–31, 250–5, 290, 333, 336, 338 divisions 259–64 identity 30, 33 integration 342 relations, capitalist 345 social movements anti-capitalist 250–5, 339–40, 344 American versus European approaches 9–15 and globalisation 35–42, 338–9 understanding 2–9 social movements, new 15–22, 338–9, 341–2 and reform 331 theory 17–22 versus politics of identity 24–8 socialism eco-socialism 212–14 socialist feminism 104, 107–9, 152 society and women 100–8, 139–41, 167–64 see social class; white society; working class Sparrow, Jeff 284, 297 St Clair, Jeff 277, 317, 343 Starr, Amory 8, 9, 24, 249, 272, 279, 280–1, 286, 287, 322, 323, 324, 334, 337, 345 state and indigenous Australians 46–9 and women’s movement 151–7 Steketee, Mike 206, 228–9 Stephens, Julie 303

Stevens, Joyce 103, 109 Stilwell, Frank 36, 38, 334 Stolen Generations report 86 Stone, Shane 82 ‘Stop the chop’ 178–84 ‘Stop the drop’ 176–8 Strange, Susan 36 Strachan, Glenda 123 Street, Jessie 162 Stringer, Trish 293, 295 Stuart Shale Oil Project 198–9 Studdert, David 270 Summers, Anne 102, 150, 161 sustainable development 210, 224–5 Switzer, Margaret 210 Sykes, Roberta 58, 145, 146 Szeman, Imre 306 Tabb, William 287 Tangey, Dorothy 101 Tanter, Richard 174 Tarrow, Sidney 11 Tasmanian Wilderness Society 166, 175 Tatz, Colin 47, 86 technology, new 291–8, 345 Third World 260 Thomas, Mark 342 Thomas, Ted 68 Thompson, Edward 13 Thornthwaite, Louise 253 Thornton, Merle 98 Thorpe, Robbie 47, 49 Tickner, Robert 84 Tilly, Charles 11 Touraine, Alain 19, 20, 341 tourism eco-tourism 62–4 Toyne, Phillip 234 trade unions see union movement Trinca, Helen 267 Tully, John 255 ultra-democracy 298–303 union-community coalitions 274–6


392


union movement 16–17, 118–19, 264–9, 219–22, 254–5 Union of Australian Women 101, 130 United Students Against Sweatshops 291 uranium mining 234 and green movement 172–5 Jabiluka Action Group (JAG) 184–8, 236 Ure, Andrew 299 voting rights for women 99 Walker, Cam 194, 227, 229, 230, 277 Walker, Dennis 57 Walker, Kath 55, 57 Wallerstein, Immanuel 345 Wark, McKenzie 253 waste disposal 196, 220–1, 232 Waterman, Peter 265, 293 Waterside Workers’ Federation (WWF) 174 Weatherall, Bob 62 Weiss, Linda 37–8, 346 Welch, Carolyn 244 Westergaard, John 30 Western Mining Corporation (WMC) 74 White, Patrick 170 White, Rob 209 white society and indigenous Australians 45–66 Whitlam, Gough 72 Whitlam government 73, 114, 128, 151, 156, 231 Wievorka, Michel 20 Wik judgement 78, 80–3, 91, 91, 191 Wilderness Society 224, 228 Wildlife Preservation Society 166 Williams, Caleb 167, 198 Williams, Gary 57 Wilson, Ronald 85, 94 Wilson, Shaun 266

Winter, Ian 30 Wiseman, John 36 Wolfe, Naomi 160 Wolfe, Patrick 81, 83 Wollstonecraft, Mary 101 Wombat Forest Society 183 Women Against Rape (WAR) 139 women and child care 127–30 Women’s Abortion Action Coalition (WAAC) 130–1, 146 Women’s Action Committee (WAC) 99, 116 Women’s Christian Temperance Union 100 Women’s Electoral Lobby (WEL) 105, 109, 113–15, 127, 130, 133, 134, 138, 143, 148–9, 156 Women’s Liberation Group (WLG) 99, 102 women’s liberation movement 103, 109–13, 127, 143, 148, 155 women’s movement 16, 98–9 and Aboriginal women 57, 61–2, 145–8, 162 and abortion 130–3 and child care expenses 130 contemporary 101–4 earlier waves 99–101 and employment 32, 101–2 equal opportunity in employment 98, 104, 120–7 equal pay 115–20 feminism in the 1990s 157–61 ideological divisions, 1970’s and 1980’s 104–9 ideology and practice 148–51 and lesbianism 141–4 liberal feminism 104–5 Marxist feminism 107–9 new millennium 161–4

organisational divisions 109–15 and politics 101, 103, 109, 113–15, 120, 151–6 radical feminism 105–7 and sexist attitudes 103, 137–41 and sexuality 101, 102, 103 socialist feminism 107–9 and society 100–8, 139–41, 157–64 and the state 151–7 voting rights 99, 101 Wood, Ellen Meiksins 38, 334 woodchipping 179, 182 Woodward, Justice 72 Wooldridge, Michael 84 working-class 6–7, 19, 30, 250–5, 290, 333 World Bank 1–2, 35, 260, 279, 322, 332 World Economic Forum (WEF) 2, 35, 40, 229, 230, 245, 278, 279, 285, 288, 298–9, 316, 318–19, 322, 332 World Heritage 176, 184 World Trade Organization (WTO) 2, 35, 42, 119, 243, 256, 277, 279, 288, 318, 321, 322, 332 Worldwide Fund for Nature 192, 224 Wright, Erik Olin 30 Wright, Tony 93 Yanner, Murrandoo 94 Yeatman, Anna 122, 137, 154 Yu, Peter 83, 88 Yunupingu, Galarrwuy 85, 94 Zald, Mayer N. 11 Zaretsky, Eli 24–5 Zirakzadeh, Cyrus 3 Zweig, Michael 261

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