Held at the Secretariat of the Pacific Community in Anse Vata, Nouméa, the event attracted people from New Caledonia’s three provinces and from several different political organizations. A number of young supporters of Palika attended, as well as representatives of the organization’s leadership. Four members of the Movement of Oceania Youth (MJO), the youth organization of the pro-independence party based among immigrants from Wallis and Futuna Islands, also contributed. Like New Caledonia, Wallis and Futuna is a colony of French imperialism.

The New Caledonian participants welcomed a delegation representing the international Young Socialists and the communist movement. The members of the delegation, who hailed from Canada, New Zealand, and the United States, each gave a brief presentation on the fight to build an international anti-imperialist movement, the class struggle in the countries in which they are active politically, and their efforts to build the communist movement. Those presentations kicked off a lively political exchange.

The delegation’s visit was the product of collaboration between Palika and the Young Socialists that picked up momentum last year as youth from the region prepared to send delegates to the 15th World Festival of Youth and Students in Algiers last August.

At the festival itself delegates from Palika described the ongoing struggle in New Caledonia against French colonial rule--a struggle in which the indigenous Kanak people, who have historically faced conditions of apartheid-like discrimination--have played a central leadership role.

Roughly one year after the festival, in early September, a team of three YS representatives from Canada, New Zealand, and the United States arrived in New Caledonia to begin a busy schedule of discussions and visits to the scene of political and labor actions.

In the days before the seminar, their hosts took them to the site of a proposed nickel mine owned by the Canadian mining giant Inco that has been targeted for protests by Kanaks and others; a Nouméa hotel that has been occupied by workers demanding an improved severance deal; and a squatter camp inhabited and organized by Kanak fighters and by workers from Wallis and Futuna.  
 
Perspectives of communist movement
The seminar was chaired by an independence supporter who works as a truck driver and who had attended the World Festival of Youth and Students in Algeria last year.

From the Communist League and YS in New Zealand, Arlene Tate said that the international movement of which those organizations are a part stands in continuity with the battle to build an international class-struggle leadership conducted by Marx and Engels, the leaders of the Russian Revolution and its defenders against the Stalinist political counterrevolution, and the communist leadership of 40-plus years of deepening and defending the socialist revolution in Cuba.

An epoch of capitalist crisis and depression, rising inter-imperialist competition and war, and intensifying class struggle is opening up today, she said.

It is not just Washington that is on the warpath, Tate noted. In the Pacific region, the smaller imperialist powers of New Zealand and Australia are also extending their military reach, with substantial forces in East Timor and Bougainville. The New Zealand government has also mounted a police operation in the Solomon Islands.

Rebecca Williamson, of the Young Socialists in the United States, talked about the resistance of working people against the bosses’ assaults, from the longshore workers along the Pacific coast of the United States to fighters against police brutality.

"In the course of the dockworkers’ fight, and others like it," she said, "young socialists and socialist workers have participated in picket lines and rallies, urged others to get involved, and sold significant numbers of Militants and Pathfinder titles to union fighters. Right now we are in the middle of an election campaign to present a socialist program to working people and youth."

Garment worker Christian Cournoyer, from Montreal, also addressed the seminar. Among other points, the socialist worker discussed the antilabor record of the Canadian mining companies that are sinking their roots into New Caledonia’s nickel resources. "Several people have explained to us here that the nickel mining industry is your national patrimony," he said. "They argued persuasively that this resource must be used as a motor to fight against regional inequalities generated by decades of colonialism."  
 
Kanak economic independence
The fight for Kanak ownership of the nickel mines is a key front in the fight for economic independence, said Sylvain Pabouty, a member of the Palika national leadership, in response. The wealth generated by this industry must be transformed into new roads, electricity, hospitals, schools, and proper houses for all, he added.

Palika member Doris Doupere described the impact of French colonial rule on the Kanak people, and its broader effect of impeding the development of New Caledonia. Today Kanak fighters face new challenges, she noted, with big multinationals from Canada and elsewhere operating in the country.

MJO president Moie Kamalele Sione stressed the increasing involvement of immigrant workers and others from Wallis and Futuna in actions for independence.

Charles Wea, a prominent figure in the Kanak Socialist National Liberation Front, the long-standing leadership of the independence fight, pointed to the overbearing role of the imperialist powers in the South Pacific--and not just France. "More and more you feel the weight of the United States," he said, "while Australia and New Zealand have the primary weight in the affairs of the region." The Solomon Islands recently changed their currency to the Australian dollar, he noted.

Seminar participants spent some time looking over a table of Pathfinder books and socialist periodicals, and scrutinizing a display illustrating the political work carried out by the communist movement in workers districts and at factory gates, on campuses, and as part of political protests. By the end of the day they had purchased almost 60 revolutionary titles published or distributed by Pathfinder Press.  
 
 
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