Is the Australian government's intervention in East Timor the result of mass pressure as reader Shane from Melbourne suggests in a letter printed on page 15? Should workers support or join prointervention protests? Should we use union power to try to damage the Indonesian economy? Should we get behind "our" government in the largest Australian military intervention since the Vietnam War? Is Australian nationalism progressive?

I believe the answer to each of these questions for workers taking action to resist the antiunion drive of the bosses and the government at home is no. While that opinion is shared by only a small minority of wharfies, there is plenty of space.  
 

Rulers invoke 'national' interest

Conservative prime minister John Howard has invoked the "national" interest. But there is no such thing. Those who promote it do so in order to hide the fact that different social classes have conflicting interests. For Howard—and all the opposition parties, who back military intervention—supporting the "national" interest means the interests of Australian big business with its billions invested in Indonesia and the region.

Australia is a class-divided society. That is precisely why we need unions. Workers and small farmers have common interests because we are producers of social wealth. But we have nothing in common with the superrich, regardless of their nationality, who exploit us at home and superexploit and oppress fellow workers in semicolonial countries.

Rather than organizing working people to "force the government to act," as top CFMEU official John Sutton told protesters September 7, the labor movement should campaign to expose the real goals of the intervention that was planned and organized for months by Canberra.

Their goals have nothing to do with saving "helpless" East Timorese. They aim to hem in the independence struggle, bring to power a neocolonial government, and boost their ability to deploy their troops anywhere "instability" threatens the "right" of the Australian imperialist exploiters to make a profit off the toil of workers and farmers.

In fact, the more than two-week "delay" in deploying foreign troops into East Timor permitted pro-Jakarta gangs to do their dirty work. It was collusion with the Indonesian military and the rightists, not indecisiveness or cowardice, and set the political stage for intervention. This complicity has been the hallmark of the Canberra-Jakarta relationship for 35 years. Our unions should be telling the truth about Canberra's consistent role, not demanding intervention.  
 

Oppose anti-Indonesia boycotts

One wharfie, a supporter of the International Socialist Organization, argues that while we should oppose military intervention in East Timor, anti-Indonesian boycotts and bans organized by unionists are progressive. As long as workers are the ones taking action then it's okay, it seems.

But the 10 days of bans on Indonesian cargo imposed by MUA officials, the ban on processing Indonesian crude oil by Australian Workers Union officials, and protests aimed at stopping Garuda, the Indonesian airline, from functioning in Australia, were inevitably carried out in an Australian nationalist—and anti-Indonesian—framework. They were part of, not counterposed to, the Howard government's preparations to intervene—no matter what the intentions of those workers who carried them out.

Such bans only divide workers in Australia from other workers, by promoting the false view that all Indonesians are responsible for the nearly 24 years of Jakarta's crimes and covering up Canberra's collusion in those crimes. Workers and farmers in Indonesia have common enemies with their brothers and sisters in East Timor: the Australian and other imperialists and the Indonesian rulers and military officer caste.

The logic of operating in an Australian nationalist framework is shown by the actions of officials such as Jeremy Pyner, secretary of the ACT Trades and Labor Council, who have disgraced the labor movement by carrying out anti-Muslim chauvinist actions in front of the Indonesian embassy in Canberra. There is no place in our unions for insulting the religious faith of workers who are believers—whatever the religion.  
 

Backing intervention weakens unions

If the labor movement and fighting unionists support intervention, it will be that much easier for the bosses' government to deepen its attacks on our unions and all working people. An effective fight against the government at home can only be waged as part of an international struggle against imperialism and war.

With intervention now a fact, the union bureaucracy has ended the bans. Their attention will shift to getting workers to patriotically support the troops and the government, which has wind in its political sails. Our unions will be further weakened as a result. It will be harder to defeat the government's draconian antiunion legislation pending in Parliament.

Whether the union officialdom takes the next logical step in its patriotic, prointervention campaign and gives support to conscription and increases in war spending remains to be seen. One wharfie who was conscripted and sent to Vietnam in the mid-60s told me he is completely opposed to today's intervention. That view and experience deserves a broad hearing among unionists.

The Australian government seeks to promote a self-image as a disinterested, moral force for good. Australian soldiers have "never sought to impose the will of this country on others but only to defend what is right," Howard said. Real solidarity with the East Timorese independence struggle begins with exposing "our own" imperialist rulers' self-image for the lie it is.

Every war they have roped working people into fighting has been to impose their will and defend their profit system at the expense of workers and farmers. In World War I they took over the Pacific colonies of Germany, especially Nauru and the German-controlled part of New Guinea. In World War II, they sought to retain those colonies against encroachment by their Japanese competitors.

Australian troops invaded neutral, Portuguese-controlled East Timor in 1942, thus setting up the East Timorese toilers to face a Japanese counterinvasion. They sent Australian troops to Vietnam because they feared that the example of the workers and peasants' fight for self-determination and socialism there would spread.

Their motives today are equally predatory. It is in the interests of workers and farmers in East Timor, Indonesia, and Australia to say no to intervention and yes to independence now for East Timor.

Doug Cooper is a member of the Maritime Union of Australia. MUA member Ron Poulsen contributed to this article.  
 
 
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