Very few Japanese were able to become permanent residents of Australia because they were excluded, along with all Asians, from becoming citizens by the Immigration Restriction Act of 1901. Japanese migrants were interred after Japan entered the war. They were mainly pearl divers on the northern west and east coasts.

There were also Japanese prisoners of war kept in Australia, along with a large number of Italians. Not all accepted their fate quietly and a group of Japanese prisoners of war attempted to escape in 1944. Army guards killed 200 and left over 100 wounded.

The racism whipped up to justify the war endangered enlisted Asians as well. As in the U.S., Japanese volunteered for the armed forces. A certain man of Chinese descent, Albert Que Noy, joined the army in Darwin, Northern Territory, and served in New Guinea. He was in constant danger from Australian forces who mistook him for a Japanese soldier. He was eventually sent back to Australia for his own safety.

Kate Rodda
Adelaide, South Australia
 
 
Workers and farmers gov’t
I very much appreciated reading the article in the May 2 Militantby Martín Koppel, “Bolshevism versus class collaboration.” But I just wanted to make one political observation.

In one section of the article, writing about the demand for a workers and farmers government, it says that the “demand remains valid and useful today as part of a revolutionary strategy.” “Valid and useful” seems a bit understated to me. I think it would be better to say that it remains “essential as part of a revolutionary strategy” or “essential as part of advancing the line of march of the working class and its allies”—or something along those lines.

To illustrate this, let me cite the opening paragraph of “Communism and the Fight for a Popular Revolutionary Government: 1848 to Today,” written by Mary-Alice Waters and published in New International no. 3.

Waters writes, “The historic task facing the working-class movement is to wrest political power from the small minority of wealthy property owners, whose class dictatorship is predicated on war and on the misery, hunger, and disease of the great majority of humanity. The task is to establish a new kind of state power—popular revolutionary dictatorship—supported by the vast majority, the exploited producers, who are organized and mobilized to fight for their interests.

“The challenge before the vanguard of the working class is then to wield the powerful weapon thus created, a government of the workers and farmers[emphasis mine], in order to defend the initial revolutionary conquests and to begin the process of transforming the economic foundations of class society, as well as the social relations that flow from the division of humanity into the classes that own land, factories, and machinery, and those who do not. Accomplishing this is intertwined with using the new state power to aid and advance the world revolution.”

As the Militantarticle points out, that is the furthest cry from “workers backing electoral or governmental alliances with capitalist parties.”

Janet Post
Hazleton, Pennsylvania
 
 
British Labour Party
Recent Militantarticles refer to the British Labour Party as a “capitalist party.” While this outfit has never been based on a revolutionary, anti-capitalist program, its history, membership and ties to the unions led Marxists in the past to consider it a “workers party.”

The Communist League and its predecessors in the UK used the tactic of “critical support.” That approach, naturally, has been dropped along with the previous characterization.

While not denying that the Labour Party may have indeed crawled completely into the bourgeois camp, the explanation of how and when that happened would be appreciated.

Tom Mauer
Dallas, Texas

For an explanation of the communist stance toward the British Labour Party, and other such parties, see Reply to the Reader column, titled “Why communists don’t call for a vote for British Labour Party,” in Dec. 28, 2004, Militant.

—Editor  
 
 
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