PARTISAN!

Frustrations with the Left are hardly few and far between. In a small city like Newcastle, the Left is an even tinier fraction of the population, yet is more divided than in larger cities such as Sydney or Melbourne. Max J analyses the situation and makes a direct call for socialists in Newcastle to wake up and get serious.

See also: Where to for Newcastle’s communists?

Dear Newcastle’s Socialists: Wake Up!

It’s no secret that the socialist movement is at world historic lows, both internationally and in Australia. This is despite various attempts to regroup and cohere the socialist movement into a fighting force once again (such as Socialist Alliance and the RCO). In Newcastle, you would not be blamed if you thought that socialists were functionally non-existent. This is because in spite of the on-paper existence of numerous socialist groupings in Newcastle, none of them are fighting organisations of militants in the workers movement.

Years have been spent and wasted in internecine, interpersonal disputes with political flavouring, which has done nothing but demoralise, splinter, and weaken the movement. This situation, which is endemic to the Newcastle Left, has made any prospects of united front work, between people who are meant to be comrades, impossible. The Newcastle Left in its current state is a smattering of friendship groups, cliques (known as “affinity groups”), insular activist clubs (Communist Students Collective & UoN Students 4 Palestine), and electoral fronts that are long past their expiry date (Socialist Alliance). This is unworkable.

We have to ask: who benefits from this situation? Certainly not the working class! Instead, this benefits cliques of activists who view radical politics as an edgy hobby to engage with once or twice a week, as opposed to a serious struggle for power. This hobbyist view of politics is not conducive to real action at all – in fact, it exists to do the opposite, to instead demobilise and pacify militants.

Blockade Australia carried out a commendable and brave campaign, risking their lives in an attempt to hinder the coal industry in Newcastle. However, years later, we must accept that this was a futile, individualist campaign which failed its basic tasks, and especially failed to win the working class over to its aims (by design). With activists broken up, smashed up, demoralised and weakened, Blockade Australia has two choices: turn away from anarchistic and terroristic direct action or stay dead.

Socialist Alliance has existed in Newcastle for the better part of several decades, though they were more relevant in the early 2000s than they are now. Having tailed the Greens and Rising Tide for the last several years, Alliance in Newcastle is in no better a position in 2025 than they were in 2022. The commitment of Alliance’s core members in Newcastle to the cause of socialism is respectable, but this respect is not a substitute for a principled Socialist left. Alliance in Newcastle has fallen into much the same traps as the rest of the activists: they are sclerotic, self-centred, and believe they can succeed on their own. The last few election cycles should be proof enough that Alliance is not doing well, and its future prospects are not great unless they change their act. To Alliance, we say: sink or swim! Either comrades in Alliance abandon their arbitrary vendettas against other comrades, or they will join the long line of defeated, dead projects (such as the old DSP).

The Communist Party’s Newcastle branch has undergone splits and reconstitutions over the last ten years. One such reconstitution took place after their previous branch chair had to be removed for sexual assault. Firmly burrowed in the single-issue pro-Palestine activist circuit, for what reason does the Communist Party exist if it does not aim to fight for power? Instead, like Alliance, the Communist Party tails left-liberal activists in and around the Greens. This is demonstrated by their electoral positions: they call for a Greens vote in the senate, so that the Greens can win “balance of power”. That the Communist Party calls for the Greens to win, who in turn want Labor to win, demonstrates a startling lack of serious strategy. Why does the CPA exist, if the CPA doesn’t want the CPA to win? The CPA may be a decaying institution, but comrades do not have to sink with the ship. We say: comrades – get serious! Full-time commitment to the single-issue activist circuit will lead the CPA and the working class down a dead-end.

The campus left, based at the University of Newcastle (UoN), has also hit a wall. The encampment campaign, led by the UoN Students for Palestine (not related to the Socialist Alternative-run Students 4 Palestine), failed to spur the university administration to act against connections to Israel and the military-industrial complex. Instead of connecting the struggle of students to that of the working class and building strong connections between students and workers (via solidarity with the NTEU on campus and staff struggles), the encampment sought to connect itself to the Greens-aligned activist circuit. To this end, the encampment sought to have speakers from the Greens, such as Campbell Knox (Maitland Greens) and Mehreen Faruqi (NSW Greens), among others. The small encampment was swiftly destroyed. Of course it was: it did not make a serious attempt at winning over the broad layer of sympathetic students at the university. Instead, it alienated the broad layer of sympathetic students through disoriented social media stunts. We commend the bravery of the students who organised the encampment, suffered losses (material and otherwise), and were harassed by the administration and its goons in campus security – but they nonetheless failed in their aims and tasks.

Now, much of UoN’s campus left fights a defensive battle against the administration and the student association. A defensive campaign is being waged on campus, led by a group around left-Laborist Matthew Jeffrey, who was recently removed from office as President of the Student Representative Council. This campaign demonstrates, if anything, how much of a laughable circus student politics at the university is. Instead of being committed to supporting students, the University of Newcastle Student Association (UNSA) commits itself to blowing student money on kickbacks, pay checks, and covert threats against activists. But a defensive campaign on campus which only aims to support one person is not a campaign which will win over a broad layer of students capable of winning a democratic association.

We say this not to sneer at the rest of the Left, but to give comrades the wake up call they sorely need. It is a bizarre situation when the Spartacist League, world-renowned for their allegedly sclerotic sectarianism, is more willing to engage in principled dialogue and united front work than “anti-sectarian” comrades in Socialist Alliance, etc.

The Socialist Left in Newcastle must recohere itself around a serious socialist program. That is, a program for the advancement of the workers movement, the overthrow of capitalism, and the establishment of an emancipated, self-managed society. This can only be done if comrades smash the chains that hold back unity: the sectarianism, the interpersonal squabbling, and the clique-ism. This situation is not sustainable. Many comrades and activists have been burned out or repulsed by these circumstances. This is an irreparable loss of potential militants and communist cadres.

The RCO is hardly perfect, nor would we claim to be so. However, our most positive trait is our willingness to work with comrades in spite of perceived slights and disputes. We have done so numerous times in the past: with Socialist Alternative via the Victorian Socialists, with the Spartacist League, at times with members of the Communist Party of Australia. But in Newcastle, this positive united front work is not possible, because other comrades choose to snub unity. Despite this, RCO comrades in Newcastle have done their best to critically support Socialist Alliance’s electoral campaign from the outside. We’ve attempted to make in-roads with unaffiliated activists across Newcastle.

Only a serious regroupment of socialists will build a party capable of leading the working class away from reformism and conservatism. But in order for this to happen, comrades need to wake up and make a choice: sink or swim!