July 28 - In two and a half months time there will be the most important political trial in this country in the last 20 years.

Anti-racist hero Lex Wotton, an Aboriginal man and a skilled worker from Palm Island, will face a Brisbane court. His trial on charges of "riot with destruction" is scheduled to begin on October 6th.

That Lex Wotton is being persecuted at all shows how really racist this country is. In November 2004 a policeman bashed to death an Aboriginal man, Mulrunji Doomadgee, at a police station in Palm Island. But the racist cop, Senior Sergeant Chris Hurley, and the police who covered this up for him were allowed to go totally free. Only the heroic Aboriginal people who resisted were jailed. Twenty three Palm Islanders were arrested and singled out following resistance actions that responded to the racist murder, actions that involved 400 people - over 10% of the entire island's population. Several resistance fighters were jailed for one to two years. Now Lex Wotton is facing charges that could carry an up to 13-year jail term.

In contrast, the cop Hurley has so far more than got away with the killing of Mulrunji. It was revealed this May that, three months after Mulrunji's death, Hurley was awarded over $102,000 by the Queensland ALP government as "compensation" for "losses" caused by the Palm Island Aboriginal resistance struggle (The Courier Mail, May 28.) That's the "rule of law" and "democracy" working.... Capitalist Australia Style!

Not a single policeman has ever been jailed over an Aboriginal death in custody. No one was charged over the state murder of Carl Woods, of TJ Hickey, of Daniel Yock, of Eddie Murray. There have been over 500 black deaths in state custody in the last 27 years. That amounts to about one in 800 indigenous people dying in custody. At this rate, if the indigenous population in Australia was the same as the whole population of China, the number of black deaths in custody in Australia would be equal to 1.3 million people! That is the scale of the genocide that is happening in the now wall-to-wall Labor government-led "democratic" Australia.

What happened to Mulrunji is an horrifically symptomatic example of the racist oppression that Aboriginal people face throughout this country. The policeman who killed him had even earlier been involved in racist brutality against black people. During the inquest into Mulrunji's death one woman, Barbara Pilot, told of how Hurley had reversed a police vehicle over her foot, hurting it so badly that the "bone was sticking out through the skin" (The Townsville Bulletin, 28 February 2006.) Hurley had predictably been "cleared" by fellow cops of any wrongdoing. In another case in July 2004, Hurley had kneed a man in custody in the stomach and squeezed his throat ferociously after the prisoner, Noel Cannon, asked for a mattress. In this incident, which occurred just months before the killing of Mulrunji, Hurley almost choked the man to death. For such "services," Hurley has been well rewarded. Only a short time after killing Mulrunji, he was working in a Police job in a resort area and was enjoying ownership of a near $1 million worth of Gold Coast properties, including two units in Burleigh Heads and a modern house at Carrara purchased in early 2006 (The Australian, 28 December 2006.)

The killing of Mulrunji has thrown a spotlight on state brutality in Palm Island. Yet after the outrage of this death-in-custody still racist police behaviour continues there. The Palms community is incensed because in the last few months police strip searching of youth has got worse and worse. This of course does not just happen in Palm Island. Racist police harassment of black youth occurs from Palm Island to Moree to Redfern, from Perth to Alice Springs to La Perouse. As a respected community member who has lived in the Redfern area for several decades remarked, indigenous people in Redfern have been suffering under a violent and racist Intervention for many years now in everything but name.

The scales of the Australian "justice" system are weighted against working class and poor people in general. And they are especially set up against Aboriginal people. Aboriginal people have never been given redress for racist atrocities through the legal system. These are the lessons that have been taught in the course of hard fought struggles, outrageous court rulings, promises of justice and disappointment after bitter disappointment. In the mid-1980s after a series of killings of black prisoners in state custody, Aboriginal and other anti-racist activists campaigned for a Royal Commission into Aboriginal deaths in custody. The then Hawke Labor government initially resisted these calls. It wanted to completely bury the question. But then as the protest actions against the racist killings grew in strength and militancy, the government decided that it needed to call the inquiry in order to divert the mounting on-the-streets campaign (which had the capacity to escape their control) into a channel that would not threaten the ruling class elite. The ruling class wanted to "restore confidence" in its "justice" system.

Aboriginal and other anti-racist activists however wanted real justice. Many joined the families of deaths in custody victims in devoting much energy to working with the Royal Commission process. But when the Royal Commission handed down its findings in 1991, it was true to form for a state inquiry - it expressed the interests of the ruling elite whose state was funding and overseeing the "independent" Commission. The Royal Commission whitewashed the racist state killings of black people in custody. Not a single criminal proceeding was recommended against police or prison officers. The only cop or screw to face any penalty over a death in custody was a South Australian prison guard ... who was fined $50 for a breach of internal regulations in the death of Kingsley Dixon. As Alice Dixon, angrily asked: "That's it, is it? Is my son's life worth only fifty dollars?!" (Eddie's Country, Simon Lockhurst)

In many cases "investigated" by the Royal Commission it was all too clear that the prisoners had been murdered and that the state officers (who in some cases even the Royal Commission had to accept had falsified evidence) were the only ones who could have been responsible. Indeed even the Royal Commission's own report said that of the 99 deaths in custody it "investigated," 30 died by hanging, 12 from head injuries, 7 from other external trauma and 4 from gunshot (Eddie's Country.) But no justice for a single victim! Instead as a sop to the families and to anti-racists, the Royal Commission accepted that Aboriginal people faced paternalism and made 339 recommendations some of which in theory could have eased the rate of black imprisonment. But even those particular recommendations, which were in any case mostly never implemented (instead governments have been introducing laws in the opposite direction ... like the Intervention!), even these were based on an attempt to cover the tracks of the state forces. For the findings were based on the outrageous lie that the deaths in custody were all caused by suicide rather than the truth that many were the result of racist state murder.

Since then, as before, state inquiries into Aboriginal deaths in custody have been whitewashes. The Coroners Inquest into the police killing of TJ Hickey in Redfern was a sham. And so was the police "investigation" into Mulrunji's death! That is what sparked the Palm Island resistance struggle. People gathered in the Town Square and as they heard of the incredible whitewash of lies they marched on the centres of injustice on the island: the police station and courthouse. The buildings housing those institutions were then, as is well known, rapidly diminished.

This Palm Island anti-racist resistance involved 10% of the island's population! It was not only a 100% justified struggle. It was also an urgent act of self defence. If the racist state authorities had been allowed to kill a black man in custody and then totally whitewash it with no adverse consequences, it would have been a big green light for further racist state violence. Now at least they knew that when they committed further atrocities they risk being again faced with mass direct action.

Most importantly, the audacity of the Palm Island resistance had the potential to inspire solidarity struggles throughout the country from others facing oppression. Firstly, from Aboriginal people and their anti-racist activist allies. But more broadly from politically advanced sections of the union movement, whose militant detachments too face state repression, for example when cops attack the picket lines of striking workers. At the actual time of the Palm resistance, major acts of solidarity (for example workers industrial action to protest police repression against the resistance fighters) sadly did not take place throughout Australia. This was because the current, largely pro-ALP leadership of the workers movement had not been up to the task and also because of the weight of conservative, state-promoted figures within Aboriginal organisations. But in the longer term the Palm Island resistance actions did create significant reverberations throughout this country and beyond. It not only ensured that Mulrunji's killing could not be totally swept under the carpet like most of the other black deaths in custody but brought the question of police racism in Australia to national and international prominence. The political impact of the Palm Island resistance would lead to ongoing street protest throughout the country over Mulrunji's killing. This social protest, and the potential it had to climb to the militancy of the original Palm Island resistance, made the racist Queensland authorities eventually calculate that they had no choice but to make the killer cop Hurley at least go through the motions of a trial. But the blatantly biased nature of that "trial" proved not only how unreformably unjust the legal system is but proved how correct it was for the Palm Island resistance to defy the cops and courts.

Today, the Palm Island resistance continues to shape the struggle against racism. This is because there is a growing solidarity movement fighting to have the charges dropped against Lex Wotton. This movement is highlighting the racist nature of Australia's legal system and is making more and more anti-racists realise that resistance that escapes the prescribed bounds of this unfair capitalist system is 100% justified.

This active campaign to have the charges dropped against Lex Wotton will not easily go away for it has been built up over three years. On 8 July 2005 a rally organised by staunch Aboriginal activists and leftists was held in Redfern's The Block to demand the dropping of charges against all the Palm Island defendants and the freeing of the then political prisoners from the heroic Redfern struggle. As a Trotskyist Platform leaflet (June 2005) building the rally stated: "In defending those persecuted for opposing racist state terror, we will be striking a blow against racist brutality." Then two years later on 22 September 2007, up to 150 Aboriginal people, trade unionists and anti-racists again demonstrated on The Block demanding "Drop the Charges Against Lex Wotton! Defend the Right to Oppose Racist State Brutality!" Following on from this action, the Sydney Branch of the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) held a solidarity lunch for Lex Wotton, where the union branch's leaders vowed to do all they could to defend Wotton and stressed that the Palm Island resistance was 100% justified. Since then more left-wing led unions have moved to join the campaign and more and more activist groups are coming on board. In Melbourne on April 5 this year, hundreds of anti-racists marched through the streets calling for the charges against Wotton to be dropped.

The Palm Island struggle was no doubt inspired by the Redfern resistance just nine months earlier that responded to the racist police murder of TJ Hickey. The audacity of these heroic struggles has also been seen at certain times in the powerful workers movement. In mid-April 1998 during the waterfront struggle, contingents of thousands of trade unionists mobilized at Melbourne's Swanston Dock to physically face down a huge cop formation that had been deployed to smash the picket line.

In different ways, all these resistance struggles show the type of defiance of the oppressor's state that is needed to win not only justice for black people but also equality for all working class and other exploited people. Because lets face it: justice is not going to come through the courts or through the parliament. Look at what is happening now. Many people so hated Howard's union-busting and open racism that they would vote for almost anyone who promised to distance themselves from these most extreme aspects of Conservative politics. But, today, in many ways Rudd is proving to the masses that he is just a Johnny Howard with a different political face. Whether it is Howard or Rudd in office it is still the same small number of rich capitalists who own this country's banks, mines, communication infrastructure and industry; and as before this racist elite have the state machinery chugging along in accordance with their long ago-programmed instructions.

This capitalist exploiting class does not like any opposition. But if such opposition is going to occur, it much prefers it if the boiling anger of the masses is piped into the parliamentary and judicial chambers where it can then be contained and de-energised. What the ruling class fears most is if mass grievances explode free from these confines. That is why they hate struggles like the Redfern and Palm Island resistances and feared so much the inspirational effect these struggles had. And that is why they want to jail Lex Wotton. The ruling class wants to show the masses that this is what will happen to you if you join struggles that burst free from the institutional channels laid out by them. But proud trade unionists and anti-racists must send the opposite message. We must prove to all such potential fighters against racism and exploitation that anyone who faces persecution in connection with staunch resistance will never be alone. The masses will defend them. That is why it is so crucial to fight for all the charges to be dropped against Lex Wotton.

We will only win that justice for Lex Wotton through mass mobilization. The legal system is too biased. All the events in Palm Island have proven this. We need the power of the organized working class in this struggle. The forthright solidarity for Lex Wotton that the MUA Sydney Branch is giving is important. For the workers movement itself this is vital because the same state that persecutes those who resist racism is the very same one that represses those trade unionists that take a strong stand in defence of workers rights. For example, currently the Victorian CFMEU construction union official, Noel Washington, is facing up to 6 months in jail for refusing to attend an "interview" with the union-busting Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC). The ABCC is a union-busting authority set up by the Liberals and maintained by the Labor government. It had unsuccessfully tried to use its Star Chamber powers to force Noel Washington to give up his fellow unionists by divulging the content of discussions at a union meeting. The workers meeting had been at the notoriously anti-worker Bovis Lend Lease which has alleged that workers committed the great crime of saying uncomplimentary things about company managers at the union meeting. The CFMEU Victorian branch has launched a public campaign to defend Noel Washington who faces a Magistrates Court in August. Defend Noel Washington - Defend Lex Wotton!

Slightly aside from the question of being in a common fight against the same oppressor, there is another important reason for the union movement to be involved in the campaign to defend Lex Wotton. By defending someone persecuted over the Palm Island resistance, the unions are educating themselves about the type of staunch resistance that the workers movement itself must wage much more of. And by being involved in defending people like Lex Wotton and in working together with the Aboriginal activists who have been in the forefront of defending him, the courage, the pride and the intellectual strength of the Aboriginal resistance will help to inspire and train staunch trade unionists.

At the 22 September Redfern rally Aboriginal activists addressing the demonstration - spokesman for The Block Lyall Munro, North Queensland-based activist Gracelyn Smallwood and rally chair Jenny Munro - called for a huge mobilization in Brisbane's Musgrave Park in the days leading up to the start of Wotton's trial, days of action that will demand the dropping of all charges against him. With the trial now scheduled for October 6, this Brisbane rally has been set to begin at 10am on October 4. Building for the rally is going ahead full steam and the Sydney branch of the MUA is organizing bus transport to take Sydney defenders of Lex Wotton to the Brisbane actions. But there is much hard, unglamorous and precise work to be done. Heavy responsibility will fall on the shoulders of worker activists who must wage a political struggle within their own unions to deepen and make more unshakeable union support for Wotton. This is a crucial anti-racist struggle that can be won. So we must get busy and feverishly politically educate ourselves so that we can do the work most effectively. Struggle to have the charges dropped against Lex Wotton! Defend the right to oppose racist state brutality! Fight for justice for Mulrunji, TJ Hickey and all victims of Australian racist state violence! ♦

RETURN TO FRONT PAGE