Those supporting the September Redfern rally understood that the issue involved was not only one of defending a particular heroic individual: it was about the fight against injustice. This theme was maintained at the November 7 MUA function in support of Wotton. Speaking at the Sydney event, Assistant MUA branch secretary Paul McAlear made it very clear that the Palm Island struggle was not a “riot” but a 100% justified act. State secretary Warren Smith stated that the union would stand behind Aboriginal peoples fight for justice. He attacked the bogus agendas floating around on the question. Debunking the talk of “reconciliation,” Smith explained that the idea that you had to reconcile two sides made out that they had once lived together fairly when this in actual fact was never the experience for Aboriginal people since colonisation and the takeover of capital. He also called for support for land rights campaigns.

Also addressing the meeting was an activist (who is also a rank and file member of another union) who has been involved in the campaigns to defend those persecuted over the Redfern and Palm Island struggles. The speaker warned that as Lex Wotton’s trial approaches in April, the enemy would intensify their witch hunting campaign of slander. He pointed to the way that the big business-owned media and Liberal and ALP politicians have targeted West Australian CFMEU building unionist Joe McDonald, simply because McDonald did what a union official ought to do: stand up to greedy bosses. The way the oppressors will target Lex Wotton will be even more fanatical. When that happens, “you must not desert the campaign,” urged the activist. The speaker also explained that in defending Wotton, who is being scapegoated as the alleged leader of the Palm resistance, the union movement is defending the type of stance that can actually push back injustice and exploitation. All the gains the workers movement achieved were not won through the courts or through ticking a ballot paper every three years – they were won through strong industrial action. The speaker stressed that the Palm Island resistance was in the same spirit as that night in mid-April 1998, during the waterfront struggle, when the physical presence of thousands of determined trade unionists successfully repulsed a huge police mobilisation to smash the picket line at Melbourne’s East Swanston Dock.

With typical modesty, Wotton thanked the MUA and those who have campaigned in his defence for the last two and a half years for their support. He expressed his wish that the campaign over his issue would help to further the whole struggle against injustice and pointed to the daily exploitation that workers have to face.

Responding to other speakers, Warren Smith promised that the MUA would do all it could to defend Wotton and would motivate the issue at union meetings. He also drew strong applause when he said that the union would provide bus transport to take supporters from Sydney to the April 4th 2008 demonstration in Brisbane [“Defend the Right to Oppose Racist State Brutality! Drop the Charges Against Lex Wotton!”].

The union officials addressing the November MUA function stressed that Lex Wotton’s struggle was a struggle that all workers and their unions had a stake in. Exactly! The same rich people’s state institutions that target Aboriginal people who stand up to racism also target trade unionists when they organise to fight against injustice. In the lead up to the anti-war APEC protests it was discovered that the police were threateningly using video footage of Sydney MUA officials (as well as community activists) to rehearse ways to deal with “violence.” As the Sydney branch secretary reported to National Council in October, “The video utilised racial stereotypes and hysteria to portray the union and community activists as a potentially violent group of thugs."

The fact that a section of the workers movement gets the connection between the class struggle and the fight for freedom for Wotton, opens up the possibility that the numbers, organisation and industrial power of the unions will be brought to bear to secure justice for him. Whether this possibility eventuates will be decided in the course of intense discussions and factional discourse within the union and left movements in the months leading up to the April 7 trial. It is likely that sections of the union officialdom more wedded to the ALP governments will – either openly or stealthily  - seek to block the movement of worker activists behind the banner of support for Wotton. Anti-racist, internationalist-minded elements will resist such sabotage. How well equipped they are to do so with the required political tools (and accompanying literature) will determine whether the burgeoning union endorsement for the campaign to free Wotton will end up in a relatively modest outcome – restricted to a couple of officials at the April rally and union support for infrastructure – or in a powerful mass mobilisation of contingents from several unions for the April actions.

It is important to anticipate the arguments that more conservative forces within the workers movement will throw out against the campaign in order to be able to rebut these arguments. For one, more rightwing elements will point to the fact that the Queensland Police “Union” (QPU) is strongly opposed to Wotton and the other Palm Island defendants. It sure is! But as one of the people who addressed the November 7 MUA gathering explained, the police “union” is not a real union because the police in this society are not workers – rather they are the enforcers of the exploitation of workers. Too true! The police associations have much more in common with the balaclava wearing security guards that ousted Patricks MUA wharfies from the docks on 7 April 1998 than with a workers union. Indeed, during the 1998 waterfront struggle, the police repeatedly proved that they are on the other side of the fence to the workers movement. In the hottest moment of the waterfront battle in mid-April 1998, police from all over Victoria converged into huge battalions with the aim (fortunately repulsed) of smashing the workers picket line at East Swanston Dock. Police “unions” should not be listened to and they should not be considered part of the union movement!

As part of mobilising to free Wotton we also have to challenge backward notions that are widespread even within the left-led unions. For example currently, while the MUA’s Sydney branch has taken an excellent stance in calling for the dropping of charges against Wotton, the very same union is running another campaign that is infused with the exact opposite ideas – a campaign against foreign seamen on flag of convenience (FOC) ships that carry dangerous cargoes. This latter campaign claims that foreign workers on such ships are a “threat to national security.” Behind the opposition to foreign workers which especially targets workers from the Philippines and Indonesia is a desire by the union to “protect” the conditions of relatively well-paid “Australian workers” from being undercut by poorly paid labour on FOC ships. But when you pit the interests of one lot of workers against another group of workers it never does any good for any workers. For it divides the labour movement and therefore allows greedy bosses to face less resistance. The union ought to completely focus instead on fighting to raise the employment conditions of FOC workers to the level of local employees. The MUA has indeed in some cases shown such solidarity. But this solidarity work is being undermined. MUA national secretary Paddy Crumlin claims that, "While Australian seafarers are subjected to full ASIO and Federal Police checks, foreign seafarers receive only cursory online security checks by Australian authorities." Appealing to, and therefore promoting, white racist fears not only undercuts the workers unity needed to defend workplace rights. It also, quite obviously, makes it harder to mobilise union members behind anti-racist campaigns - including the one to free Lex Wotton. And when you legitimise the political function of ASIO and the police in one area it weakens your ability to expose the overall political and race bias of the police/legal system – as in its persecution of the Palm Island anti-racist defendants.

The NSW MUA’s support for Wotton stands in the best part of the traditions of the union movement. Fifty years ago, when the Aboriginal workers of Palm Island went on strike for decent wages and against the vicious racism of the island’s Superintendent, the Waterside Workers Federation, Seamen’s Union (both the predecessors of the MUA) and other left-wing led unions gave important support. In the course of fighting to drop the charges against Lex Wotton, internationalist-minded union activists will need to build on, deepen and make much more consistent these traditions.

For the union movement, standing against racism is a question of its own survival. The capitalist enemy has been successfully able to facilitate their anti-working class offensive by using their familiar tactic of spreading racism: the ancient ruse of divide and conquer once again. The official scapegoating of Middle Eastern and South Asian people as “terrorists,” the wholly ignorant portrayal of this country’s first peoples as prone to child abuse, the branding of African youth as “misfits,” all serve this purpose. But all these schemes will be defeated when the workers movement links up its struggles with those suffering racial oppression.  And in the course of doing so, the heroism of those black people who have stood up to subjugation will be rubbed off on to the workers movement. And so will Aboriginal people’s healthy distrust of the present state institutions – distrust that is borne from their own experience.

The steps that the Sydney branch of the MUA has taken to support the campaign for freedom for Lex Wotton will make that union stronger. And the union movement needs to get a lot stronger! For the new Rudd/Gillard government in the end answers to the same exploiting elite as the hated Liberals.  

It is a fitting coincidence that the April 7 date on which Lex Wotton will face court is in fact the exact tenth anniversary of the notorious sacking of Patricks workers and the deployment of scabs, special forces operatives and attack dogs on to the wharves. But just as racist persecution and union busting go hand in hand so do the struggle against racist subjugation and the fight against exploitation of labour. The trade union movement is here to stay! The anti-racist resistance from Redfern to Palm Island is here to stay! And Lex Wotton is here to stay as a free and inspirational man! Help build the mass mobilisation of Aboriginal people, union contingents and anti-racists of all colours to go to Brisbane in April and demand the dropping of all charges against Lex Wotton! •

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