What a BIG dose of small parties

 WHAT A BIG DOSE OF small PARTIES

Why I left the Greens and Socialist Alliance and joined the ALP – by Helen Said

I got involved in radical politics in the 1970s as a university student. Back then I was one of very few migrant women from the western suburbs to study sciences at Melbourne University. In those days racism and sexism were rampant and Equal Opportunities laws were still in the making. I saw a strong need for social change and thought that campus based socialist groups (and later the Greens) were the answer. 

These parties promoted unequivocally egalitarian policies which earned my admiration. I joined the Socialist Youth Alliance and the Socialist Workers Party, and in later life the Greens and the Socialist Alliance, on the assumption that their strong theoretical understanding of discrimination would automatically guarantee me equality and respect within these organisations. Certainly I met many trustworthy, friendly, hardworking, dedicated idealists who work tirelessly, and weather a great deal of community misunderstanding, in their quest to save the planet and advance humanity. 

But on many occasions while a member of these small parties, in defiance of the equality rhetoric, I was flagrantly put down or effectively excluded because of my cultural background, socio-economic and family circumstances and the suburb where I now live (Epping in Melbourne’s Outer North). These lesser treatments were not just isolated incidents, but part of the narrow in-group cultures which I now believe are inevitable within small, purist political movements. After virtually growing up on anti-major party rhetoric, I have now split with these groups and joined my local branch of the ALP.

These lesser treatments were particularly disorienting and distressing for me, as they were washed down with copious self-congratulatory pronouncements, from prominent Socialist (SYA/SWP/SA) and Greens party members, about their impeccable left wing credentials and principles. These impeccable credentials were routinely hurled at me when I dared to question their biases. When I insisted that these groups should be more inclusive of broader demographics, I was frequently accused of threatening the very existence of poor little parties of some few hundred or few thousand members, who couldn’t possibly be expected to cater to the needs of people like me within such limited resources. 

Instead of feeling liberated within these parties, these negative experiences added to the burden of self doubt and discrimination I had grown up with as a migrant girl in the western suburbs during the bad old White Australia days of the 1960s and early 70s. I ended up feeling torn between continuing my political involvements to fight for progressive causes and leaving the political scene to escape the marginalising and belittling treatments of some comrades/Greens. For the sake of my emotional wellbeing, when the pressures became intolerable, I bolted. Since moving to the City of Whittlesea, and working with local Labor Party members on various campaigns, I feel I have finally healed emotionally and found my political home.

I have recently been approached by an old socialist who insisted that my negative experiences within the Greens and Socialist groups were nothing more than a series of unrelated encounters with random a---holes, a few of whom inhabit every party, and that I shouldn’t judge a party by its a---holes. She insisted that I should instead judge a party exclusively by the progressiveness of its policies. This old socialist was quite angry with my decision to join Labor, predicting that I would return to the Socialist Alliance as soon as I discovered Labor’s policy weaknesses.

But a political party is not just a neutral aggregate of individuals coming together to agree on common points. It is an organisation with its own culture and social hierarchy. As long as the smaller parties maintain narrow in-group cultures which deny many migrants, mothers and outer suburban people equal participation, they are going to alienate many potential supporters, even those who would otherwise agree with them on most policies. They are going to remain small.

“I thought everybody on the Left drinks”

About eighteen months ago I was chatting to an old workmate with a decades long history of left wing political and union involvements. She was surprised to hear that I rarely drink alcohol. “I thought everybody on the Left drinks,” she said, and I had to tell her that this is not true. As if it were not obvious enough from the colour of my face, I said, “I come from a culture where people don’t drink a whole lot. We are Greeks from Egypt. Food, not drink, is our social mixer.” 

This tendency for drinkers to take up most of the social and political space on the Left, and overlook everybody else, has been all too prevalent throughout my lifetime of campaigning. On a number of occasions over the years, when I have not joined in with this Lefty drinking culture, I have been baited, mocked, backstabbed and pressured to justify myself to people who otherwise hold strong opinions in favour of racial equality and multicultural acceptance. 

Sadly this drinking pressure is endemic in Australian society but reaches a crescendo in some small inner city based parties of the Left. Alcohol, like tobacco, has been classified by the Cancer Council as a carcinogen but, unlike tobacco, alcohol continues to be glamourised as a pathway to comradeship and an expression of rebellion by those who would otherwise rail against capitalist exploitation. Alcohol remains a focus of socialist youth activities, Politics in the Pub sessions, socialising after meetings and the all important political networking.

The Lefty drinking peer pressure started when I joined the Socialist Youth Alliance (the forerunner of the Socialist youth group Resistance) at the age of 20. I was then a university student, living at home with my protective immigrant parents. At that age I was very self conscious about being accepted within a movement dominated by older Anglo Saxons who enjoyed a great deal more life experience and personal freedom and who seemed so well read on all things liberating.

As a promising young member I was encouraged to join the Melbourne executive of the SYA. The socialists were then undergoing a turn to industry, where comrades were joining unions and trying to broaden the SYA and SWP membership beyond the traditional uni student scene. At my first executive meeting, the SYA organiser opened discussion on this transformation by talking about the type of people who should be joining our movement – migrants, workers, people from working class suburbs – and asked us what sort of weekend entertainments would attract this type of member. Of course I knew exactly what migrant workers did in the suburbs on the weekends because I lived in this very type of family. Thinking my experience would be helpful, I put up my hand and said, “We could play a game of cards.”

The entire Socialist Youth Alliance executive immediately broke down into raucous shrieks and howls of laughter that continued unabated for about a minute. I sat through this prolonged, blatant ridicule of my culture because this was the type of thing I had grown up with - in those days being ridiculed by Anglo-Australians seemed somehow routine, like it was something that I had coming to me. When the executive finally composed themselves, a very flushed mature aged uni student turned towards me and, looking at me through his long stringy blond hair, he scoffed, “We’ve got to throw parties where people can drink!” He then went on to depict such social events as the only thing potential new members could possibly feel interested in. “And you think we can build this party by inviting people to play a round of Gin Rummy?” he asked (when in fact, my family played Pastra and Concun, but I wasn’t about to press the point).

I learned young and fast that I was expected to go along with this drinking behaviour in order to feel accepted in the socialist scene. For a number of years I went to the pubs with socialists, and didn’t discuss my cultural differences regarding alcohol, partly because I had been so blatantly shamed about my family’s customs, but mainly because I didn’t even perceive myself as having “a culture”. It took me a long time to figure out why Australian socialists even drank alcohol. 

In the early 1980s, when the Asian immigration debate started, I was copping racial abuse from members of the public for taking an Australian job. That summer, I attended a socialist national conference and made an appointment to see the editors of Direct Action (forerunner of Green Left Weekly). I asked them why there had been no coverage of the immigration debate in our newspaper. The editor reasoned, “We can’t hit Australian workers over the head about being racist.”

After some discussion I was invited to submit articles about the immigration debate myself, which I did. The articles appeared under various pen names and were heavily edited, but I started to feel like I could make a difference. I started speaking at meetings and contributing to discussion bulletins, urging the Socialist Workers Party to become more multicultural, suggesting that alcohol was not right for everyone, but it was clear very few members were interested in changing the status quo. 

As the years wore on I started drifting in and out of the socialist movement. By then I was regularly being backstabbed by various drinking circles within the Socialist Workers Party. My different customs and personal tastes were interpreted by many as a sign of “conservatism”. Despite the peer pressures, I never became much of a drinker and would go home from pubs early. As the drinking nights wore on, tongues would wag. The easiest target to backstab would be the person who wasn’t there drinking with them (ie the migrant woman since our generation grew up never going to pubs). I eventually wrote a letter of resignation to the SWP, complaining that “comradeship comes out of a bottle of beer.”

Less migrant involvement

Over the years, within both socialist and Greens parties, in both formal and informal discussions, I have raised the issue of supporting the involvement of migrants. A typical response from both Greens and socialists is that their party’s superior polices are all that’s needed to prove they are fair and accessible. Any suggestions for change were largely seen as a waste of party resources or an attack on their progressive credentials. When I persisted with this line, some members would accuse me of burdening a poor little party with unreasonable demands and recite their strong anti-racist rhetoric, sometimes with a hand on the heart, as proof that my concerns were unfounded.

Lately I have heard of old comrades who have now developed health problems through drinking, I read blogs about how some of them are dealing with alcohol and I wonder why they didn’t play that game of cards all those years ago.

In recent years, after being assured that the socialists’ culture had changed, I briefly returned to this group, which has now evolved into the Socialist Alliance. Sadly the youth group, Resistance, had changed for the worse, its membership had dwindled and several young people were gleefully shrieking, even around the forum discussion table, about the next time they could go drinking. I heard them do this at a couple of events, and again I felt this exerted a coercive and off-putting influence. The group was producing anti-racist flyers with oriental looking artwork, presumably in the hope of attracting a more multicultural membership, while clinging to their non-inclusive pub culture. I wrote to them about this but I don’t expect them to change.

I went to a Socialist Alliance meeting a couple of years back and I was invited to the pub afterwards. By then I was a regular facebook user and had discussed the old SWP’s alcohol issues with older comrades online. I was assured by prominent members that they were much older and wiser and a pub invitation did not imply that I was expected to drink alcohol. Obviously that was a better attitude, however there are plenty of people who are just not comfortable with pubs full stop, including many Muslims, who would feel uncomfortable on a religious or racial level inside a pub. Certainly I’ve been gawked at by patrons when looking for a group of friends gathering in a pub and I’ve occasionally heard patrons using racist language.  This is quite off-putting. After 53 years in Australia, I sometimes go to a pub for a special occasion, but it’s not something I want to do on a regular basis.

I certainly found the old socialists friendlier, wiser and more accommodating in several ways. However I found that refusing alcohol while others are sharing a jug of beer could still make me feel marginalised. The invitation to come to the pub, and refrain from drinking, seemed to be a statement that this Anglo-Celtic male bastion is still the epicenter of Left wing political involvement and I was not to question this. Going to a place which is off-putting for many migrants, especially migrant women, hanging around the periphery of a drinking scene, is still an expected hazard for a migrant wishing to advance him/herself within the small progressive party scene. I think this pressure is unacceptable and unnecessary. 

The small party scene just hasn’t developed successful ways for many migrant members, or other non-drinkers, to network. Networks are vital to members’ survival and advancement within politics. Consequently the recruitment and integration of migrants within the minor parties is very limited. The pub atmosphere is also unsuitable to people with alcohol addiction or health issues, people without safe transport to get home at night, especially those who live far from these inner suburban and city pubs, or people who need to bring their children to political activities. There are very few custodial parents in the Melbourne Socialist Alliance and this compares poorly to the old Communist Party of days gone by where families with children were commonplace.

 “We’re the ones doing all the work.”

About 13 years ago, after having children, I felt the need to return to activism. By then I was living in Preston and Darebin Greens was well established. During my time in Darebin Greens, after the election of the first three Victorian Senators, I noticed more of the drinking culture. People would sometimes talk about the problem of including migrants if it was customary to go to a pub after a meeting, but nothing was ever resolved. 

Again I encountered the drinking pressure at a Greens election night party in an inner city pub a few years ago. The MC repeatedly made speeches demanding that members must drink up, as this was a celebration. He kept saying “Drink up everyone. Drink! Drink! I can see people who are not drinking! We are celebrating! You have to drink!” Here we bloody go again, I thought.

This Lefty drinking pressure has become a complete joke. I imagine myself confronting this drinking pressure by barging into a political gathering in a pub with a bowl of cooked beans, walking around the tables, pushing spoonfuls of beans into people’s mouths saying, “Eat up! Eat up! This is our culture. We pressure people to eat. You’ve pressured me with your drinking culture so many times so I’m here for some cultural exchange. This is your eating peer pressure, eat your beans now!”

In all my years of left wing small party involvements, I have noticed that Anglo-Australian members sometimes took it upon themselves to discuss the “problem” of migrant members, but rarely actively sought migrant members’ input into such discussions. I have never known them to initiate any kind of inclusiveness action plan to achieve an ethnic balance or enhance the participation of migrants at any level of membership. These drinking circles and their inner city networks were the small party inner sanctum who assumed any new initiatives would come from themselves. Any suggestions that they came up with were considered innovative food for thought, whereas the suggestions I put forward were often seen as a waste of resources and a criticism of the people who did all the work by someone who did less work. In fact I was being cut out of doing the party’s work because I had young kids, the meetings were quite far from home and often revolved around organising fundraisers in pubs – the purpose of my suggestions was to give people like myself more opportunity to engage in party work. 

Most socialists and Greens would laugh at men who think that feminists make a good point, but say things the wrong way. Yet many socialists and Greens have told me that I had a good point about inclusiveness but I was saying things the wrong way. In reality I have spent decades saying things about inclusiveness in every conceivable way – articles, speeches, conversations, complaints, phone calls, facebook, arguments, satire, discussion bulletins, appeals, letters, submissions – when I said things in a formal polite way I was ignored and when I became despairing and impatient I was saying it the wrong way.

Denying working class members their own branches

Until quite recently, the Victorian Greens Constitution would allow a group of six or more members to get together and form an affinity based branch, but in recent years the Greens have curtailed their members’ constitutional rights. Greens branches now have to be based on a local government area rather than affinities. This rule effectively blocks the formation of Greens branches where people from non-English speaking backgrounds could conduct proceedings in their native language while enjoying branch status. This compares very poorly to the rights and status enjoyed by migrants within the ALP. While pursuing stronger policies on refugee rights in parliament, the Greens deny political rights to many older migrants and more newly arrived communities, within their own party, who do not have sufficient English language skills to be heard and advance themselves within an English speaking municipality based branch.

Things are hardly better for working class English speaking Greens members. The one municipality-one branch rule makes it much more likely that a single wealthy neighbourhood within a municipality can permanently dominate a local Greens branch. Working class members who want to be active locally are forced to carve out their political identity amongst the professional and academic circles who currently flock to the Greens – a childcare worker from Reservoir, for instance, is likely to find herself sitting amongst lawyers and university lecturers from Northcote, listening to their academic terminology, watching them leafing through the party constitution and debating the fine print, being tut-tutted if she neglects to use her most harmonious Non-Violent Communication when she dares to disagree with something, and being told that the coming Northcote election is far more politically important than whatever is happening in her neck of the woods. 

She wouldn’t have the right to call a meeting to form a new Greens branch based on her own trade union interests, neighbourhood or local issues, she either fits in with the local branch, transfers to a branch many miles away or leaves. This worsens the current demographic imbalance within the Greens, which mainly attracts professionals but has never been seen by workers as home base.

The one municipality-one branch rule further disadvantages outer suburban and country Greens, whose municipalities are much larger geographically and have very little public transport, especially at night and on weekends, when most meetings and political events are held.

“Working class people wouldn’t want to run their own branch.”

The one municipality–one branch rule allegedly as an administrative convenience, was introduced after I left the Greens. However the constitutional change appeared to have been prompted by a failed attempt to form a separate Preston-Reservoir Greens Branch while I was still a Darebin Greens member in 2008. 

Having previously lived in the north of Preston before moving to Epping, where there was no Greens Branch, I supported the move to establish a branch closer to home. At the time, I felt that a Preston-Reservoir Branch would be in a better position to facilitate the formation of a Greens branch in Whittlesea, not just because of its geographic proximity, but because it would not be pre-occupied with winnable Northcote election campaigns and could adopt a more relevant working class culture than the Northcote dominated Darebin branch.

The move to form a Preston-Reservoir Branch was hysterically opposed by long established members from the south of Darebin, who thought it would threaten the Northcote Council campaign, and - guess what else - the members who wanted the new branch had a good point but they said things the wrong way.

In those days Whittlesea and Darebin were tied together within a now defunct Greens regional council structure. The North East Suburbs Regional Council consisted of just one branch, Darebin, which could garner most of the funds for Northcote campaigns and relegate candidates in Reservoir and Whittlesea as “paper candidates.” The addition of a Preston-Reservoir Branch, plus a future Whittlesea Branch, could upset the balance of power and the funding formula within the NESRC in favour of working class areas and campaigns.

When I put my hand up to help lead the proposed new branch, I copped some haughty remarks from the Darebin Branch Secretary in a Darebin membersonly yahoo group post. I was then the only outer northern Greens member, and one of few working class branch members, to attend meetings. The Darebin Secretary wrote, in her membersonly post, “Helen, I don’t think you’ve thought about how much work is involved in running a branch.”

After another member told her off for patronising me, the secretary rang me up to atone for her remark. She insisted her remark had not been patronising. When I tried to debate her, by saying that working class people wanted to run their own branches in the Outer North, she was shocked and repeatedly exclaimed, “Working class people wouldn’t want to run their own branch!” and “You wouldn’t want to do the work that I do.” She repeated these statements every time I tried to debate her, over a dozen times during her call.

The anti-working class putdown hit me at a very bad time – my sister had just died, I had just lost my house in Preston after a relationship breakdown, I was out of work, going through custody court and the change of life – a very full on midlife crisis. This phone call dragged me down even further. With a very influential Greens leader repeatedly running down my potential and my abilities, during a phone call that lasted over sixteen minutes, I was gutted. I felt totally exposed and shamed in front of the middle class Greens. Although I continued supporting the new branch, I felt powerless to talk back to the Darebin Branch Secretary and actually became quite scared of her. 

I was dismayed that, after being pressured out of socialist politics by Anglo Saxon pub circles, and having regained my confidence to make a fresh start in the Greens, I was again being pushed onto the outer by a narrow-minded privileged in-group, again with limited opportunities to form networks and no-one watching my back. And yet, even then, I still hadn’t had a big enough dose of small parties. I had practically grown up on the mantra that small new parties were the planet’s salvation and I tried ever harder to make a go of it in the Greens.

Being made to sit down the back.

I booked a table for my family to attend a Darebin Greens election fundraiser comedy night at Northcote Town Hall and I was the first person to make a booking. My family was the first group to enter the hall. The branch had been told there was no seat numbering so I thought we could choose good seats, but the Northcote campaign manager came running towards us from the other side of the hall and told us he had reserved a table just for us. He led us to an isolated back corner of the hall, where it was hard to see the show and told us to sit there. We were the only migrant extended family group to attend and the only people from the outer north. It felt like apartheid. I was so devastated and humiliated but I didn’t want to cause a scene and I acted like nothing was wrong.

When I later complained about the seating instructions, the Northcote campaign manager claimed he had saved the better seats for “the ones doing all the work,” which meant that anyone from the outer north will be made to sit down the back by Greens in Northcote, since we live too far away to do as much work, yet they wouldn’t let us have our own branch where we could properly contribute. 

After the other new branch supporters were bullied out of Darebin Greens, the pressures became unbearable and I resigned. I later attempted to rejoin the Greens, citing the secretary’s anti-working class put-downs as my reason for leaving. But I was denied the right to rejoin the party under Greens consensus politics.

Consensus meant that the person who made me sit down the back of Northcote Town Hall was able to block my re-joining the Greens, right through the whole appeals process, even though many other members seemed sympathetic. The secretary’s version of her telephone call, that she was “apologising” to me for her membersonly post, was automatically believed by the rest of Darebin Greens executive because, “we’re the ones doing all the work.” When I was intimidated into silence after repeatedly being told that, “Working class people wouldn’t want to run their own branch” and “you wouldn’t want to do the work that I do,” my silence was described by party leaders as being “uncommunicative” and “deceptive.” I was thus labelled a threat to the interests of the Greens. A subsequent attempt to rejoin, in recent years, has also been blocked by the same elitists.

My appeal against being excluded from the Greens was a harrowing and degrading process. I felt strongly that no-one had the right to exclude me from being part of Australia’s third political party on such discriminatory grounds. I confided in old socialist friends who convinced me to give the socialists another go, so I joined the Socialist Alliance in 2010.

“If you let too many people in, it waters down the policies.”

Several times I asked old socialists what to do about the Greens. I was still anxious and shaken up by their anti-working class behavior and I wanted to publicly expose them. But socialists insisted that I had to keep quiet about what had happened because the Socialist Alliance advocates a vote for the Greens. The Greens had strong policies in the parliament. It felt like, if I said something against the Greens, it would hurt the Arctic ice shelf or whatever.

I found it impossible to just swallow the humiliations I had experienced in the Greens and I was disappointed by some socialists’ lack of compassion towards me. My mistrust of small parties was growing and I found it near impossible to settle down and trust people in the Socialist Alliance. The Greens episode, together with the midlife events, had harmed me emotionally. Outwardly I seemed fine, I had found work, I was campaigning for the single mums and was working on my family biography, but I was becoming very anxious. Anxiety contributed to several arguments I had with Socialist Alliance members.

One of the arguments occurred when I was active in the single mothers’ scene. The single mothers had started protesting and had allowed a socialist speaker to address a rally. Single mums were railing against Howard government policies in their magazine. They published a profile on me, describing my socialist sympathies, and another article about an Aboriginal single mum who was running for parliament as a socialist candidate. Melbourne Socialist Alliance women, almost all of whom had never had children, didn’t show much relish for pursuing a working relationship with this single mothers group, despite SA’s stated purpose of pursuing alliances with other progressive organisations. Instead of inviting members of this group to speak at forums and write in socialist papers, childless socialist women were writing about these issues and giving the speeches themselves.

Many years earlier, a few of the old Socialist Workers Party men had discouraged women in the party from having babies (to keep them working for the revolution!) and this attitude was supposed to be one of the extremes and excesses that the new-look Socialist Alliance had addressed. But it seemed to me that single mother activists were still not being seen as politicised enough to represent our own issues in public feminist speech nights. Some socialist women had said that they chose not to have children to pursue their political interests, and this felt like women with children were still being pushed aside in favour of giving “real” feminists the microphone.

My concerns were vehemently denied by women in the Socialist Alliance, who said it made no difference which women gave speeches on which issues (although I’ve never seen them ask a full time mum to speak on women’s trade union issues!)

I felt even more unsettled about the situation of women with children in SA, at a socialist election night party, when a family with a young child turned up. The mother was a supporter who had never previously been involved in politics, the child had no other children to play with and the father had just tagged along. Although comrades were friendly, the whole family was obviously out of place amongst the intellectual adults-only drinking crowd. Needless to say we never saw this family again. I despaired with these socialists who hadn’t reciprocated when single mums showed them the hand of friendship a few months earlier – had socialists forged a deeper connection with the single mothers group, there would be more kids coming to social functions and it would then become easier for SA to draw in support from families and broader demographics in the long run.

This realisation opened up another round of discussions about inclusiveness. A party leader eventually warned me that, “People will think that’s all you talk about.” She later suggested, laughing in front of other members, “If you let too many people in, it will water down the policies.”

I should have woken up to small parties years ago. After becoming self employed it became harder for me to keep up my relationship with socialists who only met inner city at night and on weekends, when I often worked. I dropped out of SA. After witnessing the poor performance of the very disinterested Darebin Greens-based paper candidate for Thomastown, during the last state election, I made up my mind to switch allegiances to Labor. I joined the ALP a few months ago. At the age of 57, I am finally experiencing life in a multicultural, locally based political party. I am at last able to easily access meetings, form meaningful friendships, network with others at the same station in life and feel respected.

I went to a Scullin campaign meeting last month. Andrew Giles said, “We hold two new members events: a drinks night and a morning tea, to cater to the different demographics.” Hallelujah! The revolution has begun.