Since our second national conference in Melbourne last month, dozens of people have decided to sign up to Socialist Alliance. They have joined for many reasons, but some of those are expressed well by new member HENRY WELLSMORE from Carey Bay who joined Newcastle branch a fortnight ago.
He says:
“Up to and including Bob Hawke’s victory in the 1980s, I had always
voted Labor and felt ‘at home’ with that decision. I can still
remember the joy I felt when Bob Hawke won. I think I got terribly
drunk to celebrate.
However, joy quickly turned sour and a feeling of alienation settled in. The Labor Party moved further and further to the right, and I was left out in the cold. The alienation which began with Hawke developed into full-blown estrangement under PM Paul Keating.
Since the early ‘90s I have been looking for a political ‘address’ which would satisfy my particular view of how the world could be. In the last 10 years I have flirted with the Democrats and the Greens, and had a brief affair with Labor (just to see whether my feelings had changed). These ‘affairs’ have resulted in my being on a ticket in two elections, being a campaign manager in another, being a ‘ghost writer’ for a local candidate, and invariably working a booth at election time. Even though this was in the main good fun and it was rewarding to be doing my bit, there was still the sense of being `a man without a church’.
Last October, out of sheer frustration, I found and joined the No War Coalition in Newcastle. Through this coalition I met politically like-minded people who were not sitting around on their bums waiting for the next election. They were willing to take action on those issues that mattered to them. They saw other ways of making their presence felt apart from the ballot box.
I suddenly realised what my sense of frustration was all about. My experience of political parties was one of work your butt off for about a fortnight before the election to try to convince people to vote for you, almost kill yourself on the day of the election, watch the count hoping you get your deposit back and maybe make a bit of money for the next campaign, and then everything shuts up, the politicians go home, nothing much has changed.
I saw in the Socialist Alliance another way — a way based on the strengthening and mobilisation of people power.
I am reminded of a Peanuts cartoon in which Lucy is having an argument with Charlie Brown and she holds up her right hand and says about her outstretched fingers, ‘Separately we are nothing’. She then makes a fist and says, ‘But together we make a powerful force’. I therefore look forward to being part of the revitalisation of an authentic left in Australia.”