By Brian Webb and Dick Nichols, National Elections Working Group
What sort of federal election campaign does Socialist Alliance need? How can we best get our message across when Labor’s new messiah, Mark "Armbreaker" Latham, is promising all things to all people?
The Alliance’s National Elections Working Group started nutting out the answers to these questions when it had its first telephone hook-up on December 5. So far our basic approach goes like this:
(i) We have to link our election campaign closely to the ongoing opposition in Australian society to the war in Iraq. We must continue to score the criminal nature of the Howard government’s participation in it. "Troops Out" should be a lead slogan of our campaign, building on SA’s strong role in the anti-Bush demonstrations. This will not only demarcate us from Labor, but put a strong pressure on the Greens to come clean as to their real position
(ii) The campaign has to be an offensive in the "war of ideas" about social alternatives. It must put across a clear and concrete message about the sort of alternatives that are possible in Australia today, and encapsulated in slogans like "Medicare, not Warfare". Against Labor and Liberal agreement on essentials we need to be able to show concretely how poverty could be eliminated, the environment saved, democratic rights extended, inequality reduced etc.
(iii) We need to explain how our "package" of alternative policies points towards socialism as the all-round alternative to capitalism and its horrors.
(iv) Our campaign has to be bold, irreverent, funny and as unlike "politics-as-normal" as we can make it. Here the Alliance has already piled up a lot of experience in previous elections, state and federal.
Branches and state conferences have already begun to pre-select their House of Representative and Senate candidates. A complete set of candidates will have been pre-selected by the end of February.
To help the campaign have the biggest possible impact, the working group also decided to develop a "package" of national propaganda, starting with a mass-distribution anti-war poster and a new leaflet urging people to get involved in the election campaign. It will also include a "Socialist Alliance Manifesto 2004" that presents the basic arguments for our alternative, a mass-distribution broadsheet, as well as further posters, stickers and badges.
To ensure the manifesto is as sharply written and as useful as possible, the working group decided to publish the first draft in Alliance Voices. We urge all members to contribute their criticisms and suggestions for improvement (by January 9).
At its next hook-up (January 16), the working group will consider detailed plans for financing the campaign, as well proposals on media work and translating our message into community languages.
The election campaign belongs to all Alliance members, so please contribute your ideas on how the campaign can have the biggest possible impact by contacting the national conveners at ne@socialist-alliance.org