Comrades, we’re living in tumultuous times, in vital times. They’re crucial times for building, for rebuilding our organisations, the organisations of the oppressed, of the opposition. Greed, aggression, cruelty, exploitation are on the rampage. Clinton’s arrogant aggression in bombing Iraq again last week said it all.

The reasons why we need a revolutionary party, and Lenin’s outstanding contributions on this question, was thoroughly covered by Reihana’s talk yesterday. The aim of this talk is to look at the sort of party we’re building and some of the basic concepts and methods of our party-building approach.

Comrades, this Resistance Conference will prove to be a vital gathering. It comes at a crucial turning point in world politics. The contradictions of capitalism are deepening, yet the old misleaders of the movements of the workers and oppressed have been defeated and discredited, while the new generation has not yet forged the weapons it needs – its leadership, its organisation.

One of the traditions on which Direct Action built is that of the old Industrial Workers of the World, who were the first publishers of a paper with this name in Australia. The IWW was formed in Chicago in 1905, and by the outbreak of WWI was well established in Australia. The IWW – otherwise known as the Wobblies – set out to be an industrial union uniting all workers in the struggle against the bosses. But it was also a revolutionary organisation based on a dedicated membership preaching the doctrines of all-out class struggle and the fight for a new social order.

This is a time of major upheavals in the world socialist movement. The developments unleashed in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe since Mikhail Gorbachev came to power are leading to possibly the biggest shake-up in the socialist movement since the victory of Stalin and Stalinism in the Soviet Communist party. We are confronted with the possibility of the definitive exposure and defeat of Stalinism, which has shackled the Communist movement since the death of Lenin.

In September 1944 the Communist Party of Australia had reached 23,000 members. It had led mass struggles of the unemployed during the 1930s. It had developed substantial support amongst Australian workers. During the late ‘40s CPA members occupied leadership positions in unions representing nearly half the organised working class. At the end of WWII the CPA had 4000 of its members in the armed forces. Its national weekly had a circulation in the tens of thousands, and it published separate weekly papers in Victoria, Queensland, Western Australia and South Australia as well.

In a June 24, 1987, discussion of the July 11 federal House of Representatives elections, the Socialist Workers Party national executive decided to support a first-preference protest vote for left alternative candidates wherever possible, and a vote for the Australian Democrats where no left alternative candidate was available.

This report has two purposes. The first is to give an assessment of the 12th World Congress of the Fourth International, which was held in the last week of January and the first week of February this year. And the second is to explain the motivation behind the decision taken by the National Executive on June 27 to recommend to this National Committee meeting that our party cease its affiliation to the Fourth International.

Since the Polish United Workers Party (PUWP) leadership’s attempt to cut the living standards of working people at a single blow in June 1976, Poland has been living through a new crisis. The most obvious, daily symptoms of this crisis are economic and social: rising prices, chronic and acute shortages, especially of agricultural produce, a severe energy shortage, dislocations in industry, great strain on the social services – the housing shortage, shortages of medical supplies – heavy indebtedness to the bankers of the capitalist West, and so on.

Demonstrations and strikes erupted throughout Australia within hours of the unprecedented dismissal of Labor party Prime Minister Gough Whitlam on November 11 by the queen’s representative, Governor General Sir John Kerr.

Kerr’s “coup” installed millionaire rancher Malcolm Fraser, leader of the conservative Liberal party-National Country party (L-NCP) coalition, as prime minister. He was commissioned to form a “caretaker” government until elections – scheduled for December 13 – are held for both houses of Parliament.