Victorian Socialists launch Socialist Workers’ Caucus
“Victorian Socialists aims to bring socialism from the fringes of the political landscape back into the mainstream”, Mick Clune, a member of the Victorian Socialists executive, told more than 200 people gathered at the Uniting Church Hall in Northcote on 30 August to launch the Socialist Workers’ Caucus. “Workers make the world run, but we think workers should run the world”, Mick continued. “And to do that, we need to get organised. The SWC aims to be that vehicle.”
The three keynote speakers at the event—Jerome Small, Louisa Bassini and Madi Roof—all discussed the need for socialist politics and organisation to address workers’ problems.
“We have lofty aims, but we need to start from where we are at”, Jerome Small, who has been a socialist and trade unionist since the 1980s, told the audience. He said there are two markers of where the trade union movement currently stands: the unwillingness of trade union leaders to mount a fight back against the cost-of-living crisis and the failure to lead any industrial action against Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
“This is in a country that set records for industrial militancy in the 1970s and was justly famous around the world for the international solidarity that it showed on a regular basis”, Jerome continued. “The slogan of the left wing of the anti-war movement in the Vietnam War was ‘Stop work to stop war’. And hundreds of thousands of workers over time actually did that. We were famous for the bans initiated as part of the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa.”
How did we get from the highs of the 1970s to the current lows? Trade union officials and the ALP have imposed the politics of class collaborationism—the idea that workers and bosses have shared interests—on the workers’ movement since the 1980s.
Louisa Bassini, an Australian Services Union rank-and-file member, helped lead a strike in support of Palestine in February 2024 (the only one that has taken place in Australia). Louisa and her workmates at a community legal centre in North Melbourne are now organising another strike on 10 September and are calling on all workers and unions across Melbourne to join them. Louisa told the audience: “This is a message to our union leaders: we want a fighting union movement, and we are prepared to build it”.
Madi Roof, who has been central to organising call centre workers across Melbourne and was part of launching the SWC when it was first established by a group of VS members in 2024, spoke about the impact that small numbers of socialists can have in their workplaces and across their unions.
“When Woolworths tried to introduce labour hire at distribution centres in 2015, it was socialists who helped coordinate a four-day walkout by 500 workers”, Madi said. “It was socialists who organised NTEU Fightback in 2020: the largest rank-and-file rebellion in the union movement in decades.”
More recently, it was a Victorian Socialists member who organised and led the first industrial action taken by Grill’d workers earlier this year. “Socialist politics doesn’t just tell you who the enemy is—it gives you a blueprint for how to fight back”, Madi explained.
Several Victorian Socialists members, including teachers and nurses, also spoke from the floor about their organising work and the need for socialist politics and organisation.
“The union leaders and the ALP have their politics of class collaborationism”, Jerome told the audience. “We have our politics of class struggle and socialism. Those politics have had an incredible amount to contribute to the working-class movement. And we can do it again today.”
