In February 1965 a group of Sydney University students, organised as Student Action for Aborigines, set out on a bus trip through rural and regional NSW. Inspired by the seminal actions of US civil rights activists a few years earlier, the freedom riders aimed to draw attention to the deeply racist underbelly of Australian society. The towns visited included Walgett, Gulargambone, Kempsey, Bowraville and Moree. In many, segregation practices were rife. Ann Curthoys was one of the students aboard the bus. She documents the story in her book Freedom Ride: a freedom rider remembers. Ann spoke to John Percy about her memories.
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How was the Freedom Ride conceived and who was involved?
There was a strong student radical culture in Sydney University by 1964. The growth of student left wing politics combined with having Aboriginal students on campus for the first time – Charles Perkins and Gary Williams. That combination led to the Freedom Ride.
Meetings were held basically of mainly left wing students to form Student Action For Aborigines. A variety of students came together …
In the early stages SAFA wasn’t even sure that they’d have a Freedom Ride, but they wanted to do something dramatic about racial discrimination against Aboriginal people, and it settled down onto a Freedom Ride with a bus trip.
What were your expectations as a young student on the Freedom Ride? 
Most students, apart from Charlie Perkins and Gary Williams, didn’t really know what they were getting into. It wasn’t until we got to Wellington, an Aboriginal settlement on the outskirts of town, where people were incredibly poor, that the rest of us realised how serious it really was. You had a general idea that Aboriginal people were discriminated against, but the level of poverty and the health issues really hit home.
We stayed overnight in Dubbo in a hotel, and there was a sign about no Aboriginal people allowed in that part of the hotel. But nothing really happened until we got to Walgett, and there the hostility of the white townsfolk was intense.
What was the impact of the Freedom Ride on the political development of the students involved? 
It might have led people more in the direction of what you might call “popular front” politics, people combining over a given issue, coming from different perspectives. It’s hard to answer about the Freedom Ride in isolation. The anti-Vietnam War campaign took over very quickly, which radicalised more people than Aboriginal politics. For me there was also the feminist dimension; this started to have an impact in the 1970s. But the Freedom Ride was early in the process of the 1960s radicalisation, so it’s an important spark.
How much do you think has changed in the 50 years since?
A lot’s changed, yet some things are stubbornly the same. We had a Freedom Ride with 34 students, 32 of whom were not Aboriginal. That could not happen now; there’s a greater presence of Aboriginal students at university, taking leadership roles on Aboriginal issues. The follow-up Freedom Rides have been increasingly Indigenous. There’s been a huge growth in Aboriginal leadership, activism and organisation, so that when you now go to country towns there’s a lot of protocol, people you have to see. In the past every power structure was white, while in some towns now there’s a strong land council and other forms of Aboriginal leadership. For me that’s a big step forward.
What the Freedom Ride was protesting was institutionalised segregation – now it’s not legal, it’s not institutionalised, but there’s still a lot of voluntary segregation of communities. Back then some Aboriginal men still had jobs as shearers, railway workers. Today a lot of that has gone. On the other hand there is more employment in towns of Aboriginal people.
Certainly racism and discrimination still persist. But it’s been taken control of by the establishment in some ways, and been pushed further into the background, further into the outback. 
Yes, the whole Hanson episode revealed the continuing depths of racism and the continuing anti-Aboriginal feeling. Things can still be pretty terrible in country towns …
Land rights is really important in identity and connection to country, but it doesn’t necessarily create an economic base for people.
There have to be real changes at a cultural and educational level. There have been some changes at the higher levels of education, but not real changes at the level of economic sustainability.
Tell us about the commemoration events being organised, which Sydney University is financing.
Firstly, there’s the re-enactment, going to four country towns, joining up with local community events. Then there’s the big performance that Rachel Perkins is organising, with Troy Cassar Daley and others.
Then there’s the one I’m most involved in, a reunion dinner on 13 February which is going to unveil a plaque at the university to commemorate the Freedom Ride. I’ve been involved in trying to track down the original Freedom Riders, which is not easy. Everybody went in very different directions, around the world and around Australia.
The Freedom Ride was certainly a challenge to the establishment. Now the establishment at Sydney University has embraced it. How do you feel about that?
I have mixed feelings about it, because the Freedom Ride was an intensely political event, and there were political disagreements. But once it happened and had become a success and Charles Perkins had become this very well-known community figure, it’s as if those disagreements had gone. I think it’s because it succeeded, people did think that we’ve got a level of racial discrimination here, so it’s gone into consciousness in this positive way. Initially there was a lot of criticism of going into towns, stirring up trouble, then moving on and leaving the local Aboriginal people to handle it. And I suppose the other thing is that most people now would give at least lip service to the idea that Aboriginal people should at least have opportunities, respect …
I think one of the points that some of the Freedom Riders want to make is that at the time the university gave no support whatsoever. It was totally hands off then. And now, the university wants to own it, which is a major change.

John Percy

50 years on – a freedom rider remembers

“We have our party back!” That expresses exactly the feelings of all former Revolutionary Socialist Party comrades after a year of unity with Socialist Alternative.
Jon Lamb, a former RSP comrade from Brisbane, made this point at the December 2013 Socialist Alternative conference, referring to one of the themes we were fighting for in the factional struggle in the old Democratic Socialist Party, from which we were expelled in 2008. We wanted our revolutionary Marxist party back, but the Socialist Alliance/DSP leaders dissolved the DSP in 2010. (And now they have also dissolved their youth organisation Resistance!)
The overwhelming assessment is that Socialist Alternative has been a very welcoming, very comradely party to be in. There’s a genuinely political, serious culture and understanding of the current political period in Australia. The very active (and mostly young) comrades are inspiring. We can look back on a very successful year, and a very successful unity.
A year of progress
The SA conference in December was very impressive, with excellent discussion. There was a no-nonsense attitude to assessing our successes and mistakes, and fostering democratic discussion (despite quite different outward forms and structures to the old DSP – the three-minute speaking limit leads to disciplined, sharp contributions, but can be frustrating, with so much to say). Former RSP comrades played an active role:
Two (out of 14) conference reports were given by former RSP members; eight delegates out of approximately 100 were former RSP members; former RSP members made 20 out of 188 contributions on the political reports; and there are five former RSPers elected to the SA National Committee of 40 again.
The 12 months that we have been united have been very successful and encouraging. There’s been real SA growth – from RSP unity and some extra comrades joining as a result, but overwhelmingly from campus recruitment. We’re still recruiting the cream of the radical youth.
Our work in 2013 in leading many of the campaigns and actively propagandising for socialism on an increasing number of campuses led to a record number of SA comrades being elected as delegates to the National Union of Students conference last year. We ended up with 29 office bearer positions In NUS and on universities around the country.
SA comrades were leading and initiating important political campaigns – the equal marriage rights demonstrations; rallies in support of refugees after the announcement of the ALP’s PNG “solution” – and comrades have been engaging in an increasing range of industrial struggles.
This success is in significant contrast to the recent experiences of others on the left – it’s a real example of left unity.
What basis for unity?
The clear basis for our unity has been revolutionary Marxism, and a general agreement on tasks and perspectives today. The 16-point “General Statement of Principles” that was discussed as the basis for our unity and adopted by SA’s conference in December 2012 is printed in every issue of Red Flag.
Credit must go to the leaders of SA in pushing through the unity discussions and carrying out the fusion. Comrades from the Revolutionary Socialist Party/DSP tradition have been made welcome at all levels in SA. We were not asked to give up our ideas. Neither were we pressured to give up areas of political involvement. If comrades so wish, they have a right to dissent publicly.
The serious organisation we are building is in marked contrast to so many of the left groups today – Leninism, not dogmatism; recruiting and building cadre, educating and training them.
We’re determined to “create an organisation that revolutionaries from different traditions and backgrounds can feel at home in and make their own”, stated SA leader Corey Oakley in issue 5 of the Marxist Left Review. That approach to unity has been successful and will be important in rebuilding and strengthening the left.
John Passant, a long-time comrade from the IS tradition, opposed the RSP unity with SA at the 2012 conference, insisting on the centrality of “state capitalist” theory as a criterion for membership. He tried to raise this again at the December 2013 Conference, but couldn’t get a seconder. Unfortunately, he resigned after the conference.
I hope he and others who have been stuck on old shibboleths recognise the gains made by SA and the benefits of its open revolutionary perspective, and rejoin in years to come.
The theory of “state capitalism” is not the uniting fundamental. Neither is supporting revolutionary Cuba, for example, which is my position, one opposed by the majority of SA comrades. Neither of these issues is likely to be the key for building a revolutionary party in Australia at the moment (though in the event of a new attack on Cuba by imperialism, I’m confident all SA comrades would mobilise in solidarity.)
There are full opportunities for political discussion in the preconference discussion bulletin, and in an ongoing online discussion forum, as well as in the branches and NC and informally.
The Leninist party-building project has been a clear-counter position to the “broad party” strategy that in recent decades misled many groups internationally who were yearning for a quick solution to the difficulties of the left. So many artificial attempts to form a “broad” party internationally have failed. (Of course, we don’t rule out participation in a genuine development of a new formation that has some real mass support.)
This “broad party” strategy has led to the failure of the DSP’s Socialist Alliance – its dwindling size, the fact that there are no other currents in this “alliance” and very few recruits. It’s illustrated by the fact that Green Left Weekly sales are less than a third of what they were at the beginning of the Alliance project.
Experience in action
Former RSP comrades have been able to participate in the work of the united organisation as much as they are able (though they’re not always able to keep up with the pace of SA’s young and enthusiastic cadres!). In addition to the NC, comrades have been on branch executives and helping lead our political and organisational campaigns.
It was a very smart move to launch Red Flag in June last year, another indication of the SA leadership’s astuteness, and perhaps also an indication of the benefit of the unity. SA has been able to benefit from former RSP/DSP experience with producing and distributing a socialist newspaper.
The Red Flag launch dinners were a big success. Anniversary dinners are coming up in June in all branches, so readers of Red Flag should plan to attend, subscribe and donate.
Most former RSP comrades have been able to contribute to Red Flag, and sometimes have presented different positions to the majority view in Red Flag, e.g. on Syria and Venezuela.
Former RSP comrades have been able to make useful contributions to Marxist Left Review, with Allen Myers as one of the editors. There are two articles in the current issue (No 7.). Max Lane on “Indonesia: trade unions and the regeneration of radical politics,” and Allen Myers on “Trotsky’s Transitional Program: its uses and abuses”. Scheduled for the following issue is an article on imperialism by Sam King.
Benefiting from each other’s traditions
The new Socialist Alternative is learning and benefiting from the unity. We’re preserving the positive traditions of the DSP/SWP, and of Cannonism, itself trashed by the sect leadership of the current US SWP.
The Socialist Alliance leaders publicly reject and denounce what they call the “narrow” tradition of the DSP. Our responsibility is to preserve that, and learn from both the good examples and the mistakes of past decades. My History of the Democratic Socialist Party and Resistance, Volume 1 is available in SA centres and stalls, and covers the early years, 1965-72; the later years and lessons also need to be written down and made use of.
It’s very unfortunate that a longtime leader of the RSP and DSP, Doug Lorimer, passed away – he was looking forward to being part of the united organisation. SA organised memorial meetings in Sydney and Melbourne. As the tutor at the DSP school, the author of some important books and pamphlets and the writer of introductions to reprints of important titles by Lenin and others, he can still play an important educational role. We have plans for a collection of his more recent articles as a book.
It’s a difficult political period today, and a difficult country in which to create revolutionaries, but SA is still winning radicalising youth on the campuses and building a revolutionary cadre. Former RSPers are generally older (and more experienced) than most comrades in SA, but are very welcome to be part of an overwhelmingly youthful organisation.
Exemplary on women’s liberation
During the unity discussions last year with the Socialist Alliance, the Alliance leadership attempted to attack SA in regard to women’s liberation and distort our position. But SA has a vigorous anti-sexist culture, and its actual practice in winning and training women cadres is a concrete refutation of the smear. Neither the Alliance nor any other left group I know of here or around the world can match SA’s record in training and educating comrades on women’s liberation. They can’t match the development of real women revolutionaries. SA has 50 percent women leadership at all levels, from the national executive to branch committees, and it’s not done by quotas. SA’s recent national conference illustrates the role of women:
Seven of 14 reports at conference were given by women; 98 of 186 contributions in the discussion on the reports were by women; 22 of 40 on the National Committee elected by conference are women; and six of 10 of the elected National Executive are women.
Good prospects for our second year
We can look forward to another year of growth, building stronger campus clubs campaigning on education cuts and participating in, leading and initiating a range of political campaigns. We’ll be able to strengthen the smaller branches, and build branches in new cities, integrating and involving at-large comrades, in Australia and overseas.
We can substantially increase the distribution of Red Flag, which has already surpassed expectations. With a subscription campaign and a sales campaign after the Marxism 2014 conference, former RSP comrades can contribute their long experience in organising sales of the socialist press.
SA’s central task is to recruit and train cadres. We’ll still be basically a propaganda organisation for some time to come. But now that we’re the biggest left organisation in the country, building a bigger periphery becomes increasingly important. We need to organise the growing number of readers of our publications and supporters who aren’t in a position to be as active as members in a cadre organisation like SA requires. Again, this is an area where the benefit of the experience of former RSP/DSP comrades can be helpful.
We’re heading into another very promising Marxism conference in Melbourne at Easter. Marxism has been established as the main left gathering in Australia, with more than a thousand socialists from different backgrounds getting together. All Red Flag readers should consider attending. (For program and tickets, visit <a href="http://www.marxismconference.org">www.marxismconference.org</a>.)
One year on, our fusion provides an excellent example internationally of revolutionary unity – of what can and should be done.

12 months of revolutionary unity

The Australian left has lost one of its outstanding revolutionary comrades. Doug Lorimer, a committed socialist activist for 42 years and a remarkable writer and educator in the ideas of Marxism, died in Sydney on 21 July after a year of deteriorating health. Doug dedicated his whole life to the fight for socialism and the struggle to build a revolutionary party that will be needed to win it.
He was a rebel from his high school days, arrested at the Adelaide moratorium protest against the Vietnam War in September 1970. He joined the Socialist Youth Alliance (the youth organisation of the Socialist Workers League, which became the Democratic Socialist Party) in 1971 and the SWL soon after. He was elected as a full member of the National Committee at the SWL third national conference in January 1974.
Doug organised many branches of the DSP, worked in the party’s national office, frequently editing the DSP paper Direct Action, then also Green Left Weekly. He served for two years in Paris at the Fourth International centre.
But the main role he excelled at was in education, writing and Marxist theory. He was the main DSP comrade conducting our full-time educational school, which ran from 1981-1992, at which groups of eight to 10 comrades studied Marxism for four months.
His most important book was Fundamentals of Historical Materialism. This was translated into Indonesian, and also published in India in English and Hindi. Other books included Trotsky’s Theory of Permanent Revolution – A Leninist Critique. He was the comrade primarily responsible for drafting many of the DSP’s programmatic documents, including the DSP program.
He wrote many important articles and reports, some of them published as pamphlets, including “The making of a sect” (analysing the degeneration of the US SWP) and “The Collapse of Communism in the USSR”.
His books, pamphlets, reports to congresses and National Committee meetings, and the many analytical articles published in the internal discussion bulletins will be invaluable educational materials for new generations of socialist activists for many years to come.
He was one of the first comrades to raise doubts about the wisdom and effectiveness of the DSP’s broad left party strategy, which led to the formation of the Socialist Alliance in 2001. In 2005, after the Socialist Alliance conference, he proposed that it was time for the DSP to pull back from burying itself in the Socialist Alliance. The main DSP proponents of the broad party strategy disagreed, and from then on a vigorous political debate developed in the DSP.
After the January 2006 DSP congress, Doug was a leader of the minority Leninist Party Faction, which waged a determined struggle to restore the DSP as the revolutionary party we build.
In May 2008 Doug, along with the rest of the LPF comrades, was expelled from the party he’d joined 36 years previously and spent his adult life building. With others we formed the Revolutionary Socialist Party, Doug becoming editor of our paper Direct Action.
Doug ran several schools on Marxism for comrades in Indonesia. In August 2012 he went to East Timor for seven weeks to conduct a school on Marxism for the Socialist Party of Timor. At the time he was probably already starting to suffer from the effects of the disease that killed him – Buerger’s disease, a result of smoking (he favored a particularly nasty little cigarillo).
Doug was very enthusiastic about the RSP uniting with Socialist Alternative. It is so sad that he became ill before the fusion was completed and was never able to participate properly in the vibrant united organisation and contribute his knowledge and experience.
We will be holding memorial meetings for Doug in Sydney, and possibly other cities, which will be announced in Red Flag.
Red salute, Doug, to a great comrade and friend.

Doug Lorimer, 1953-2013

Red Flag builds on a long tradition of socialist publications. Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin drummed into his supporters in “Where to Begin?”, written in 1901, the role of the newspaper as “scaffolding” in building an organisation:
“The role of a newspaper … is not limited solely to the dissemination of ideas, to political education, and to the enlistment of political allies. A newspaper is not only a collective propagandist and a collective agitator; it is also a collective organiser. In this last respect it may be likened to the scaffolding round a building under construction, which marks the contours of the structure and facilitates communication between the builders, enabling them to distribute the work and to view the common results achieved by their organised labour.
“With the aid of the newspaper, and through it, a permanent organisation will naturally take shape that will engage, not only in local activities, but in regular general work, and will train its members to follow political events carefully, appraise their significance and their effect on the various strata of the population, and develop effective means for the revolutionary party to influence those events.”
During the ’60s youth radicalisation, I helped produce several publications, and first became involved in publishing a regular socialist paper with the first issue of Direct Action. Launched in Sydney in September 1970, it had a clear purpose, stating in its first editorial:
 “To publish a paper without an organisation to build and be built by it is political irresponsibility. It is to play with politics. Only when a paper has an organisation to build, and that organisation has a program to guide it, does a little left wing venture such as ours take on any meaning.”
The editorial reflected our frustration with the old Trotskyist group, which refused to seriously build an organisation. It also reflected our contempt for the intellectual left, which sometimes produced magazines, but no organisation. It was also aimed at campus dilettantes.
Direct Action was published on behalf of the socialist youth organisation Resistance, and it soon became the paper of the Socialist Workers Party (which later changed its name to Democratic Socialist Party).
I edited the first issue and then moved to Melbourne, where we had a few supporters, to sell it at the second Vietnam Moratorium in September 1970. My sales of 430 on the day ensured I was an enthusiastic supporter and seller of the socialist press for the following 43 years! We soon had a branch in Melbourne,
Direct Action had an initial print run of 5000, which increased to 9000 for the following issues. But with the end of the Vietnam War and the decline in the youth radicalisation, sales of the socialist press became a harder grind.
In 1991, to overcome the lagging sales of DA, and to reach out to a broader readership, we changed the paper’s name to Green Left Weekly. It had the desired result – street sales rose, initially by a factor of 2.4 compared to DA.
James P. Cannon, the leader of the US Trotskyists, explained in a letter written from prison in 1944 his view on the role of their newspaper, the Militant, which we benefited from for both DA and GLW:
“The Militant must strive to be a combination paper; a paper which interests and serves the needs of the new reader who picks it up for the first time, the reader who is beginning to think of himself [sic] as a Trotskyist without yet thinking about the party, and the educated party militant – all at the same time.”
A combination paper such as Red Flag needs to report on strikes and struggles against injustice, and carry more weighty theoretical articles, analysing the state of capitalism and the direction of the movement against it. It needs to carry reviews and cultural commentary, letters and discussion, publicise our events, forums etc. and the campaigns we’re involved in. It must introduce readers to the role of the organisation – the political positions, statements; the organising role; the finance campaigns to produce the paper; the efforts of members to sell subscriptions and maximise the sales of single copies on campuses, workplaces, city streets and all left political events.
Red Flag will play a role in reaching-out and building the movement. It will provide new impetus for further unity of the revolutionary left.

50 years on – a freedom rider remembers

12 months of revolutionary unity

Doug Lorimer, 1953-2013

The role of the socialist press

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