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.
“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.
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.
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: