Dave Riley mystifies the Brisbane council vote

Bob Gould

Dave (Ratbag Radio) Riley has posted some strange comments about the Brisbane local government elections on the Green Left discussion list, and Greg Adler has responded. Riley lives up to his self-chosen soubriquet and just tells bald untruths about the Greens vote.

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On Media Monitors and information gathering

He was only doing his job, implies Sue Bolton and says Peter Murray

Bob Gould

Green Left discussion list, June 6, 2007

The unjustified pressure on Dean Mighell to resign from the Labor Party, and the media witch-hunt against unions, attempting to marginalise them in the Labor Party, bring into the light of day questions that should alarm everyone in the workers’, Labor and socialist movements.

ISO leaves Socialist Alliance

Dear comrades,

It is with regret that we write on behalf of the International Socialist Organisation to inform you that the recent ISO national conference voted to disaffiliate from the Socialist Alliance.

Electoral success and sectarian babble

Bob Gould

Green Left discussion list, March 5, 2007

For a month or two I’ve observed a self-denying ordinance on contributing to the Green Left list, which these days is mainly a sounding board for very unusual contributors such as Nemo, Mato Ska and the rather nasty Stalinist Roger Raven, who libelled me as an agent provocateur.

The DSP’s alternative universe

Sectarian myopia

Green Left Weekly discussion list, October 18, 2006

A few days is a long time in politics. A week or so ago a friend described to me the NSW conference of the Socialist Alliance, held at the DSP headquarters, which seats comfortably maybe 50 people in its meeting room.

Workers Power resigns from Australian Socialist Alliance

Carlene Wilson

The Socialist Alliance: a failed experiement

The Socialist Alliance formed in the summer of 2001, it was unprecedented, particularly in its early stages because it brought together most of the major left organisations in Australia under a single banner. It was certainly prompted by some of the early successes of the UK Socialist Alliance and by a general feeling among many on the left in Australia that the events of S11 were the beginning of a new period of opening opportunities for class struggle and organisation.

Voting in Australia

A tale of two states

Greg Adler

State elections were held today [Saturday, March 18] in Tasmania and South Australia. The incumbent Labor Party governments were returned in both States. In South Australia there was a swing of about 11 per cent to Labor. In Tasmania there was about a 2 per cent drop in the Labor vote and a similar drop in the Greens vote. However, Labor is still expected to win a clear majority of seats.

DSP front well to the back

Greg Adler

The Socialist Alliance was set up in Australia as an attempt to develop left unity for campaigns and electoral work. I understand how that is working out is a matter of interest for some on this list.

Clyde Cameron joins the Socialist Alliance

You win some and you lose some. Clyde Cameron, former federal Labor industrial relations minister, joins the Australian Socialist Alliance and Humphrey McQueen leaves

Clyde Cameron, former federal Labor industrial relations minister in the Whitlam Cabinet, longtime Labor Party powerbroker in South Australia and nationally, now there’s a name to conjure with in relation to the Socialist Alliance. New DSP general secretary Peter Boyle has put up a rather extraordinary Potemkin Village account of the Socialist Alliance on Marxmail, mainly for overseas consumption, because just about everyone on the Australian left knows that Boyle’s account is unreal in the extreme. (For the opposite view in the DSP on the Socialist Alliance, see John Percy’s report to the October 2005 meeting of the DSP national committee.)

The left in the Labor Party

Response to Dale Mills

Bob Gould

Green Left Weekly discussion list, January 15, 2007

Dale Mills reckons he has never met a left-wing Labor Party member, and asks someone to name some prominent Laborites who are on the left.

Whom the gods would destroy they first make mad

DSP Green bashing

Bob Gould

Green Left Weekly discussion list, January 13, 2006

The first obvious product of the new Peter Boyle leadership of the DSP is a totally eccentric outburst of verbal assaults on the Greens by some of the more volatile Boyle supporters, who publish energetically on the Green Left discussion list.

Socialist Alliance: an exchange on Indymedia

The strange pathology of a section of the DSP

[Around the time of the 2006 DSP national conference, a number of DSP internal documents were posted on Indymedia, mainly the Sydney and Melbourne sites. This led to a heated and sometimes illuminating discussion. The Indymedia records of these exchanges no longer exist.]

The miller’s tale

Greg Adler

In responding to Alex Miller’s comment on my piece on the Democratic Socialist Party and the Socialist Alliance in Australia I want readers to know that Miller’s diatribe was posted to Marxmail and the Green Left Weekly discussion list. In those places it was headlined “A Glasgow Kiss for Greg Adler (and Weekly Worker)”.

DSP split over future

Greg Adler, former national executive member of the Australian Socialist Alliance, looks at the dispute within Democratic Socialist Perspective, the dominant SA group

(Rehosted from Weekly Worker, December 1, 2005)

In my recent open letter resigning from the Socialist Alliance, I wrote: “It is with great relief that I leave the demoralised, Democratic Socialist Perspective-dominated wreckage that now parades under the name of the Socialist Alliance.” I further said that there was no reason to “remain within the Socialist Alliance unless you share the delusion of the DSP that the building of its sect is the only way forward for the building of socialism”.

Resignation from Socialist Alliance

Greg Adler

I resign my membership of the Socialist Alliance.

It is somewhat traditional in such circumstances to express regret about the circumstances that lead to such an act. And it is true that I regret the failure of the Socialist Alliance to develop as the sort of uniting political force of the left that seemed a possibilty when it began, and I regret that I leave behind some people still within the Socialist Alliance who I believe are sincere in their dedication to the struggle for socialist and progressive causes.