International Socialist Organisation (Australia)
Encyclopedia
- This article is about the International Socialist Organisation in Australia. For other uses, see International Socialist Organization (disambiguation).
The International Socialist Organisation (ISO) was an Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
n Trotskyist political organisation, founded in 1971, originally as the Marxist Workers' Group (MWG) until it dissolved to form Solidarity
Solidarity (Australia)
Solidarity is a Trotskyist organisation in Australia, formed in 2008 from a merger between three out of four groups emerging from the International Socialist tradition: the International Socialist Organisation , Socialist Action Group and Solidarity. The group is a member of the International...
in 2008 with two other socialist organisations. It was the official representative of the International Socialist Tendency
International Socialist Tendency
The International Socialist Tendency is an international grouping of unorthodox Trotskyist organisations based around the ideas of Tony Cliff, founder of the Socialist Workers Party in Britain...
(IST) in Australia.
1970s
The ISO formed in 1971 as the MWG, then as the Socialist Workers' Action Group (SWAG), and finally the International Socialists (IS), becoming the official representative of the IST in Australia. The IS expanded from its initial base in MelbourneMelbourne
Melbourne is the capital and most populous city in the state of Victoria, and the second most populous city in Australia. The Melbourne City Centre is the hub of the greater metropolitan area and the Census statistical division—of which "Melbourne" is the common name. As of June 2009, the greater...
until it had branches in every major Australian city. The organisation published a paper up until 2008 called Socialist Worker
Socialist Worker
Socialist Worker is the name of several socialist/communist newspapers associated with the International Socialist Tendency...
.
1980s
The IS saw a breakaway faction in the 1980s called Socialist Action led by Tom O'LincolnTom O'Lincoln
Tom O'Lincoln is an American born Marxist historian, author and one of the founders of the International Socialist Tendency in Australia. He attended UC Berkeley in 1966 and joined the International Socialists who had participated in the Free Speech Movement two years earlier...
and Carole Ferrier
Carole Ferrier
Carole Ferrier is a Feminist Australian Academic. She is Professor in English at the School of English, Media Studies and Art History at the University of Queensland. She has many published works about feminism, socialism, literature and culture...
which later rejoined the IS. At this point they changed their name to the ISO.
1990s
A faction fight beginning in 1993 led to the expulsion of leading ISO members in 1995, mainly but not exclusively in Melbourne, who went on to form Socialist AlternativeSocialist Alternative (Australia)
Socialist Alternative is a Trotskyist political organisation in Australia formed by an expulsion from the former International Socialist Organisation in 1995. It is one of the largest groups of the Australian far Left, claiming to have the largest active membership. With branches across...
(SA). The faction argued that the ISO's perspective of the anti-capitalist movement of the 1990s mirroring the "1930s in slow motion" was overblown. The ISO had adopted this position from the British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
Socialist Workers Party
Socialist Workers Party (Britain)
The Socialist Workers Party is a far left party in Britain founded by Tony Cliff. The SWP's student section has groups at a number of universities...
at the time.
2000s
Another period of internal crisis beginning in 2001 led to a loss of members and a further split in 2003 when another grouping of members around former leader Ian RintoulIan Rintoul
Ian Rintoul is an Australian political activist and Sydney resident, best known in Australia as a refugee advocate, and as spokesman for the Refugee Action Collective....
left to form a group known as Solidarity. Somewhat prior to this O'Lincoln also left, eventually joining Socialist Alternative. Socialist Alternative approached the ISO in 2002 with a unity proposal but this was rejected by the ISO's National Executive.
The ISO was a founding component of the Socialist Alliance
Socialist Alliance (Australia)
The Socialist Alliance was founded in 2001 as an alliance of socialist organisations and individuals in Australia, initiated by the Democratic Socialist Perspective and the International Socialist Organisation along with 6 other founding socialist organisations, to create greater left unity in the...
which grouped together a number of Australian socialist organisations. The ISO controversially stood a candidate against refugee advocate Pamela Curr. In 2007, the ISO voted to withdraw its involvement at its national conference, criticising the failure of the project to achieve its intended goals and the role of the Democratic Socialist Perspective
Democratic Socialist Perspective
The Democratic Socialist Perspective was an Australian Marxist political group, which operated as the largest component of a broad-left socialist formation, the Socialist Alliance...
in that failure.
On 3 February 2008, the ISO, the Socialist Action Group and Solidarity agreed to merge, with the new organisation to be named Solidarity
Solidarity (Australia)
Solidarity is a Trotskyist organisation in Australia, formed in 2008 from a merger between three out of four groups emerging from the International Socialist tradition: the International Socialist Organisation , Socialist Action Group and Solidarity. The group is a member of the International...
and based in Sydney. The new Solidarity replaced the ISO as the official representative of the IST in Australia. Socialist Alternative, the largest Australian organisation emerging from the International Socialist Tendency
International Socialist Tendency
The International Socialist Tendency is an international grouping of unorthodox Trotskyist organisations based around the ideas of Tony Cliff, founder of the Socialist Workers Party in Britain...
, was not invited to participate in the unity discussions.
During the ISO's peak
The organisation built a history of supporting militant direct action. It was active in the Right to March campaigns in BrisbaneBrisbane
Brisbane is the capital and most populous city in the Australian state of Queensland and the third most populous city in Australia. Brisbane's metropolitan area has a population of over 2 million, and the South East Queensland urban conurbation, centred around Brisbane, encompasses a population of...
under the Joh Bjelke-Petersen
Joh Bjelke-Petersen
Sir Johannes "Joh" Bjelke-Petersen, KCMG , was an Australian politician. He was the longest-serving and longest-lived Premier of Queensland, holding office from 1968 to 1987, a period that saw considerable economic development in the state...
government. The ISO was involved in actions against racism, which physically confronted the rise of the nationalist One Nation party led by Pauline Hanson
Pauline Hanson
Pauline Lee Hanson is an Australian politician and former leader of Pauline Hanson's One Nation, a political party with a populist and anti-multiculturalism platform...
. They participated in the S11 demonstrations
S11 (protest)
S11 refers to a series of protests against meetings of the World Economic Forum on 11, 12 and 13 September 2000 in Melbourne, Australia, where approximately 10,000 people of many ages and a wide cross section of the community were involved. One of the groups involved in the protests called itself...
in Melbourne that disrupted a meeting of the World Economic Forum
World Economic Forum
The World Economic Forum is a Swiss non-profit foundation, based in Cologny, Geneva, best known for its annual meeting in Davos, a mountain resort in Graubünden, in the eastern Alps region of Switzerland....
. And some of its own members, including Mick Armstrong
Mick Armstrong
Mick Armstrong is a socialist activist and author based in Melbourne, Australia. He is one of the founding members of the Trotskyist organisation Socialist Alternative and was also one of the Austudy Five....
, Jill Sparrow
Jill Sparrow
Jill Sparrow , has been active as a socialist in Melbourne since 1991. She helped organise protests against the Gulf War and was involved in free education campaigns throughout the early 1990s, as well as participating in nearly every left-wing political cause over the past decade .-Biography:Having...
and Jeff Sparrow
Jeff Sparrow
Jeff Sparrow is an Australian leftwing writer, editor and former socialist activist based in Melbourne, Victoria. He is the co-author of Radical Melbourne: A Secret History and Radical Melbourne 2: The Enemy Within...
were labeled the Austudy Five
Austudy Five
The Austudy Five was the epithet given to a group of five activists arrested in 1992 at a National Union of Students national demonstration in Melbourne, Australia. NUS had called the demonstration around the Keating Government's proposed abolition of Austudy as a student grant to be replaced by a...
after being arrested at a National Union of Students
National Union of Students (Australia)
The National Union of Students is the peak representative body for Australian university students. Most student unions in Australian campuses are affiliated to NUS...
demonstration in Melbourne against the Paul Keating
Paul Keating
Paul John Keating was the 24th Prime Minister of Australia, serving from 1991 to 1996. Keating was elected as the federal Labor member for Blaxland in 1969 and came to prominence as the reformist treasurer of the Hawke Labor government, which came to power at the 1983 election...
government's proposed abolition of Austudy
AUSTUDY
The AUSTUDY Scheme was an Australian educational assistance scheme that provided financial assistance to eligible students between 16 and 64 years of age...
.
During the ISO's decline
The organisation's main priority from 2003 was to build opposition to the Iraq War and oppose the Australian government's involvement. The group also identified the need to fight IslamophobiaIslamophobia
Islamophobia describes prejudice against, hatred or irrational fear of Islam or MuslimsThe term dates back to the late 1980s or early 1990s, but came into common usage after the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States....
and work alongside the Islamic community in Australia.
The ISO argued that the anti-war movement needed to build a broad-based united front
United front
The united front is a form of struggle that may be pursued by revolutionaries. The basic theory of the united front tactic was first developed by the Comintern, an international communist organisation created by revolutionaries in the wake of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution.According to the theses of...
against the war. It identified building locality based peace groups, in Brisbane Southside, Moreland, Newtown and Leichhart and the Just Peace group in Perth, as a way of building networks of anti-war
Anti-war
An anti-war movement is a social movement, usually in opposition to a particular nation's decision to start or carry on an armed conflict, unconditional of a maybe-existing just cause. The term can also refer to pacifism, which is the opposition to all use of military force during conflicts. Many...
activists.
During 2006, the ISO helped organise a national anti-war conference named "Unity for Peace" in an attempt to broaden the anti-war movement's base of support. The conference was the culmination of a speaking tour of the US anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan
Cindy Sheehan
Cindy Lee Miller Sheehan is an American anti-war activist whose son, U.S. Army Specialist Casey Sheehan, was killed by enemy action during the Iraq War. She attracted national and international media attention in August 2005 for her extended anti-war protest at a makeshift camp outside President...
and Dr. Salem Ismael from Doctors for Iraq and was attended by approximately 60 organisations and attracted 350 people. One initiative from the conference was to set up a national Unity For Peace steering committee. However, the declining membership of the ISO had prevented its proposals from ever materialising.