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The Activist – Volume 15, Number 15, November 2005
By John Percy, Sydney branch

The Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela led by Hugo Chavez has been an important and inspiring event, the “first revolution of the 21st century”, not just shaking up Latin America, but giving hope to socialists around the world.

The Activist – Volume 15, Number 15, November 2005
By Doug Lorimer, Sydney branch

As has become the pattern in PCD contributions by members and supporters of the NE majority, Comrade Paul Benedek ("From minority to majority support", The Activist Vol. 15, No. 14), defends the majority position in the debate on what party-building perspective the coming DSP Congress should vote for by misrepresenting the NE minority’s position. However, he takes misrepresentation to a new level by attributing a position to the whole party that it never had.

The Activist – Volume 15, Number 14, November 2005
By John Percy, Sydney branch

I sat in the DSP Sydney branch conference on October 29 flabbergasted. I looked around at other comrades who had been at that same Socialist Alliance meeting, wondering were they as incredulous as me?

Sydney branch secretary Alison D had just described the amalgamation meeting of Sydney Central SA and Marrickville SA on Tuesday October 25 as “an extremely good SA meeting”!

The Activist – Volume 15, Number 13, October 2005
By Doug Lorimer, Sydney branch

The August 15 national executive meeting unanimously adopted a draft resolution for vote at the 22nd DSP Congress in January 2006 that stated that the political “conditions to build the Socialist Alliance into a new party did not exist” at the time we embarked on this turn; that without a “regroupment with broader left forces that are generated by a new upturn of resistance to the capitalist neoliberal ‘reforms’” the SA cannot “take a significant step to creating a new socialist party”, and that, in the absence of the existence of these conditions, the DSP should build the SA, not as a

The Activist – Volume 15, Number 12, October 2005
By John Percy

This report (and discussion) has to be a DSP party-building report and discussion. Comrade Peter Boyle’s report is not, even if his first half is about DSP organisational tasks, it’s still in the framework that we can build the Socialist Alliance as the “New Party”. Even if he puts building “two parties” in inverted commas, or says building two parties, but two “different types of parties”, or describes it as “two organisations”, or ambiguously interprets the phrase “new party project”, switching back and forth between interpreting it as our long term goal, perspective, (for the last two decades) of working to find ways to build a mass workers’ party, and on the other hand treating the SA as that new party we’re building.

The Activist – Volume 15, Number 11, October 2005
By Doug Lorimer, Sydney branch

In her PCD article “Political divisions in the DSP and how to proceed” (The Activist Vol. 15, No. 10) Comrade Pat Brewer urges “comrades to read exactly what the documents are saying so the differences can be clearly expressed”. However, she completely ignores her own advice and bases her assessment of what the NE minority is saying not upon the documents we have written, but upon the assumption that we are engaged in a “cynical manoeuvre” to shut down the Socialist Alliance. Comrade Brewer is not alone in doing this.

The Activist – Volume 15, Number 10, October 2005
By Doug Lorimer, Sydney branch

In the last issue of The Activist (Vol. 15, No. 9), a number of NC comrades made contributions which do little to clarify the debate on the relations between the DSP and the Socialist Alliance because they do not take up the actual issues that are in dispute – I refer in particular to those by comrades Nikki Ulasowski, Jim McIlroy, Sue Bull and Graham Matthews.

The Activist – Volume 15, Number 9, October 2005
By John Percy

Comrades, I bring warm greetings of solidarity from Australia on behalf of the Democratic Socialist Perspective, our youth organisation Resistance, and our newspaper Green Left Weekly. We warmly salute the 60th anniversary of the founding of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, when Comrade Ho Chi Minh proclaimed Vietnam’s independence to hundreds of thousands gathered in Hanoi on September 2, 1945. After years of fighting the French colonialists, and then five years of Japanese occupation, Vietnam was free. But full liberation was to take another 30 years of suffering and sacrifice, and fierce fighting.

The Activist – Volume 15, Number 9, October 2005
By Doug Lorimer, Sydney branch

At the September 26 national executive meeting comrades Max Lane, John Percy and I presented for a vote four amendments to the NE’s draft resolution on “The DSP and the Socialist Alliance” (see “Minutes from DSP national executive (extracts), September 26, 2005”, The Activist Vol. 15, No. 8). These amendments were motivated in the draft party-building report for the October 15-16 National Committee plenum presented by Comrade Percy to the NE meeting and in our PCD articles printed in the The Activist following the August 15 NE meeting.

The Activist – Volume 15, Number 8, October 2005
By John Percy

This report (and discussion) has to be a DSP party-building report and discussion. Peter Boyle’s report is not, it’s still in the framework that we can build the Socialist Alliance as the “New Party”. Even if he puts building “two parties” in inverted commas, or says building two parties, but two “different types of parties”, or ambiguously interprets the phrase “new party project”, switching back and forth between interpreting it as our long term goal, perspective, (for the last two decades) of working to find ways to build a mass workers’ party, and on the other hand treating the SA as that new party we’re building.