Labor on December 13. The removal of Whitlam was unprecedented in Australian history. For the first time, the government of a party still commanding a majority in the House of Representatives was thrown out before the end of its term. It was done through complicated parliamentary maneuvers that have been labeled by the Labor party leadership as amounting to a "bloodless coup. " The Labor party held an absolute majority of 65 seats in the 127-member House of Representatives. In the Senate, however, the opposition Liberal-Country party coalition held 30 of the 60 seats, against Labor's 27. The Liberal-Country coalition used its strength in the Senate to block approval of the national budget drawn up by Labor, a budget that had already been approved in the House. The bourgeois opposition made it clear that it would allow the budget to pass only if Whitlam agreed to hold a gen-
Australia the fall of the Labor government eral election, the third in three years. Whitlam refused, stating that the Labor government would continue to function with or without a budget. He apparently expected to save his position by engaging in some parliamentary maneuvering of his own. But the Australian ruling class had other ideas. On November 11 Sir John Kerr, the governor-general (formally the representative of the British Queen, a post to which he was appointed by Whitlam. himself) dissolved both houses of parliament, appointed Malcolm Fraser, head of the Liberal-Country coalition, as "interim" prime minister, and called the new elections: The factors motivating such precipitous action on the part of the bourgeoisie are clear enough. Australia is in a deep economic crisis. The annual rate of inflation is more than 12 percent; unemployment stands af more than 300,000 (better than 5 percent of the work force), an increase of 100 percent since last year; several large Australian firms have gone bankrupt and others teeter on the brink of bankruptcy. The Labor government has attempted to deal with the crisis by holding down wages, taking no action to reduce unemployment, and granting big handouts to capitalist companies in danger of going under. Meanwhile, social expenditures have been cut and the standard of living of the workers reduced. There is some irony in the fact that the very budget the Senate refused to approve called for further cuts in public spending and increased taxes on workers. Despite these policies by the Labor government, the economic situation has not improved. More important, Labor has been unable to prevent the workers from faking direct action in defense of their living standards. From the standpoint of the bourgeoisie, the Labor government has been a failure on two levels: economically, if has been insufficiently effective; politically, it has failed to keep the workers in check. What the bourgeoisie needs now is a strong government that can confront the working class head on, a task to which the Labor party government is unsuited. Hence the necessity of dumping Whitlam. At the same time, the policies applied by the Labor government and the Labor party's open defense of capitalism have had the effect of drastically undermining support for Whitlam. "We came to power to save the system, " Bob Hawke, president of the Australian Council of Trade Unions, told a Labor rally in Sydney October 30. And Labor Treasurer Bill Hayden, speaking in defense of the Labor budget, explained, *recovery in the private sector is essential." This openly right-wing policy - applied with a lack of subtlety uncharacteristic of the labor bureaucracy in advanced capitalist countries - has given the Liberal-Country coalition hopes of being able to defeat Labor in a general election. Polls taken shortly before the ouster of Whitlam indicated that support for the government had fallen abysmally. Thus, the bourgeoisie apparently assumed that now was the time to get rid of Whitlam - by any means necessary. But the brazenly bureaucratic and undemocratic procedure adopted shifted the focus of the political issues involved. The Australian workers saw Governor-General Kerr's move - correctly — as an attack not only on the Labor leadership but on the entire workers movement. The response was immediate. Within hours after Whitlam was deposed spontaneous strikes and rallies broke out. Some 3,000 people marched in Sydney; 5,000-10,000 turned out in Melbourne; 2,000 in Canberra; 3,000 in Perth. Three days later, on November 14, the largest political demonstrations in Australia since the height of the movement against the war in Vietnam were held. And this time the demonstrations were overwhelmingly working class in composition. An estimated 400,000 workers went on strike in Melbourne, the country's second-largest city. The port was shut down completely, as were the automobile and metal industries, as well as many other factories. Tens of thousands participated in a downtown rally. More than 12,000 people demonstrated in Brisbane, and more than 10, 000 in Adelaide. In most cases, the mood of the crowds was notably more antiFraser than pro-Whitlam. This was not surprising, for the Labor leadership's hostility to the mobilization of the working class continued, even when that mobilization was in defense of the Labor party itself. "I do not believe that a national stoppage and strikes are a wise move, "Bob Hawke said after the
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WHITLAM'S SUPPORTERS RALLY IN CANBERRA first mobilizations protesting Whitlam's ouster. He went on: "We are determined to advocate law and order, follow traditions and accustomed practices - unlike the Opposition. We must not substitute violence in the streets and anarchy for the processes of democracy. Of course I am upset, but it is not just a question of a Labor government appearing to fall, my concern is about the future of this country. What has happened today could unleash forces in this country the like of which we have never seen. We are on the edge of something quite terrible and therefore it is important that the Australian people respond to leadership." As for Whitlam, he seemed a bit stunned and disappointed with the performance of Her Majesty's representative. "I mean the Queen never would have done it, " he stamWhitlam (left and Fraser (right) 28 mered, "let's be frank about it, the Queen never would have done it.
But regardless of Whitlam's touching faith in Elizabeth and apart from Hawke's trepidation that he stands on the brink of something quite terrible, the Labor leadership - for simple motives of survival in office - has been compelled to launch a unusually vigorous election campaign, denouncing the Liberal-Country leadership as a band of thieves and putschists. The Labor campaign was officially launched on November 24 at a rally in Sydney. It was attended by 30,000 people, the largest election rally in the history of Australia. A poll released on November 23 indicated that 56 percent of "uncommitted" voters were leaning toward the Labor party and only 29 percent toward the Liberal-Country coalition. Significantly, the people polled cited the manner in which the government was thrown out and not the economic situation as the central issue - by a better than two-to-one margin.
GOVERNOR GENERAL SIR JOHN KERR The problem for the reformist Labor leadership is to wage a sufficiently active campaign to win return to office but at the same time to keep the militancy of the working class in check. This task will not be an easy one. It is not unlikely that the bourgeoisie's decision to throw Labor out through a brutal maneuver will have the effect of returning Labor to office with an even larger majority. But even if the ineptitude of the Labor leadership results in a Liberal-Country election victory -which would be a defeat for the working class - the polarization and working-class mobilization generated by the maneuver will leave lasting - and, for the bourgeoisie, extremely negative - effects on national polities. Therein lies the miscalculation of the bourgeoisie.