Trotsky Didn’t Surf by John Tognolini

 

                                           Leon Trotsky, Frida Kahlo, Natalya Sedova, 1937

There was that knock on the door, the other day and my partner answered it. She saw two young men, one with a bucket for donations and the other introduced themselves saying they were from the Socialist Equality Party. She replied, ’No, thank you.’ The usual call people make when Devil Dodgers knock on one’s door being polite to those that belong to religious cult, but this was a political cult. Is cult the wrong word? No, it isn’t and I can say that because I was in one but a political cult of a different brand of Trotskyism.

I cut my political teeth as a 16-year-old Trotskyist in June 1975 when I joined the Socialist Youth Alliance, the youth organisation of the Socialist Workers League, a member of the Leninist Trotskyist Faction of the Fourth International. Mad as bat shit politics. However, even though I broke with the sectarian politics, it did give me some good political characteristics. On Trotsky himself I see him as a Hamlet-like historical figure. If Trotsky were alive today and he looked at Australian groups such as Socialist Alliance, Socialist Alternative, and Solidarity, he would ask who needs Stalin? When I saw a member of Solidarity wearing a Trotsky t-shirt I thought, why? One of my projects is to write a book called Trotsky Didn't Surf. I have been influenced by reading and listening to Alexei Sayle's Stalin Ate My Homework & Thatcher Stole My Trousers. I tweeted him about what he said on one of his Youtube Podcasts 'Interesting chat between Alexei and @p_bevin [Jermey Corbyn's media adviser] on the smearing of Corbyn, gentrification and betrayal of social housing tenants, and Trotskyism. Nice to hear that Alexei agrees that Trotsky crushing the Kronstadt rebellion was the moral death of the Bolshevik revolution.'Alexei Sayle's Podcast

I take ownership of my mistakes. On the Socialist Workers Party, later Democratic Socialist Party and now Socialist Alliance. It might seem strange to assert that the American Trotskyist Jame Cannon who the Australian SWP led by Jim and John Percy and Doug Lorimer moulded the party on had more in common with Stalin. But it is true.

They followed the US SWP in an Ape Like Manner and had far greater demands on its members than those who followed the UK SWP such as the International Socialist Organisation that split into Solidarity and Socialist Alternative. John Percy actually led his followers from Socialist Alliance after they were expelled from it by Peter Boyle into Socialist Alternative.

In the SWP the membership was based on our pledges, selling the the paper, moving to different cities, as well as the corralling of the membership with meetings for the sake of having meetings and the annual party conference, much like Socialist Alternative’s Marxism Conference and Solidarity’s version. As well as both of these groups with their Red Wedges at demos.

In 1979-1980-1981 I was working at GMH's Dandenong and Fisherman's Bend Plants and was trying to rejoin the party. Even though I was pledging $30 a week from $120 week pay packet, selling the paper, active in the Vehicle Builders Union (later became part of the AMWU) and showing solidarity with the Workers Occupation of the Port Melbourne Toyota Plant and the Irish Hunger Strikes. In 1981 I was told that I could only rejoin the party if I moved to Sydney. The whole turn to industry was very Stalinist and again an Ape Like action. When the US SWP became totally insane, we broke company with it but still kept the organisational norms on membership remained. And yes, we had a layer of apparatchiks, and that applied to the party’s large staff. There was also this attitude that still exists that your not a ‘serious revoltionary’ until you worked on the paper Direct Action, Green Left Weekly, now Green Left.

They Percy Brothers and Lorimer were happy to fly around the world on our pledges. Another thing that the Percys preached was 'being footloose revolutionaries' not getting a mortgage for a house and I was told by leader of the Melbourne Branch not to have kids. Saying that the Percys had big houses in Glebe. Also, another aspect was jumping or frowning on any independent thought or action. I noticed as I started doing radio and that was seen being against the party because I was not selling the paper. Even when I interviewed Tim Anderson after he was released from prison and the conviction for Hilton Bombing Coviction quashed. there was no reference to my radio show made in Green Left Weekly.

When I came back to Katoomba, in the greater Sydney Area after 8 years in the Bush at Wellington near Dubbo in 2016. I saw the same structure still there with Socialist Alliance. I resigned after I was gagged over my differences on union work in Teachers Federation. Socialist Alliance self-destructed over supporting Steve Jolley with the Victorian Socialists in 2018 Victorian Elections, as well as many other mad errors.

When I look at Socialist Alliance at the Gaza Protests, that regularly attend in Sydney and also on a recent 8 day visit to Melbourne. I’ve noticed its members in the main, as people around my age 65 and upwards. Last year I had open public disagreement with a Socialist Alliance member who was backing Solidarity’s campaign in opposing the teachers accepting the biggest salary increase for teachers since the 1990s and he was not even a member of the union.

There are many things that shaped me that were positive and made me the political individual and activist that I’m today: next year will mark 50 years as an active unionist, 25 years blue collar and 25 years as teacher unionist, Life Membership in two unions, the Painters & Dockers and NSW Teachers Federation, my work with Aboriginal and Torres Strait People from working with the families the forced Bob Hawke to set up the Aboriginal Deaths in Custody Royal Commission and the 1988 Sydney Anti-Bicentenary Protests to Supporting Adam Goodes, Adnyamathanha Aboriginal Man, 2014 Australian of the Year and Sydney Australian Football Club Champion who was driven out of Australian Football by racism to campaigning for the Voice last year. Socialist Alliance largely opposed it and then gave critical support to just weeks before the vote. I could say a few more but I won’t. Resigning from Socialist Alliance was a step forward for me and I have noticed that with other Comrades who have resigned from Solidarity and Socialist Alternative.