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WSWS : News & Analysis : Australia & South Pacific

WSWS/SEP public meetings in Melbourne and Sydney: the political tasks facing the antiwar movement

28 February 2003

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The mass protests that took place across the world over the weekend of February 14-16 inaugurated an international antiwar movement that already embraces tens of millions of people. In Australia, as many as one million marched in cities and towns around the country.

While demonstrating the broad opposition to a US-led invasion of Iraq, the protests also revealed the lack of a clear political program in the working class. Workers and youth expressed their desire for peace, social equality, democratic rights and international solidarity, but were politically limited to appeals to the official establishment to change course or hopes that the United Nations would prevent war.

The growing antiwar movement can only go forward to the extent that it resolutely breaks from the establishment parties—including the ALP, the Democrats and the Greens—and opposes the entire socioeconomic system responsible for war. This requires turning to the construction of a new mass international movement, based on the international working class. Such a movement must be armed with a socialist perspective that sets itself the task of uniting the struggle against war with the fight against the unrelenting destruction of jobs, social conditions, living standards and democratic and civil rights and reconstructing society on the principles of genuine social equality and human solidarity.

The World Socialist Web Site and Socialist Equality Party of Australia are holding public meetings in Melbourne and Sydney to discuss this perspective. We invite all WSWS readers to attend.

Melbourne
Monday March 17, 7.00pm
YWCA Function Hall, Hotel Y
489 Elizabeth St
Melbourne
Tickets: $4/$2 concession

Sydney
Thursday March 20, 7.00pm
University of Sydney
Holme and Sutherland Rooms
The Holme Building
Science Road
Tickets: $4/$2 concession
By car or bus, enter the university from Parramatta Rd via the Ross St entrance. Pay/display parking is available inside the university grounds for $6.00

For further information email sep@sep.org.au or contact the Socialist Equality Party:
PO Box 367, Bankstown, NSW 1885
Telephone: 02 9790 3511
Fax: 02 9790 3501