Australia, Melbourne Anarchist Communist Group Anzac Day Statement

Dear Comrades, The Melbourne Anarchist Communist Group today distributed its statement on 
the centenary of Anzac Day at the 8 Hour Monument in Melbourne. Anzac Day is a national 
holiday which the capitalist class in Australia is increasingly using to promote 
militarism. Please see the following link and click on "Anzac Day 2015" at the bottom of 
the page: https://melbacg.wordpress.com/leaflets/ ---- It was notable that the reception 
for the leaflet was considerably more positive than in previous years. A much larger 
proportion of passers-by took one. It was also noted that the ethnic background of the 
recipients was significant. If the person offered a leaflet was Anglo, they were more 
likely than not to decline. If the person was non-Anglo, they were more likely than not 
to accept.

In Solidarity,

Ablokeimet
for MACG.

END ANZAC DAY

One hundred years ago today,
Australian soldiers landed on
the shores of Gallipoli, a Turkish
peninsula not far from Istanbul.
They were part of an invasion force
comprising British, New Zealand
and other allied troops, in a plan to
knock the Ottoman Empire out of
World War I and deprive Germany
of an ally. The episode was a fiasco
from day one and ended when the
last of the invaders left with their tails
between their legs in January 1916.
In the interim, over 100,000 died.

WWI was no accident. Although
triggered by the assassination of an
Austrian Archduke by Gavrilo Princip
in 1914, it was a conflict waiting to
happen. The Balkan War of 1912
had nearly ignited war between the
Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary
and the Ottoman Empire)

and the Triple Entente (Britain, France and Russia), but diplomacy
narrowly kept the lid on things. The fact that the respective belligerents
hadn’t quite finished preparing their forces probably had something to
do with averting the war, too. And if diplomacy had worked in 1914,
something else would have sparked it the next year or the one after. This
was a showdown which would not be long delayed.

Australian troops were fighting
in no noble cause. The
Gallipoli campaign was a sideshow
in WWI, which was a
crime against humanity. It
was a clash between two rival
imperialist alliances, a squalid
contest over resources,
markets and territory in which
15 to 18 million soldiers and
civilians were killed to advance
the power and profit of their
rulers. The Australian troops
fought not for “freedom and
democracy”, but for “God, King
and Empire”. The empire in
question was British and there
was precious little freedom
and democracy in British India,
in Britain’s African colonies or
even in Ireland. The empire on which the
sun never set was also one on
which the blood never dried.

The other belligerents in WWI brush up no better. France had snapped
up a huge colonial empire in Africa. Germany, a late-comer to the
colonial game, wanted a bigger share of peoples to dominate. Austria-Hungary
was a feudal relic, full of mutually hostile nationalisms. The
Ottoman Empire was worse, a decomposing wreck kept backward for
centuries by its Sultans. Russia was notorious for the autocracy and
oppressiveness of the Czars. Italy conducted an auction, finally siding
with the Entente after being promised a slice of Austria. And Belgium,
poor little Belgium, over which the British Government cried crocodile
tears, maintained a particularly gruesome empire in the Congo. We
could go on – about Serbia, Bulgaria, the United States, Japan and so
on, but the picture wouldn’t change.

There was resistance to the war, though you’d never guess it from the
memorials across Australia, or from the militarist propaganda disguised
as histories of Australian troops’ actions at Gallipoli, on the Western Front
or in Palestine. Not everyone was prepared to follow Andrew Fisher, the
Prime Minister of the day, who promised to fight “to the last man and
the last shilling”. At the very start, the Industrial Workers of the World,
a revolutionary syndicalist (i.e. revolutionary unionist) organisation,
denounced the war in the strongest terms. Defying massive pressure
from the Government and all official institutions, they described it as
a war for profits and called for those who owned the country to do the
fighting for it, as the workers had no stake either way.

After the debacle at Gallipoli, Australian troops were sent to the Western
Front. Trench warfare had reduced the situation to a stalemate, where
generals regularly wasted tens of thousands of lives in futile offensives
trying to break through the other side’s lines. Sandbags, barbed wire and
machine guns, however, gave entrenched defenders an overwhelming
advantage, so when officers ordered their troops over the top, most were
mown down.

The rapidly rising death toll depleted the armies of all belligerents.
In Australia, Billy Hughes, Labor Prime Minister in 1916, decided
conscription was necessary. To get around mounting opposition in the
Labor Party, he sent the issue to a referendum. The IWW’s anti-war work
had born fruit, however, and the referendum was narrowly defeated.

Hughes wasn’t one to take “No” for an answer. He ratted on the ALP, took
24 accomplices with him and kept the post of Prime Minister as leader
of the new Nationalist Party. He tried another conscription referendum
in 1917 and lost it by a bigger margin than the first time. The anti
conscription forces were also more radical the second time around, with
outright criticisms of the entire war being more prominent.

Hughes, though, had his revenge. In 1917 he banned the IWW and
began a wave of persecution that crushed the organisation. The Sydney
12 were framed for arson and received long sentences. A major defence
campaign eventually succeeded in freeing them, but the IWW never fully
recovered and the Government had established a precedent for union
busting in the name of national security.

Back in Europe, the strains of war brought many of the belligerents
undone. Russia erupted in revolution in 1917 as the Czar’s autocracy
was compounded by military and economic incompetence. At the same
time, the French army was convulsed by mutinies – and the German
generals, not wanting their troops to get the same idea, threw their armies
against British sectors of the front.

In 1918, however, the entry of the United States to the war and the
deployment of new technology like tanks helped to break the stalemate.
Germany’s increasing military setbacks provoked desperate measures
by the High Command. The fleet was ordered to launch a suicidal attack
on Britain’s Royal Navy. The sailors responded with mutiny and, within
days, Germany was a fire with revolution. The Kaiser abdicated and the
new government agreed to an armistice. In the aftermath, the AustroHungarian
and Ottoman Empires also collapsed.

Anzac Day is built on a lie. World War I was ended by workers’ revolution,
not by the heroism of Australian or any other military forces. Anti-war
movements broke the governments of Russia and then Germany and
threatened to sweep away several more. And it is workers’ revolution
which can sweep away the governments of all imperialist powers,
including Australia, which wage war on oppressed countries today.

Today’s capitalist politicians use the blood of the Anzacs to create backing
for current and future wars. This is especially the case with Tony Abbott,
the current Prime Minister, who shamelessly boosts militarism in order
to convince people in Australia that they need to support the imperialist
war being waged in West Asia at the moment. Instead of glorifying
the military prowess of the Anzacs, we should be building the working
class movement which can sweep away all capitalist States. We need
a revolution that will establish libertarian communism, a world of liberty,
equality and solidarity, where war and militarism exist no more, except as
exhibits in museums and lessons from history.

END AUSTRALIAN IMPERIALISM



Melbourne Anarchist Communist Group
PO Box 5108, Brunswick North VIC 3056
http://melbacg.wordpress.com/
macg1984@yahoo.com.au