Copies are available for $5 ($6.50 posted) by emailing grant_brookes at paradise (etc.) with your postal address. We also have copies left of issue no.8, which examines the international growth of broad left movements and the background to RAM's decision to go nationwide and stand for parliament here in New Zealand.

In solidarity,
Grant Brookes
Socialist Worker

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UNITY

Tino Rangatiratanga mo te Ao Katoa
Self-Determination for the Whole World

CONTENTS

5 More than “kia ora”
DAPHNE LAWLESS, editor of UNITY

10 Marx, Engels and Lenin on the national question
NORM DIXON, Democratic Socialist Perspective (Australia)

27 Thirty years since Bastion Point
ROGER FOWLER, RAM co-organiser

34 Culture matters
PAUL MAUNDER, playwright

44 The Maori Party in their own words

51 Why Socialist Worker supports the Maori Party
GRANT BROOKES, Socialist Worker (New Zealand)

59 RAM endorses the Maori Party
OLIVER WOODS, RAM candidate for Auckland Central

61 RAM’s Indigenous Charter (draft)

65 Tuhoe: a long history of resistance
Dr RAWINIA HIGGINS, Victoria University of Wellington

80 Back in the mists of fear
MOANA JACKSON, author

83 October 15th: the colonial context
from www.october15solidarity.info

85 Venezuela: from indigenous resistance to solidarity and
liberation
LISA MacDONALD and LARA PULLIN, Australian Venezuela
Solidarity Network

95 A people’s constitution for Aotearoa?
VAUGHAN GUNSON, Socialist Worker (NZ)

116 Australian government forces Aborigines off their land
JAY FLETCHER & PETER ROBSON, Green Left Weekly
(Australia)

119 Feedback: contributions from Ondine Green, Vaughan Gunson,
and Peter de Waal

123 Where We Stand: the programme of Socialist Worker

129 How We Organise: the constitution of Socialist Worker

132 Contacts

Editional information

More than “kia ora”
by DAPHNE LAWLESS

The title of this issue of UNITY makes a political point in itself. It has long
been a point of pride among the members of Socialist Worker - New Zealand
that, when asked if we support tino rangatiratanga - Maori self-determination
- we can give a simple "yes". However, as Marxist internationalists, we also
emphasise that we stand in solidarity with every struggle of indigenous people
across the world, against exploitative and brutal colonial capitalist regimes.
Sadly, what might be called the "Pakeha left" in this country has had an
unfortunate history of not moving very far from lip service to the ideals of
tino rangatiratanga. The modern faultlines in this movement were laid in the
1980s, when several Marxist groups came under the influence of what has
been called "the tripod theory of oppression" - that racist and sexist
oppression were independent from the oppression of workers by the boss
class. One logical upshot of this was that unity between Maori and Pakeha
workers was impossible in any meaningful sense, since Pakeha workers
(apparently) benefited from racism.
While this no doubt had resonance in the fraught atmosphere of the
Springbok tour, the consequences were devastating for the radical left in
Aotearoa. Many Pakeha activists used this as an excuse to write off the Pakeha
working class altogether with abandoning the idea of socialism. On the other
hand, those who maintained an identification with Marxism often went in
the other direction – suggesting that Maori nationalism of any kind was
inherently reactionary because it "broke up workers' unity".
While the first tradition has survived to become the orthodoxy of liberal
academia, the second tradition has regrettably sunk deep roots into what
passes for the "radical left" in New Zealand. Case in point: when the Maori
Party was formed in 2004, it almost instantly led to a split in the Alliance,
then the strongest force in New Zealand’s extra-Parliamentary left. The rump
leadership of the Alliance subsequently headlined an issue of their unofficial
political journal, Red & Green, "The Maori Party: Leftists Beware!"
It is surely no coincidence that the central Alliance leaders, which took
such a short-sighted attitude to a new party with an overwhelmingly working-
class mass membership, ended up in the Labour Party within a couple of
years. Because here is the central fact that has to be grasped – as Matt
McCarten put it, in New Zealand increasingly a blue collar is found around a
brown neck. As in most "Western" nations, the class divide increasingly
becomes a racial divide, as the verbal skills and "cultural capital" which often
come with being born into the dominant ethnicity increasingly become tickets
to middle-class jobs.
Simply put – it is impossible to have mass radical politics in New Zealand
in the 21st century which do not take Maori desires for self-determination
seriously. The sections of the "Pakeha left" who not grasp this find themselves
increasingly talking to themselves. Mass politics require taking the working
class as we find them, not as we would like them to be. The attitude that only
workers who think of themselves without ethnicity (or without gender, for
that matter) are fit subjects to become revolutionary is a technocratic, idealist
one, not really dissimilar in nature from Green Party or even Labour Party
social liberalism.
Taking tino rangatiratanga seriously requires more than throwing random
phrases of te reo into one's everyday speech, or visiting a marae a couple of
times. It means doing serious thought of how tino rangatiratanga and mana
kaimahi (workers' power) can be brought together. This issue of UNITY is
meant as a way to open up that debate, rather than drawing any
firm conclusions.
We begin with an article by Norm Dixon from the Democratic Socialist
Perspective in Australia, setting out the Marxist tradition on national
minorities. The central truth that "a nation which oppresses others can never
free itself" is born out time and time again throughout history. The poorest
and most backwards sections of the working class have always been in places
like South Africa, the American South or the North of Ireland where they
have allowed themselves to become divided along racial lines.
Notwithstanding our criticism of the Pakeha left's inadequacies on the
issue of tino rangatiratanga, there have been honourable exceptions. Many
trade union and socialist activists threw themselves into supporting the first
wave of land activism in the 1970s - including the old Communist Party of
New Zealand, the predecessor of Socialist Worker. Roger Fowler’s memoir
in this issue of the Bastion Point occupation in 1977-8 gives a flavour of those
times, and perhaps hints for how future struggles may pan out.
Paul Maunder's article, "Culture Matters", provides a vital piece of the
jigsaw in understanding what "ethnic culture" means today. Across the world,
corporate capitalism is providing more and more job opportunities to middle-
class layers who can turn culture which comes from below into profit-making
opportunities. Paul crucially points out that Pakeha working-class culture
(such as rugby) has been expropriated and commodified, in the same way as
is increasingly happening to Maori culture. Although this provides a new
Maori middle class with economic privileges, it increasingly divorces them
from the lived reality of tikanga Maori. Only unity from below - recognizing
that we all lose when commodity culture impoverishes our lives – can
challenge the corporate culture machine.
The Maori Party arose out of the foreshore and seabed controversy, the
political rupture of the idea that the Labour Party was serious about
honouring the Treaty of Waitangi. It is perhaps a symptom of the distrust of
middle-class radicals of movements from below that the Maori Party is far
more often talked about rather than heard from. To redress the balance
somewhat, we reproduce two speeches in full from Maori Party MPs. As
Grant Brookes goes on to explain in his article that follows, these show the
crucial political development that the Maori Party leadership have gone
through in the four years of their existence.
From initial signs that they were being courted by conservative politics,
the Maori Party MPs appear to have seen their way out of that trap, and are
clearly positioning themselves as the most "left" of all the Parliamentary
parties, supporting solid pro-worker demands such as opposing the China
FTA and supporting RAM's call for GST off food. Grant makes the excellent
point that Labour ‘s strategy "was to brand the Maori Party as right wing...
Early signs suggest that a similar fate probably awaits RAM..." Of course,
Labour accusing left parties such as RAM or the Maori Party of being "right
wing" is simply the modern equivalent of Stalin referring to communist
dissidents as "objectively pro-fascist".
RAM's initiative in proposing an Indigenous Charter, and in endorsing
the Maori Party in the Maori seats, is a sign that here is a radical political
force which finally takes tino rangatiratanga seriously. RAM understands
what the real dividing line in New Zealand politics is - against the bosses'
parties, as well as the social-liberal parties who genuflect before the idol of
the Free Market.
The stakes on the issue of tino rangatiratanga were suddenly and
breathtakingly raised on 15 October 2007, when 17 Maori and Pakeha activists
were arrested on bogus "terror" charges and held for three weeks without
trial. Dr Rawinia Higgins gives the vital background to understand what Tuhoe
nationalism is, where it comes from, and how it signifies one form of grassroots
resistance to colonial capitalist logic.As Moana Jackson clearly points out, the
state wants to divide and rule all opposition and keep it docile. Any Pakeha
leftist who didn't give immediate and instinctive support for justice for the
"Urewera 20" was fundamentally missing the point about what is needed to
really change things in Aotearoa - not an endorsement of guerilla conflict, but
a deep engagement with what is really going on at the flaxroots of our society.
So, what's the way out of this trap? An interesting phenomenon which
has spread across Latin America recently is the idea of "refounding the
nation". Beginning with the example of Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador have
also called popularly elected constitutional conventions, to rewrite the basic
rules of the nation-state from top to bottom. This has been a process fraught
with drama, compromise and (in the case of Bolivia) the threat of civil war.
But in all these cases, the indigenous peoples have been able to raise their
heads and find themselves formally recognized by the state, perhaps for the
first time ever. Lisa MacDonald and Lara Pullin give an account of how this
happened in Venezuela, and the continuing struggle to make rights on paper
a reality. Given the parallels to our own situation, Vaughan Gunson
rounds out this issue by asking - is it time for a constitutional convention to
refound Aotearoa?
It is unfortunate that this issue doesn’t have room to go into more detail
of the various indigenous struggles around the world, with the exception of
one brief article on Aboriginal resistance to Australian Federal Government
intervention in their communities. But we believe that this issue has at least
given foods for thought, and pointed the ways in which the issue of building
a real mass movement -open to Maori, Pakeha, Pasifika, all ethnicities and
origins - which can shake the foundations of the neo-liberal state can be built.