RICHARD NEVILLE: HOW FAR CAN A DROP-OUT DROPP

Richard Neville, he editor of 'OZ' and the underground freak that the bourgeois media loves, has issued a call for expatriate Australians to return home.

Why this sudden burst of patriotism from the commune of Notting Hill Gate? Neville believes that the election of the Labour government in Australia spells a new era of social reform and 'permissiveness'. In the closing paragraph of his column in the ultra-Tory Beaverbrook newspaper, the London 'Evening Standard', he If Whitlam's victory really has opened the door to permissiveness, then some may consider it their duty to go back and put their foot in it.' Mr Neville is not new to putting his foot in it. Workers Press has previously drawn attention to his eulogies for James Reid, Communist Party leader of the UCS work-in.

He wrote in one of his Tory Press columns: 1 have occasionally been moved by political oratory such as by Jimmy Reid in Glasgow, but he was speaking not to me, but for me?

In previous column almost 18 months ago Neville said: "Gone was the cheap left sectarianism and the dank rear-vision party bureaucracy. No trace of forelock wrenching, inferiority or the mystical belief that some people were born to rule. After 16 weeks ... they have claimed to have shown not only that they can run an industry as well as the government but better ...

It was difficult not to be swept along by the collective joy of the men and women in the audience. Especially as the crowd roared approval of Reid's closing declaration that it should be the intention of every one of them to make this earth as nearer to paradise as a human ingenuity will allow?

Richard Neville: says that the election of a Labour government is 'tantamount to revolution.' The paradise on earth' ended in Reid and his Stalinist colleague, James Airlie, signing a divisive deal with the Tory government and Marathon Manufacturing. The deal contains what amounts to a no-strike pledge and destroys traditional craft demarcations.

In the process more than 2,000 workers lost their jobs. Two thousand, Mr Neville! 'No trace of forelock wrenching'? Listen to Airlie on the birth of the Govan deal: In our opinion they [the Tory government have lived up to their responsibility for this industry and also for the community as a whole.

'Regardless of the differences we have had in the past we have to say the government has taken the correct decision and we welcome it and congratulate them?

The aghast man fron, 'The Guardian' later said in his article that 'it must be one of the warmest comments ever passed by a communist on a Conservative government.' The praise was so fulsome that at last year's Communist Party Congress one of the hacks used Neville's 'Evening Standard' remarks to boost morale! Neville's latest pin-up, Gough Whitlam, who is drawing up real plans for a showdown with the Australlan working class.

Mr Neville has been busy since then. He's been to the Democratic Party convention in Miami where he enthused about the radical drift in US His latest pin-up is Gough Whitlam whose politics are about as radical as Roy Jenkins' and just as pompously middle class.

Not so, according to Mr Neville: 'In the context of the Australian political scene, this change of government represents something more than democracy's triennial listposting of new house prefects. It is tantamount to revolution? (Our emphasis.)

On what does he base this astonishing analysis? Within days of taking office Whitlam embarked on these assaults on capital: • In line with decisions already taken by the Tory regimes in Britain, the US, and Japan, Whitlam is sending an ambassador to Peking. • He has made Lionel Murphy, a Queen's Counsel, the new Attorney-General. Neville reports that Murphy was 'last heard of distributing leaflets outside local cinemas arguing the case against censorship'. • Whitlam has endorsed the principle of abortion on demand. • Mrs Whitlam is credited with forming a Women's Lib group. Neville reports that a 'scholarly friend' told him that Mrs Whitlam was 'possibly the most interesting and active wife of any politician in the Well, now, isn't that absnlutely amazing. Isn't that a fighting charter for socialism!

Neville says it 'sounds like a communiqué from the Black Panthers. (Our emphasis.)

Neville is talking utter political rubbish. He hasn't got two thoughts of any substance to rub together.

He has built a spurious reputation for being 'progressive' and yet he has stumbled from one political misfortune to the next.

The former public schoolboy who comes from one of Sydney's wealthy, upper-class families was telling us only a couple of years ago that the in' thing was "play power' This was a new political development which rested on the thesis that if individuals played together and with each other more regularly they could somehow become liberated This inspired philosophy appears to have given way to old-style, fuddy duddy social democracy. Neville now asks his friends to stop playing with each other and pack themselves in boats to Down Under to join in the 'socialist revolution' His suggestion could be laughed out of court if it wasn't so serious. Neville's column is read and believed by people who are not fully acquainted with the real political developments in Australia as they reflect the international situation. And when he's talking about the Labour government, he's talking about the future of the working class.

We don't think these are questions which should be left to hippy careerists. They must be dealt with seriously and emphatically. In recent weeks there has been a world-wide movement to social democratic parties: West Germany, Holland, New Zealand, Australia and even a left swing in Japan.

This is a reflection of the rapidly-maturing economic crisis. This is a massive demonstration of opposition to the bourgeoisie and its plan to resolve the crisis at the expense of the working class and its standard of living.

Does this now mean that the social-democratic governments in these countries will come to the aid of the working class with the introduction of socialist policies?

Of course not! This is the hour of the greatest treachery of the social democrats. They are parties and leaderships which are bound hand and foot to capital and they will serve it implicitly.

Whitlam has not suggested one item of economic policy which could be remotely described as socialist. He is throwing scraps to the frustrated middle-class and the opportunist sections in the working class. Behind this carefully-gauged propaganda exercise Whitlam and his close friends in big business are drawing up the real plans for Australia: a showdown with the working class.

He inherits a country which is facing huge economic problems: unemployment, the effects of the world currency instability, the increasing trade war, inflation and rising prices.

There is poverty, slum housing and a deteriorating health and education system.

Not a word from Whitlam on these issues-but his wife is big on Women's Lib!

The working class in Australia makes none of the conclusions of Mr Neville. It sees the election of Labour after 23 years as a kick in the teeth for the employing classwhich it is. Strengthened by this victory it comes forward with demands on the new government.

Within days of the election there were widespread strikes. Oil tanker drivers threatened a national strike unless they received a 100 per cent wage rise and a 35-hour week and more than 1,200 domestic airline pilots voted for a country-wide stoppage for a 35-per-cent increase.

Almost in the same breath the country's 32,000 building workers decided to down tools in support of two jailed union officials. They were imprisoned in Adelaide, South Australia, on contempt of court charges.

If Neville was in Australia he would no doubt be joining in the chorus of nearhysterical, reactionary demands by the Tory Press for 'industrial harmony'-a favourite concept of Jimmy Reid's.

In his 'Evening Standard' piece, Neville refers to the 'gifted leadership' of the trade unions. It is this same 'gifted leadership' under Bob Hawke, general secretary of the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) which is demanding that everyone go back to work at once.

We have caught Mr Neville precisely where we want him —in the camp of the bourgeoisie, tied to the coat-tails of reformism.

For all his shrill cries about being 'the alternative voice' and the spokesman for 'counter culture, Mr Neville is what he is: a part-time subscriber to the Tory Press and television. He's one of them. So much for the Labour revolution' described by Mr Neville. In the week following the election, prices on the stock exchanges 'rose' This would indicate that the Australian ruling class does not fear imminent expropriation!