From secret police records in Russia just before the First World War: “The most energetic and audacious element, ready for tireless struggle, for resistance and continual organisation, is that element ... concentrated around [Vladimir] Lenin”.
Mass protests change people. The act of collectively standing together pushes aside the powerlessness we experience in everyday life, builds confidence and generates a sense of strength.
If you want to see transformative, mass left-wing radicalism in Australia, the time to be active is not when the struggle bursts out. It is now. The longer those who hope in their hearts for a world of equality, justice, beauty and joy hesitate to take the first steps, the more likely it will be that embryonic movements will fail to develop to their full potential.
You might be pleased to know that you can now read Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels with racist references edited out. But the misogyny remains, including the notion that women “love semi-rape” along with the disabled villain trope.
“The ’60s”. What images this conjures up: youth rebellion; drugs, sex and rock ’n’ roll; radicalism that helped to stop the Vietnam War. But actually, some of the most important events of this decade and the next were workers’ industrial struggles.
It was 1961. Migrants erected a sign on the roadside twenty kilometres outside of Albury: “Bonegilla, Place of No Hope”. The authorities left it there, perhaps for fear of further inflaming the bitterness that inspired it.