The Moratorium Misses

"For the police and protestors, it was a day to be proud. There were only minor angry incidents, no one was hurt, no damage was done and no one was arrested." The Sun- Melbourne, May 9.

After the great build up, with the news media giving minute-to-minute publicity with details and overt encouragement, the major effort of the Communist conspiracy in organising the so-called Moratorium on the Vietnam War has come and gone without any more impact than a Saturday football match. To use an Australian colloquialism, it was a fizzer, for to anyone who understands the techniques of communist strategy in urban street demonstrations no such demonstration as that mounted on Friday in Melbourne and Sydney should pass without incidents which can be turned to advantage.

The exploitation of the shooting of the four students in Ohio USA is now being so conducted. It was a fitting exercise for all those taking part in a demonstration of sympathy for Communist tyranny, and disloyalty to their own country, (not an Australian flag was seen in the marchers ranks) that they should sit down in the street like so many petulant children. Rather like children who refuse to obey their elders and sit down in defiance, later to have their seats dusted in the appropriate manner.

There are many indications of how easily the tide could be turned against the highly organised conspirators if there was any honesty in the press reporting. Mr. Nixon has been taking all the tricks in USA, and even his promise to withdraw by the end of July has certain political value in the present climate of the psychological battle. In his press conference last Friday when it was confidently anticipated Nixon would back down he maintained the offensive. Consequently the reporting was kept to the minimum.

The Age correspondent, Roy Macartney reported that Mr. Nixon apologised for nothing. He backed up Mr. Agnew in the face of a New York Times front-page report, which said he would silence Mr. Agnew on his attacks against students and left-wing college principals. He can point to increasing signs that the silent majority is expressing itself such as the way construction workers in New York broke up a similar demonstration to that which took place in Melbourne and Sydney, and then for good measure raised the American flag to the top of the flag pole at the Town Hall in defiance of left-wing Mayor John Lindsay at whose orders it had been lowered.
But more positively he can show the American people the vast hordes of military supplies captured in Cambodia, and the disruption of the most highly complex headquarters and arsenal unearthed in the Vietnam War.

A measurement of the dishonesty in reporting was afforded in The Herald, Melbourne, when Peter Costigan in Washington in a highly critical report on President Nixon said the Americans had unearthed nothing more than rice and laundered uniforms in Cambodia. On the very next page Australian Associated Press from Saigon reported the capture of above base with its thousands of weapons, ammunition, anti-aircraft guns, tons of food. 20 mess halls and 200 structures, trucks, carts and bicycles.

There is no doubt President Johnson could have done the same many years ago. The war could have been won and the Communist control in North Vietnam destroyed. The power was always available but not the will. If the left wing taking the war into the streets of America persist in their tactic it may be that Mr. Nixon will get the will. Future tactics will be interesting and worth watching.

SOCIALISING THE WOOL INDUSTRY

"The Prime Minister (Mr. Gorton) will ask the Minister for Trade (Mr. McEwen) to go to Japan to negotiate a revolutionary new system for selling Australia's wool clip." - The Age May 11.

Peter Samuel, leader writer for The Bulletin recently quoted a Liberal Party rebel on the schisms developing within the Liberal Party. "The root cause of the trouble is that Mr. Gorton is at heart a socialist. He is breaking every single principle that the Liberal Party stands for." Wool marketing is just another example, but to be fair to Mr. Gorton it must be pointed out that the destruction of the free auction system in the wool industry and its replacement by another socialist marketing board by whatever name it is called, could not have been accomplished without the aid of the Country Party, in particular its leaders, Mr. McEwen and Mr. Anthony. Of the two Mr. McEwen is the greater influence, and when the history of the socialisation of the Australian farmer is fully written the contribution of John Mc Ewen will be the most significant with his policies of tying rural production to the international markets in such a way as to advance the plausible argument that such markets could only be negotiated if the Australian Government controlled national production.

Under whatever guise the new marketing system is to be presented, it will result in the growth of a vast new bureaucracy battening on the producer and bleeding him with costly overheads not subject to any type of competition, while nothing will be done to deal with the one main factor which have brought the woolgrower to this position, rising costs. Consequently his position will grow worse although the luxury salaries of highly paid officials and the thousands of other parasites will go on carrying with them automatic increases as the cost of living goes up.

The graziers and farmers have been deserted by their leaders who now meekly accept the acquisition of the wool clip and its sale by the government. The graziers organisations have accepted a concept of restructuring the rural industries promoted by the Council for the Economic Development of Australia in which acquisition of the wool clip is a basic feature. A former champion of the free auction system, Mr. LeCouteur is president of CEDA. So the sell out of the last remaining independent section of Australian farming life is almost complete. However the battle is far from over.

As the reality of this type of control is brought home to the growers so will come the reaction. The stage is being set for some positive action by those who can see they can no longer trust the present leadership in those institutions, which are supposed to protect them from exploitation and the destruction of their freedom.

KEEP THE FIGHTING FUND GOING

IN HAROLD WILSON'S BRITAIN

Mr. Eric Butler reports from London

Once again Prime Minister Harold Wilson has demonstrated that he is the master politician. In his May Day address he caused a sensation by publicly offering to make available to his opponent, Conservative leader Edward Heath, a top official of the Treasury Department to cost Mr. Heath's taxation and other financial proposals, so that Mr. Heath would have his sums correct. The truth is that the Conservatives offer no real alternatives to what the present Government is imposing on the British people. Mr. Wilson has the measure of Mr. Heath.

A friend suggests that Mr. Wilson should pray every night that nothing happens to Mr. Heath before the British elections; he is Mr. Wilson's greatest asset. Mr. Heath has now openly conceded that the Common Market issue could be the major one preventing him from coming to office. And so in a major address in Paris to the Anglo-French Chamber of Commerce, Mr. Heath stressed that a Tory Government would insist on "reasonable and acceptable terms" for entry into the Common Market. This speech is seen here as an attempt to safeguard Conservatives against Mr. Wilson's charge that they would take the United Kingdom into the Common Market at any price.
Press reports in London state that the Heath address in Paris has heartened many Conservatives, who fear that British hostility to the Common Market will be turned against them by Mr. Wilson.

The strong public opposition to the Common Market is now one of the basic facts of political life in the United Kingdom. There is every evidence that the opposition is growing, not diminishing. But the problem facing the anti-Marketeers is how to translate this anti-Common Market feeling into a non-party campaign at the coming British Elections. Now that Mr. Heath has been forced to shift his ground, it should be easier for the anti-Marketeers to obtain firm pledges against the Common Market from all candidates.

At the time of writing, Mr. Wilson has not yet indicated when he will hold the elections. There are many rumours. But such a shrewd political operator as Mr. Wilson is not going to name the date until he has got what he considers the best possible conditions. If Mr. Wilson is going to call the elections next month, there is much speculation on why is the Prime Minister clearly identifying himself with those protesting against the coming South African cricket tour. Perhaps he is seeking to influence the large number of new young voters, those who have just turned eighteen. Mr. Wilson does nothing without careful calculation.

The Rhodesian issue is far from being "dead", but it will not be a major election issue. This permits the Wilson Government to vent its spite against Rhodesians in a number of ways, such as charging a surcharge on letters received in the United Kingdom from Rhodesia. Then there is the case of a young man who spent all his savings in traveling from Rhodesia to Britain in search of his mother from whom he was separated when he was four years of age. He found his mother, but the Home Office says that he does not qualify for permanent settlement. This in spite of the fact that his mother is English.

The Race Relations Act continues to produce incidents, which enable the British to have a good laugh. A Municipal Councilor complained that a Pakistani who advertised for an English lodger who could help teach his children English, was contravening a section of the Race Relations Act! An official from the Race Relations Board explained to the Councilor why no action was being taken against the unfortunate Pakistani. He had taken down the advertising sign in his window before the Councilor had reported him. And he had promised not to do it again. His wife said, however, that an English-speaking lodger was still required for the empty room, and to teach English to the children. But it is illegal to advertise this desire in any way.

In the meantime Mr. Enoch Powell has caused another stir by charging that the figures relating to non-European births are false, and that the non-European birthrate is much higher than claimed officially. Looking at the May Day celebrations in London I was reminded of Marx's statement that the British would never make their own revolution; that foreigners would have to make it for them. A photo of the leading rank of a parade of young Communists and Socialists reveals one European and six non-European girls. The secretary of the Pakistani Workers' Union, Mr. Abun Ishaque, is a self confessed Marxist, and believes in "action" against "fascists" and others who want to keep Britain a European nation. It is estimated that there are 7,000 Pakistanis in East London alone.

Left-wing Irish groups have been meeting with the Pakistanis in London promising to join them in the streets of London." Mr. Edward Davoren of the Irish National Liberation Solidarity Front, whom I mentioned in my last report, is one of those working with the revolutionaries amongst the Pakistanis. But even on the race issue, Mr. Wilson can truthfully claim that it was the Conservatives who opened the gates to a flood of non-European migrants, while it was the Labor Party, which closed the gates. Mr. Wilson works both sides of the road on any issue. It is not surprising that many call him the artful dodger - although a little plumper than the original artful dodger of Charles Dickens.

THE COMMON MARKET

Going rounds in Britain is the following ditty:

We paid the price, in blood and sweat and tears
For a free Britain, for a thousand years;
And now You little men of double face
Would sell us in the Common Market Place:

ON TARGET BULLETIN

SUBJECT FOR DISCUSSION
SELLING IN THE MARKET PLACE

The development taking place in the marketing of wool prompts us to take up this subject. Early economic systems in primitive communities did not use a monetary system. Therefore some very sound principles were established in the system of bartering which took place. First of all goods were exchanged when there was a genuine demand for them and the producer had no trouble in ascertaining the strength of the demand. If the demand was greater than the supply he could expect to exchange his merchandise to an advantage and obtain a greater return of those things, which he needed himself. If his goods were oversupplied he could well have to accept fewer of his own necessities but be forced to give more of his own production in return.

It is feasible to suggest that the more buyers there were interested in obtaining his produce the better chance he had for a deal suitable to himself. Had one man come along and said, "I will take all your produce and let you have the best deal I can get from the buyers, "the producer would quickly see the fallacy of an arrangement which put him at the mercy of just one man taking all his produce.

Maintaining the concept of bartering. Had demand became so big it produced a middle man offering to barter all the goods of the producer, no doubt the producer would only accept the services of the middle man if the arrangement was satisfactory to himself. He would maintain the right to sell, or barter his goods himself if not too sure of the intentions of the agent offering his services.

Now that we have a monetary system the principle should be no different. When the producer accepts or is forced to accept a system by which his produce is acquired, he is no longer his own master, and he has no control over what he receives back for his produce. The substitution of a system of voting to elect representatives on a board only sets the stage for exploitation and fighting amongst the producers. There is a leveling down of quality and efficiency and the inefficient receive the same reward, bringing further unrest. In the situation now prevailing in both wheat and wool, it can easily be foreseen that the Government acting, as the sole agent will also institute measures to eliminate those they feel are not needed in the industry. There is no replacement for freedom of choice.

In the monetary system, factors which constitute almost black magic have been introduced to destroy the correct relationship between supply and demand between producer and buyer. It is these factors, which must be dealt with if the producer is to maintain freedom of selling and production.