Labor and the spooks {was re:Iraq)

[Gary MacLennan]

At 04:05 PM 14/07/2003 +1000, you wrote:
>Gary:
> >>I myself suspect that the Agencies are a no-go zone for Labor ever since
>the Cold War.  If you recall the way in
>which the incoming Labor government crapped in their pants over the Ivanov
>affair in 1983, then I think you have an idea of how scared Labor are of
>the spooks.<<

Hi Tom,


I wasn't in Oz at the time.  But Murphy was something of a maverick on the
Left and really all sides of the Labor Party considered the raid a big
mistake and one they were never to repeat.

But wasn't that the time when there was  Labor Left which had separate
economic policies?  Somewhere in my library there is a document from the
70s which is a Socialist Left critique of Capitalism.

It was by Tom Uren, former saint of the Left and a thoroughly up himself
human being.

We have travelled though a long way from the days of an independent  or
almost independent Left within the ALP.  It was of course destroyed by the
Hawke led Labor govt and more importantly the collapse of the Soviet Union
and the Australian Communist Party.  I have a very good book on that in my
library.  Might lend it to you sometime - it's by a young  American chap!!

wr

Gary