The next battle is being prepared. The first round of contract negotiations has just begun. The Employers Confederation has demanded the extension of present contracts - in other words, a one-year Jim Percy (1948-1992) THE above are excerpts of the obituary written by the DSP for Jim Percy. Although Jim had led the then SWP to split from the FI in 1985, we are hereby mourning one of our comrades, a revolutionary militant who was keen to maintain comradely relations with the Fourth International. We had drawn politically closer
During the political disputes in the FI in the 70s, the Australian SWP sided with the SWP of the USA in what became known as the "Leninist-Trotskyist Faction". The LTF waged a fierce fight against the FI majority in the name of Trotskyist orthodoxy, accusing the latter of adapting to non-Trotskyist revolutionary currents.
Ironically, in the early eighties, both SWPs began a process of open revision of some basic tenets of what is commonly known as Trotskyism.
The Australian SWP left the ranks of our International in August 1985, because they thought that the FI - but actually their own experience and interpretation of it — had become an obstacle to their convergence with the rest of the world revolutio-
However, the SWP-DSP remained from then on very pragmatic and open to learning from the actual processes in world and Australian politics. In world politics, Jim's party put a strong bet on Gorbachev, believing that his perestroika might lead to a revival of socialist democracy. In Australian politics likewise, the DSP tried to reach an agreement on possible unification with the local pro-Moscow forces. Both expectations faded out.
wage freeze.
If this is not accepted, they assert, the "market" will force a new austerity package on the people.
It remains to be seen if the patience of the Swedish labour force will break. *
One lesson Jim drew from these endeavours, as he himself told me when he last visited us in Paris last year, was that after all, he found that we shared a common wavelength distinguishing us from other components of the broad world revolutionary movement. In other words, we still shared a wide range of basic programmatic targets and a global conception of revolu-
For this reason, Jim had come to be in favour of close collaboration between the DSP and the FI comrades in Eastern Europe and the ex-USSR. He was sad that the DSP had not been invited to observe the 1991 World congress of the FI. He was very interested in the development of our views on building the International and the role it should play in the broader revolutionary movement, as well as our non-centralist conception of the internal functioning of the FI.
We pledged to work together to overcome any obstacles in the relationship between the DSP and the FI.
Accordingly, an exchange of letters was started and some decisions taken to strengthen our relationship. This process is still unfolding and we firmly hope that it will lead the DSP eventually to take part, in one form or another, in our debates and share directly our concerns about building the world revolutionary movement.
It is indeed very sad that Jim will not be present any longer to continue working for this outcome. Actively pursuing this same goal will be our best tribute to the memory of our comrade, Jim Percy - SALAH