He was only doing his job, implied Sue Bolton and says Peter Murray

By Bob Gould

The unjustified pressure on Dean Mighell to resign from the Labor
Party, and the media witch-hunt against unions, attempting to
marginalise them in the Labor Party, bring into the light of day
questions that should alarm everyone in the workers', Labor and
socialist movements.

The clipping service, Media Monitors, whose clients include many trade
union and labour movement organisations, appears to have a second line
of business: recording meetings of workers' organisations with an eye
to selling critical material that may emerge at such meetings.

It appears, on the face of it, that the highest bidder in the case of
the Mighell recordings, and perhaps other material of significance,
was the government watchdog on the building industry, the ABCC.

A number of building union sources suggest that there is some
confusion as to whether the Mighell recording took place in a section
of the meeting in which the union leadership authorised a media presence.

The statements in the press of representatives of Media Monitors raise
the question was to whether its clients also include employer groups
and agencies of the Howard Government. It's clearly possible that
these agencies include ASIO, etc, which are obvious potential clients
for this sort of material.

In the past, workers' organisations were usually very careful about
the privacy of their deliberations. The ALP rules in NSW still contain
a provision that branch meetings cannot be attended by journalists in
a working capacity, and media statements can only be made by the
president and secretary after the meeting.

It seems obvious from the recent events that a certain lack of caution
has crept into the practices of some parts of the trade union movement
on these questions.

The Mighell business is a salutory lesson as to why that ALP rule
exists and why trade unions should be cautious about letting the media
into their decision-making meetings, particularly in the current
context, where the whole of the print media, and the bulk of the
electronic media, are frantically beating up every story to somehow
resurrect the Howard Government's re-election prospects.

It's also vital to consider the current context. For the past few
months the building unions, in particular, and militant unions in
general, have been under the most intense pressure and scrutiny by the
ruling class, with a particular focus on Victoria. It seems obvious
that any socialist in Victoria working the media has a deep-rooted
moral obligation to take such factors into account.

An important and difficult issue for serious socialists on these
events is something that has just jumped out of the media. The man who
actually recorded Mighell's comments, if reports in the media are to
be believed, is a minor figure on the far left, for some time and
possibly currently a member of the Victorian executive of the
Socialist Alliance, a bloke who has been around the left for a very
long time.

Coincidentally, he is one of two or three surviving independents in
the Socialist Alliance who doggedly defend the Boyle DSP leadership of
the Socialist Alliance and from time to time he makes the odd rabidly
anti-Labor speech at Alliance conferences.

It emerges that this bloke has been an employee of Media Monitors for
quite a while. On the face of it, he's not a journalist who writes a
lot of copy. His main value to MM seems to be his abilities with a
recorder, and possibly his practical access as a known member of the
far left to all kinds of meetings and events where other journalists
without such connections might find access somewhat more difficult.

For instance, I'm told by a delegate in the Victorian CFMEU that for
several years this bloke has regularly recorded delegates' meetings of
the Victorian CFMEU. These circumstances obviously suggest that he may
record delegates' meetings of other unions on behalf of his employer,
Media Monitors, which then onsells such material in a commercial way
to its clients. It's fairly obvious which clients may be interested in
recordings of this kind.

In the Financial Review of June 5, in an article on page 7, on another
matter, the following appears: "The tensions were fuelled by union
claims last week that the ABCC had 'secretly' recorded a mass meeting
at which Electrical Trades Union official Dean Mighell had bragged
about pressuring employers to win pattern pay rises. Criticism of Mr
Mighell's expletive-strewn speech saw him forced out of the Labor
Party by federal opposition leader Kevin Rudd.

"A commercial media monitoring firm, Media Monitors, has confirmed it
recorded Mr Mighell's speech last November, in its role of covering
events based on their saleability amongst 'existing clients and any
industry groups'. 'We turned up on spec', said Media Monitors
executive Gregg Aimes. 'I've got no comment as to who it was actually
sold to.'"

This report in the Financial Review extract reveals a large part of
the current Media Monitors story. In Melbourne, at least, it has a
lucrative sideline consisting of taping any significant meetings of
workers' organisations, into which they can get "on spec", and then
onselling the recordings to all interested parties.

The man who does this kind of the taping for Media Monitors is a
recognisable figure on the far left. The question arises, and must be
asked, whether this bloke also records public gatherings of the
Socialist Alliance and other organisations, including the couple of
big trade union gatherings that have been associated with the
Socialist Alliance? Are they of interest "on spec" to his employers?

Did he also record for his employer, Media Monitors, "on spec" major
events addressed by Craig Johnson, who fell foul of the capitalist
state? Such material would obviously be of some interest to employers
and other Media Monitors clients.

In a comment on these events, Sue Bolton naively asks if the recording
of workers' meetings routinely takes place in other states, as it
apparently does in Victoria. I've made some initial inquiries about
this in NSW in the past few days and Media Monitors doesn't appear to
record union delegates' meetings in NSW. Perhaps there isn't anyone
available to Media Monitors in NSW with the kind of practical access
to workers' meetings that Media Monitors appears to have in Victoria.

Under capitalism, workers and members of the middle class have to do
many things to make a living and the rational tradition in the
scientific socialist movement is not to moralise too much about how
people are forced to, or even choose to, earn a crust.

Nevertheless, some jobs are clearly excluded for socialists, and for
class-conscious workers. Most obviously, they shouldn't join the
police, work for ASIO and other secret police, etc. Another question
frequently arises in the labour movement, which is that of union
officials being offered jobs by major capitalist concerns and
employers as personnel officers, or human resources managers, as they
are now so-called.

Such crossovers are usually regarded in the labour movement as class
desertion and such people are usually regarded as having excluded
themselves from the workers' movement. A similar problem, in my view,
arises from a certain type of industrial relations journalism and
anti-Labor political journalism.

No matter what their past background, industrial relations and
political journalists who constantly attack the labour movement are
generally regarded as having excluded themselves from the workers
movement.

In my considered view, it isn't permissible from a socialist point of
view for an active socialist to work in the capacity of chief recorder
of workers' meetings for Media Monitors with the knowledge, which he
must have unless he deliberately closes his eyes, that delicate and
sensitive material he obtains will be onsold by his employer to
whoever pays the price, and the developments of the past week or so
underline the importance of this point.

The man, Raven, on the Green Left discussion list, who libeled me
without any evidence as an agent provocateur, in his comment on these
events, muddies the water even further. Objectively he joins the
witch-hunt against the trade unions in the Labor Party in repeating,
with apparent approval, the attacks of the ruling class on officials
of the ETU being selected as Labor candidates in Victoria and Queensland.

He also makes light of the activities of Media Monitors and Rehame in
recording sensitive parts of workers' meetings and onselling the
recordings to their clients.

The most recent comment on this question by Peter Murray seems to me a
bit of a diversion. He attacks the bosses of Media Monitors for
dropping one of its employees in it, as an invasion of his privacy.
That's as may be, Media Monitors is possibly making a bit of a
scapegoat of this bloke to cloud the issue of its routine information
gathering activities in the workers' movement. That, however, is not
the central point, although it is important.

There are two issues in this series of events. One is the revelation
of Media Monitors' activities, and the other is the revelation of the
apparent centrality to these activities of this bloke who has been
around the left for a very long time.

Painful though it may be, the fact that Media Monitors chose to drop
the bloke in it, so to speak, is objectively speaking, quite useful
because it gives us a dramatic insight into the new territory the
whole of the workers movement is being forced into by the increasingly
aggressive and barefaced information gathering activities of the
ruling class.

The leadership of the Socialist Alliance, and the bloke in question,
have a responsibility to the whole of the socialist and labour
movement to explain these events.