Rod Pickette

Rod Pickette

Chile demo

On 11 September 1974, demonstrations against the repression in Chile took place as scheduled in several locations in Australia.

In Sydney, a statement supporting the demonstration and demanding an open platform at LAN Chile was endorsed by Peter McGregor, Mike Matterson and Dorothy Coates of the Sydney Anarchist Group; Bob Gould; NSW MLA George Petersen; Henry Mayer, a professor at Sydney University; David Scott (AMWU member); T. Parnell (Hurstville Resident Action Group); Peter Tieman, Rod Pickette, Brian Dale (YLA members); the Spartacist League; and a number of individuals.

Also approached were the Healyite Socialist Labour League (SLL); the Glebe-Balmain branch of the CPA; the Newcastle Young Communists; the Pablo-Pabloite Revolutionary Marxist Tendency (RMT); and Jim Baird and Senator Arthur Gietzelt, two of the scheduled CSCP speakers.

The SWL and CL refused to support the statement. The Glebe-Balmain CPA pleaded unclarity on the events, after the intervention of Denis Freney against an open platform. Baird explicitly rejected an open platform. Gietzelt professed his "sympathy" but refused to do anything on grounds of expediency. Also chickening out was the RMT, because they did not want to be identified with the issue during the "crucial" Leichhardt Council election -campaign then in progress.