Doug PollardThe Last Socialist in Australia
This weeks guest on Digging Deeper isn't gay but he is the only openly Socialist elected politician in Australia, as far as I'm aware. Nowadays Stephen Jolly is a councillor in Yarra, but in his time he's trained black South African trade unionists during apartheid, and was there in Tiananmen Square when the People's Army moved in.
DOUG: This is Doug Pollard. This hour as always we have a special guest who we go one-on-one with for a full hour today – Stephen Jolly, joining me now in the studio – good morning, Stephen. Now, tell people who you are.
STEPHEN: I’m a councillor in the City of Yarra. I’m the only socialist councillor elected in Australia – well, at least I don’t know – since World War II or something like that.
DOUG: A rare bird indeed, then?
STEPHEN: Yeah – yeah, you know? A rose amongst thorns I’d say. But I’ve been a political activist since I was 18, in South Africa – Zimbabwe, China. Here. The UK and – m’mm, I’ve got a bit respectable the last few years and elected by mistake onto the Council.
DOUG: [laughs]
STEPHEN: So I’m lookin’ after dog pooh and dodgy trees that are messin’ up the foundations of – you know? People’s houses. But – m’mm, basically I’m pretty much a relatively prominent activist in this city and have been, for some time.
DOUG: You made a bit of a splash during the election, you got a fair-old-vote there in Richmond didn’t you, when you stood for the – m’mm, parliament here?
STEPHEN: Yeah – well, look – we were really pleased with it. I doubled my vote and got the highest vote for a socialist candidate here in Australia, in a State election. For a hell of a long time and – m’mm, yeah. The votes we got – like, I got mainly from public housing tenants and people in my Ward where we’ve worked really hard to sort-of make the “socialist” word not as scary as what people may first think.
DOUG: Yeah [laughs] we’ve become a bit scared of the word “socialist” in recent years, haven’t we and as I say you’re a pretty rare bird, you actually happily wear that badge. There are some people probably, in the Labor Party who still think of themselves as socialists – I don’t suppose they really are, anymore. But you’re one of those people committed to making a difference which is one reason I wanted to talk with you on the programme. What I want to do is start back – right at the beginning, where you originally came from, what the roots are of this activism and this commitment? We’ll do that in just a moment because what we always do on this segment of the programme is start with a piece of music and then we kick-off from there, about why you chose that and then away-we-go. Now, your first piece of music is from Thin Lizzy. This takes me back a bit, it’s called: Jail Break. Why did you pick this one?
STEPHEN: Well, anyone who lived in Ireland in the 1970s – where the Catholic Church was like the theocracy – where there was no abortion, no contraceptive, no divorce let alone the issues for LGBTI people – it was an horrific theocracy, everybody wanted to get out of there and I felt like an outsider living there. I lived in a public-housing estate in Ireland from zero to 14 and Thin Lizzy at that stage were the only thing that ever came out of Ireland that was famous.
DOUG: [laughs]
STEPHEN: He [Phil Lynott] was the only black guy in Dublin so he was always a bit weird. Phil Lynott passed away a few years later.
DOUG: Yeah.
STEPHEN: For me, all I wanted to do was get out of that hell-hole. That’s how I looked at it – and m’mm - - -
DOUG: (and) “Jail Break” is the song?
STEPHEN: - - - yeah. Exactly.
DOUG: That does it for you – okay, Thin Lizzy: “Jail Break”.
[music]
DOUG: This is Doug Pollard bringing it to you this hour – Digging Deeper with councillor Stephen Jolly – now, that was Thin Lizzy: “Jail Break”. Emblematic of Steve’s wish to escape from theocratic Ireland. Let’s go right back to the beginning, you said before we played that you lived in Ireland from Year-0 to 14 – I think, was what you said?
STEPHEN: Yeah. That’s right.
DOUG: Let’s begin at the beginning. Whereabouts were you born?
STEPHEN: I was born in London, actually. My mum and her two sisters were living in a house where their father molested them, basically – my mother ran-away from home in the early 1960s to – m’mm, London. At a time when it was hard being a single mum – a single woman especially an Irish woman. There used to be signs up: If you want to rent no dogs, Irish or Blacks need apply.
DOUG: M’mm, m’mm.
STEPHEN: So – she got pregnant very quickly and the guy just buggered-off. She had me in London and her mum came over, took me off her and brought me back to Ireland. I was a couple of days old and I was brought-up as I said before, in a public-housing estate in Dublin. I was told my mother was my sister so for the first 14-years of my life I thought I was the 6th-kid and the other five were a little bit older than me – you know? 3-sisters and a couple of brothers – and – that was life for me; I lived on this public-housing estate, went to government school in Ireland and sometimes, went to visit my sister/mother – thinking she was my sister – over in Ireland (sic) and m’mm, yeah. It was at a time when Ireland was in a low-level civil war. In the North of Ireland, in the ‘70s.
DOUG: M’mm.
STEPHEN: It was very political and that obviously, got me very, very political – my grandfather the guy who was the abuser, actually – I didn’t know this ‘til years later, what he was doin’ – he had fought in the Spanish Civil War for the Fascists. So he was very political, obviously. From a right-wing perspective - - -
DOUG: Yes.
STEPHEN: - - - so I had a very, very weird political background.
DOUG: [laughs] Boy you did, didn’t you?
STEPHEN: When I was 14, I went to visit my mum who since got married and had two more boys and moved to South Africa under apartheid. I went there and she had a swimming pool, a maid and was livin’ the high life. She said: I’m actually your mum, do you want to live with me? I’m thinking: shit – it’s warm, we’ve got a swimming pool.
DOUG: [laughs]
STEPHEN: A maid, a gardener. So I moved at the age of 14, from this shithole in Ireland to this - - -
DOUG: That’s a - - -
STEPHEN: - - - existence in South Africa.
DOUG: That’s a huge jump isn’t it – I mean, it sounds like it was a very poor life in Ireland?
STEPHEN: My grandmother who brought-me-up was an amazing woman – I mean, she lived her life in denial of what her husband was up to and that was a tragedy. But she was fantastic to me. She gave me a lot of confidence and maybe too much confidence, actually.
DOUG: [laughs]
STEPHEN: She passed-away maybe, 10-years ago – but – so I don’t regret that background and those experiences. But they were tough, you know? They’ve toughened me up a bit and then, South Africa in a different way. Was a very politicising experience.
DOUG: Yeah. Let’s stick with Ireland for a moment; you said it was like a theocracy at the time, that the [Catholic] Church had a stranglehold on the country. Did you feel that in every-day life, in what sorts of ways did it impact on you?
STEPHEN: Every single person – literally – every sing person went to Mass on Sunday.
DOUG: M’mm, m’mm.
STEPHEN: Every day the priest would come around with the envelope – every week, I should say – and give it to my mum and we would have to put hopefully, a note in it. To go back to the priest; by the way the priests – most of them – were touching-up the kids in the area. All the altar boys and girls, whatever – but m’mm, we had a situation where there was no abortion. No contraceptives, no divorce. People were trapped in un-happy relationships. People who were gay for example, were either single or were married into unhappy relationships. There was loads of domestic violence; when my other sister for example – well actually, my Aunty. Got pregnant, she had to get a back-street abortion. Because we couldn’t afford to send her to the UK for a proper abortion. Obviously abortion was banned.
DOUG: M’mm, m’mm.
STEPHEN: So – look; there was a lot of joy and happiness in Ireland at the time but to be honest with you the Catholic Church made life absolutely miserable for most people. Plus on top of that the other overlay was that you had a low-level civil war goin’ on in Ireland which occasionally spilled over into Dublin. With car bombs and so on. It was very, very interesting times but I think - - -
DOUG: Because the civil war was going on and because there was this stark differentiation being made between Protestant North and Catholic South that must’ve in some respects, enforced the theocracy?
STEPHEN: Absolutely.
DOUG: Because it was part of – like, being southern-Irish wasn’t it? It was part of the Irish identity.
STEPHEN: Yeah, that’s right. You know, it was only afterwards that I thought it was weird the State would have an official religion. We all laugh about [indistinct] today and some of the Middle Eastern countries – and correctly so – criticise them where Islamic religion is dominant upon the State. But it happens in so-called Christian countries, too. Or it did in Ireland - - -
DOUG: M’mm.
STEPHEN: - - - and it’s no wonder in the 1980s and ‘90s there was this massive reaction – mainly from young people – against the Catholic Church and Christian Brothers and priests, nuns in Ireland young people absolutely hated and despised because of what they’d got up to during the course of a 100-odd years. I’m not saying everybody who took the cloth was like that, there were some amazing people who did that – but – there were some really rotten eggs in there, too.
DOUG: Did you experience any of that?
STEPHEN: No. I was very lucky. I got physical abuse at school – you know? The leather and so on.
DOUG: M’mm, m’mm.
STEPHEN: But I was never – unless it’s deeply repressed, not that I can remember that I was actually - - -
DOUG: I think you’d remember.
STEPHEN: - - - yeah, I think so.
DOUG: I’m not too keen on this repressed memory thing.
STEPHEN: Yeah.
DOUG: I think if you were you’d know.
STEPHEN: Yeah. It gets a bit over-played.
DOUG: I know a lot of people say: It never did me any harm. You came out and through, so to speak. But I don’t think it helps much, either?
STEPHEN: If you go through an horrific experience and survive it’s not a question of saying: I survived so therefore it’s okay. It’s: I’m lucky I survived. A lot of people didn’t survive.
DOUG: M’mm.
STEPHEN: My natural-mother - - -
DOUG: Yeah, it doesn’t toughen everybody.
STEPHEN: - - - yeah. (and) Her sisters, they’re really messed-up to this day. They’ve just won a court case in Ireland against the Catholic Church, for the abuse they received in Church – not only did they suffer abuse as I said before, from their father – my grandfather – but also from nuns. Physical abuse and that’s affected their self-confidence to this day.
DOUG: M’mm. So it must’ve been like a vision from Heaven when suddenly, you were presented with South Africa, a swimming pool, servants and the white-lifestyle? That they had out there.
STEPHEN: Oh, absolutely. Also because I had a bit of an accent all the girls thought that was pretty cute.
DOUG: [laughs]
STEPHEN: (and) I played that up a bit so I had a great time there. I was into sport and I still am into sport. For white people it was just an amazing lifestyle, it was Heaven-on-Earth. For the first few years there before I started to waking-up to what was going on around me, that I was in this little island of prosperity in this ocean of poverty, repression and racism – but as a 14-year old you don’t think like that, of course – it was just fantastic. I mean, it was pretty tough at school. We had military training, we were all getting ready to go into the Army. The violence against the kids in school, the corporal punishment was even tougher than in Ireland.
DOUG: M’mm, m’mm.
STEPHEN: But it wasn’t as bad because you didn’t have this guilt thing that you had in Ireland and obviously the sun, the weather – you know? The lifestyle was just light years ahead of what I’d experienced and I had an absolute ball as a teenager in South Africa.
DOUG: It’s an amazing change of life from one to the other. As I said, it must’ve seemed like Heaven when you’d first got there, before you twigged to the political situation?
STEPHEN: Absolutely; my mum was very keen for me to stay and not go back to her mother. So she really laid-it-on thick so I was spoiled silly and it was nice to connect to – I thought they were my nephews but they were my two half-brothers – David and Danny.
DOUG: M’mm.
STEPHEN: Who I caught-up again for the first time in 28-years at the recent World Cup in South Africa but I’ve got a really close relationship with them and that was just a marvellous time in those years.
DOUG: Time I think, for another piece of music. You’ve picked out X-Ray Spex – m’mm, Bondage?
STEPHEN: Yeah. In South Africa, live was honey-and-roses. Then in the late ‘70s Black South Africans started to rise-up and some white kids got really shocked by that and the music we’d listened to was really bland, mainstream – John Travolta. You know, really horrific stuff.
DOUG: M’mm, m’mm.
STEPHEN: Boring, boring stuff I should say.
DOUG: [laughs]
STEPHEN: Then all of a sudden Punk music came on the scene and I remember listening to this song somebody had posted to me, from Ireland. It was this young woman, she was about 15-years old and she was in a male-dominated Punk scene. She sang this full-on song. Not many Punk songs have saxophones in them and m’mm, Punk music began to sort-of wake me up to the fact that life wasn’t all honey-and-roses for everybody. That’s what this song represents for me.
DOUG: Okay. X-Ray Spex: “[Oh] Bondage Up Yours”.
[music]
DOUG: This is Doug Pollard Digging Deeper this hour with Councillor Stephen Jolly who narrowly escaped I think is probably the right phrase, getting into parliament at the last election. We were talking about his time living in South Africa when apartheid really started to come apart, I suppose; because there’d been uprisings before. Black people had fought back against the white minority before but what sort of era are we talking about here?
STEPHEN: Late ‘70s, early ‘80s. Yeah.
DOUG: This is the time when it really started to break and that coincided with your radicalisation?
STEPHEN: Nelson Mandela was gaoled; there was a really repressive period for a decade or two. In ’76 you had the Soweto Uprising. In the late ‘70s you saw the development of the Independent Black Trade Unions. Student movement and huge demonstrations all over the place; that was the time I’d left school. I’d gone to UCT – University of Cape Town – studying political science and I started going out with a woman who was not white. I didn’t think much of that but at the time that was illegal. The Sexual Relations Act (sic) [Immorality Act (1950)] and that said that you can’t have sex with somebody of a different race and there’s nothing that politicises and 18-year old male than when the government tries to interfere with their sex life, that’s exactly what they tried to do. So, it was the first time I’d been negatively impacted by apartheid. Up until then, apartheid had been fantastic for me, you know?
DOUG: M’mm, m’mm.
STEPHEN: M’mm, that plus seeing all of these people putting themselves in danger to try and change what really brought back a lot of memories from when I was in Ireland and what I’d seen back there. I slowly but surely had an intellectual interest. I started reading, started talking to people and slowly but surely started getting involved in the Movement.
DOUG: When you were at school and living the high-life you didn’t have many Black friends I take it?
STEPHEN: No.
DOUG: They were on the other side of the wall so-to-speak?
STEPHEN: Absolutely – apartheid was the physical separation of Black and white. A lot of the schools where white only. Certain jobs were kept aside for whites, the only Black people I would meet would be people who worked in shops, servants – gardeners and so on – it was the most horrific form of society in the modern era.
DOUG: So how come you ended-up with a non-white girlfriend?
STEPHEN: Well, because in Cape Town it was slightly more liberal – of a city – so, m’mm I was involved in South Africa’s first Punk bank: Red Army. Which was also Africa’s worst-ever band.
DOUG: [laughs]
STEPHEN: We played at this nightclub called: Scratch. It was the only non-racial nightclub ‘cause all the nightclubs were either Black or white. But there was one that was multi-racial so I met this woman. I thought she was white when I first met her, to be honest with you.
DOUG: Because you had this ridiculous classification system didn’t you – white, coloured?
STEPHEN: Yeah. There were 4-categories, the bottom were Africans. The second-from-the-bottom were coloureds – or “mixed race/Indians”. The second-highest were Japanese, Asian.
DOUG: M’mm.
STEPHEN: The top were whites, Europeans. Which I was in. She was in I suppose Category-3. When I went to visit her house she was lighter than all her siblings, parents and so on and it didn’t worry me but I mean, obviously it worried the State.
DOUG: So she could pass as white?
STEPHEN: Yeah.
DOUG: (and) That’s why you didn’t get any immediate reaction to your relationship.
STEPHEN: I don’t think my mum was too happy although she’s embarrassed to say that today. At the time she’d warned me about the dangers of Nelson Mandela, who was in gaol at the time and what he would do if he took over the country. Now she’s literally got a statue of Nelson Mandela next to a statue of the Virgin Mary in the lounge room.
DOUG: [laughs]
STEPHEN: When I reminded her of what she’d told me 20, 30-years ago she went: Oh, I didn’t say that. But of course she did.
DOUG: Yeah-yeah.
STEPHEN: The white people love Mandela now, I got-to-tell-you.
DOUG: So you get yourself a coloured girlfriend and that was the thing that really started to radicalise you ‘cause you started to wonder why on Earth the government’s got anything to do with it?
STEPHEN: Yes also there was a big rugby team; the British and Irish [indistinct] broke the boycott, came to South Africa – m’mm, a lot of protests against it. One of my [indistinct] was in the team – Tony Ward, he was the #10 the [indistinct] for Ireland in the British Lions team and I interviewed him. ‘Cause I was president of the radio station at UCT and all the Black and coloured students nearly wanted to kill me ‘cause I’d interviewed somebody who’d broken the sports boycott. For the first time I realised people had a political interest that interfered with one’s personal life and it really shocked me and it made me intellectually curious, I suppose. But because I’d lived in a poor background I related to these kids a lot more than I related to the kids I went to school with in Africa who were rich, white and middle-class. The coloured and Black students were more of who I was used to from zero to 14 back in Ireland – so, all of those things came together and in very, very late 1981, I decided I had to get out of the country. Plus I was pushed a little bit and I left South Africa and went back to Ireland on Boxing Day 1981 and I didn’t go back for 28-years.
DOUG: You didn’t get actively involved in politics in South Africa?
STEPHEN: Yeah. I was involved with protests on campus but I was very much just a kid, a peripheral element.
DOUG: M’mm.
STEPHEN: I wasn’t involved to the degree I became later.
DOUG: ‘Cause when you said you were “pushed” was that family pressure?
STEPHEN: Well, a little bit of family pressure. But also - - -
DOUG: Or political pressure?
STEPHEN: - - - some problems with the government. Because of the Sexual Relations Act and also there was a [indistinct] factor. I really wanted to get out of that joint and see the world. I suppose those 3-things combined meant that I saved the money up (sic) and flew out back to Ireland in late ’81.
DOUG: M’mm, m’mm and what did you find when you got there?
STEPHEN: Ireland was in recession. Europe was in recession – Maggie Thatcher was runnin’ the UK; the place was in uproar, you know? But it was dead-exciting.
DOUG: [laughs]
STEPHEN: I went over to England and got involved in politics, joined the Labor Party. Joined the militant [indistinct] inside the Labor Party and worked with their South African wing which was in exile in London.
DOUG: M’mm.
STEPHEN: So I was given a false passport, a false name – I did some underground work in Zimbabwe and in South Africa, in the early ‘80s. My name was: Anton. On my 21st-birthday all my presents are: Dear Anton. I was just a frenzy of political activity. Every Wednesday – because the South Africans used to send parcel bombs to all the political activists’ headquarters so I was just telling somebody the other day that every Wednesday it was my turn that when any parcel came, somebody had to open it. So you’d go down into the basement and always on bloody Wednesdays there were always parcels. Because they [indistinct] first and various activists who were in exile.
DOUG: Yes.
STEPHEN: Through parcel bombs; so, I was – like, 20-years old at the time and it’s only later when I look back I think it was a bizarre existence, you know?
DOUG: When you say you worked under-cover what did that involve doing if you can talk about it?
STEPHEN: Well I can now, obviously – but I mean, at the time – the apartheid State was a brutal régime. They killed and bombed, gaoled anyone who opposed their point of view – so, in order to organise unions, students and protest movements you couldn’t just walk in like you can in Australia, sell newspapers and have public meetings – petitions and all the rest of it.
DOUG: Yeah.
STEPHEN: You were usually arrested.
DOUG: We’re talking relatively, about pre-internet days as well.
STEPHEN: Absolutely; so – m’mm, the whole thing was underground. I had a false name, false passport and my cover was that I was a school teacher.
DOUG: Was this in Zimbabwe?
STEPHEN: In Zimbabwe, Botswana and other places where there were lots of South Africans also Zimbabwean poor. We would organise current affairs discussions – like, a cover for discussin’ politics. Organising student workers, student movements – trade-union movements – against the régime. Both Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe and also the white apartheid State in South Africa.
DOUG: You were politicising these people, you were giving them tools as it were?
STEPHEN: Yeah. They were already politicised. Very angry and politicised, wanted to change the system but – m’mm, it was just organising them and supporting them. I had that sort-of experience and I was part of an organisation that was able to do that.
DOUG: So did they then go back to South Africa?
STEPHEN: M’mm.
DOUG: Or did they work from-in whatever country they were at the time?
STEPHEN: These are people who created what – you know, became the strongest trade-union movement in the world. Which was the South African Trade Union Movement, the Student Movement and basically, overturned and over-threw the apartheid régime.
DOUG: They were coming to places like Zimbabwe, Botswana and so on – basically getting trained in how to organise?
STEPHEN: That’s right.
DOUG: (and) That was your role?
STEPHEN: That’s correct and also we tried to organise people in Zimbabwe, themselves. Against what was quite clearly and increasingly dictatorial régime which was the Mugabe régime. Which had come to power 3-years earlier with great promises but was obviously just a bureaucratic caste lookin’ after itself and treated people very badly so that was part of – like, our operations. Then in ’83, I went back to the UK – I was working for the “Militant”. I realised that even though I felt I’d done a good job down there I was actually a 1st-world person, enjoying living in London. I met an Australian who’d been a - - -
DOUG: You didn’t do the totally-fall-in-love-with-Afr ica thing?
STEPHEN: Not really. No – m’mm, you know – I think - - -
DOUG: It was a job rather than an emotional connection.
STEPHEN: - - - look I love Africa it’s absolutely fantastic. But I like the nightlife of Europe and Australia. I like the intellectual discourse I have with people who I’m used to, you know?
DOUG: M’mm.
STEPHEN: I think in Africa it was an absolutely amazing place. The people are amazing; but I was always an outsider.
DOUG: M’mm, m’mm?
STEPHEN: While in England and Australia – and Ireland – I don’t feel like an outsider. So I went back to the UK and continued to be involved. But this time in the UK the Miners’ Strike was goin’ on at the time. I worked as a typesetter for the “Militant” newspaper and I met this absolutely crazy Australian woman. Who had been a heroin addict and a prostitute on the Gold Coast, fled to the UK to try and clean her act up (sic) and I thought she was just the most sophisticated, beautiful person I’d ever met. I’d never met an Australian before and I suppose - - -
DOUG: Some introduction.
STEPHEN: - - - yeah-yeah.
DOUG: [laughs]
STEPHEN: So we used to just go out and in-between sort-of organising the revolution, we used to go out and have the most amazing times – and the next song, just to jump ahead really symbolises that time for me. Debauched nights in London during the early 1980s, you know?
DOUG: Well, it sounds like a good time to do that and we will go to this piece of music now and – yeah. Frankie Goes To Hollywood: Two Tribes. Two tribes? “Two tribes go to war”.
STEPHEN: I didn’t see it very politically, those days. I was just havin’ a good time you know?
DOUG: [laughs] Okay.
STEPHEN: I think you’re over-analysin’ there, Doug.
DOUG: M’mm – well, with someone like you I’m inclined to see [laughs] politics in everything.
STEPHEN: Fair enough.
DOUG: But - - -
STEPHEN: That’s what my shrink says.
DOUG: - - - perhaps on this occasion we’re not talking about politics. This is, Frankie Goes To Hollywood: “Two Tribes”.
[music]
DOUG: This is Doug Pollard – Digging Deeper this hour with Cr. Stephen Jolly, he’s a councillor in Yarra – just reminded me off air that he serves alongside a member of our own community, Dale Smedley from DTs.
STEPHEN: Yeah. Dale’s a good friend of mine, he [indistinct] down at Richmond and he’s one of the most beautiful human beings I’ve ever met. He’s got a great heart and he’s also very, very funny.
DOUG: He is that.
STEPHEN: I always make sure I sit next to him at Council meetings because I’ve got to tell you, I’ve done a lot of politics but nothing has ever been as boring sitting at Council meetings at Yarra Council. Dale helps me get through those boring Tuesday nights every month – so, thanks Dale. If you’re listenin’?
DOUG: If it’s so boring why do you do it?
STEPHEN: I do it because the council meetings are really just the icing on the cake (sic) as a local councillor you can get loads done, you know? I mean, over the last 6-years in terms of – you know – making sure we’ve got lots of child care, makin’ sure public housin’ tenants have a voice. Makin’ sure we’ve got more appropriate development than would otherwise be the case and just lookin’ after a million issues – from getting an indoor sports centre, re-opening Victoria Park – m’mm, it’s real community politics. It’s the lowest level of politics in Australia, you know? The people in Yarra – I mean, you’ve got everything from drug dealers to millionaires. Public housing tenants to really, really rich folk. Lots of the artistic community, loads of LGBTI community there as well and it is really the most – I know it’s an over-worked word but it’s definitely the most – diverse part of the world and it really keeps you on your toes. I just love it. I feel so honoured to be councillor for those people.
DOUG: Because a lot of people say that one of the things wrong with Australian politics is we have too many politicians, too many layers of government and Jeff Kennett was the first one to start slicing-out things from the bottom layer and gluing smaller areas together. To give us bigger councils but a lot of people think we haven’t gone far enough along those lines. But you sound like you’re in favour of the small-scale stuff?
STEPHEN: In Europe, they’ve got a European parliament where the politicians get paid a whole heap of money and have massive constituencies; once in a year you might bump into your local European parliamentarian.
DOUG: M’mm, m’mm.
STEPHEN: At a local level I think council should be made more powerful. I think we should be in Australia with local councils, lookin’ after education and they [councils] should be more powerful and get rid of State government. I don’t think we need 3-layers of parliament – 3-layers of government, in Australia – we obviously need a federal government, that goes without saying. But I think local councils are the easiest place for local people to access when they’ve an issue. But the problem is through cost shifting they’ve been systematically under-funded and they’re much less powerful than they are in places like Britain. I think that’s a big mistake
DOUG: Everybody who works in one particular level of government thinks one other level of government needs to go. I have heard a lot of argument in favour of scaling back the federal government enormously and giving much more power to the States. I’ve heard arguments for scaling back local government and giving much more power to the States – I’ve heard every argument from every particular angle.
STEPHEN: M’mm.
DOUG: One of the things as an outsider – obviously as a Brit myself, who’s come to live in Australia. It’s been nearly 20-years, now. One of the things that strikes me when you look at a city like Melbourne is there is no city-wide authority. There are a lot of small councils looking after relatively by English standards anyway, small areas but you don’t have one strategic authority – like, with the GLC [Greater London Council] in London for an example.
STEPHEN: Or in Brisbane.
DOUG: Or in Brisbane, for example.
STEPHEN: M’mm.
DOUG: Would you like to see something like that?
STEPHEN: Yeah I would but I have to say, Doug. It’s not just the structural questions; because even if you did have that central authority if it was run by the major Parties today they would balls-it-up just as much as they’re balls’n-up – you know, the segregated system we have at the moment. The key thing is the fact that in Australia the two major Parties in my opinion are like Tweedledum and Tweedledee. They turn-off most young people; the Greens are like a lame, anaemic alternative and unlike some places in the world there really is no major alternative of left-wing voice. The Party I’m in is a very small Party, we’ve got a certain base in Yarra but no really major bases elsewhere - - -
DOUG: M’mm.
STEPHEN: - - - so there really isn’t – like, a powerful left-wing voice. An alternative voice in Australian politics like you have in Greece, Germany and Ireland. I think that’s a missing link we really need to fill. Because - - -
DOUG: But aren’t the Greens coming along, turning into the force? Because you’ve people like Adam Bandt who started out in the Labor Party, from a Marxist perspective. Who’s nowadays getting labelled I think the phrase is, being a watermelon: red with a “Green” skin. You haven’t been tempted to go down that route.
STEPHEN: I think the Greens, I know it’s a cliché but some of my best friends are Greens.
[laughs]
STEPHEN: But I’ve got to say they’ve been hopeless on the local council. They’ve been in a very powerful position on the Yarra Council since 2002; we’ve had three or 4-Green mayors. We’ve elected another one 2-nights ago and all we’ve had from them are high rates and a couple of extra bicycle lanes. The hopes people had in ’02 in Yarra when we had the first Green mayor and the first almost majority Green on the Yarra Council [indistinct] councillors was that – you know, the world was going to be turned up-side down and we were going to have tremendous changes takin’ place – well, that actually hasn’t happened. Every times the Greens enter into a coalition with a major Party here, Tasmania – overseas – they’ve sold-out their ideas and they become like a prop for one of the major Parties so I think it’s great people voted Adam in, in August. Because it shows people are looking for an alternative to the 2-major Party system and I congratulate Adam. He’s a mate of mine and all that. But I don’t think that the Greens are that 3rd-force; they’re very middle class, they’re very inner city. They don’t really have a basis outside the inner city and I think we can do better than the Greens for a 3rd-force in Australian politics.
DOUG: There’s not much sign of them going to your Party for that - - -
STEPHEN: No, no. I’m not - - -
DOUG: - - - socialist – which branch of socialism are you? ‘Cause we seem to have lots of little splinter-socialist Parties.
STEPHEN: You could say there’re 3-types of socialists. On the one extreme there’s socialism that’s another word for Stalinism, which is what we saw in China, Russia and Eastern Europe. That’s obviously not what I stand for in fact, I participated in the 1989 Tiān’ānmén Square movement. I spoke at those protests to half-a-million people. The other extreme, you mentioned at the start of this interview people in the Labor Party who are – you know? Carrying on the policies of the major Party who claim to be socialists, I stand for socialism that actually means representing ordinary, working people – democracy. So I’d see myself as a democratic socialist, not a totalitarian socialist or – like, the ones in the Labor Party. Fake socialists.
DOUG: I had a friend at college when I asked him what sort of socialist he was he said: I’m a crude Stalinist. With the emphasis on “crude”.
STEPHEN: I didn’t say I wasn’t crude.
[laughs]
DOUG: I think you can’t be a Stalinist and not be crude. You’re not that kind of socialist.
STEPHEN: M’mm.
DOUG: But it has to be said there doesn’t seem to be – I think you’re right, people are looking for a 3rd-way of some kind. People are looking for something different from the 2-major Parties but how do you – if the Greens are not going to be it – how are you going to get that 3rd-force into something powerful within Australia if you don’t do – like, Adam Bandt and others have done and sort-of put the socialist past aside and basically do what used to be called entryism, into the Greens.
STEPHEN: If you – m’mm - - -
DOUG: ‘Cause you say they’re too middle class, right? But isn’t that putting-off working class people like you, from getting involved.
STEPHEN: M’mm, no. I think you’ve got to be honest with people. You’ve got to say to people what they (sic) are. I could’ve got double the vote I got if I didn’t say I was a socialist, if I’d have said I’m an Independent – something warm-and-fuzzy and so on – ‘cause most of my [indistinct] think: oh you’re a good bloke but I can’t vote Socialist that’s a bit too far for me to go. But the fact is like a chemist, you’ve got to label your chemicals correctly otherwise you’re going to kill somebody and the same in politics. So - - -
DOUG: I don’t think your brand of socialism is going to kill anybody.
STEPHEN: - - - no. You know what I mean.
DOUG: [laughs]
STEPHEN: The point I’m makin’ is that once this country fires-up like we’re seeing in Europe, you know? Obviously, economically we’re better than they are in Europe and America at the moment; but once you see an economic change like you’ve got over there at the moment. There’re more movements taking place of young people, students, workers and so on that leads to the generation of community groups, of activism and that’s when you bring all those groups together into a 3rd-force. That’s how it happened in places like Germany in the last couple of years.
DOUG: Any sign of it happening here?
STEPHEN: Not in the short term. But I think Australia’s in the slipstream of Chinese growth and we’ve sort-of semi-escaped the global financial crisis but that’s not going to go on indefinitely and when it does happen it’ll happen very fast. I suppose the point I’d make if I can get 10 per cent vote for an open Socialist candidate in a gentrified part of Melbourne can you imagine what those ideas would generate in more working-class parts of Melbourne and Australia. So, I suppose I’d say to the unions stop being the ATM for the Labor Party and start creating a new 3rd-force that are really going to look after your interests and the interests of everybody in this country. Rather than those of the major Parties.
DOUG: Okay; so much for the manifesto.
STEPHEN: Oh well, you asked.
DOUG: I did ask. I did want to hear it; m’mm, we’ve not a huge amount of time left and you’ve two more songs to get in. Both of which I’m keen to hear so let’s bring in the next one which is “Groove is in the Heart” by DeeLite – where’s this one sit, in your pantheon?
STEPHEN: I went to Sydney in ’85 and I worked as a Socialist and a Labor Party activist there for some years but in 1989, I was asked to go to China when the Tiān’ānmén Square movement was on and I got involved in that. I saw the massacre and a lot of people being killed, I spoke to half-a-million people. I was the only westerner to speak at Tiān’ānmén Square; it was an extremely traumatic experience so when I came back to Sydney in the winter of ’89 after that I had post-traumatic stress syndrome. I was in hospital - - -
DOUG: M’mm, m’mm.
STEPHEN: - - - for a week and this song – I suppose like the last song – symbolises for me, me just sort-of escapin’ from politics for a little bit and just partyin’. I moved to Enmore and just havin’ a really wild time in Sydney during the early part of the 1990s and – yeah. This song brings back a lot of really good memories of clubs in Sydney, back then.
DOUG: Okay – DeeLite: “Groove is in the Heart”.
[music]
DOUG: Digging Deeper this hour with Yarra councillor, Stephen Jolly – now – before we went to that track which we faded out because it’s immensely long and you said that was your – like, chilling period. After you were in China during Tiān’ānmén Square; do you want to tell us a little bit how you got there and what that was like?
STEPHEN: I went over there as a journalist for the socialist newspaper because we wanted to find-out firsthand what was goin’ on and obviously, the whole city a couple of months prior to the massacre on 4th-of-June ’89 was basically in the hands of the people. It was like a city in revolt and Tiān’ānmén Square was teeming with tents and students fighting for democracy and for a change in China. As I interviewed them, I entered into many discussions with them and was invited to speak at the launch of the Independent Trade Union Movement they’d set-up in the Forbidden City. Right next to Tiān’ānmén Square.
DOUG: M’mm, m’mm.
STEPHEN: That was 4-days before the massacre. They asked me to speak. I thought there was goin’ to be – like, 12-people there. When I got there, there were half-a-million people – again, I was there sort-of underground and the next minute I’m all over TV – ABC-TV, all over the world. ‘Cause I was the first non-Chinese to speak at Tiān’ānmén Square so my cover was well-and-truly blown.
DOUG: [laughs]
STEPHEN: So - - -
DOUG: If you want to work undercover it doesn’t do - - -
STEPHEN: - - - no.
DOUG: To stand-up in front of half-a-million people, does it?
STEPHEN: So – m’mm, I buggered-off to Shànghǎi for a couple of days and then came back on Saturday morning. The 3rd-of-June, a - - -
DOUG: Were the authorities keeping an eye on you?
STEPHEN: I don’t know.
DOUG: Presumably, they do in China?
STEPHEN: They had many more problems than Steve Jolly I’ve got to tell you; they had the whole country in revolt or at least, Běijīng anyway.
DOUG: M’mm, m’mm.
STEPHEN: So I got back to China, to Běijīng – the Saturday morning, the 3rd-of-June and we weren’t to know it at the time, but it was a few hours before the massacre. I was in the Square when at midnight. What I thought were fireworks went off and that of course was the start of the movement of troops, the so-called People’s Liberation Army into Tiān’ānmén Square and one of the most horrific massacres in modern history.
DOUG: Very traumatic.
STEPHEN: Well - - -
DOUG: For the Chinese people and also for you, personally.
STEPHEN: - - - it’s not – m’mm, you know when you see people gettin’ killed. When you get to see people gettin’ shot unless you’re a total psychopath it affects you.
DOUG: M’mm.
STEPHEN: Especially when some of those people were people you knew.
DOUG: (and) When you could yourself be in the line of fire.
STEPHEN: Very, very brave people helped me out and got me out of that place, I don’t know whatever happened to them. I hung around in Běijīng for about a week and then bribed my way via taxi to the airport and one of Bob Hawke’s emergency planes he’d organised for Australians in China. Managed to get a Qantas flight out but it was an amazing experience, because everyone talks about the massacre but the period prior to the massacre was just the most amazing political experience. To see a whole city – one of the biggest cities, becoming under the control of the people.
DOUG: I remember them making that statue they put in the Square, the sort-of Statue of Liberty but both hands on the torch.
STEPHEN: Yes, yes.
DOUG: (and) All those sorts of things.
STEPHEN: But they weren’t saying they wanted to bring back capitalism into China because they knew that’d be 3rd-world capitalism they’d get. Not the 1st-world capitalism; they were lookin’ for democracy. They were sayin’ some of the socialist stuff is good; they had better education and health than they had before the ’49 revolution. But there’s so much corruption, dictatorship, brutality and lack of democracy they couldn’t live like that anymore.
DOUG: Was there some hope around then the government would take that on board and perhaps make changes?
STEPHEN: Yeah. Some people thought that. I didn’t, I thought they’d [the State] have to be over-thrown to get the type of changes the people wanted. Or alternatively, the government would counter-attack and wipe-out the people which is obviously, what happened.
DOUG: M’mm.
STEPHEN: But the idea the Chinese government were just going to say: Oh, yeah that’s a good point. (and) Just sort-of make reforms from the top – like, Gorbachev-style. Was never goin’ to happen because once you lose power in China – governmental power – you lose everything. Because the government at that stage, controlled the economy; you couldn’t just retreat to the economic front and they [the State] were goin’ to fight to the end. The geriatrics that ran the country, at the time.
DOUG: The funny thing now that China has opened up and you’ve a kind-of capitalism happening there another Tiān’ānmén [massacre] is less likely but on the other hand, if it took place it may have more chance of making that kind of reformist change?
STEPHEN: Yeah, well you’ve got – you know, a billion people workin’ in industry. It’s the biggest working class on the planet and they haven’t really moved into action, they’re super-exploited and when they do they’re goin’ to turn that country up-side down and I think that’s goin’ to have big impacts – including with Australia but that’s sort-of the missing factor that’s taken in China right now.
DOUG: M’mm, m’mm. Well let’s leave China and get you back to Australia, you had to recover from that experience and somehow from all that you ended-up in Melbourne.
STEPHEN: Yeah. When Jeff Kennett got elected in ’92 the Socialist Party in Sydney said, listen will you go down there and help our Branch in Melbourne? I was very happy to do that and I got involved ‘cause there were massive protests against the Kennett government in the ‘90s with the Richmond Secondary College occupation which went on for a year.
DOUG: M’mm, m’mm.
STEPHEN: I was campaign co-ordinator there. We saved that school; it’s now, Melbourne Girls’ College. My daughter goes there now so it’s an irony of history. Durin’ the course of the ‘90s and this decade I’ve been a political activist. I’ve ended-up with two kids and – m’mm, as I said before got elected in ’04 to the Yarra Council and – yeah. This is my home now, I love this city. It’s just the most amazing place and m’mm, it’s not perfect. Nowhere is but I’ve been all over the place but I like Melbourne more than anywhere.
DOUG: You’ve stood for parliament – you’ve stood for State parliament?
STEPHEN: Yeah – well, the council election came first. I beat the Greens, Labor Party – everything else, in ’02. I got 1 per cent in the State. In ’06, I got 5 per cent in the State and a couple of weeks ago I got 10 per cent so it’s a steady progression. I think by the time I’m 130, I - - -
DOUG: [laughs]
STEPHEN: - - - might get elected to State parliament. But at a local level [indistinct] support me and my Party have and – m’mm - - -
DOUG: You’re not tempted to have a go at the federal senate for example, where you might be in with a chance?
STEPHEN: I don’t know. You might’ve given me a good idea there?
DOUG: [laughs]
STEPHEN: Got to come and talk with you more often, Doug.
DOUG: Yeah.
STEPHEN: You can be my advisor, you know?
DOUG: I can hear the thunder from the right wing – God-damn socialists in the senate, can’t have this. Rhubarb-rhubarb. I think you’re right, there is a seeking for a 3rd-force – maybe – you’re destined to be the spearhead of that 3rd-force in Australian politics, who knows? Because you’ve had more success than anybody else with breaking through from outside the mainstream other than the Greens.
STEPHEN: I think one of the things the Socialist Party has been very good at is the rubber hits-the-road we don’t just talk about that stuff. We actually implement it.
DOUG: Do it at the local level.
STEPHEN: Yeah.
DOUG: Bit like Hezbollah, really. In that sense [laughs]
STEPHEN: Yeah or the Black Panthers. I know you’re jokin’ but there is an element of truth – you know that people will trust you if you can deliver on the small things. How are they goin’ to trust you with the big things if you can’t deliver on the small things? That’s been a political motto I’ve had and so a lot of what I do is very, very mundane stuff but it builds trust.
DOUG: It does. Well, Stephen it’s been a pleasure talking with you today.
STEPHEN: Thank you, you too.
DOUG: I didn’t realise what an exciting life you’ve had so I’m glad you came and told us all about it. One last piece of music and then we’ll say goodbye, this is?
STEPHEN: For my gay friends in Collingwood and my daughter who’s a big Kylie fan.
DOUG: Okay.
STEPHEN: Kylie and Scissor Sisters did this at Glastonbury, winter this year and it’s an amazing song. But I could only get the original version which is pretty good anyway. It’s by the Scissor Sisters: “Any Which Way”.
DOUG: Stephen Jolly – thanks very much, for joining us today.
STEPHEN: Thank you.
