In my senior year of high school I remember wrestling with the idea of politics and where my political affiliations were. It occurred to me that we were all living within the system known as Capitalism and we were doing things in a ‘Capitalist way’, so therefore I must be a Capitalist. I mentioned this to my English Lit teacher at the time, someone I had a lot of respect for, and she voiced surprise and disappointment, saying she thought I was surely a Socialist. I said, ‘What’ s that?’ The next thing I knew I was borrowing a bunch of books about Socialism from my school library and reading up on the subject. I quickly became a Socialist and have been one (with the occasional detour into Anarchism when Socialism didn’t seem hardcore enough) ever since. Blame it all on my high school English Lit teacher.
Come 2018 me and my mate Lui attended the annual Marxism Conference put on by a political group called the Victorian Socialists. This was our second year doing this. We had formed our own political group a year before as part of the Democracy at Work movement (a kind of cheer-leader for co-ops in the workplace) spearheaded by Marxist economist Richard Wolff, and we were the Melbourne chapter. I was also involved with another group called UBI Victoria, dedicated to researching and promoting the idea of Universal Basic Income. You might say Leftist politics was in the air for me back in the 2010s. Anyway, at this particular Marxism Conference we attended a speech given by a fellow called Stephen Jolly, who was campaigning as the VS’s representative for the State Election that year. He was a powerful orator, and I decided then and there I would join the campaign. I had been looking to get more insider experience in radical politics, thinking it would help me with my other political activities, and this was a golden opportunity to do so. So I joined the Victorian Socialists and campaigned with them to get old Steve into the Upper House seat of Wills Region for the 2018 State election. It was my political campaigner phase. Not really one of my favourite phases, I must say, but definitely a Phase.
It got off to a slightly shaky start, and I should have seen what was coming based on that, but I didn’t. It might have saved me a lot of money spent and time wasted. The shaky bit was what I discovered when I did a quick Google search on Stephen Jolly, which immediately told me he was involved in some harassment complaint. There wasn’t a lot of detail about it and I let it go because I figured the Victorian Socialists had vetted Steve and decided it was probably bogus. I’ll come back to this later.
Next, I attended a number of meetings with the VS at Melbourne’s Trade Hall and got to know some of the other members. I think I was viewed with suspicion by some, especially some of the women, who maybe thought I was playing at ‘revolutionary’ to get some female action. Needless to say, this was never the case. But I liked going to Trade Hall, with all its history, and then hanging out with some of the other members for drinks at the John Curtin Hotel across the road. It was definitely a vibe. From talking with the other members I soon learned that we were trying to win the fifth seat in the Wills Region. It presently had 2 Labour, 1 Green, 1 Liberal and 1 Independent. We would be hoping to beat the Independent candidate, who was Fiona Pattern of the newly-renamed Reason Party (formerly the Sex Party!). I met Steve Jolly a number of times and found him to be a magnetic personality, but can’t say I got to know him very well. I once congratulated him on his performance on a radio program and he seemed pleased and disarmed that I had even listened to it.
I was eventually assigned a district to campaign in, namely the northern suburb of Mill Park. My partner in this was a fellow named Nick, a young guy with a beard who was much more seasoned in Socialist politics than I was. He was a really nice guy, but there’s one thing I have to tell you about Nick: he was incredibly handsome, and he knew it. The VS put on a number of promotional events in the course of the campaign, and every time I attended one there was good old Nick acting as the greeter/face of the party. Nick knew very well that they were giving him this role because he was so damned handsome. He used to joke about it. You can’t help like a guy who has a sense of humour about how pretty he is.
I spent so 
much time (and money) driving out to Mill Park to do my campaigning with Nick (it was quite a way from my home). It mostly consisted of handing out flyers to punters at the big shopping mall there and talking to them about the campaign. Nick was a natural at this, and his good looks got quite a few young ladies on board. I was less natural at it. In fact, I hated every minute of it but was resigned to doing it for the sake of the campaign. I guess the best part of it all was hanging out with the many other VS members I met in the course of the campaign. We often had a few of them join us to help with the Mill Park campaign. Then there were other events I attended, like a couple of protest rallies in and around Melbourne. These were pretty intense – especially the one I joined in Northcote where we chanted and marched up and down High Street, stopping the traffic. The best event was definitely the Marxism Conference I attended in Sydney. I hadn’t been there before, so it was nice to see the place. The conference was well attended and I enjoyed meeting new people and being stimulated by some interesting lectures and debates. After the conference I wandered the city and checked out some great record stores. I also took a ferry around the famous harbor up to Manly.
The campaign heated up as we
headed toward election day. We did multiple door knock sessions every Sunday in many inner-city districts, including Mill Park. These were pretty intense in their own way. I had to steel myself every time I entered another yard to knock on a stranger’s door and try to talk to them about the campaign and what the VS were about. Most times I was met with mild curiosity, sometimes even enthusiasm, but sometimes it was outright hostility or apathy. Overall, I can’t say I enjoyed it, and I was always happy to just join everyone at the post-door knock festivities that were held at the nearest pub. It was a good time to debrief and share stories about the day, the people we met and so forth.
In the last couple of weeks before the election I was required to attend one of the pre-voting booths in my district, to hand out flyers and talk to the punters waiting in line outside to vote. This was something I especially hated doing. I assumed most of the people by this point would have made up their minds about who they were voting for, but I guess there were still a few ‘swinging’ voters who the VS thought could still be persuaded. I was not good at engaging, but there were others in my team who were very aggressive – so much so that there were complaints from some of the other party members. I had some friendly chats with these other party members, especially the ones representing the Labour Party. It was a bit frowned upon by some of my colleagues, but I didn’t care. I also got to see and/or speak to some of the other candidates who made an appearance, shaking people’s hands and fielding questions. One of these was Fiona Patten, our main rival in the voting. She headed the incumbent Reason Party, which had won its seat previously as the Sex Party. Word was she had done some deals with other parties to get ahead in preferences, which are a part of the system here in Victoria. If we were going to win, we would have to beat her. In person she seemed nice enough, polite and slightly pretty, with an undertone of cutthroat competitiveness.
Around this point in the campaign I was surprised to get asked by the VS leaders to represent Evelyn district for the lower house seat. The party had decided to put in candidates for many of the lower house seats, and I was apparently the only member who lived in the Evelyn district, so I got the nomination by default. I agreed and was very surprised to find my name there on the ballot. I was the Victoria Socialists member for the seat of Evelyn in the 2018 state election!
Come election day I was assigned a voting site to man and hand out vote slips to the public as the Victorian Socialists’ representative. This was a Primary School in Mill Park. I got there early and set up some billboards out front and settled in for the day. Apart from trying to give How To Vote slips out to the punters there wasn’t much else to do. I struck up a conversation with one of the candidate reps, talking about anything other than politics as I recall. When the votes were in I remained at the school and watched the tallying process as a scrutineer. It looked like my party had got some votes, but I had no idea if it would be enough to get us through. I texted Admin my impressions then headed off to the big vote night party at an inner city pub.
The word when I got there was that we didn’t win the seat we wanted but got damn close. It was a disappointment, but we knew we’d tried our best. Everyone was drinking and having a good time, relieved that the big campaign was over. At one point Steve Jolly got up, to a round of cheers, and thanked us for our efforts, with a promise to keep the fight going. It was a good night, despite the result. I hung out with some of the friends I’d made and we congratulated each other on a job well done, and that was pretty much it. The next day I checked the Victorian Electoral Commission’s site for the results. It turned out we had actually won the Primary vote count but lost on those damn preferences. Fiona Pattern had been smart doing all those deals with the other parties as they helped her get over the line. And my own personal count in the seat of Evelyn? I got seven votes, including my own!
A few weeks after all this I received an email from the Victorian Socialists admin. It mentioned how there had been a court hearing against Steve Jolly to do with that harassment complaint and he’d been found guilty. I still don’t know the details, but it may have gone as far as physical or sexual assault, possibly to do with his ex-wife. Don’t quote me, I’m not sure. But, as the email stated, because of all this, the Victorian Socialists had decided to withdraw their support for Steve and cut their association with him. I couldn’t help wonder how this all would have played out if we’d won the seat in the election. Steve would now be a sitting member of Parliament, but with assault charges against him. How the mainstream media would have loved that! Maybe it was just as well we didn’t win. Either way, it was a learning experience for the VS, who have gone on to field even more candidates in recent elections, gaining at least one seat on a Local Government Council so far. As for me, somewhat disillusioned by the whole experience, I turned my back on the VS and enrolled in a Library and Information Services course to become a Library worker. Which is what I do these days. But I’ll always remember that big Victorian Socialists state campaign of 2018 and the part I played in it.