Same with all groups. But we should judge groups by their outcomes for the common, and that’s why I’d class unions as broadly progressive, and forgive them for the sins of their members.

Anyway, ‘left’ is an antiquated term. It only serves to differentiate from that other vagary, ‘right’. Sort of a general signpost for the direction we wish to take.

I’m not so much complaining about the closed shop, but how the closed shop organisation represented a class of people different from myself.

And how the ALP drew on this network of closed shop organisations for its sustenance.

I struggle to see how that organisation can be described as ‘Left’ when it was filled with sexist, racist and frankly reactionary males.

This is not the ‘Left’ I know – not progressive, not inclusive, not egalitarian, none of the above.

Maybe it is a limitation of the term ‘Left’ rather than a limitation of the Labor Movement. Maybe the Labor movement was never intended to be ‘Left’ in the way modern people would read.

It was always a Catholic Party – there to correct a sectarian imbalance in Australian political power, rather than to progress society in general.

It is one thing to ensure the Brothers and the Nuns have enough money to provide hospitals and schools to the working poor; it is another thing altogether to genuinely change society based on respect for humans.

In reality, though, voluntary membership hardly works quite as well as the mandated one. Just look at the biggest union of all – the taxpayers’ union. If membership was voluntary, who would sign up? You’re right, noone. The country would stop running and we could all retreat to our mortgaged mcmansions and grow vegetables.

I’ve been a leftie all my life and can never once remember joining a union willingly.

My first boss was a card carrying NSW ALP member, and said if I joined a union they would regard it as a sign of failure in our relationship.

I was forced to join a union in a closed shop for a part time job at uni. I wrote and told them to fcuk off the day I quite the job. They wanted to keep collecting dues even though I left and didn’t keep working in the industry.

And to make it worse, their newsletter espoused political views I disagreed with vehemently, on issues like tobacco, women’s rights and forests to name 3.

I find it bizarre that people associate a movement or a party having an organised labour function and calling that ‘Left’.

I bet the AMA ringleaders would find it odd too, as would the police associations in each state.