<!-- Image with unknown copyright status removed:
Craig Isherwood
-->
Craig William Isherwood,
Australian political activist,
is National Secretary of the
Citizens Electoral Council (CEC),
an organisation of Australian supporters of the American political
activist
Lyndon LaRouche. He has been a candidate in
Australian federal elections four times, but has never polled a
significant vote.
Isherwood was a horticulturist, mechanic,
youth worker and shop owner before becoming involved in the
LaRouche movement. In
1988 he
was involved in the CEC in
Kingaroy, Queensland. The CEC was
originally created by the
Australian League of Rights, an
extreme right-wing and
anti-Semitic organisation. But in the late
1980s the CEC was taken over by LaRouche followers. Isherwood
worked for
Trevor Perrett, who ran as an independent
candidate with CEC backing in the
Barambah
by-election resulting from Sir
Joh Bjelke-Petersen's resignation
from the
Queensland Legislative
Assembly. Perrett won the by-election, but joined the
National Party of Australia soon
after. (In
1998 he was
defeated by a
One Nation Party candidate.)
In 1990,
the CEC developed an economic programme for the reconstruction of
our nation entitled Sovereign Australia, and in 1994 published
Sovereign Australia II—A Legislative Programme to Save our Nation,
which latter contained drafts of the necessary legislation for
economic reconstruction, including debt moratoria for farmers and
the re-establishment of a national bank, among other key elements;
these programmes and legislation are far more urgently needed now,
than when they were written.
CEC policies included
citizen initiated referendums,
opposition to the "
Australia Card" and "a fairer go" for farming
families. In the
United States, LaRouche has frequently been
described as a fascist and accused of anti-Semitism. Although the
Australian CEC faithfully reproduces LaRouche's statements and
distributes his literature, Isherwood has not been accused of
extreme views in the same way. The CEC's published views are a mix
of traditional left-wing policies and
populist slogans which it shares with One Nation
and the Queensland National Party.
As does Mr. LaRouche, the CEC
represents the Judeo-Christian-Islamic view that all human beings
are created in the living image of God the Creator, and are
therefore endowed with creative reason, unlike any other species.
This "divine spark" of reason common to all mankind, means that
there is only one race—the human race—contrary to the racist
premises of multiculturalism. Since all men and women are created
equal, they are thus sovereign individuals under natural law, and
the sacred duty of governments is to foster the common good—the
economic and social conditions under which each and every
individual may flourish, and therefore contribute to the good of
his or her nation, and to mankind as a whole.
In the early 1990s
Isherwood moved to
Melbourne and become a full-time worker for the
CEC. As National Secretary he runs the CEC from an office near his
home in
Coburg. His wife and sons are also CEC
office-bearers and frequent election candidates. Isherwood
contested the federal seat of
Wills in
1996 and
2001, and
ran for the
Australian Senate in
1998 and
2004.