The Queensland Journal Of Labour History No. 18, March 2014 ISSN 1832-9926 Contents EDITORIAL Howard Guille, Ross Gwyther and Bob Russell 1 BLHA President’s Column Greg Mallory 3 Activities of our National Organisation Nikola Balnave 5

ARTICLES Dunwich Asylum Mess Hall is 100 Elisabeth Gondwe, Howard Guille and Lisa Jackson 7 Alexander Macdonald and Student-Union Peter Cross 11 Solidarity: 1966–1969 May Day, 2013 Humphrey McQueen 24 “These times of boasted freedom...”: the Jeff Rickertt 26 Brisbane Free Speech Fight of 1913–14 Creating Union Activists: An Interview with Bob Russell 42 Jen Thomas, Acting Queensland Branch Secretary of the Services Union BOOK REVIEW The Dictatorship of Capital: The New Bob Russell 54 Corporate World Order IN MEMORIAM A tribute to journalist Tony Reeves Jack Saunders 56 CONTRIBUTORS 62

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The latest issue of Labour History (November 2013)

The latest issue – a standard non-thematic - continues the journal’s long-established practice of publishing innovative research on the economic, industrial, social, ideological and political dimensions of Australasian labour history. Whilst covering a diversity of topics, themes, spaces and moments in time, the issue’s complement of 11 scholarly articles also serves to advance knowledge in the field by breaking new ground, redressing significant areas of neglect or contesting pre-existing understandings and interpretations. What the contents of this issues highlights, above all else, is the resurgence of interest in revisionist interpretations of Labor Party history. In the lead piece, Bradley Bowden offers some powerful insights on Labor’s past and present in Queensland. Bowden charts the emergence of ‘modern Labor’ in Queensland from 1980 on, when control passed from Trades Hall to the Reform Group after intervention by Labor’s Federal Executive.

As well as the usual complement of reviews, the issue carries two non-refereed research reports.

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Email: [email protected] iv Editorial Howard Guille, Ross Gwyther and Bob Russell

This issue of the journal once again making it as hard as possible for unions takes us from the 19th century to the but as easy as possible for big money. present. It does so when the Australian car industry is being closed, Qantas Other changes to industrial law and workers are paying with their jobs practice are even more anti union and for bad management, both Alcoa and anti worker. They include restrictions Rio are closing aluminium refineries on entry to work sites, reducing the and smelters at Gove and Point Henry number of allowable matters in State and mining has lost its lustre. Anti- awards and agreements and, as we go to worker political forces are rampant in press, imposing individual contracts on Queensland and the Commonwealth. senior medical staff in public hospitals. The industrial changes in Queensland The waters around the Barrier Reef were described by one union officer as are to be filled with millions of tonnes “work choices on steroids’ of spoil from new coal ports and Mr Abbott says he will not support the The VLAD (Vicious Lawless creation of any more national parks and Association Disestablishment) Act that timber workers are “the ultimate started out against motor cycle gangs conservationists”. but needs to be seen as an attack on freedom of association and the right to In 2012–13 the Queensland Government work. It is anti civil liberties and allows shredded the public service. Now with the Attorney-General to use regulations its controls on political spending it is to define any group as ‘illegal’ and the trying to shut up its critics especially police to determine whether anyone the unions. Unions are required to is an ‘associate’. The ALP opposition ballot their members before spending voted for the original legislation in more than $10,000 for a ‘political November last year but in March this purpose’. Yet Attorney-General Jarrod year announced it will press for repeal. Bleijie is making it much easier to keep As the Queensland Law Society says political donations secret by lifting the these laws put at risk the democratic disclosure threshold from $1,000 to rights of all people and threaten the $12,400 and scrapping caps on election fundamental principle of the separation spending. It seems to us very much like of powers.

1 A spoof advertisement for Australia last year on the history and continuing and Queensland is an apt summary of significance of May Day in Australia. where we have got to; As he says, ‘it is our duty to keep the past alive’ and that “we are not in for ADVERTISEMENT the long haul, but the endless haul” Business without borders. Bargains galore. The three writers from the North Hurry, labour for as little as $1 Stradbroke Island Historical Museum a day. draw our attention to a less well- Forests going cheap as chips. known history, the incarceration of Great Barrier Reef — own a the poor, sick and inebriated at the piece of coral as an executive Dunwich Benevolent Asylum on paperweight. North Stradbroke Island. 2013 marks Who needs a car industry or an the 100th anniversary of the remaining airline. building from what was Queensland’s Stride across the globe and workhouse for the poor from 1865– pick the low hanging fruit. 1946, It had 21,000 inmates over its Australia — open for business life — the majority who were aged — closed to refugees. labouring people shipped there from all over the state. A common thread connects the various articles in this issue and that Peter Cross continues our analysis of is the injustice and repression that the turbulent 1960s in Brisbane with a Queenslanders have had to combat from close look at the relationship between before federation down to the present. Alex Macdonald and the student Peter Cross, Jeff Rickertt, Elisabeth new left. Peter is an undergraduate Gondwe, Howard Guille, Lisa Jackson Law/Arts student at the University and Humphrey McQueen chronicle of Queensland. He has a particular various aspects of this history. Jeff interest in Queensland political culture Rickertt provides a detailed discussion and has worked with the Centre for of our first battle for free speech as part the Government of Queensland under of the campaign for full civil liberties Danielle Miller and Roger Scott. We in his discussion of the Australasian welcome this article and would be Socialist party’s struggle for the right pleased to have more contributions to be heard in Brisbane. Given recent from a new generation of students. moves that place civil liberties under a cloud in Queensland, this article on We continue our series of interviews our first free speech movement could with current union and political hardly be more timely. We also reprint leaders. This issue features an a speech given by Humphrey McQueen interview with Jen Thomas, the Acting

2 Secretary of the Services Union. Our Finally on free speech and activism, we interest in this union was sparked by remember and mark the contribution a new activist program that the union of Tony Reeves. In his own words is running. Distinct from delegate ‘You don’t know what it’s like to be a training, this program adopts a broad member of the Labor Party till you’ve notion of activism in the workplace been expelled at least once — in my and in the community. While we know case, twice’. that activists created trade unions, the question now is whether unions can successfully create activists.

BLHA President’s Column Greg Mallory

President’s column February 2014 selling the journal at various bookshops around Brisbane. This was met with The Association held its AGM in mixed success with some bookshops December. Danielle Miller has selling them and others giving them stepped down as she has taken a job away as these shops could not enter the in Melbourne and Andrew Dallas journal into their computer system. has stepped down as Treasurer but continues on as an Executive member. Ross Gwyther has continued his work I thank them for their work over on the project Queensland Comrades the years. The AGM voted two new Speaks. This project is funded by members to the Executive, Emma the Search Foundation and is based Thornton and ‘Snowy’ Heilborn. Both on a series of interviews of labour have long experience in the trade union movement activists who were active movement and ‘Snowy’ has attended in the Communist Party in the 1940s virtually every event conducted by the and 1950s. Ross has conducted 15 Association since its reformation in interviews so far and plans to do 2000. The AGM also heard a report on another eight during 2014. A web page

3 has been established as part of the and October Symposium. We need to BLHA website and transcripts will be get more young people involved in the available. Association. Perhaps we could have a seminar which explores postgraduate At the Federal level the ASSLH ran the work in the area of labour history or national conference in July in Sydney. a seminar on trade union work which Sigrid McCausland attended and has involves young people. written a report in the September journal. We already have had some ideas on possible symposium discussions for On a sad note I would like to report this year. This year there will be a lot on the death of one of our members of public discussion on war since it Tony Reeves. Tony was a colourful is 100 years since the start of World character who wrote a number of books War 1. Conscription was a big issue on prominent crime figures in Sydney. then and the role of trade unions and He was also an active ALP member the Industrial Workers of the World until his resignation from the party (IWW) was significant. It has been over privatisation. Tony was a former suggested that the Association run a symposium on the theme of the trade Sydney City Councillor during the union movement and war. Another Green Ban era of the 1970s and a good suggestion is a bus tour of Brisbane friend of Jack Mundey. examining various labour history sites. The Executive will discuss these As President I would like to see the proposals at its first meeting of the year. Association be involved in more activity I wish the Association and members a besides our Alex Macdonald Lecture productive year.

4 Activities of our National Organisation - The Australian Society for the Study of Labour History Nikola Balnave President, ASSLH

I am very pleased to contribute a few 2014 special issue of the journal holds words to the Queensland Journal of particular significance. This issue will Labour History, and to provide BLHA be devoted to articles by historians in members with a brief update on the Australia and overseas working on activities and focus of the Society. various aspects of the relationship between the Anzac Legend, the labour There are currently two main movement and the working class, and objectives of the Society. The first is will be produced as a book with the to ensure that our primary publication, title: Labour and the Great War: The Labour History, maintains its local Australian Working Class and the and international status as a vibrant, Making of Anzac. progressive and high quality journal. The second is to grow our membership In terms of our second objective, the base at the branch and national level. July 2013 Federal Executive meeting endorsed a motion to create an executive As subscribers to Labour History committee to review the operations of would attest, the first objective is in the Society. This committee was elected good hands under the editorship of John at the November Federal Executive Shields, the editorial working party, and meeting and will be seeking input from others associated with its production. all branches over the coming year. The Each issue of the journal is put together review will involve the following: with both passion and professionalism. 1. taking an inventory of our resources If the reminiscences of the Brisbane and relationships; FOCO club published in the November 2. the viability and timing of the 2013 issue caught your interest, please national conference also look for the research report by Alan 3. the links between the society and Knight on the 1971 Springbok protest like-minded groups such as unions, in Brisbane which will be included in think-tanks, museums, political the November 2014 issue. The May parties, progressive organisations,

5 progressive faith groups, bookshops In relation to point 2 above, I am and the creation of ‘affiliate’ bodies; very pleased to advise that the 4. the role, viability of and links Melbourne Branch has put its hand up between branches; succession to organise the 2015 National Labour planning and attracting young History Conference. At this point scholars to our society; the conference is planned for early 5. as part of a sub-committee review, in the year, but further details will be the future of the journal, Labour circulated in due course. History (the Editorial Board has formed a working party for this I would like to take this opportunity purpose). to congratulate and thank members of BLHA for their contribution and commitment to labour history as a field of study, and as a community.

Students!!...Apply for the Eric Fry Labour History Scholarship

The closing date for applications for the $1,000 Eric Fry Labour History Scholarship has been extended to 31 March 2014. Honours and postgraduate students are invited to apply for the scholarship which supports research at the Noel Butlin Archives Centre at the Australian National University. The archives holds an unrivalled collection of trade union and business records, as well as the personal papers of labour movement activists. The scholarship is supported by the Canberra Region Branch of the Australian Society for the Study of Labour History and the Research School of Humanities and the Arts at the Australian National University.

Full eligibility criteria, past scholarship holders and how to apply are available at this web address: http://archives.anu.edu.au/news-and-events-1/eric-fry-labout-history- scholarship

6 Dunwich Asylum Mess seated 400 “single men” and was linked to the Dunwich jetty and the asylum Hall is 100 kitchen by horse-drawn tramway. Meals were served in three sittings. Elisabeth Gondwe, Howard Guille and Lisa Jackson The Asylum operated at Dunwich from 1865–1946 and served the whole of Queensland as a public institution for The centenary of what is now the the poor and destitute. The indigent Dunwich Public Hall was celebrated of Queensland were despatched and in 2013 with a series of events confined there. Dunwich also became organised by the North Stradbroke a lazaret for “white” patients and place Island Historical Museum. Since the of commitment under the Inebriates Hall is the largest remaining part of Institutions Act 1896. These two the Dunwich Benevolent Asylum there functions moved to Peel Island, also are many links between its history in Moreton Bay, in 1907 and 1910 and that of Queensland labour and respectively. communities. Benevolent asylums were established The current building was opened on in all the Australian colonies in the 29th October 1913 as the Men’s Mess nineteenth century. In NSW and Hall for the Dunwich Benevolent Victoria they were established as Asylum on North Stradbroke Island. It religious charities. In Queensland,

Dunwich Public Hall 2013

7 The asylum admitted 21, 000 people over its eighty years. From the 1890s to 1946 there were around 1,000 inmates present at any one time with 1,600 in its peak year of 1903. The Asylum had over twenty however, the state took responsibility wards — including a and the Queensland Benevolent distinct women’s section and a separate Asylum Act of 1861 funded hospitals to have ‘asylum wards’. In 1865 the Colonial Government proposed that an asylum ward for the sick and poor be established at the new general hospital site at Herston. Under ‘public pressure’ the colony government decided in 1866 to relocate the asylum on a ‘temporary’ basis to the Dunwich Quarantine Station. It started with 80–90 inmates, confused funding and a drunk as ward for ‘Asiatics’. By 1930s, it included a police station and lock up, Director. visitor centre, public hall, bakery, kitchen, laundry and ancillary service buildings, ward buildings, tent accommodation and recreational facilities. It was only electrified in 1926 with its own power station using oil generators. It had a dairy herd and piggery.

Waiting for meal 1938

8 Dunwich Benevolent Asylum 1913

9 Inmates were predominately though Asylum. The operating principle was not exclusively old. People could be that able-bodied inmates were meant assigned to the asylum by a hospital, to perform work and staff the asylum. by police order or by their families. It Unfortunately, apart from some of the seems that many of the inebriate men inebriates, age prevented most inmates were confined by their spouses. Inmates doing a full day’s labour. In addition as came from across Queensland with a the Brisbane Courier of 1874 reported very detailed process of getting them by boat and/or rail from the north and These old gentlemen at the west to the Yungaba immigration Dunwich do not as a rule depot at Kangaroo Point and then by approve of being asked to work. boat to Dunwich. They meet every request to do so categorically: “Why should I Six times as many men as women were work ! if so be I could work, why inmates. The backgrounds were mainly be I sent here ?” rural and urban workers with, in the nineteenth century, a considerable From the 1880s to 1920s there were number of people who had been rarely more than 20 official staff to 900 transported to the Australian colonies to 1,000 inmates. The Asylum needed as convicts. There was, though, a cheap and permanent labour. It got it sprinkling of middle class people fallen from the Quandamooka Aboriginal on hard times or drink. One was John people of the Island who lived at One Filhelly, Deputy Leader of the ALP Mile outside Dunwich, and who did under Theodore and one of the founders what Goodall says was “heavy and of the Queensland Rugby League who unpleasant work” from the 1870s.2 By is listed in the Australian Dictionary the 1920s up to 30 Aboriginal men were of Biography.1. Another was Johnny Cassim, who was of Indian origin and in the ‘outside gang’ which included transported as a convict from Mauritius the dairy and piggery. Some Aboriginal to become an hotelier and respected men were in trade, skilled and semi- citizen of Cleveland. skilled jobs including carpentry and operating the power station. Around 15 The Asylum was always inadequately Aboriginal women were employed as staffed and funded. In current (2013) cooks, nursing assistants and domestics values Queensland Government including in the houses of the senior funding was $1,900 per person/per staff of the Asylum. The Aboriginal year in 1900 and $2,900 in 1932. workers formed a substantial part of In the twentieth century, inmates the total work force for the asylum, at who received a Commonwealth old times over half, right up to its closure age pension paid part of this to the in 1946.

10 Aboriginal workers were paid in rations Alexander Macdonald but from the 1920s onwards took action to be paid wages. This was successful and Student-Union in 1925.The actions included petitions Solidarity: 1966–1969 to the Medical Superintendent and the Home Secretary, representation to the Arbitration Court by the Australian Peter Cross Workers Union and industrial action. However, there were continuing battles about the level of wages and even The political history of Queensland’s attempts to put them back on rations. trade union movement extends far beyond its links to the ALP. Trade Knowledge of the successful actions unions have repeatedly involved by Aboriginal workers at Dunwich is themselves in public debate. This as little known as the Asylum itself. paper will examine the brief period One of the last medical superintendents of close co-operation between the described it a Moreton Bay Shangri- Queensland union movement as la; in contrast Goodall says it was a represented by the Trades and Labour dumping ground where the rhythms of Council Queensland (TLC), and the life beat out to the coming of the boat left-wing student movement of the twice a week and sago pudding on 1960s. This relationship was fraught Sundays.3 with political tension. This paper will analyse the pivotal role Alexander Notes Macdonald played, as TLC Secretary, 1 Betty Crouchley, Fihelly, John Arthur in overcoming these tensions. It (1882–1945), Australian Dictionary of will cover both Macdonald’s role in Biography, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/ facilitating TLC’s industrial action in fihelly-john-arthur-6169 2 Joseph B. Goodall, Whom Nobody Owns: 1967 in support of student protests, The Dunwich Benevolent Asylum, An and his more controversial support Institutional Biography 1866–1946, Ph D of the Foco Club. In doing so, I will Thesis, Department of History, University of argue that Macdonald’s strong support Queensland, 1992 3 ibid of worker-student co-operation can be partially explained by his links to the Communist Party of Australia (CPA). However, despite being instrumental in fostering co-operation between the union and student movements, Macdonald was unable to prevent rifts developing towards the end of his life. Following his premature death while in

11 CPA.3 He was simultaneously entering the trade union movement, joining the Ironworkers Union and quickly becoming its Secretary.4 By the early 1950s Macdonald had become deeply involved in the TLC. Now known as the QCU, this was a peak union council, affiliated with approximately 40 unions.5 It is true that during this period the TLC only covered approximately a third of Queensland unionists due to the fact that the enormous Australian Workers Union was not affiliated with it.6 However, it was one of the most influential union bodies due to the influence it wielded within the ALP from 1957 to the late 1980s. 7 Extract from Foco’s newsletter, typifying the irreverent mixture of radical politics and art which characterised the Club In 1952, Macdonald replaced (http://www.qhatlas.com.au/photograph/ Communist Mick Healy as Secretary foco-newsletters-1968) of the TLCQ. In doing so he joined a core of committed Communists on the TLC Executive. This group office in 1969, the relationship quickly (which also included Hugh Hamilton, deteriorated. Jack Hanson and Greg Dawson) drew its strength from unions such as the Alexander Macdonald’s public life Builders Workers Industrial Union and was dominated by his involvement the maritime unions.8 The Communist with progressive left wing politics, influence within the TLC Executive most notably the Communist and trade was representative of broader union movements. Understanding this Communist influence over unionists, dual role is crucial to understanding with approximately 15% of union why and how he built an alliance members being controlled by the CPA with the student left. Born in Scotland as of 1969.9 Within the TLC Executive, in 1910, he immigrated to Australia communists such as Macdonald vied in the 1920s.1 Unable to find work, for influence with TLC members who he drifted towards radical politics mere more aligned to the ALP, such as and became an active Communist.2 President John (Jack) Egerton.10 This By 1936 he had been elected to the tension within the Executive would Queensland state committee of the later become important when relations

12 between Egerton and the student left This marriage of universal respect and soured. a concern with broader political issues explains why Macdonald entered into Macdonald’s time as TLC Secretary was an alliance with student activists. distinguished by three characteristics. The first was the universal respect he The student left formed independently enjoyed from his colleagues. “One of of any political party or union body the calmest, most patient and good- during the 1960s. This was a period natured men conceivable”, Macdonald of intense political activism on excelled at negotiating compromise university campuses across the globe. between the diverse range of views Across Australia, university students within the TLC Executive.11As were becoming politicised by their Bob Hawke noted shortly after Macdonald’s death, despite his opposition to conscription and to the 16 ideological allegiance to Communism Vietnam War. By 1966, groups such he “not once” tried to “ram it down as the Vietnam Action Committee had the throats” of his colleagues.12 This formed at the University of Queensland facility for promoting compromise (UQ). It was out of these anti-war was repeatedly mentioned approvingly groups that a broader student activism in oral recollections of Macdonald’s movement (strongly influenced by the leadership style. Moreover, within American New Left) was able to grow17 both the TLC and CPA, respect for Students such as Mitch Thompson and this ability was often coupled to Brian Laver, and academics such as genuine affection for Macdonald. Even Dan O’Neill were inspired to found the the ALP-aligned Egerton displayed Society for Democratic Action (SDA) 13 intense loyalty to him. The second in April 1966.18 These activists quickly characteristic was his conviction that began large-scale marches against the union movement should be an conscription throughout 1967.19 The advocate for progressive political Nicklin government responded with causes. Macdonald founded the TLC’s bureaucratic suppression via the State Equal Pay Committee, was a vice- Traffic Act and police violence.20 This president of the Peace Committee, and was an early “beacon for Aboriginal further outraged student activists. rights”.14 In pursuing these goals By the end of 1966 the student left Macdonald was willing to work with had become equally committed to forces outside the union movement. protesting for civil liberties as a natural As his obituary in the Tribune noted, outgrowth of the anti-war movement. his life was spent striving “to unite Therefore, the mid-1960s saw the all sections of the labour movement emergence of a highly active student around common progressive issues”.15 protest movement.

13 14 There were two reasons young students young students would choose to form of the period chose to join groups their own organisations rather than such as the SDA, rather than working work through traditional left channels. through the ALP, the ALP-affiliated TLC or the CPA. The first was the Despite this undeniable distance undeniable class distinction between between young students and trade the children of the middle class, (who unionists, from 1966 onwards the two could afford a tertiary education before groups began to work together. The Whitlam’s reforms) and the working student left first attracted real attention class members of more established from the TLCQ once it focussed its leftist organisations. The second was energies on securing civil liberties. the disconnect between the Old Left For instance, at the 1966 Trade and youth in general. As Jon Piccini Union Congress it “congratulate[d]... has noted, the union’s youth programs the students and staff of Queensland were extremely poor, being dominated University who are continually by staid events (such as Miss Union campaigning for civil liberties”.25 This competitions) that held little appeal for was soon followed by industrial action members of the 1960s counter-culture.21 in favour of the SDA’s civil rights The CPA’s Eureka Youth League, protest. Indeed, throughout 1967 the whose “programmatic dogmatism” had SDA would describe the trade unions as made it “an object of mild derision, at being their “most responsive ally”.26 For best, in youth circles”, was no better.22 example, the TLC held a four-hour stop This problem was compounded by the work meeting on the 14th of September fact that many young activists saw 1967 in protest at the “shocking” police both unions and Communists as being brutality against students participating too willing to compromise with non- in a march six days before.27 As the left forces.23 Even within the union minutes of the TLC Executive record, movement, young people often had to “the overall feeling of the Executive struggle against general disinterest in was that it was necessary to take youth issues, which were rarely raised some positive steps” in support of at Trade Union Congress before 1965. student civil liberties.28 This meeting For instance, Alan Anderson (a young was attended by over 3000 people. delegate for the Plumbers’ Union) Although records of the TLC’s internal remembers being verbally abused by deliberations are murky on this point, it Egerton when he suggested that the seems that Macdonald played a major body needed to do more to engage role in persuading the TLC Executive with young workers (revealingly, to take this action. Interestingly, Macdonald was in contrast highly Egerton himself initiated this protest, supportive of young delegates).24 In belying his previously derisive attitude this environment, it was natural that towards youth, citing the intermittent

15 “urging” by affiliated unions to take a As Macdonald himself noted in 1968, firmer stance in favour of students.29 to the TLC Executive “industrial and However, Piccini contends there were civil liberties were inseparable”.37 also “sharp divisions” in some unions Likewise, the SDA perceived the union about the validity of such a stoppage, movement’s long struggle for industrial indicating that support from a figure liberties and the right to march to be as senior as Macdonald would have evidence of its “bona fides” on civil been critical.30 Anderson describes liberties.38 Therefore, over the issue this decision as a “bold stand” by of civil liberties “Old and New Left Macdonald.31 It is understandable, met, finding a common enemy in the therefore, that several members of the form of Queensland’s repression of SDA (including Laver and Thompson) protest”.39 Consequently, the perceived participated in the 1967 postal strike, nexus between these two struggles and were subsequently arrested for offers a powerful explanation for early handing out union leaflets.32 This in TLC support for student protests. turn led to another four hour stoppage by the TLC. Despite these shared goals, it is important not to overestimate the These actions can be partly explained closeness of the union-student by the common aims of the union relationship. While the TLC was and student movements. For instance, officially keen to see greater student- a number of its more left-wing union cooperation, young unionists member unions (notably the Seamen’s and activists both recall continued Union) had, like the student left, indifference and suspicion towards been outspoken critics of Australian groups such as the SDA.40 Those involvement in Vietnam since the involved in the SDA at the time believe early 1960s.33 The TLC was so that this distance was engendered by its sympathetic to the anti-war movement radical politics, which even in a militant that it criticised the federal ACTU union council attracted distrust from for being insufficiently supportive.34 “right-wing ALP” types.41 In the minds More broadly, the TLC saw an affinity of many trade unionists, however between the student’s civil liberty laudable the student left’s goals were, campaign and their own struggle for they remained “a lot of long-haired industrial liberty.35 For instance, in no-hopers, probably inundated with the special meeting that preceded the drugs”.42 A good example of this was September 1967 stop-work meeting, Macdonald’s decision at the end of they seem to have been persuaded 1967 to hire Brian Laver to work as a by Ralph Summy’s appeal that “the research assistant in the Trades Hall.43 struggle for a better life was bound up In doing so he stepped from supporting with the struggle for civil liberties”.36 student groups to actually allowing

16 them to work within the TLC. It was culturally.46 It took its name from the precipitated by Laver’s involvement Spanish word for “camp”, referring to in the October 1967 marches, which Che Guevara’s Cuban training camps.47 prompted Communists associated What was remarkable about Foco, with the TLC (notably Ralph Summy) however, was that it operated out of the to suggest he should be employed.44 TLC’s premises at Trade Hall, while Anderson again characterises the being jointly run by a combination of hiring of Laver as a move which student activists, young unionists and forced Macdonald (with the support the Eureka Youth League. Therefore, it of Communist sympathetic unions was a three way venture between the such as the BWIU) to confront more student left, the union movement and conservative members of the TLC, the Communist movement. This was most notably ALP-aligned members an unprecedented level of student- such as Egerton.45 While Egerton union co-operation.48 Moreover, it was not opposed to the aims of the was remarkably successful, attracting student left, he was unwilling to go regular crowds of 500 people every as far as Macdonald in allowing a Sunday night until its closure in June potentially disreputable student leader 1969 Guyatt 1983: 266)49. Those who to work within the walls of Trades attended were not only exposed to Hall. However, notwithstanding these avant-garde culture but also to radical reservations, the TLC and the student leftist literature and ideas (disseminated left had demonstrated genuine support most stridently by the student left). As for one another. such, Foco can be considered a triumph of student-union co-operation in the It is therefore important to distinguish cause of promoting political awareness. the TLC’s ideological support for the aims of the student left from Macdonald’s vital role in the venture the distrust and prejudice many is commonly acknowledged. In unionists harboured towards students Anderson’s estimation, “much of the themselves. It is notable that the TLC success of Foco can be attributed to was able to co-operate so closely with Alex”.50 Macdonald’s support took students. It is here that Macdonald’s three forms. Firstly, he supported the importance becomes more apparent. idea in the TLC Executive, despite the His decision to employ Laver was a fact that (as Hamilton reflects) it no pre-cursor of a much more ambitious doubt cost him support amongst the student-union initiative: the Foco Club. more ALP-aligned members.51 These Conceived by the SDA as a space in members did not want to associate the which anyone, but particularly young TLC with either the radical left politics students and young workers, could or the moral panic (described below) express themselves politically and that suffused Foco. So strong was the

17 opposition that Macdonald’s widow ever attended.59 In contrast, Macdonald recalls him dispiritedly remarking that visited almost every week.60 “if the [TLC] kick me out I wouldn’t be surprised”.52 Macdonald’s immense Finally, Macdonald defended Foco esteem within the labour movement, from controversy, in stark contrast coupled with his excellent negotiating to most of his colleagues. The most abilities, can be seen in the way he notable instance of this were the convinced his colleagues to accept accusations from conservatives that Foco’s use of the Hall. In this regard he Foco was a front for drug dealers and was undoubtedly aided by the fact that prostitution. These were levelled by Egerton and a large number of other Liberal Party MP Don Cameron in TLC officials were unable to attend 1968 under Parliamentary privilege. the meeting at which it was resolved They had an enormous impact on to give Foco the use of the Hall.53 He public opinion in socially conservative made use of the Communist faction Queensland, even amongst some older within the TLC.54 As Laver infers, members of the Communist Party.61 it was Macdonald’s CPA links that Most damagingly, he alleged that the enabled him to “do a deal” within the Club was close to ‘the nerve centre of ALP to allow the project to proceed.55 the ALP in Queensland”.62 Concern Macdonald’s efforts may very well for the reputations of both the union have been enhanced by the fact that movement and the ALP caused Egerton Egerton, who was opposed to student to publicly criticise Foco in June of use of the Hall, was frequently overseas 1969.63 In contrast, Macdonald never during this period.56 The Trades Hall doubted the fact that the allegations was a crucial factor in Foco’s success, were a “political smear”.64 Unlike because the TLC’s political prominence the majority of his colleagues, he not meant that Queensland’s notoriously only publicly denied the allegations’ violent police were reluctant to raid validity but personally convinced it.57 This was demonstrated by the only Police Commissioner Bischoff of their Foco meeting held outside the Trades falsity65. Consequently, by securing Hall, which was immediately dispersed the Trades Hall, providing his ongoing by police.58 support and publicly defending it, Macdonald was an integral part of Secondly, Macdonald supported Foco Foco’s success. by remaining continuously engaged with it, unlike many of his colleagues. It is necessary to examine the historical Writing a few months after Foco’s context surrounding Macdonald’s expulsion from the Trades Hall in actions in order to understand them. June 1969, its former President Alan As mentioned above, he was naturally Anderson noted how few union officials inclusive when it came to progressive

18 issues which he felt strongly about66. Foco Club to operate out of the Trades However, this explanation alone Hall.73 Similarly, it is significant that a seems unsatisfactory in the face of major force in establishing Foco was the opposition, which he endured the youth front of the CPA. While it towards the end of his life for his is not tenable to attribute Macdonald’s support of student-union relations.67 support of student-union initiatives like One possible explanation that has not Foco to his membership of the CPA, it been deeply explored is the influence is necessary to acknowledge his CPA that Macdonald’s allegiance to the allegiance as an important factor. CPA had on his support for student- union solidarity. Since 1964, the CPA Despite Macdonald’s success in had undergone a national change in establishing Foco, he was unable to platform under the leadership of Laurie prevent the relationship between the Aarons.68 Reversing his party’s previous two movements deteriorating. The hostility towards the New Left, Aarons first major dispute came on Labour declared that “united action with other Day 1969, when around three hundred sections of the community’s common student activists joined the union- objectives” was essential.69 By the time organised march with the intention of of the 1969 CPA State Conference, the “reintroduce[ing socialist] politics” youth movement was being praised as to the event.74 Waving red and black “certainly the most spectacular feature flags and shouting slogans at ALP of the Australian left movement”.70 participants (including Federal The most important of these objectives Opposition leader Gough Whitlam), was the anti-Vietnam struggle, the these students caused the ALP-aligned influence of which on “solidifying TLC considerable embarrassment. the relationship with radical youth In response, Egerton called for the cannot be overstated”.71 It would be students to be physically thrown out presumptuous to conclude that the of the march, calling them “a group CPA’s national platform was the sole of scrubby, confused individuals”.75 reason for Macdonald supporting close Moreover, Laver alleges Egerton relationships with students. However, “gave an open invitation to the police it is notable that the most consistent to deal [with students]”.76 Conversely, support for close student-union ties student participants felt that they had came from Communist inclined been excluded from the march by ALP TLC members. For instance, Hugh aligned unionists.77 Hamilton was singled out as being particularly helpful in establishing This fracas in turn led to Foco’s Foco.72 Indeed, Laver goes so far as expulsion from the Trades Hall in to say the CPA “did a deal” with the June 1969.78 Although it was publicly ALP to allow the partially student run claimed that this was a routine result

19 of long-planned renovations, Anderson In conclusion, Alexander Macdonald suggests the conservative trade was a crucial figure in solidifying the unionists opportunistically used the alliance between students and workers students’ actions to eliminate Foco.79 in the 1960s. Firstly, he capitalised on Regardless, Foco collapsed shortly the shared goals of the two movements afterwards.80 Although Macdonald to help promote a system of mutual publicly emphasised the routine nature support. Moreover, he went further of the expulsion, Foco organisers saw than many of his colleagues by helping it as reflecting the low priority the TLC young activists gain the use of Trades placed on student-union interaction.81 Hall for Foco. In doing so he enabled a This division was symptomatic of the highly successful joint student-worker shift in the student left from a protest endeavour. This comparatively high movement to a radical movement, less level of support must be situated within willing to support the more moderate the context of Macdonald’s links to stance of the ALP-influenced TLC.82 the CPA. However, despite his best Following Macdonald’s sudden efforts, not even he could prevent this death in late 1969, the student-union relationship from buckling under the relationship deteriorated further. tensions between the more conservative The breaking point was the Vietnam side of the TLC and radical students. Moratorium of May 1970. On that occasion, both the CPA and ALP Notes aligned members of the TLC prevented 1 Molly Macdonald Interview with Cecily elements of the student left (particularly Cameron 1984 in Cecily Cameron Papers the Revolutionary Socialist Students UQFL 439 Box 10 Alliance) from voicing active support 2 Hamilton 2010: 18 3 BLHA 2010 for the Viet Cong.83 They did so by 4 Interview with Ted Bacon by Cecily convincing Hugh Hamilton to alter Cameron 1984 in Cecily Cameron Papers op the speaker’s schedule at short notice cit. to delay Laver’s address, and then 5 BLHA 2010: 8 allowing CPA members to physically 6 Fry, Shield and Elen 2004: 112–114 restrain Laver while ALP Senator 7 Ibid: 104 8 Alistair Davidson 1969 “A Short History George Georges spoke in his stead. of the Communist Party of Australia”, This incident demonstrated that the 142; Justus M. Van Der Koef 1970 “The radical politics of the student left had Communist Party of Australia Today”, diverged from the political interests Studies in Comparative Communism, 70 of the TLC. From then on, it became 9 Alistair Davidson op cit, 158 10 Brian Laver Interview with Cecily Cameron increasingly unlikely that the two 1988 in Cecily Cameron Papers op cit. movements would ever work as closely 11 Bacon’s Oration 20/8/196 CPA Papers Box as they had during Foco. 19, 1; Hamilton 2010: 15

20 12 Robert Hawke 1969 Address to TLC on 35 Student Guerilla No 21 “Open Letter from 3/9/1969 in TLC Records UQFL 118 Box 90 Dissenting Dogs” in Greg Mallory, A Left 13 Ted Bacon Interviewed by Cecily Cameron Compilation 1984 in Cecily Cameron Papers op cit 36 TLC Minutes Tuesday 12/9/67 in TLC 14 Hamilton 2010: 15 Records Box 8 Parcel 29, p. 2 15 Tribune 2/8/1969 37 Trade Union Congress op cit. 16 Alan Anderson 2010 “Alex Macdonald 38 Student Guerilla 1968 (unknown edition), 1910–1969” Brisbane Labour History extract in Mallory, op cit. Association, 11 39 Jon Piccini op cit, 22 40 Alan Anderson op cit, 11 17 Dan O’Neill 1969, Semper Floreat “The 41 Brian Laver Interview with Andrew Stafford Growth of the Radical Movement”, 9 in Dan 6/11/2001 In Andrew Stafford Papers, O’Neill Papers UQFL 132 UQFL 440, Box 2 18 ibid, 12 42 Alan Anderson Interview 2002 in Material 19 Courier-Mail 8/9/1967 Relating to the Foco Club, F3598. 20 Dan O’Neill Ephemera Relating to the Right 43 Alan Aderson op cit to March and Civil Liberties FVF 638 VF6 44 Brian Laver Interview with Andrew Stafford ’68 op cit 21 Jon Piccini 2011 “ ‘A Group of Misguided, 45 Brian Laver Interview With Cecily Cameron Way Out Individuals’: The Old Left and the 1988 in Cecily Cameron Papers op cit. Student Movement in Brisbane 1966–70”, 46 Foco Club Ephemera 1968, Opening Night Queensland Journal of Labour History no. Poster 12, 21 47 Brian Laver Interview With Cecily Cameron 22 Justus M. Van Der Koef op cit, 79 op cit 23 Rex Mortimer 1967 “Communists and the 48 Communist Party Records in Cecil Cameron Australian Left” New Left Review no.46, 47 Papers UQFL 439 Box 10 24 Alan Anderson 2010 opp. cit.11 49 Trade Union Congress 1968 Executive 25 Trade Union Congress 1966 Executive Report in TLC Records UQFL 118, 59 Summary in TLC Records UQFL 118 Box 50 Alan Anderson Interview 2002 op cit. 90, 12 51 Hamilton 2010: 16 26 Student Guerilla No 21 “Open Letter from 52 Molly Macdonald Interview with Cecily Dissenting Dogs” in Greg Mallory, A Left Cameron 1984 in Cecily Cameron Papers op Compilation” by Greg Mallory cit. 53 TLC Minutes Wednesday 7/2/1968 in TLC 27 John Egerton Report on Civil Liberties Records Box 8 Parcel 30, p. 6 22/9/1967 in Dan O’Neill Papers UQFL 132 54 Brian Laver Interview with Andrew Stafford Box 5 Folder 3, 4 op cit. 28 TLC Minutes from Tuesday 12/9/1967 in 55 ibid TLC Records Box 8 Parcel 29 p. 3 56 Brian Laver Interview With Cecily Cameron, 29 Egerton, ibid 1988 in Cecily Cameron Papers op cit. 30 Jon Piccini 2011 op cit, 21 57 Alan Anderson Interview 2002 op cit. 31 Alan op cit, 12 58 ibid 32 Trade Union Congress 1968 Executive 59 Alan Anderson 1970 “The Foco Story” in Report in TLC Records UQFL 118 Box 90, Tribune 2/9/1970 , 8 50 60 Ted Bacon Interviewed by Cecily Cameron 33 Seamens Journal May 1965 in , 93 1984 in Cecily Cameron Papers op cit. 34 TLC Minutes Tuesday 20/9/1966 in TLC 61 Alan Anderson Interview 2002 op cit. Records Box 8 Parcel 29 62 Hansard Extract in Alan Anderson, ibid

21 63 Courier-Mail 14/9/68 May Day, 2013 64 Alan Anderson Interview op cit 65 J. Piccini, op cit 66 Tribune 2/8/1969. 67 Molly Macdonald Interview with Cecily Speech at Woden Tradies, Cameron 1984 in Cecily Cameron Papers op Canberra cit. 68 Justus M. Van Der Koef op cit, 80 Humphrey McQueen 69 Laurie Aarons 1964 “Labour Movements at the Crossroads”, 38 ; Alistair Davidson, op cit, , 150 A month ago, Megalo workshop 70 Queensland State Conference Report, June asked me to launch a book celebrating 14 and 15 1969 in Communist Party of its thirty-three years of poster and Australia Papers UQFL 234 Box 26 71 Justus M. Van Der Koef op cit, 87 print-making. Megalo had been set- 72 Brian Laver Interview with Andrew Stafford up during 1979–80 as part of Jobless op cit. Action. At the time, under Fraser, 73 Brian Laver Interview With Cecily Cameron, youth unemployment in the ACT 1988 in Cecily Cameron Papers op cit. 74 Socialist Humanist Action Committee was around twenty percent. Megalo ~1970 Pamphlet in TLC Records Box 390 produced protest posters and then 75 Courier-Mail 16/5/1969 “Student Radicals: began to contract for jobs. The book ‘Never Again’ At Labor Day” reproduced a selection of posters that 76 Brian Laver 1970 “The Communist Party is were on display at the Megalo printery Behind the Moratorium- Way Behind”, 3 77 Socialist Humanist Action Committee op cit. in Watson. A poster for the 1981 May 78 TLC Minutes Wednesday 11/6/1969 in TLC Day rally in Civic listed me as one of Records Box 10 the speakers. So I have been at this for 79 Alan Anderson Interview 2002 op cit. over thirty years. Henry Lawson wrote 80 Alan Anderson “The Foco Story” in Tribune 2/9/1970 , 8 81 Telegraph 29/5/1969 “Eviction of Foco ‘not I’ve been union thirty years sudden order’ ” And I’m too old to rat. 82 Mitch Thompson “SDA Dissolves” in SDA Ephemera 1966–1969 FVF381 Well, I reckon, like many of us here, I 83 Brian Laver 1970 “The Communist Party is was union before I was born. But my Behind the Moratorium- Way Behind”, 2 study of history shows me that no one is ever too old to rat. So what keeps us on the Left track? The answer is comradeship. ‘It’s the union keeps us strong’. Or in the words of the Eureka Oath, we ‘stand truly by each other’.

That’s one more reason why I’m grateful for your invitation. We can be sure of keeping honest only for as long

22 as we are part of the struggle. It’s not The contest is intensifying again. what we did thirty or more years ago. Today, we are all time poor. Some It’s what we’re doing together today workers have high take-home rates of and what we shall do together the day pay. But how much time do they have after tomorrow. A young interviewer at home to enjoy it? Eight hours rest asked a Canadian radical on his and eight hours recreation are as rare ninetieth birthday: ‘So you’ve been in in 2013 as the eight-hour day was in for the long haul?’ ‘No,’ he growled 1856. back. ‘I’m in for the endless haul.’ Australia was the world-beater. We have had our workers’ holiday under May Day is not a holiday in the ACT various titles and on several dates. Here as it is in some parts of the world. it is Eight-hour day. There it is Labour However, Australia led the way in Day. The day has roamed around the the nineteenth century with the first calendar from early March to late public holiday to honour working October. West Australia provides a people. Those holidays celebrated the perfect example. The unionists in Eight-hour day. Engineering workers Fremantle-Perth in the 1890s held their in Sydney were the first to win ‘the march late in October on Proclamation boon’, late in 1855. The next year in (Invasion) Day. The holiday was moved Melbourne, on 21st April, stonemasons to first week in May. But it rained so got eight-hours. They still had to put in much during May that they shifted the a forty-eight hour week. holiday again to early March, where it is now. We could think of these shifts as Some employers had supported the one more sign of the power of workers change. But it wasn’t long before the to improvise. bosses tried to reverse the situation on st site. They pushed for piece-rates to get We are here on May Day, the 1 May. We shall be at the May Day protest as much value in eight hours as they outside parliament on Saturday 4th. had out of ten. In 1860, they imported Does the date matter? Not usually, but German stonemasons to undercut the it can. We can find out why the date can Society. No sooner had the Germans matter by asking a different question: learned what was going on than they what is it about the holiday that too stood out for the shorter hours. matters? The answer is that we secure Yet there are no permanent victories. a day to celebrate our struggles and The Master Builders replaced stone successes. It matters that we hold onto with bricks. Within thirty years, the a day which celebrates the creativity Stonemasons Society had shrunk to a of working people. That holiday is tenth of its size in 1856. one way to remind everyone that our

23 labours built this country. And they still the streets. The boss class knows what do. Without us, ‘not a single wheel can it has to do. We need to take their turn’. example to heart and hit back.

Sad to say, ‘Canberra 100’ pays no Again the question: does the date or attention to the workers who are still name matter? I was taught one answer making the wheels turn here. From to that puzzle a couple of weeks after I the official programme you wouldn’t arrived in Canberra in January 1970. I know who built the rail line from met a French revolutionary, Professor Queanbeyan to Civic, the roads, the Jean Chesneaux. I asked him how his powerhouse and the dams in 1913. comrades planned to commemorate the What about those workers? It is not too Paris Commune of 1871. He exploded: late for unions and activists to get the ‘We celebrated the Commune by re- local struggles and achievements into enacting it on the streets in 1968.’ In the celebrations. For instance, there a manner which we might think of was a running dispute throughout the as typically French he declared that second half of 1913 at the Cotter dam. confining celebrations to anniversaries The Prime Minister Cook (a Labor rat) is like a bad marriage, celebrated only detoured to try to settle it in January on the anniversary: “It shows that love 1914. is dead.”

The date and name of the holiday can If we apply Chesneaux’s rule to the matter. They matter now in Queensland. here and now, when was the last ‘May The Tories have moved the date of the Day’? One answer is earlier today when holiday from the first Monday in May. 200 ANU students marched on the ALP In my childhood we lined the streets as MHR for Fraser to insist that he oppose union floats and contingents of rank- the ALP cuts to tertiary education. and-filers were stirred on by brass and pipe bands from workplaces. “Printers’ When was the ‘May Day’ before today? devils” with pitchforks darted in and The loud and clear answer is yesterday out of the tens of thousands who lined in Melbourne against Grocon. 12,000 the streets. workers defied threat of $10,000 fines on each of them under the ALP’s The current hit at working-class coercive powers. They defied the abuse traditions is not just about memories. of Mass Murdoch and from pollies of The Tories felt the force of the May Day all stripes and shades. It is ‘disgusting’ marches along the coastal cities and to politicise killing for profit. mining towns against Workchoices. Only last year, their first round of cuts Canberra also celebrated May Day was met with another surge through three weeks ago in the win for the

24 Korean building workers. Not only did Magistrate. Yet workers are safe only they get their back money and improved if we are active ‘on the job’. Support conditions. The contractor coughed up from officials and from the community a $1,500 gratuity for each of them. backs up the determination of rank- That is real existing internationalism. and-filers to get home safely. That is the substance, not the rhetoric, of class warfare. ‘May Day!’ is a warning to the boss class about more than this or that The struggles that make for a May demand. In Europe, May Day comes at Day are both strategic and tactical. the peak of spring. Spring is rebirth. We Teachers are now engaged in both. One can make this May Day the rebirth of strategic drive is to end the serial child the vision for a new social order. May abuse that is Naplan. Another is to Day nourishes re-birth of socialism. ‘give a Gonski’. Meanwhile, the AEU For that goal, we need to battle on presses for specific improvements. every front. We need to combine the For instance, they are campaigning for industrial, the economic, the political classroom assistants on $20 an hour, and the cultural. kept casual after twenty years and stood down over the breaks without pay. The CFMEU in the ACT is taking a step in keeping with the Labour History There will be many, many May Days Museum. The Division is sponsoring a of struggle to come. Every public competition for a short film on some servant will face her or his May Day. person or event, past or present, from The recipients of tonight’s award for the working class. Entries will close workplace delegates of the year show in the middle of March. A substantial what can be won. Their counterparts prize will be announced. in all the States, whether under ALP or Coalition administrations, already I’d like to end with a suggestion for know how much they can lose if they one of those films. James Stephens of do not educate, agitate and organise. the Stonemasons’ Society offers a great subject. As an apprentice in England, ‘May Day!’ is also a danger call from he fell and injured himself. He joined pilots about to crash. We have to the Chartists to fight for the vote. In acknowledge that ‘May Day!’ is still a 1839, he was in a demonstration when danger cry on health and safety. With the soldiery shot and killed twenty four deaths here last year the danger cry of his comrades. He fled to London of ‘May Day!’ is both painful to recall but was a marked man. He lost jobs yet energising. The positive side is that as soon as the bosses were informed the outcry has got Worksafe active. of his past. He emigrated to become The ALP has promised an Industrial an active unionist in Melbourne. He

25 led the eight-hour protest march on “These times of boasted parliament on 21 April 1856. He declared he would use ‘physical force’ freedom … ”: the and not just ‘moral suasion’ to win ‘the Brisbane Free Speech boon’. Thirty years later, he was all but 1 forgotten. However, workers rallied Fight of 1913–14 and collected £500 for his final years. Jeff Rickertt The story of James Stephens is one more reason why we need a Museum of Labour History and the film It was June 1913 and Gordon Brown competition. Why has there never and Jim Quinton had just arrived in been a feature film on the eight-hour town. On the face of it, the two dusty day and another based on his life? We travellers were indistinguishable from have only to ask to know why Foxtel the many other itinerant workers beating has not put millions into that project. a path to the sub-tropics to escape the Workers know better than to wait for southern winter chill. Young, fit and Mass Murdoch to tell the truth. adventurous, Brown and Quinton had carried their swags from Sydney, So it is our duty to keep the past alive. keen to discover what Queensland had That duty is not to enshrine May Day to offer. To their great surprise, they as a ritual commemoration. May Day is soon discovered it had more than they not the peak of spring if it resembles a bargained for. “We reached the Queen loveless marriage. May Day stimulates City of the Queen State one Thursday, the perpetual passion for social and on Sunday found ourselves in jail,” equality. To strive for that vision, we Brown recalled.2 are not in for the long haul, but the endless haul. We must make every Being outsiders and poor, it was not day a day of menace to the boss-class. unusual for workers on the track to fall We can make every day a May Day of victim to the prejudices and suspicions struggle and success for our class. of local police. But this case was unusual. Brown and Quinton were not victims of petty harassment in the usual sense. They had courted trouble. And over the next eight months they would court much more.

As it turned out, there was more to these two adventurers than met the eye. They were members of the Australasian

26 Brisbane Free Speech Fight IS Cartoon 1913

27 Socialist Party (ASP), an organisation Paradoxically, denial of this freedom committed to building a working class became a convenient propaganda movement that would sweep away point, a ready-made indictment of the the wage labour system and replace it very system they aimed to overthrow. with a Co-operative Commonwealth. “Ordinary working plugs”, keen to find What subsequently transpired in the employment, most certainly. But they streets, courtrooms and lockups of also wanted a revolution, and they saw Brisbane in 1913 and 1914 would no reason why Brisbane workers would amount to Brisbane’s first coordinated not want one too. They had come north free speech campaign and the largest to spread the socialist message.3 and most militant civil liberties struggle in Queensland prior to the It was never going to be an easy job. late 1960s. Thousands of people would Denied access to mass circulation be involved in some way, scores of newspapers, even those owned by police would be mobilised, dozens of the unions, Brown, Quinton and gaol terms would be served, prison their comrades were compelled to hunger strikes would be waged and rely on street meetings and rallies to one activist would be incarcerated in put their case and win recruits. But the Goodna Hospital for the Insane. in Queensland, this strategy placed Yet despite the public attention this them on a collision course with the campaign garnered at the time and the conservative Denham government and importance of free speech as an issue its unyielding police commissioner (then and now), this series of events, William Cahill. Under the traffic nestled inconveniently between the regulations one needed a permit from tumultuous Brisbane general strike of Cahill to gather on the streets and 1912 and the Labor Party’s electoral he quickly made it clear there was triumph in 1915, has been largely no chance a group of revolutionary extruded from the grand narrative of socialists would be issued one. At Queensland political history.5 least not for Sundays. If Brown and Quinton were to find an audience for The story of the free speech fight also their socialist proselytizing, defiance sits uneasily in the official narratives of of the law was their only option. The Australia as a beacon of liberty. How cause of socialism and the demand for could it be that on the eve of a world freedom of expression thus coalesced. war in which, in the name of freedom The socialists needed freedom of and democracy, almost 417,000 speech to spread their message. Australians would enlist to fight, Their campaign was, they readily 160,000 sustain injuries and around acknowledged, “a fight to enable us to 60,000 die, civilians in Queensland propagate the principles of socialism”.4 were being systematically and violently

28 prevented from exercising one of the The matter was referred to the most basic of democratic rights: the Superintendant of Traffic, who advised right to freedom of expression? By any Gilligan to let the matter pass. Such measure, their struggle has much to tell offhand dismissiveness revealed a us about the actual, as distinct from regime riding high after its crushing the mythical, character of Australian defeat of the unions in the Brisbane democracy. general strike the year before. Having bludgeoned the labour movement into This article takes a close look at this submission on the streets in January struggle. It delves into the social and February 1912, the Denham character of the campaign, its popularity government had been returned to amongst Brisbane citizens and the power in April after a quickfire law and causes of its decline. The article recasts order campaign. Parliament promptly the campaign as an important historical passed an Industrial Peace Act with episode. At a time when Queensland provisions as draconian as any enacted progressive politics of a more formal during the war on unionism in the kind were preoccupied with the 1890s, while on the streets Cahill’s business of winning parliamentary police enforced a ban on Sunday public office, these campaigning socialists gatherings other than the turnouts of were keeping the banner of freedom the Salvation Army. aloft, reminding the politicians of what politics ought to be about. Specifically, Into this charged atmosphere stepped they punctured the fog of repression the iconoclasts of the IWW and ASP. engulfing the Queensland capital since The ASP applied for a permit to hold the 1912 general strike, they introduced a street meeting on Sunday 8 June. radical socialism to a new generation of Cahill refused. On Sunday 15 June Brisbane residents, and they enlivened Gilligan joined Brown and Quinton the hitherto staid official discourse on and a small band of revolutionary political rights, paving the way for socialists on the corner of William and significant democratic concessions Queen Streets. Individual members after Labor came to power in 1915. of the group proceeded to address the passing crowd from a small stool, There is much to the story. Strictly with the evils of capitalism and the speaking, it began before Brown and emancipatory potential of an organised Quinton even arrived. On 27 May, and politically conscious working class James Gilligan, an activist with the the main topics for discussion. By the Wobblies — the Industrial Workers time the first police arrived a crowd of of the World (IWW) — applied to around 150 people had congregated. Commissioner Cahill for a permit Arrests ensued; a fresh speaker for the IWW to hold street meetings. stepping onto the stool as each previous

29 Brisbane Free Speech Fight Queen and Edward Sts c1900 orator was dragged away. Five activists in less prominent sites like Market — Gilligan, Brown, William Mauden, Square (present day King George Robert Jenken and Percy Mandeno — Square). But for street agitators, were charged with holding a public Sunday afternoon was prime time. Of meeting without a permit, while all the days, Sunday offered the most Jim Quinton was accused of having conducive environment for spreading created a disturbance, the prosecution the message of socialism. It was the alleging he had attempted “to ventilate only full day most workers enjoyed his opinions, contrary to law, and away from their employment, an without a license”. In the magistrates important consideration for activists court the following Tuesday Quinton who were themselves working class denied causing a disturbance but and who aimed to reach a working admitted giving his opinions. He was class audience. Inner city streets were convicted and fined 5 shillings or 12 pedestrian arteries of working class hours imprisonment. The other four community life, and Sunday was the defendants were similarly convicted day this life was at its liveliest. The and penalised.6 socialists were determined to make the most of these opportunities. Defying The radicals had chosen Sunday the law on the Sabbath also allowed deliberately. The police tolerated street them to highlight the discrimination meetings on other nights, though only at the heart of a permit system that

30 sanctioned religious evangelicals and strictly on their merits, and banned secular radicals. For their part, are granted or refused as may the police and the Government, having be considered desirable in the staked their authority on implementing public interests…8 the ban, evidently felt compelled to enforce it in the face of the socialists’ With no prospect of a permit, the challenge. Brisbane ASP branch met in early September and discussed whether to Initially, it seems, the ASP preferred to abandon Sunday street meetings or spruik socialism lawfully than wage a escalate their defiance. Gordon Brown, confrontational free speech campaign. by then Brisbane Party secretary, They applied again for a permit, and explained the outcome: sought to meet with Cahill and the Home Secretary, John Appel. F. Carroll, Having tried all constitutional the Police Superintendent of Traffic, means and failed, we have wrote to the ASP to inform them that decided on taking up a militant the Commissioner of Police would attitude. Next Sunday one of our not approve the issuing of permits to speakers will take a stand on the hold open-air meetings on Sundays corner of Edward and Queen for other than religious purposes by Streets, on a spot occupied recognised religious bodies. The Home earlier on in the evening by Secretary’s office advised that Appel the Salvation Army. He will was “not disposed to take any action in be arrested undoubtedly. The the matter”.7 The ASP approached the following Sunday we shall trade unions, asking for support on the be there again with another streets and in the hallways of political volunteer. So the fight must go power. A special union meeting on.9 was called but only two unions sent delegates. On 21 August, John Fihelly, While the ASP considered the campaign for the Labor Opposition, asked a their own, they would work closely with question on the matter on the floor the IWW, radicals from the Russian of Parliament but offered no rebuttal émigré community, and various non- when Appel used the opportunity to aligned anarchists and socialists. iterate the Government’s intransigent The IWW influence is evident in the attitude: tactic of creative civil disobedience culminating in arrest, a ploy pioneered … the persons referred to are to great effect by the Wobblies in the not harassed as alleged; … United States. Although no women are applications for permits to hold known to have played a direct role in street meetings are dealt with the Brisbane confrontations, another

31 source of inspiration may have been who would also serve time during the the militant defiance of the British campaign. suffragettes, whose contemporaneous battles with police on the streets of Away from the main city streets and London were covered extensively in the flashpoint of Sunday night the the Brisbane press.10 socialists continued to hold public forums unhindered and indeed The first clash following the ASP’s unprotected by the authorities. decision to continue the campaign Following Boggo Brown’s gaoling, occurred on Sunday 7 September. the ASP convened a Saturday evening Police and crowds thronged the corner mass meeting in Market Square. On of Edward and Queen Streets as the the Friday of the following week, they activists assembled. By the time the held a similar protest meeting at Main first volunteer, Alfred Brown, rose to Road, Woolloongabba. Gordon Brown, speak, he was surrounded by up to 200 the keynote speaker, highlighted the supporters and spectators. “I come here contradiction at the heart of the State’s tonight for the purpose of addressing a ‘liberal’ democracy: socialist meeting,” he declared. “The law says it won’t allow it but I will try Is Queensland as democratic it. We want freedom and we must get a country as it claims to be? it.” His oration had barely begun when In the British Isles and on a young constable moved forward and the Continent men may come demanded to see Brown’s permit. He forth into the streets and give replied in the negative and returned to out their views, but here in his speech. Arrest came quickly and without resistance. Queensland, where the principle of Government by the people In court, Brown conducted his own is supposed to be regarded as defence. Magistrate Eglinton, duty- a sacred right, men are being bound, he said, to “try…to make the victimised because they spoke defendant and others keep within what was in their minds, just the law”, recorded a conviction and because the powers at the head imposed a fine of £5 or one month in of affairs did not agree with prison.11 Brown chose, as his Party them.13 explained, “to take the rest cure at King George’s Boggo Road establishment”.12 He appealed for help to continue Henceforth he became known as the fight against “police tyranny Boggo Brown to avoid confusing him and Governmental suppression of with Party secretary Gordon Brown, liberty”.14

32 With Boggo Brown resting in state Surely in these times of boasted custody, the Sunday of 14 September freedom I can speak on the required a fresh volunteer. Another common highways. I stand for itinerant labourer and ASP member, the highest ideals of ethics. Percy Mandeno, stepped forward. These laws have been framed An experienced activist, Mandeno by a certain class; they have proved himself that night particularly not been framed by the working adept at the art of mobile oratory. classes, and the man or woman who debars me from expressing He commenced his address in my views is conspiring against Edward Street, near the Queen Street justice.16 intersection, and proceeded to walk up and down Edward discoursing on Mowbray sentenced the peripatetic matters of free speech and socialism, orator to a fine of £2 or 14 days’ occasionally halting his presentation imprisonment. Mandeno opted to join to urge the crowd following him to go Boggo Brown for a reststay. home. His arrest sparked loud hooting � from the crowd, which had grown A week after Mandeno’s arrest, Albert to around 500 during the course of Jenkins, an engineer resident in South his presentation. As he was led along Brisbane, suffered a similar fate after Adelaide Street in the direction of adopting Mandeno’s wandering tactics. the watchhouse, the crowd followed, “It’s a lovely night,” he began, “a fine continuing their booing and jeering. night for exercising my lungs.” Setting Mandeno called for a song. Some of forth along Edward Street, he rambled his comrades launched into The Red from Queen to Adelaide Streets and back, at one point admonishing his Flag and the crowd heartily joined growing audience: “Don’t follow me. in, singing verse after verse until Go home. I am going to walk up and the prisoner disappeared into the down here and talk to myself about watchhouse.15 socialism and free speech, which is the right of every British subject.” In court Mandeno asserted he was His roaming soliloquy continued for not involved in a public meeting and 15 minutes before the police cut it could not be held responsible for the short. By the time the constabulary crowd walking behind him while he had commenced to escort Jenkins to vocalised his thoughts. In his summing the watchhouse a crowd of up to 500 up, however, he shifted ground, people were in tow, spilling into the passing quickly over his faux point- street and blocking the trams as they of-law defence to concentrate on the joined Jenkins in the chorus of The substantive political point: Red Flag. Outside the watchhouse the

33 prisoner called for three cheers for the high in the branches of a tree in Market revolution and the crowd responded Square from which he was persuaded with gusto. to alight only after one, possibly two, constables, pursued him into the Another spirited court defence followed. foliage.21 This “arboreal rostrum”, as it Impressed by Jenkins’s conduct of the was subsequently dubbed, featured on case and by defence testimony that he numerous occasions during the months had been one of Sydney High School’s of campaigning. Later the same night, most outstanding scholars, presiding James Gilligan, Gordon Brown and magistrate Mowbray was inclined to Percy Mandeno, the latter only recently be lenient, inviting Jenkins to provide released from Boggo Road, addressed an undertaking to desist from unlawful a street crowd from the veranda of the public speaking. Jenkins declined and Daily Standard office.22 a piqued Mowbray escalated hostilities by handing down a sentence of a On 19 October Hamilton Rudolph £3 fine or one month in gaol. When affixed himself with a strong chain Jenkins informed the court he refused and two padlocks to a post in Edward to buy free speech, he, too, was carted Street, from where he delivered a off to the “Boggo Road Bastille”.18 lively diatribe on the parlous state of democracy while an increasingly Harsher penalties hardened the ASP’s agitated police contingent worked resolve and spurred them on to ever furiously to cut him loose.23 Later, more provocative tactics. On 28 Mandeno, Gordon Brown, William September not one but two speakers — Jackson and the Wobbly activist George George Thompson and John O’Brien Reith spoke to an “immense gathering” — persisted until arrested. Thompson, from the window ledge of the Daily who later in court described himself Standard office. Reith continued as a “sort of half-bred wage slave”, his oration along Adelaide and into “sometimes exploited, sometimes George Streets before jumping into a not,” chained himself to a veranda post waiting car which delivered him back near the intersection of Edward and to Edward Street where he chained Queen.19 On the same night, Gordon himself to a post before the exhausted Brown climbed a fence of a private sale foot police could arrive.24 In January, yard, about six feet from the street, and Gilligan and Boggo Brown hired a delivered a short speech.20 On 5 October, room on the third floor of the exclusive 26-year-old cook, Hamilton Rudolph, Carlton Club Hotel. After supping on was detained after a lengthy program an elegant tea, the two guests retired to of activities which saw him speaking the veranda where they commenced a on three separate occasions around the loud conversation on the question of city, the second from a vantage point free speech, an exchange loud enough

34 to be heard by the large crowd listening mass. It was a rare sight for attentively on the street below.25 Brisbane on a Sunday evening.26

As the weeks went by, the crowds grew. In late November another crowd From an audience of around 200 in early estimated at 5000 listened September, the campaign was soon a enthusiastically as Jim Quinton spoke weekly routine for thousands: a crowd for about an hour from a private of 500 on 21 September became 1000 a veranda on the Edward-Queen Street 27 week later, a thousand soon multiplied. corner. The largest gathering was probably on 5 October when the ASP led a march How did this tiny band of activists around the streets, stopping at various manage to attract such interest? Various junctures for more speeches. This was reasons can be teased out. As sheer the occasion of Rudolph’s arboreal theatrical spectacle, the campaign had few rivals in Brisbane, certainly oration in Market Square. According none that could be witnessed without to an estimate by the Daily Standard, an admission fee. The creativity and by the time Rudolph alighted from his audaciousness of the socialists, their eyrie, the massed citizenry had grown willingness to provoke a confrontation, to around 5000 (as a proportion of the opportunity they created to see Brisbane’s population, approximately state officials made into a laughing 75,000 in 2013 terms). “Seldom had stock, all played a part in creating such a crowd been seen in Queensland, compelling entertainment. It was, as and they carried everything before Gordon Brown acknowledged, “jolly them,” reported the Standard. The good fun”.28 pro-government Brisbane Courier was prepared to concede “a large crowd”, But one suspects there was more to it which they estimated to be “several than this. The people who thronged hundreds”. The Worker’s account, the speakers were not content with however, corroborated the Standard’s the voyeuristic pleasure of watching estimate: a confrontation between histrionic radicals and the forces of law and Several prominent free- order. They became participants, speechers … headed a large willing to play active support roles. crowd through Edward Street Familiar with the conventions of and up Queen Street. From melodrama, they cheered the speakers there they traversed other and jeered the police. They followed thoroughfares, gaining numbers the orators around the streets as until, finally, some thousands speeches were delivered, spilling of citizens were in the moving onto roadways yet disregarding the

35 disruption their numbers often caused of the capitalist class”, as Cahill’s men to trams and other traffic. They pushed would be dubbed, bashed and trampled and jostled to be close to the action. their way through two peaceful Rather than offer assistance to police processions, one a group of union fumbling with inadequate tools to cut women returning from a protest outside speakers free from posts and railings, Parliament House. After the initial they laughed and offered sarcastic attacks, violence against unarmed jibes and even cheered when flustered citizens continued sporadically across officers hammered their own thumbs. the inner city and surrounding suburbs They followed arrested activists to the throughout the day.30 watchhouse, joining the prisoners in raucous renditions of socialist songs In the weeks after Baton Friday, as the and offering hearty cheers for the leaders of organised labour turned their revolution. On 5 October the massed attention to winning parliamentary citizens enthusiastically formed into a office and forming stronger unions, procession which traversed the length grassroots enmity towards Cahill, and breadth of the city, chanting for Denham and Badger (the manager free speech. On 19 October the crowd of the Brisbane Tramway) was so accompanying the police and arrested pervasive and mercurial it easily over- speaker George Reith descended on a ran the familiar grooves of union Salvation Army gathering, scattering and electoral activity. Rank and file the Army’s literature across the street resistance persisted as sporadic and and overturning their organ.29 often clandestine episodes of direct action. As Raymond Evans has noted: These were not passive onlookers, then, but partisans. To find the Police records after 2 February reason for this partisanship and its reveal another eight attempts by mass appeal, we need to go back small crowds and individuals in time to 2 February 1912 and the to close business premises, Brisbane general strike. On that day more than a score of physical Commissioner Cahill left an indelible assaults on strikebreakers and mark on the memory of working class ‘Specials’ and an equal number Brisbane by personally leading at least of sabotage attempts on trams 2000 police and volunteer ‘special’ and tramlines using dynamite, constables on a brutal rampage against gelignite, fog signals, and large workers marching in solidarity with rocks.31 Brisbane tramway employees, sacked for wearing union badges on duty. Whatever the tactical considerations With rifles, bayonets, swords and behind these incidents, whatever truncheons, this “slugging committee politics may have guided them, above

36 all they registered a community defiant There is never an opportunity but in retreat, driven by a desire to hit lost by certain people to seek back at their enemies but hamstrung by revenge upon the Commissioner a lack of organisational means. And it is for his firm and wholly correct this combination of powerlessness and action in the restoration of order vengefulness that we see carried across in the streets of Brisbane in into the street mobilisation of 1913. 1912.32 The same community that supplied and protected the physical force unionists Anxious not to see this order unravel, and saboteurs in 1912 also supplied the the Courier urged the authorities to crowds for the ASP’s campaign a little remain firm against “mob rule”. “What over 18 months later. Although, on the would the position be,” they asked streets and in the labour press, there darkly, “if a political meeting, with was public sympathy for the ASP’s more or less turbulence, was held at anti-establishment politics, Brisbane’s every street corner in the city?”33 working class rallied around the speakers not so much because they The arrests and convictions continued. were socialists or even tribunes for free By 21 October, eight activists had speech but because they were standing served or were serving gaol sentences.34 up to Cahill and his hated police force. Writing from his cell, Gordon Brown Perhaps without fully realising it, the made light of their predicament: ASP had created a weekly carnival of the oppressed where the targets of The Boggo Road Branch held Cahill’s Baton Friday terror could their first meeting yesterday… express their pent-up hostility through Several resolutions were relatively risk-free public displays of passed, the principal one being disloyalty. The free speech fight thus we have sugar and milk with exhibited a Janus-like quality. A veneer our hominy. It was also agreed of audacious theatricality and jolly that a general strike take place good fun masked a class confrontation as soon as possible … We stamped with the raw memories of will shortly lose our chief February 1912. propagandist, John Gray. He is to be discharged tomorrow. The establishment sensed this Mandeno is chewing a bit of undercurrent at work. The stolen toast as I write. Reith is Brisbane Courier accused Labour in the cook-house and is getting parliamentarians of inflaming tensions fat. Henry is wood-cutting, and by singling out Cahill for attack: Rudolph is painting.35

37 Behind the black humour, however, a was handed down after Alfred Rees serious struggle continued, even on the declared he would return to street inside. George Thompson commenced speaking as soon as he was free.38 In a hunger strike upon arrival at the January, Paul Jordan and Joe Fox were prison on 14 October, possibly the first gaoled for two months.39 The socialists political hunger strike in Australian had reached an impasse. They were history. After a week of refusing food, drawing crowds but they had failed to he was force fed by gaol doctor J. build a mass movement which might Espie Dods who afterwards certified have given them a fighting chance of him as mad and, on 22 October, had winning their demand. him transferred to the Goodna Hospital for the Insane. Even here, Thompson On the one hand, approaches to the refused to be silenced. On 24 March labour movement met with little 1914, while still an inmate, he penned success. A Citizens Free Speech a letter to the International Socialist, Committee formed on 9 November took appending some verse, which he up the cause through union networks hoped could be printed and sold as but found the unions unresponsive.40 his contribution to the Free Speech A fresh attempt followed a Market Fund. “I cannot do more at present,” Square rally on 18 April 1914, when he lamented.36 In December 1913, union officials and Labor leader Dave William Rose, another free speech Bowman spoke of the importance of prisoner, also refused to eat, declaring free speech. Resolutions were passed he was following the example of the and another committee was formed. suffragettes. After 14 days of rejecting This one called on unions to rally on normal prison food he was transferred Sunday 31 May in defiance of Cahill’s to the gaol hospital where he agreed ban. In the event, not one union was to eat only because the hospital food officially represented. Gordon Brown was better. In January, his sentence reacted bitterly: completed but too weak to walk, he was released into the care of his ASP … we can only draw the comrades.37 conclusion that they are so intoxicated with brain For all the resolve and courage destroying parliamentary shown by the activists, by December laborism that their doped state it was evident the campaign was unfits them for consideration of not sustainable in its current form. any militant action.41 Mandeno had already accumulated a repeat conviction, and penalties were Laborism was indeed a large part of increasing — in November, the first the reason for union indifference. But six-week sentence of the campaign the ASP’s sectarianism did not help.

38 Brown’s attack blurred the distinction proclamation during the general strike, between paid union officials and the Boggo Brown noted in December working rank and file: “We are told 1913, the workers were horrified. But that the trade unionists are the flower of today, he complained, when socialists the labouring class. Guess that flower go to gaol to win back this right, the has withered some, eh?”42 Earlier, the workers “are submissive, docile, International Socialist had abused curiosity-mongers”.44 Labor Party supporters as “molluscs”.43 Isolated from organised labour and On the other hand, the ASP fared critical of their own supporters, little better in converting their street the socialists in the end had only supporters into frontline activists. themselves to rely on. As the arrests They consistently stood apart from continued and the duration of gaol their audience, substituting themselves terms increased, Gordon Brown and their own daring stunts for mass published appeals for interstate ASP action. They do not appear to have members to replenish the speaking encouraged the crowds to join in their stocks. Some came but the numbers antics. In any case, even workers who could never be sufficient. After the agreed with the free speech demand or rally on 31 May failed to break through shared the ASP’s socialism would have to the unions, the campaign faltered. been reluctant to volunteer for certain At the rally itself the ASP refused to arrest. People with jobs, especially put forward speakers for arrest. Brown people with families to support, could wrote in cynical resignation: ill-afford time off to attend weekday court hearings, let alone risk a term If any speaking had been of imprisonment. Merely the news of indulged in it would have come an arrest and court appearance could from our boys. The crowd cost an activist his or her job, while would have cheered, several of the fines could spell financial disaster. us [would have been] jugged, Consequently, the crowds supported and the heroic unionists would the activists but few individuals outside have returned to their yokes the ASP/IWW circle were prepared to and smilingly related (when the step up to the speaking stool. boss wasn’t watching) how the foolish socialists were again The ASP could have changed tactics, candidates for the Boggo Road perhaps encouraging acts of mass division.45 disobedience where the individual risk of arrest was diffused. Instead, By July the ASP’s Brisbane branch they turned on their own constituency. reports contained no mention of the When free speech was denied by free speech struggle. By September,

39 the branch’s activities were limited war edge of that struggle, some familiar to Saturday night dances and Sunday faces were prominent: Percy Mandeno, evening lectures.46 William Jackson, Jim Quinton and Gordon Brown. All in all, over the course of the campaign at least 21 men had served Notes one or more gaol terms, two had 1 Originally written for publication in the conducted hunger strikes and one had Queensland History Teachers’ Association been confined in the Goodna Hospital, eJournal, 2014. where he languished long after the 2 Gordon Brown, My Descent from Soapbox struggle petered out.47 Gordon Brown to Senate, Cooperative Press, Brisbane, had been summonsed eight times and 1953, p. 125. served many sentences, the longest two 3 ibid, p. 128. months.48 These sacrifices, however, 4 International Socialist, 15 November 1913. As the ASP’s national newspaper, the were not fruitless. Everyone from International Socialist published regular sitting magistrates to Ted Theodore, reports on the Brisbane campaign. Deputy Leader of the Parliamentary 5 For an exemplar of this narrative arc, see Labor Party, came to acknowledge D.J. Murphy, T.J. Ryan: A Political Biography, publicly that free speech was an UQP, St Lucia, 1990. Examples of recent important principle and that certain histories which overlook the episode include public spaces should be set aside for Ross Fitzgerald et al, Made in Queensland: 49 A New History, UQP, St Lucia, 2009, unvetted political gatherings. pp. 82–4, and Frank McBride et al, Brisbane 150 Stories, 1859–2009, BCC, Brisbane, After Labor’s electoral victory in May 2009. A notable exception to this pattern of 1915 a renewed push by the socialists exclusion is the work of Raymond Evans. for a designated forum area led, on 18 See Loyalty and Disloyalty: Social Conflict July, to the first legal political street on the Queensland Homefront, 1914–18, meeting in Brisbane on the Sabbath. Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 1987, p. 18; ‘Free Speech Fight, 1913–14’ in Raymond With no threat of arrest, some 50 people Evans and Carole Ferrier (eds), Radical gathered on the corner of North Quay Brisbane, The Vulgar Press, Carlton, 2004, and Ann Street to hear the ASP hold pp. 150–55; A History of Queensland, forth on “war and Christian failure”.50 Cambridge University Press, Melbourne, Subsequently, the Government set 2007, p. 153. aside an area behind Parliament House, 6 Brisbane Courier, 17 June 1913, p. 3; grandiosely named The Domain, for International Socialist, 20 December 1913. 7 International Socialist, 20 September stump speakers. Despite its isolation 1913; Letter from Under Secretary, Home from the city, this open expanse would Secretary’s Office to M.H. Sampson, play a significant role in the mass Secretary Australasian Socialist Party, mobilisations against conscription Brisbane Branch, 11 July 1913. Queensland during World War One. And at the anti- State Archives Item ID861615, Letterbook, p. 412.

40 8 Queensland Parliamentary Debates 35 International Socialist, 29 November 1913. (Legislative Assembly), 21 August 1913, 36 International Socialist, 1 November 1913, p. 944. 11 April 1914. A full account of Thompson’s 9 International Socialist, 13 September 1913. incarceration and the campaign for his 10 The Brisbane Courier on 29 September release is beyond the scope of this article. 1913 itself suggested this link. One Brisbane After a brief period of freedom in 1915, he woman who did publicly support the spent a further four years in Goodna and campaign was Emma Miller. She spoke on at Toowoomba mental health facilities. least two occasions at Market Square rallies. 37 The Daily Standard, 25 November 1913; 11 Daily Standard, 9 September 1913. International Socialist, 10 January 1914. 12 International Socialist, 20 September 1913. 38 Daily Standard, 20 November 1913. 13 International Socialist, 27 September 1913; 39 International Socialist, 10 January 1914. Daily Standard, 22 September 1913. 40 Daily Standard, 10 November 1913. 14 ibid. 41 International Socialist, 6 June 1914. 15 Daily Standard, 16 September 1913; 42 ibid. International Socialist, 27 September 1913. 43 International Socialist, 30 May 1914. 16 Daily Standard, 16 September 1913. 44 International Socialist, 27 December 1913. 17 ibid; International Socialist, 27 September 45 International Socialist, 13 June 1914. 1913. 46 International Socialist, 19 September 1913. 18 Daily Standard, 22 September 1913, 25 47 International Socialist, 21 February 1914. September 1913; International Socialist, 4 48 Brown, My Descent from Soapbox to October 1913. Senate, p. 129. 19 Daily Standard, 25 and 29 September 1913; 49 The Daily Standard, 20 November 1913; Brisbane Courier, 29 September 1913. Queensland Parliamentary Debates 20 The Worker, 9 October 1913. (Legislative Assembly), 26 September 1913, 21 Daily Standard, 6 October 1913. p. 1584. 22 Daily Standard, 27 October 1913, 50 International Socialist, 7 August 1915. 31 October 1913, 6 November 1913. 23 Daily Standard, 20 October 1913. 24 International Socialist, 1 and 8 November 1913. 25 International Socialist, 17 January 1914. 26 Brisbane Courier, 6 October 1913; The Worker, 9 October 1913. 27 International Socialist, 6 December 1913. 28 Brown, My Descent from Soapbox to Senate, p. 128. 29 International Socialist, 8 November 1913. 30 The Worker, 17 February 1912. 31 Raymond Evans, ‘Baton Friday, 1912’ in Raymond Evans and Carole Ferrier (eds), Radical Brisbane, The Vulgar Press, Carlton, 2004, p. 149. 32 Brisbane Courier, 29 September 1913. 33 ibid. 34 Queensland Parliamentary Debates (Legislative Assembly), 21 October 1913, p. 2046.

41 Creating Union Activists: organising strategies as advocated by An Interview with the ACTU. Jen Thomas, Acting In this feature interview, we examine a new initiative on the part of the Queensland Branch Queensland Branch of The Services Secretary of the Services Union to foster a new breed of union Union activist. Jen Thomas coordinated the introduction of the programme in 2012 and its subsequent development. This Conducted August 19, 2013 by is an edited and abridged transcript Bob Russell that is part of a larger project that the interviewer is carrying out on the union’s activist program. With policy shifts away from full employment Keynesianism during What got you thinking about the activist the 1980s and the adoption of neo- programme? liberal paradigms in their stead, labour I’ve been dealing with all the elements unions have confronted increasingly relating to delegates’ training and unfavourable conditions in which to their learning and development for organise and bargain. Over this 35-year the Branch over at least the last ten period, we have witnessed dramatic years and as we became more of a declines in trade union density and a campaigning and organising union our corresponding decline in union strength and influence. Importantly, these have been worldwide trends that have traversed the already industrialised capitalist economies. In some nations, unions have largely proceeded with ‘business as usual’; in others it has been worse than that as witness the stream of concessionary bargaining rounds in the US. In Australia, the labour movement has responded to the challenges of neo-liberalism with the uptake of a number of initiatives, including top-down amalgamations, the movement to enterprise bargaining, greater administrative centralisation in individual unions and the adoption of Jen Thomas

42 delegates didn’t have the skills needed. how you want to go out there and lobby We were asking our members not just politicians, or do activities that benefit to campaign within their workplace both your community and your Union. but also to involve our communities We didn’t really have any formalised in industry campaigns linked to the type of delivery to expand those roles. provision of direct services to our community members. These have How did the activist programme grown over the last five years. actually get started? When I became the Assistant Secretary, Delegates didn’t have the skills to do this was something I particularly all this type of work; it really frightened wanted to pursue and so with Branch them. While they could be considered Council endorsement a very reasonable activists in their workplaces, when amount of funds was set in the annual they had to start engaging out in their budget for 2010/11 to deliver a first communities, when they had to go and pilot programme, which we called, talk about their work and industries in “The Activist Development Programme their community, they couldn’t do that for 2012”. in a formalised or structured way. The underlying theory is to have a The ASU always had a fundamental programme that wasn’t just about delegates’ programme largely for how you figure out how you represent new delegates. At times we did more someone in the workplace, or how you advanced delegates training, but for recruit a new member to the Union, or something specific like bargaining. how you had a discussion with your Largely it would have been the boss. It was about something more: fundamental type of training that we why does the movement exist; why do would do, focusing on how you support someone in the workplace. There we want to have healthy communities; was never anything about developing why do we want to get involved and bigger thought processes or concepts become active, and not just in our of activism. Indeed some of these workplace, more globally. We engaged 1 might not always suit a delegate. Lisa Heap as a consultant to start to model the type of framework for such a Now, if as a member you were programme. At that time I didn’t know fundamentally more about being an of any other Union that was doing this activist, that might mean you don’t like type of programme, and I still don’t. So doing any of the roles that our training it’s quite unique, and there are not a lot traditionally was around, but you might of people out there doing that type of have been heavily involved in how you work, but Lisa certainly in her line of wanted to progress your industry, or work was someone that I knew would

43 be more progressive in terms of those have been doing campaigning work sorts of ideas. for a number of years. There were not that many programmes but their Was this an initiative of this Branch, or fundamental delegates’ programmes was it a National initiative? — they had quite a lot online — are all No, it was only a Branch initiative. actually about campaigning. Certainly it feels a bit like that at the moment. Maybe when Kath2 and I What did you hope to accomplish when became the Branch Secretary and you set up the programme? Assistant Branch Secretary we’re were In our Rules we still don’t have the trying lots of new things. We’re not term officially of an “Activist”. We scared of having a go at trying some actually only have a term of a Shop different things to see if they succeed Steward or Delegate, and I just think or fail, and the key to all of this was we that’s out-dated now. There’s definitely had an action learning framework so still a role for delegates to play, we could constantly evaluate the work overwhelmingly, but ultimately my that we are doing. desire was to create a different type of programme and have two types of Our application for funding from the people. One is about a delegate that is ACTU through the Delegates Training more of the traditional role and there Fund was successful for the 2013 are many of them. They’re just happy project. We obtained the maximum a to support their 10 or 15 people that Branch could get, which was $20,000. might be in the particular worksite. This was important because we estimate when you include all the staff And then we had this other type of behind it, is about $60,000 to run the person — and again, it might just be on programme. one issue or might be on one campaign, or might be for them permanently in Were you influenced by anything that their life — when they want to get you might have heard was going on active about any issue or a campaign. elsewhere? These are the activists — they need to I think we acknowledged that have a different set of skills and we, as becoming a campaigning union was a union, needed to help with getting a really big step for us; to encourage them trained and involved. our largely white collar type of members to actually get into the mode We need both in the Union, because of campaigning. We were particularly when you just try to engage the looking at the UK Unions. UNISON is delegates who only have the desire to do a very similar, large type of Union that support work for members, you’ve got we have a relationship with and they no chance of trying to engage them on

44 anything bigger. They’re not interested programmes to attract those people to and are the wrong type of people for do different work. us to be pushing and saying, ‘You need It’s exactly like industrial and to do everything’. There are delegates organising — we actually do it in our who are really honest with us as well, own staff, we just don’t do it in our and say, ‘Just some of those things I’m own structures. They’re two different not interested in doing.’ That means groups of people, and this is all about you have to have different people, and the “people people,” — how we that means you have to have different actually grow and build and develop.

45 How did you try to do this? it was a six day programme and then There were a couple of criteria in a two-day part where participants had setting up the programme. One to attend the Delegates Conference. was that we had organisers actually Therefore we thought an application attached to these activists. The second was necessary because it was a far more that applied in the first year of running intensive programme. One attraction the programme was that the activists point was we had guest speakers and weren’t going to be delegates. I had this introduced the study of a lot more really clear view then that the two roles academic frameworks, more global should be separate and so no delegate concepts and presentations than what could apply for the role or to do the we would ever do in a basic delegates activist training. That’s changed since. course.

So for the first pilot year there was How does the activist programme a clear criterion that you couldn’t fit with training and support of the be a delegate, or a very long term traditional delegates? delegate and you didn’t have to have The Activist Course started to make us fundamental Delegates’ training. think differently about our delegates. Our Branch Council — which is all The next part was that participants in the made up of delegates — could see activist programme wouldn’t be hand- our fundamentals’ training had to be selected; we would seek applications carried out differently. to be a part of the programme and potential candidates had to address We’ve extended the resources for selection criteria. That was something further training of delegates and now we’d never done before and it ended up have a permanent trainer by converting being quite intense, but just trying to one of our organisers to become the set a couple of new, boundaries around trainer. This allowed us to re-develop it to see that thinking that this might be our fundamental delegates’ programme a programme that people might have an as well; it is more styled down than actual desire and want to kind of fight our activist programme. This has for this spot, as opposed to kind of how given us a new lease of life and a normal Delegates are tapped on the new real investment in what is my shoulder. ultimate passion which is building real workplace power. We tried to make it a bit more like tapping the desire. And also in those The main thing we’ve done is try and days our delegates’ training was two deal with the structural part in terms of days. This programme was going to be the formalised training. I think we’ve eight days — significantly different; still got a long way to go about how

46 our organisers genuinely support our We just haven’t got that down pat — activists and our delegates, as well and I’d extend that to any white collar as our industrial officers and how we union. We just don’t have it settled, and generally do that. I think that’s because there’s still quite a servicing mentality that the member We learn different things every day. will just call the office directly. It is a One of the biggest changes as well is legalistic kind of thing — if I need a that we never included an organiser in service, I expect it to be there, and I our delegates’ training. They weren’t will call if I’m in trouble or I need that part of the puzzle. We only had them help. working in isolation, so we were training, say, 20 and 30 delegates at How do you make the changes? a time and we never hooked them up We’re aware the change takes a long with those organisers. time to build. It doesn’t happen quickly. The first step to actually making the That’s a really basic omission, isn’t it? change is to at least make sure your Yes, so it was probably one of the organisers are connected with delegates key things I wanted in an Activist and activists. We don’t want to just Programme; more of an intense have groups of people being trained relationship with our organisers. but then we don’t do anything on the Operationally on a day to day basis, the ground to do anything with those skills ways we were supporting our delegates in a structured way. was still too much on a white collar mode. Changing to an organising and There are some serious issues for the campaigning union means you’ve union here. We’re realising that now, got to stop doing everything for the when we have a broader chance to delegates and you have to let them look at what our industrial officers develop. Learning as a union how to do. The type of work that they do is support them is a lot harder to do than all about addressing issues and doing just going in to fix issues. it in a very technical way. We need to do quite a bit of learning about how We actually have to link organisers to support delegates to do that kind to delegates and make sure they are of work. It requires quite a lot of skill supported. That is where I think from development for those union staff to be what I’ve seen that blue collar unions able to support delegates. do things very well. The Construction Unions and so on are very effective in What was special about the activist terms of real delegate type of work. training you did in 2012? Their organisers are on the ground with We had 40 members or new Delegates the delegates all the time. apply for consideration, and then I

47 interviewed every single person, by And they knew they’d have to do a telephone. We had never done that project; the first time we’d ever thought before. We probably only wanted to of that. I had seen other unions do that get to 12 or 15 over the year, because and I thought that’s something that we we didn’t know what it was going to don’t do particularly well. I also thought be like. Beyond that, I’d got to attach it would help structurally — that is organisers to everyone, so it had to internally to the union, if we had each be a smaller group in terms of real activist do a project that actually meant the organisers had to engage with them. development. That is, the organisers would have to check up, they had to give support and We ended up getting 13 that we looked ensure that the activists actually got a at placing. It took a month because real chance to try their skills. we had 40 applicants, so to interview them all and then short-list them, and So that was really new for us, the then we had to try to apply for their concept of a project and for that year training leave. That was quite a bit of they had to present their projects at a negotiation, because I had never had to Delegates Conference, and they really ask for eight days off for anyone before. freaked out about that, so they knew it That was one of their first tasks. I made was serious. the applicants go back and start talking to their employers about their desire to Did you use a programme from be a part of this programme and about elsewhere? what benefit it would provide to the It was mapped out in-house. Largely employer and their own development. Lisa had a good concept about the academic type of framework, which There was a difference between setting I didn’t, and because she does quite a the training up in this way and the bit on human rights, worker rights as human rights, she really brings some usual delegates’ training. We wanted more cutting edge material. I was the people genuinely interested in it and one who kept saying, ‘We’ve got to who can see the investment. I was have a structure to this,’ because if all always really clear about it, and we’d we do is talk about theories, it’s just break it down even about how much going to wash over them. That was this would cost. It would be four or five the concept of why we had to have grand a pop we were investing in them; a project, how you had to apply the we wanted them to know they weren’t theory. She definitely had the academic kind of going into it just with the view leanings and frameworks and I just had that, ‘Oh, if I like it, I like it; if I don’t, more of a vision of what I wanted to I don’t.’ see and how we could use them.

48 What did you learn from the pilot? for us was that it was necessary to fix We realised in the first year that it was the way our organisers operate. our organisers’ support that was the biggest downfall for us. It wasn’t our How did you think the issues of participants, so that was the biggest organisers through? kind of learning for us. That came out The organisers felt it was just another overwhelmingly in the evaluation done job for them to do on an already busy by the first group of activists at the work schedule. I couldn’t understand end of the pilot. It was the light-bulb this as the Co-ordinator of the moment for us about our organisers; Programme because a fundamental of really weren’t providing genuine a union organiser’s job is working with support for the activists. delegates and activists. What we had The support the activists got was people discovered was we needed to put them trying to go in and fix their issues. The through some training again about what organisers were involved and were it is really required to support someone supporting their activists side by side and actually try to do a skill assessment but the practical stuff when they got of, “do our Organisers actually have in the workplace was not about real some of the skills to support people support. It was more about, ‘Oh, well, in a genuine way?” On some things we can just turn that into an issue and we could say, “no, they didn’t” and on we can fix it’. That was the biggest others it’s that desire to go and be the thing we learned. White Knight and fix things.

We weren’t expecting that at all. In What we realised as well, from the fact, what we had discovered was activists themselves, was that not the activists were quite inspirational having the fundamentals of delegate in terms of having a vision for their training and not understanding the Union and their own involvement and Union structure made it difficult what they could do. It’s pretty amazing, for those activists. Not knowing the that you don’t get in a Delegates’ things learnt in fundamental delegates’ Programme, because it’s two days. training slowed them down a little bit You have a longer time with these people, who really did have a better as well. From 2013, the activists have opportunity to develop. to do delegates training first. And for the Organisers we did two different At the end of the pilot we knew the training courses with them in terms structure of our programme was good, of supporting activists. Also there is a you could see the activists continuing weekly work structure for them to meet to develop, but the overwhelming thing with the activists in the programme.

49 We didn’t do applications this time, How far does this go? and I think it’s one of the sad parts, but We’ve had to do that in the last couple going with the new criteria, which is of years in two large industries — that you have to do Delegates Training Power and the Community Sector. first, largely we just look at the We’re experiencing it now for four Delegates we trained in the past year, Local Government Councils where we so look at the last hundred Delegates are dealing with de-amalgamation. So that we’ve trained when we think of activism the issues are quite wide; our members and organisers Are you hoping that delegates take on at times just think about wanting to some of the workplace functions from get red hot on an industrial matter or officers and staff? a social issue, and just want to go out Not even just directly for the members; and do rallies. It’s far more complex in what we have experienced even in terms of the work we want to deliver, our industrial work is they’ve had to because it’s all about engagement. So take on additional roles. Look at our part of activism is still in the workplace energy industry at the moment — at about getting people to participate and privatisation and what’s occurring to understand the issues. This means there. We’ve got very senior delegates understanding the work that members that have had to go into a very do and the industrial environment and campaigning type of structure, but then understanding how to actually about industrial matters that relate engage about that. to very technical elements of their industry. Recently for privatisation, because we deal with the energy industry, it’s Now, as far as we’re concerned, the also about electricity pricing. Our best people to put in front of the delegates want to get involved in Prime Minister are our members and all of that because they understand our delegates. It’s not us the officers. their industry brilliantly. We ended We experienced this through pay up sending a number of our delegates equity for our Community sector. down to Canberra and they got to We had to explain what community meet with the Acting Prime Minister, service provision was and had to start and they engaged about their industry explaining their job. They had to do that and about the pricing of electricity, to Members of Parliament but in doing about privatisation, and were that you actually have to still draw successful. That’s when the Federal out those elements of the industrial Government was looking at a paper relations of the technical part of the job about privatisation, and ultimately they and break it down into messages. decided they’d leave it with the States.

50 Now for what we call a heavy activist always actually the pressures people campaign about privatisation, we’ve experience at home. designed our whole campaign based not on the worker, it’s all based on the What kind of pressures are these? consumer. So our message is all about There are the overall and usual ones the reliability of the service and about that people feel, the actual pressures the cost of electricity. could be about employment security and also generally about cost of living, Now, in a Union Office we don’t though we don’t do our campaigns know all of that; we know about the based on that because we’ve been a employment market and what relates bargaining union for so long. to that. We’re trying to get our member activists to make their industry issues And then members have their local and industry policies out a broader type of pressures. They are always issue for the community. This is really concerned about their community, and about how you can merge the two not just relating to where they work worlds of work and the community. and what type of service they provide. Some of this is about inclusion for What’s a good example of your sense of different elements of their communities. a campaign? Transport and infrastructure appear to Privatisation of electricity is a perfect be key issues. example and that’s extended now. We thought it was only going to be about And that’s largely because our members electricity, but now Campbell Newman are the mums and dads, the type of has extended that into the Railways and member we have generally are mums the Port Authorities, so it’s our entire and dads and they’ve got a couple of Government Owned Corporation kids in school. The average age of our (GOC) area. So we need activists members is about 45. They nearly all around that can become the leaders want job security; even those joining about how privatisation actually the industries and the union are after impacts on issues for consumers as more security. This is because they’ve well for the workplace; these are the trying to get a mortgage and this needs type of programmes that are practically work for the next 20 years. driven for us in our workplaces. It’s kind of all-encompassing, what At general elections we always you can find, too, is when you’re doing campaign on issues that are very bargains or there’s privatisation or specific to our industries while working other big things going on, that, people within the overall ACTU approach. want to be active about issues that they However, the election issues are not want to influence. Often these are more

51 local issues because that’s probably a — but when Newman decided to cut big extent of what they feel they can 100 of the bus routes around Brisbane. deliver. While we need leaders and We just worked with all the unions to be able to have people engaged in in terms of engaging our members, those big types of campaigns we also because largely they were the people need to look at where people’s activism who had to catch the bus in to work, lies. If they’re not engaged in those big or they’d put their kids on the buses issues, wouldn’t it be great to have a to schools and just got them engaged programme on the issues they want to in just doing some online petitions, engage on, that they could have some because they were the ones really skills to do that? worked up about it

You have also talked about activism Has the programme met your and participation; what’s involved? expectations? Absolutely, we want to be a union that The programme, as I said, made us supports participation, and as I said, assess how our organisers work, so in terms of the training we do in Basic that was totally unexpected, and I think Delegates, it is still aimed that way, brilliant at the same time, that we were but a skill that person might take out is willing to evaluate it. only about supporting people at certain times in their workplace careers. The We could see some real failings in activist role would be about how you terms of the type of work activists could engage regularly about whatever ended up doing; it was too basic for issue is occurring at the workplace, or what we wanted this programme to whatever issues are occurring in that achieve, which meant we just needed to community that members are engaged get some structures in place. We won’t about. It’s not just about the workplace. fix it overnight, but we can continue to work on supporting our activists. We That what we want to extend the really need to work on it in the next activist concept into. We haven’t done five years. perfectly yet. Largely it’s still been about our own type of industry issues, The activists had really good ideas but that we could do that is good, beyond their initial projects, but if the because that’s what happens at times stumbling block is you’ve got to get as well. Task 1 done all the time, it just takes you longer to get into it. It also makes us ready for new issues. Recently in Brisbane we’ve had a One of the original activists now works great one, which was when Campbell for us as an organiser and we probably Newman — it happened really quickly wouldn’t have drawn her from just a

52 delegates’ type of programme. We have ultimately that’s what I wanted to had nearly, I think, 70% of the people happen because we need to open those who have been to Activist Programmes opportunities about union structures to now take up appointments in our Union those people. So I think that’s a really structures in terms of the official type good outcome, that they didn’t just of structures, and they’ve wanted to walk — some did, but I mean, largely invest in terms of the actual structure in terms of the programme, you know, of the Union, not just to say, ‘Well, if we get 70-odd percent that actually I’ve done that programme and I’ll just continue on with it.’ They’ve actually take up the new structures, that’s really made a deeper connection to their good. I’ve had a number of people apply Union. for jobs in terms of when they come up, so they’re really into the making So is it developing a cadre of Union of their unions in their workplace and activists? the broader issues have continued on Yes, and investing, like, they’ve social networks, and really talking the continued to invest in their Union, language of the Union. which means actually taking on more responsibility, so that’s brilliant, So for all those things, all I can say is because you don’t get that out of Basic we’re on the right track. And I do think Delegates Training Courses. Which it’s because it’s a different programme means it is a more accelerated type of and it’s a smaller group, and that it’s programme, because ultimately that’s what you want. You want some new a different type of investment. I think leaders for when, particularly for us, for that does have something to do with our delegates that are aging, they’re all it. So for all those things I can say going to retire soon enough, and we’re it’s good, but I’m keen to evaluate at going to need this new group who the end of this year as well, and that’s actually want to be a part of it, not just a positive thing. I think we’ll change continue to be tapped on the shoulder, things again for next year. because we will have that as well. I’m really into the view then in terms of Notes when you’re having those debates of 1 Lisa Heap is currently the Executive Director that view of what the union should be of the Australian Institute of Employment all about, and that big investment into Rights. delegates is required. 2 Kath Nelson is the Secretary of the Services Union Queensland Branch. At the time So that’s, in a really quick turnaround, a of the interview she was on leave and Jen year and a half into it, and maybe that’s Thomas who holds the office of Assistant me doing a bit of pushing because Secretary was filling in as Acting Secretary.

53 Review of means that attempts to resolve the one only make the other worse. Despite M. Tubbs, The Dictatorship of some interesting ideas, this is not an Capital: the New Corporate academic treatise. If anything, if falls World Order, Salisbury Qld.: more within the populist, ‘muckraking’ tradition of polemical writing. Boolarong Press, 2013, 118 pp. The book provides numerous Reviewed by Bob Russell examples of contemporary corporate malfeasance, and unethical behaviours, abetted by complicit political parties (Liberal and Labor) and politicians. So, if the purpose of the book is to remind readers of this state of affairs as part of a broader process of agitation/mobilization then I suppose it has a purpose. However, more knowledgeable readers will find little that is new in the book, given that most of its references are taken from Australia’s daily press.

The author also expresses some views that I can only describe as ‘weird’ or erroneous. For Tubbs much of our current troubles began following the collapse of the USSR, which, if nothing else offered an In this short, self-published book, alternative, although not necessarily Michael Tubbs rails against the fraud, more desirable, social system. This corruption and exploitation that is is plainly wrong. Neo-liberalism as part and parcel of the global capitalist an alternative and more regressive order. Tubbs argues that we are social paradigm had its origins in the currently experiencing a dual crisis early 1970s — theoretically with the that consists of global financial chaos musings of the trilateral commission and global ecological meltdown. The and more practically with the coup and crises are both inter-related and also subsequent introduction of ‘Chicago mutually antagonistic, by which he school economics’ in Chile.

54 Tubbs also seems to dichotomize is used for productive investment and capitalism into a benign era of a debt that is used for pure speculation. A “human owned personal capitalist more adequate treatment of the subject economy” and the malignant era of would acknowledge these points. corporate capitalist dictatorship that we now experience. For Tubbs this For this reader, the book may has come about when legal systems provide a degree of ‘eye opening’ or granted companies’ personhood and consciousness raising among a newer in the process rendered individual generation of novices. However, it capitalists immune from the deeds cannot really be said to unearth any of the organisations they controlled new knowledge about the way our (i.e. the doctrine of limited liability). political economy works. These legal innovations established an environment that was only too conducive to corporate secrecy and conspiracy, which is now continually played out at the expense of public interest in corporate boardrooms. For Tubbs, (a former lawyer) these shifts in law are all important. I, on the other hand, see the changes in legal doctrine as reflecting the laws of capital accumulation that Marx begins to explore in Capital. Through accumulation, concentration and centralization small-scale capital either morphs into corporate capital, is smashed on the rocks of capitalist competition, or is acquired by larger capitals through acquisition.

Finally, I find Tubbs’ views on debt to be overly simplistic. For the author all debt is toxic and is symptomatic of crisis. This is to ignore 50 years of Keynesian economic history in which states employed sustainable debt to fund worthy social projects. There are different kinds of debt — state, household, funded/unfunded, debt that

55 In Memorium

suffering a suspected heart attack while on holiday with his soulmate Kamala Shakti, in Indonesia late last month. After 73 years of unerring inspiration he selfishly and inconsiderately left us to our own devices.

Bugger, I say.

Treeves strove so hard to be a modest and common man but was continually undermined by his uncommon compassion, commitment, larrikinism, humanity and grace.

Tony Reeves He defied being pigeon-holed but wouldn’t have objected to being variously labelled as a Marxist and a A tribute from his close friend socialist — he would proclaim in a rare and comrade Jack Saunders deviation from his unswerving atheism “god forbid, call me anything but a rat and class traitor, an ‘effing’ Trotskyist”. Yes indeed, Tony Reeves won’t be writing his column today because he The infant Treeves graced us with his is feeling unwell — let me tell you presence in 1940 in Essex in the UK. at the outset, award-winning author The Churchillian regime in power at and journalist Tony Reeves was your the time obviously recognised his early classic leftie, a genuine class warrior latent talent and decided to protect their and penultimate true believer. future intellectual elite by hiding him away in bunkers and gas masks far Just as Billy Shakespeare foretold in away in the colony of Wales, remote his sonnets, Treeves, as he was lovingly enough it seems to escape the Nazi called, shuffled off this mortal coil after tsunami heading their way.

56 Obviously out of clear and present of the overwheening sense of cynicism danger Treeves took a distinct liking born of a sense of entitlement that to his adopted country and quickly preoccupies so many of us today. mastered the guttural and generously irrigating Welsh dialect. Starting as copyboy on Packer’s Telegraph he worked through his His later resort to Welsh choirboy grades — not a mean feat as he had no impersonations were frightening as respect for authoritarian and anally- well as life-threatening as you dodged retentive chiefs-of-staff and editors — the saliva he could spray around, all as most of you will know, they were in in the name of singing up his ‘native’ abundant supply in those days. language.. Tony quickly became an investigative In 1954 Tony moved to Australia journalist of many years standing and being the immensely intuitive and dare I say, note. He went on to character that he was, turned his hand work at the Daily Mirror, the Sunday successfully to a kaleidoscope of Telegraph, the Sunday Australian, the activities so diverse as cultivating roses National Review and the ABC. More all the way through to silversmithing, importantly his forensic and multi- and wait for it, sewing. dimensional reporting helped bring about the Moffitt Royal Commission But his innate love of life, dedication into organized crime. to truth, unavowed commitment to bolshie leftwing beliefs and love of all In 1975 Treeves joined his close friend things wordy and English led him into and investigative journalist Barry journalism. Ward in trying to unravel the appalling murder of Kings Cross newspaper No formal education, no degrees, but publisher Juanita Nielsen, in what may an uncanny love of the language and have been the crime of the century in unadulterated life experience drew NSW. him to journalism on the chance he may be able to right the wrongs in They were continually rebuffed in their his obsessive dislike of perpetrated attempts to have the book published corruption, deception, duplicity and or force a commission of inquiry to outright criminal tendencies. expose the truth behind this sordid tale of police and political corruption, of This is what pervaded Treeves’ betrayal and heinous brutality. consciousness — a righteous indignation, a hatred of pretentiousness Back to the man. Would you believe and bumptiousness, an absolute disdain Tony was sexually liberated even

57 before the term was first coined. Such was the nature of the beast — His investigative reporting as crime and all of us were swept away by his roundsman on the Telegraph forced infectious decency and compassion. the then federal attorney-general, Lionel Murphy, to order the federal Early on Treeves decided the Labor police to put a 24/7 bodyguard of Party was the best vehicle to implement two burly federal coppers on his case. his radical agenda, particularly his Close comrade Murphy was extremely fearless advocacy of public housing, concerned at Tony’s key role in the public transport and support of the revelations uncovered by the Moffit green bans movement. Commission into organised crime. He took his drive and energy with A long session of intense caring him when he spent seven years as a and sharing with comrades led the man to abandon all care and launch councillor on the Sydney City Council himself on a naked romp around his from September 1977. block in Victoria Street, East Sydney, Fortunately his beefy bodyguards He teamed up with fellow-travellers decided to remain clothed — seems it Robert Tickner and Steve McGoldrick is hard to conceal weapons in such a to become a left wildcat ginger group state. driving Lord Mayor Leo Port and ALP right-wing power broker Doug A touch of naked rap dancing outside Sutherland well beyond the point of the Kings Cross police station failed distraction. The planning committee to arouse much interest but a similar become their playground and quickly tactic outside of a nearby brothel allied themselves with Jack Mundey didn’t go totally unacknowledged. and Joe Owens in the green bans Tony managed to make his presence movement. felt and once inside the establishment imperiously fronted the madam at the He fought to preserve Sydney’s reception who looked him up and down historic sites from demolition and and asked — ‘oh yeh, and where’s worked overtime to save inner city ya money honey?’; Devastated the suburbs, such as Woollomooloo and comrade made a tactical retreat. the Rocks. He was prepared to talk Tony loved nothing more than a anytime on urban conservation and his convivial libation with a comrade, a various campaigns saved many inner- colleague, in fact any unfortunate who urban tenants of low-rental homes could find and bask in this rare oasis of from eviction and communities from human charm and charity. disruption and dislocation.

58 Tony Reeves 70th Birthday Unfortunately in 1975 the federal BLF to be. He and his spiritual inspiration branch intervened against the NSW Kamala just captivated our previously branch which seriously disrupted the subdued state — it was as if the green bans revolution. messiah had arrived — once again apologies for any terms that would Meanwhile Sutherland’s dominant cause discomfort for a devout atheist right faction trumped up a case against such as my comrade. Treeves and expelled him from the party. Tony loved quoting the notorious Tony quickly reclaimed his place in the mayor of Leichhardt Larry Hand, labour movement, rejoined the Labor star of the remarkable warts and all Party and organised a super-leftie documentary ‘Rats in the Ranks’: branch. He just as quickly assumed a “You don’t know what it’s like to be a key position in the socialist left faction member of the Labor Party till you’ve of the Queensland branch. been expelled at least once — in my case, twice”. He was so impressed by an observation by a rather left-wing barrister at one In 1992 our comrade decided to spread of our branch meetings: “I would far the light and warmth to Queensland prefer to have a small cadre of left-wing and what a fine moment that turned out comrades in this branch than a thousand

59 careerist apparatchiks destined to state have spoken in judgement in the embrace the ministerial leather in meantime. some sell-out Labor government”. Tony is survived by his partner of 30 In Brisbane Treeves returned to his years, Kamala, his previous wife Tessa freelance writing and publishing who he remembered fondly along with career. His interest was rekindled in two sons and a daughter scattered investigating the criminal behaviour around Australia. and corruption he had witnessed first Yes he was proud, but strong, a great hand as a young reporter in Sydney. conversationalist, contrarian, inspiring His first book Mr Big the true story yet so personable and gentle — this of Lennie McPherson won the Crime world and his closest friends miss him Writers’ Association Ned Kelly Award so dreadfully. Quite frankly we loved for true crime. He followed this with the man — it is a bloody empty, desolate Mr Sin: the Abe Saffron Dossier and place without him. Vale Treeves. The Real George Freeman.

His latest project was to uncover the real culprits behind the Whiskey Au Go Go fire in Brisbane’s Valley in 1973, thereby revealing a web of police and political corruption that inspired the Fitzgerald Inquiry.

These books make compelling reading as the level of corruption is staggering. He was fearless in putting his true crime revelations together, so different from writing fiction as it is fraught with potential legal complications including libel suits, not to mention fears for the writer’s personal safety.

My comrade and I resigned from the Labor Party after Premier Anna Bligh decided to privatise state assets and expel union executives who opposed her government’s despicable actions — needless to say the people of our fair

60 2014 Alex Macdonald Lecture HOME FRONT WW2: MYTH AND REALITIES Dr. Rowan Cahill

5.30pm for 6.00pm Tuesday 20 May Level 2 TLC Building 16 Peel St South Brisbane

*free admission *refreshments available

Beginning with recent attempts by conservative interests to depict some Australian trade unions as acting in ‘treasonous’ ways during WW2 aimed at wrecking/sabotaging the war effort, this lecture will variously examine the claims, the use of consensus history as the base for conserva- tive politics, and the myth of the social solidarity of Australian society 1939-1945.

Dr Rowan Cahill has worked as a teacher, freelance writer, agricultural labourer, and for the trade union movement as a journalist, historian, and rank and file activ- ist. An Honorary Fellow with the Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts, Universi- ty of Wollongong (NSW), he has published extensively in labour movement, radical, and academic publications. His books include The Seamen’s Union of Australia, 1872-1972: A History (with Brian Fitzpatrick, 1981), Twentieth Century Australia: Conflict and Consensus (with David Stewart, 1987), A Turbulent Decade: Social Protest Movements and the Labour Movement, 1965-1975 (edited with Beverley Symons, 2005), Radical Sydney (with Terry Irving, 2010). The Alex Macdonald lecture is an annual event organised by the Brisbane Labour His- tory Association. It commemorates former Qld TLC Secretary Alex Macdonald and the critical role unions have played in the Qld La- We would like to thanks the Qld Council of Unions for its generous support of BLHA. bour Movement. For more detail contact: Dr Greg Mallory 0407 692 377.

61 Notes on Contributors

Jack Saunders.

Jack was a close comrade of Tony Reeves — both journalists and both socialists. They were life-long members of the Socialist Left faction (SL) of the Labor Party until both decided to resign from the party when Bligh moved to privatise a number of public assets including the railways and forestry plantations. They founded and produced the infamous SL paper Keep Left, a never-ending irritant of the old guard and AWU factions in the Queensland ALP. As journalists they had a mutual love of all things labour history and religiously attended labour history functions whenever possible

Jeff Rickertt

Jeff is a labour historian, librarian and archivist. His publications range from a history of Australian telephonists and their industrial organisations, to articles on early Queensland unionism and socialist politics. He is a regular contributor to and former co-editor of this journal.

Peter Cross

Peter is an undergraduate Law/Arts student at the University of Queensland. He has a particular interest in Queensland political culture. He has worked with the Centre for the Government of Queensland under Danielle Miller and Roger Scott. He hopes to go on to postgraduate study in the fields of political science and history.

Elisabeth Gondwe, Howard Guille and Lisa Jackson

Elisabeth, Lisa and Howard are undertaking a project on the Dunwich Benevolent Asylum for the North Stradbroke Island Historical Museum with funding from the Commonwealth Government Your Community Heritage programme. The project is titled A mutual isolation — the Dunwich Asylum and the Quandamooka people. It is about sharing and telling stories of the Dunwich Benevolent Asylum, the Aboriginal community and the Dunwich Public Hall on Minjerribah/Stradbroke Island. Elisabeth and Lisa work at the Museum and Howard is contributing as a museum volunteer.

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