“He who lies here, it said, marched
Not to conquer a foreign land, but
His own.“
– Bertolt Brecht, “The Tombstone of the Unknown Soldier of the Revolution“
I am shocked to hear the news of the passing of Bernie Neville.
A friend and I were talking to Bernie by phone in Rockhampton hospital at Friday lunchtime, the day before yesterday.
Bernie Neville grew up in Leeds in England during World War II and had good working class ethics from an early age. He was a trained cutter of men’s suits and remembered fondly his Jewish employer who was so impressed by his skills that he paid Bernie an adult wage while still a minor. This helped Bernie’s family as his father died young as a result of harrowing experiences at Dunkirk during the war.
With his wife Mavis, Bernie migrated to Christchurch in New Zealand and worked in the clothing industry. Looking for sunnier climes, Bernie and Mavis came to Brisbane in the 1970s. Bernie learnt a new trade as a cable jointer in the electricity distribution and supply industry in South East Queensland ending up being employed by South East Queensland Electricity Board (SEQEB).
As a union activist, Bernie did not sit on the sidelines as a commentator but endeavoured to fix things in a practical way. This won him many allies and staunch supporters including his much loved wife, Mavis (May) who sadly passed away in the 1990s. May was out there helping Bernie poster up with a glue pot in hand during the 1985 SEQEB dispute where over a thousand workers, including Bernie, were sacked by the Bjelke-Petersen government.
Bernie led the Electrical Trades Union rank-and-file strike committee during the SEQEB dispute (1985-86). In the end, all that Bernie and SEQEB workers wanted was their jobs back, with their superannuation and long service entitlements intact.
Bernie got neither. Along with a number of other underground workers (cable jointers), Bernie was black banned by his employer. Underground and cable jointing work is highly dangerous because of the high voltages of electricity involved. Doing this work, Bernie was thrown across a basement room in Q1 building on the Gold Coast by thousands of volts of electric current. There had been a breach of health and safety rules by a contractor that caused Bernie to be injured.
Some days during the SEQEB dispute, Bernie believed that he would not make it home at night … so brutal were the personal and physical attacks launched against him. Death threats were made to both Bernie and his family. Senior figures in politics attempted to bribe him to stay out of the dispute. But Bernie stood firm. More has to be said about this, but not now.
Bernie was very clever. He formed a great partnership with Phil Perrier who had a talent for depicting on posters what Bernie said in words.
Both Bernie’s sons supported him from when they were young. At the height of the SEQEB dispute, his son Michael, still in primary school, locked two scabs in a tunnel only to be brought home by two coppers. Bernie’s response was to say: “Good onya, son” and, in the same breath, told the police to “F*** off” slamming the door in their faces.
In recent years Bernie campaigned tirelessly for the West End community house at AHIMSA and for people who were taken advantage of by the Public Trustee. Bernie and Maggie could be seen on a stall at the West End markets for weeks on end getting 600 signatures for a petition to the Queensland Parliament to save AHIMSA house and exposing the Public Trustee’s role in its demise and the abduction and locking up of its former owner, Ross Taylor. Bernie was Ross’s power of attorney and tried desperately to have him returned to his family home on Mains Road, Sunnybank.
The campaign “You can not trust the public trustee” became a national campaign to correct the abuse of elders and vulnerable people in the community at the hands of the public trustee. A committee formed to build the campaign with a lot of grass roots organisation that eventually attracted the attention of the mainstream media including the ABC’s Four Corners program. Bernie was an active participant in a group led by Roslyn Mirciov exposing maladministration and corruption by corporate bodies set up to self-fund what should be a free public service, the making of a will by the poor and the vulnerable. Instead the Queensland Public Trustee exploits the free will service to extract fees from the estates of ordinary people.
As for myself, I was locked inside a police wagon outside the Executive building in 1985 with this good man during a picket protesting the sacking of the workers.
From that day forward Bernie and I had an unspoken agreement that we would endeavour to make the bastards who were responsible pay for what they did to ordinary workers in Queensland and elsewhere. I know that Bernie lived up to his side of that pact that bound us. I can only hope that I can live up to my side of the bargain.
Vale Bernie, I will miss your good humour and humanity greatly.
Under this globalised capitalist system, everyone pays a price. Bernie and his family were no exception. Much has been said in recent days about the passing of the Queen and what that means for our society. But when a worker with Bernie’s history passes, there is radio silence. His passing truly is an end of an era. An end to how workers of Bernie’s generation struggled within the capitalist system.
What will the next generation do? We will have to wait to find out.
I will leave readers with a film showing Bernie advocating for his friend, Ross Taylor, outside AHIMSA (Peace) house at West End in 2011. Feel free to write your own tributes, recollections and condolences in the comments section down below. In the words of Joe Hill: Don’t mourn, organise.
My condolences to his two sons, Brent and Michael, and their families. My condolences also to Bernie’s friends and comrades.
As for his enemies, all the wrong doers, both right and left; they will no doubt breathe a sigh of relief to hear of his departure.
Bernie’s funeral will be held at Dayboro at 10.30 am on Tuesday 20th September 2022 at the St Xavier Catholic Church at 135 McKenzie Street, Dayboro. Bernie will be buried alongside his beloved wife, Mavis, in the Dayboro cemetery. There will be refreshments afterwards at the Dayboro Bowls Club, a chance to catch up and remember Bernie’s life with sharing of yarns and thoughts.
Ian Curr
11 September 2022
I didn’t know Bernie well but on the few occasions we talked he struck me as the most amiable ‘dissident’. Not self-appointed, but forced into ‘dissidence’ by a failing solidarity. (The solidarity of ‘personhood’ – the personal self in relation to the ‘Self’ of humanity). This is what was really being fought over back then, through the corruption of the linked Trade Union and Labour historical narrative – led by Simon Crean and a ‘neoliberal’ clutch of Labor cronies. Who have of course persisted … They were corrupting their own narrative, the better part of which Bernie and we all were trying to uphold.
At the time I wrote this song for the ETU ‘dissidents’, trying to express this – for Bernie and his mates – which was only ever performed publicly once (and recorded live on 4track) at the Metro in Brisbane in 1986.
It was actually written on May Day 1986 – after witnessing the pathetic attempted media manipulation Crean’s cronies undertook there – specifically in honour of Bernie and the ETU strikers, and in defiance of the trade union leadership, as a tragic lament of the fact that ‘our common enemy’ had become the common doubt in the very possibility of solidarity. Nat Trimarchi 5 Oct 2022.
Two years ago we rode up Mt Nebo & Mt Glorious. 50 kms and 1,400 metres of climbing!
I remember in the early 1960s our family car breaking down on the Mt Nebo Climb. There was no breaking today with my friends Lachlan and Graeme putting in a big effort for the Palestinian Women’s Humanitarian Organisation.
It was not all pain, we had pizza and coffee at the top thanks to Sue & Lach’s wood fired oven. Along the way we heard all kinds of birds: Kookaburras, BellBirds, Cat Birds, and many others.
I visited my old union mate Bernie after the ride and he kindly donated $50 to the cause saying: “You would think that after we got rid of the nazis all that bad stuff that in the world would stop. But no, it is just as bad as back then!” Plus ‘I don’t like that Netanyahu‘. Bernie said that he was employed by a very kind Jewish family in Leeds after the war, the Weiman’s. “This is not a Jewish problem” Bernie said, referring to Palestine. I think I know what he meant. The occupation of Palestine is not just about the colour of people’s skin, or what culture settlers were born into.
Ian Curr
24 Sept 2022
We’ll do our utmost to keep the fight going and to bring those bastards to justice !! Your efforts are beyond admirable. Time for you to rest ! Ann Marshall (Expose the Public Trustee movement)
Spoken by Ian Curr at the funeral for Bernie Neville, Dayboro, at the invitation of his son, Michael, on 20 Sept 2022
I would like to say a few words about Bernie Neville, a friend and comrade.
I first met Bernie in a police van. It was June 1985. We had both been arrested outside the executive building of the Queensland government. Bernie found my arrest to be comical. In the police van with us was Tony O’Gorman, brother of civil liberties lawyer, Terry O’Gorman, and of former police union secretary, John O’Gorman.
Bernie saw me crash tackled from behind by two police officers, Walsh and Monley, as I was holding a red banner with the words “Joh Must Go!” painted in yellow … the slogan of the street march campaign from 1977 till 1979.
What Bernie found so funny was, after Walsh executed the flying tackle we hit the pavement together and became rolled up in the banner, end over end, right up to the door of the Lands Office hotel. Both Walsh and Monley lost their caps in the melee.
I suppose from Bernie’s perspective this was a crazy outcome to a picket to challenge the sacking of over 1000 SEQEB Workers. There were hundreds in attendance witnessing this not so bizarre arrest … Police did not realise that a future Brisbane City councillor by the name of David Hinchcliffe had his camera ready and reeled off a series of photos of the police assault. The local radio station 4ZZZ recorded the conversation of the two police charging me with resist arrest and carrying an unlawful banner. Having presenting this evidence, a Magistrate acquitted me of the resist arrest charge but convicted me for carrying a banner whose dimensions breached the Traffic Act. I was fined accordingly.
For the better part of our brief journey in the police van to the watchhouse in Herschel Street, Bernie and Tony joked about how I was arrested. I was not so sanguine about it because I was nursing a wrist that Monley had nearly broken.
After the dispute was lost Bernie was forced to take up contract work. He was black banned from employment with SEQEB and never received his proper entitlements of superannuation and long service etc.
One of those contracts was to lay electric cable on the soon to be opened refugee detention centre on Christmas Island. Bernie was curious about the nature of this project which he initially thought may have been the building of both a refugee centre and later a military compound. He wanted to get his hands on the plans so he asked a supervisor to see the plans for the entire facility. When challenged as to why, Bernie said that he could not lay the cables properly without an understanding of the entire complex. Bernie described to me of how he looked over the new compound from a distance. He was challenged by a federal police officer but Bernie did his best to hide his curiosity. Given reluctantly, Bernie received a hard drive containing the complete plans to Christmas Island. The plans showed a nursery for babies where they would be separated from their parents in a compound behind locked electric controlled doors.
On his return to mainland Australia, Bernie made sure that these plans were exposed and senior politicians were asked questions about the purpose of confining babies in a separate nursery.
These plans were shelved. It was Bernie’s curiosity and determination to expose the truth about Christmas Island that had helped prevent this from happening.
Condolences
Over the past week I have received condolences from a number of people who were unable to attend this funeral. For example Barry Stark an NTEU delegate who participated in the trade union support group in solidarity with the sacked SEQEB workers in 1985 asked for his condolences to be recorded here. Others who knew Bernie sent me their condolences privately are: Graeme Walker and Claire Kennedy who are in Italy, Basil Varghese in Melbourne and my brother and sister, John and Pamela Curr. Others have left comments on Workers BushTelegraph.
Finally, in the “The Tombstone of the Unknown Soldier of the Revolution” Bertolt Brecht wrote:
“He who lies here, it said, marched
Not to conquer a foreign land, but
His own.”
Goodbye old friend.
Ian Curr
20 Sept 2022
I knew Bernie as a father, watched his struggles, felt his guidance, compassion Humanity, love and moral fibre. Good bye Dad. You will live on through us all.
Hello all,
Bernie’s funeral will be held at Dayboro at 10.30 am on Tuesday 20th September 2022 at the St Xavier Catholic Church at 135 McKenzie Street, Dayboro. Bernie will be buried alongside his beloved wife, Mavis, in the Dayboro cemetery. There will be refreshments afterwards at the Dayboro Bowls Club … a chance to catch up and remember Bernie’s life.
Regards,
Ian Curr
13 Sept 2022
Bernie Neville was a truly admirable man. I would only add to your excellent account, Ian, that Bernie and his coworkers were the victims of a neoliberal inspired onslaught and their defeat ushered in the neoliberal era in Australia. In many ways the SEQEB dispute was as significant as the UK Miners’ strike of 84 and Bernie was our Scargill. I can think of no higher compliment. Farewell Bernie.
He did right and the example is there to help the new generations. The attack on SEQEB workers and then privatisation was extreme enough it took people by surprise; would they be that vicious for the sake of getting at the assets and cutting the ‘labour cost’? Bjelke’s race was run after a few more years, as when they start doing what they really want, they can falter – like Howard with ‘work choices’. But he no doubt enabled a lot of profit taking, before the current ‘market failure’ and break-down of our energy supply. Thanks to BN for being a leader and taking his stand – never wasted.