True believers

The price of wool was falling in 1891.
The men who owned the acres saw something must be done.
“We’ll break the shearers’ union and show we’re masters still,
And they’ll take the terms we give them or we’ll find the men who will!”
— Ballad of 1891 by Helen Palmer and Doreen Bridges (née Jacobs), as part of the folk revival movement in the 1950s.

One of the most important things for organised socialists in Australia is to work out their relationship with the Labor Party. In Edgar Ross’s words: “An explanation why the labor government’s behave as they do when confronted with major working class action“. How different Australia may have been if the miners in NSW and their leadership had paid heed to this injunction. They may have had a better chance of success. Had the miners won the 1949 coal strike it is unlikely that we would have had so many years of conservative rule in Australia. Menzies exploited division in the labour movement to win the 1949 election and begin a dynasty of conservative rule in Australia till 1972.

What could have been?

An historian might wish to ask important questions such as: 1. Could the miners have won? 2. How could they have won? and, 3. Why didn’t they win? This is not to say that history can be reduced to A causes B causes C, in a linear fashion. I question how the union movement at its zenith could have been defeated by a Labor government in the 1949 miners dispute. Here I’m more interested in the present and what could be. I suppose I am interested in this could-be approach because I have not witnessed any real union victories in my working life, but have been involved in plenty of defeats (from 1975 on) as the graph of union participation illustrates.

Perhaps the Communist party miscalculated in 1949 and did not foresee that the labor government of the day would respond in the way it did. The intellectual leadership of Edgar Ross and his comrades may have not been enough to foresee the misery that would befall the miners and their families. Some may wish to put the blame on the Communist Party leadership for refusing to lead a workers defence of wages and conditions during the war years that preceded the dispute. Perhaps the pressing need for better wages and conditions in 1949 made the union and their members desperate. But I was not there and cannot presume to judge. However I was there during the SEQEB dispute nearly 40 years later and I witnessed the retreat of the Communist Party into social democracy. I saw the perfidy of Labor Party leaders selling out of the workers in my own union and elsewhere. Their actions were calculated and lies were told. For example, the power station operators at Swanbank during the SEQEB dipsute were lied to by their own union and the Labor leadership. They were told that if the power operators turned the power back on in February 1985, the 1001 sacked workers would get their jobs back.

The Great Compromise

Workers sacrificed much to see the end of Malcolm Fraser and Bjelke-Petersen. That is the price of so called democracy. What compromises are necessary to make the Labor Party palatable to the rest of the electorate many of whom live of the shares of capitalists corporations. Put crudely share prices go up if management can drive down wages of workers who produce the wealth. We do need to ask what would’ve happened had the SEQEB workers won their dispute in Queensland in 1985 because such ‘speculation’ is part of our lived experience (at least those who were part of it). We would not have had Bjelke-Petersen’s ‘Joh for Canberra’ campaign. Nor would the ‘neo-liberal’ Labor government led by Keating and Hawke have been determined to reduce wages albeit exchanging them for a social wage. In Queensland, both Liberal and Labor neo-liberalism may have been exposed earlier. Workers would have had more say in the workplace. It is hard to imagine the Labor Party of Whitlam, Hawke, Keating, Rudd, Gillard and Albanese could have existed if Chifley and his troops had been defeated by the miners in the Hunter River coal fields.

One of the sorriest tales I remember about the 1949 coal dispute was Hughie William’s description of the consequences his family suffered. In 1985 Hughie Wiliams was the Queensland State Secretary of the Transport Workers Union and grew up in the Hunter during the 1949 dispute. Together with a truck driver (a TWU member) I had asked Hughie to launch Ernie Lane’s Dawn to Dusk – reminiscences of a rebel (the 2nd edition) at Trades Hall a few years after the SEQEB dispute. This book’s theme was ‘you (workers) can’t grow figs on barren trees (the ALP)’. Hughie told us the story of how his mother was forced by poverty to give him up because she knew she could not look after him. This had a profound effect on Hughie for the rest of his life. Despite becoming an Olympic wrestler and being on the state executive of the ALP, Hughie carried this sadness with him despite all his achievements. He helped set up the Paddo Workers Club with George Georges to make life easier for working class people by selling petrol at a cut rate and providing a bar where they could relax in the company of other union members. Hughie stood at the gates of Patricks Stevedores in 1998 and personally asked truck drivers to boycott the stevedore owned by Chris Corrigan as he had sacked his entire workforce to get rid of the union (known as the Cobar option). Yet in Brisbane at least, Patricks were able to move trucks on and off the wharf. These were stories not told at Hughie’s funeral at St Brigid’s Catholic Church in Red Hill, Brisbane. Nevertheless union members present knew as much.

Within this climate, credit should be given to those determined workers, including those from unions like the TWU, led by Hughie Williams, that showed courage in an isolated position. Theirs was an illegal secondary boycott laws (s45 D & E of the Trade Practices Act) that the Hawke government refused to challenge in the federal parliament. The lack of courage of most other union leaders to commit to secondary boycott meant that their rank-and-file support was not tested, leaving only determined participants at Camp Solidarity and Camp Unity near the wharves to face up to relative isolation.

In his introduction at the launch of Edgar Ross’s book about his father, Bob Ross drew a parallel between earlier strikes and that of the SEQEB dispute in Queensland in 1985. Would the ACTU-led sellout of the SEQEB workers by Simon Crean have been possible had Chifley been defeated by the miners? Would expectations by workers of Labor governments have been lowered? The fantasies in Bob Ellis’s True Believers may have been seen for what they were. Halfpenny and Crean, backed by the Hawke-Keating Labor government, allowed Joh to defeat the SEQEB workers so that they could maintain the Accord. This brought contract labour back into the electricity industry in Queensland and elsewhere. The defeat of the miners in 1949 was a defeat for the Communist Party which narrowly avoided being banned by the Menzies government that followed that defeat at the hand of the Chifley Labor government.

Perhaps Australia could have had a more social democratic party like that of Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party in the UK if the miners had won as they did in Britain in the 1970s. Australian socialism has shown itself more likely to follow Britain than elsewhere. Australia may even have become a republic. Instead Menzies mandated tugging the forelock to Queen Elizabeth through those long years of conservatism. Sir John Kerr’s dismissal of the Whitlam government in 1975 may have been impossible if the miners had won. Workers may have ‘maintained the rage’ as Whitlam wished, rather than Hawke’s acceptance of the dismissal. Australian governments may not be kow-towing to the United States and big transnational mining companies. Doc Evatt’s betrayal of the miners would have made it hard for him to strut the world stage and sponsor the UN’s formation of the apartheid state of Israel. The Communist Party may have been strong enough to survive.

The downward curve of union participation shown in the graph below would have been less likely and the sad compromise of workers voting for so many conservative Labor and Liberal government from the 1980s to the 200os. It is hard to imagine that contract labour would be so pervasive and that the Accord would ever have been introduced to depress real wages to instigate ‘the recession we had to have‘ thanks to Keating.

The 1998 MUA here to stay dispute may not have ended with half the wharfies being made redundant and losing half their wages and conditions.

It seems unlikely that the Greens, without any organic links with the working class, could have occupied the social democratic space left vacant by successive Labor governments.

Edgar Ross, the former editor of the miners journal Common Cause, wrote a book about his father Robert Samuel Ross, one of the early socialists of the labour movement in Australia. The book, These Things Shall Be! Bob Ross. Socialist Pioneer – His Life and Times, by Edgar Ross was launched just after the ABC broadcasta series called The True Believers. Bob Ellis wrote True Believers and romanticised Labor Party leader Ben Chifley after the Second World War. Ben Chifley, as prime minister in 1949, had ordered troops to break a strike in the coal fields around Newcastle in the Hunter Valley. His government starved the miners back to work in a dangerous and destructive industry. If the miners had won their demands for a 35-hour week and long service leave, it may have been impossible for Bob Hawke to emulate Chifley and use the RAAF to break the 1989 Australian pilots’ strike.

Former Labor speechwriter Bob Ellis’s account in The True Believers was flawed.

It drove Edgar’s daughter Fleur Ellis (no relation to Bob Ellis) to write this criticism after “The True Believers‘ was re-hashed as “Infamous Victory, Ben Chifley’s Battle for Coal” broadcast on 6/11/08.

“To infer that a struggle for a thirty hour week could lead to a Socialist revolution is ludicrous in the extreme, It shows a total lack of knowledge of that period of history, a pre-requisite, I would have thought, for any serious documentary making. Remember, as stated in your ‘docodrama’, the people of this Country had only recently rejected, by referendum, the Nationalisation of its banks.“

As Bob Carr pointed out, Ellis was a child of the Curtain and Chifley era, thinking them to be the greatest Prime Ministers in Australian history. Sadly each Prime Minister that followed was worse the one that preceded him (or her).

At the book launch, Edgar Ross denies that Communists were responsible for the strike; that he personally had come up with a compromise to avoid the strike. Edgar Ross parodied Bob Ellis depiction of him in ‘The True Believers‘ thus: “Well, for those who don’t know me, I’m the pub crawling crazy fanatic that you saw in ‘The True Believers’. Forever mouthing fiery phrases, and plotting Revolution, and so on. Well, with all due disrespect to Bob Ellis, and his team I’m not like that at all. Matter of fact, I have the reputation, you know, of being a bit of a puritan in my work at the Miners federation.’ (Audience laughs).

We could have been forgiven for seeing Edgar, his father Robert Samuel and Ernie Lane and other fellow travellers as the real true believers, not Chifley, Curtain, Scullin and Evatt and certainly not Keating and Bob Hawke who inherited their legacy. Keating and Hawke privatised the Commonwealth Bank. Chifley would have turned in his grave to see this. As Fleur Ellis (nee Ross) pointed out Chifley tried to nationalise the banks only to be defeated at referendum when the banks spent 5 times as much in the referendum campaign. Unlike Hawke and Keating who wanted to privatise everything in sight, Chifley begin giant publicly owned infrastructure projects like the Snowy Mountains scheme.

On the other side there was a kind of intellectual preacher in Edgar’s tone at the book launch. His party, the Socialist Party of Australia, broke with the Communist Party in 1971 and remained loyal to Moscow despite the USSR invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 and Kruschev’s secret speech against Stalin in 1955 . But this does not explain the deep rift in the labour movement where brother (Edgar Ross) was pitched against brother (Lloyd Ross). And Chifley, a fireman who shoveled coal into the boiler of trains, should send in the troops against the coal miners in the Hunter River valley in 1949.

In the vein of Ernie Lane’s line that ‘you cannot grow figs on barren trees‘, Edgar outlines how many labor leaders began life as true believers ‘in the secular religion of socialism’ but who sold out the workers when they came to power inside the Labor party. Few could have transgressed as much Sir John Kerr who was mentored by Doc Evatt and was a committed radical in the Sydney set. Yet Kerr ended up working for the CIA and the monarchy when he sacked Whitlam who had refused to confirm that he would extend U.S. leases over Pine Gap.

Some may say I am stretching a long bow to extrapolate the defeat of the miners in 1949 but there is little doubt the boom years of capitalism in Australia that followed lay on the back of the exploitation of workers. The gradual post war decline of socialist parties to the left of the Labor Party allowed it to drift to the right.

Here is a recording of the book launch (Ross, E.A. (1988), These Things Shall Be! Bob Ross. Socialist Pioneer – His Life and Times, Mulavon Publishing, West Ryde) captured from the bin of history with the help of Edgar’s granddaughter, Amanda Ross and Ross Gwyther. The book launch was held at the Miscellaneous Workers Union offices in Brisbane CBD and was organised by Amanda Ross and Phil Monsour. Apologies for the poor audio quality of the recording and any mistakes I have made in the transcript of the speeches given at the launch.

Ian Curr,
15 December 2022.

True Believers

SPEAKERS

Bob Ross, Edgar Ross

Bob Ross (Introduction)

…. Even more incestuous if you realize that the main organizer of the event (the book Launch) was Amanda Ross, who’s Edgar’s granddaughter. From my childhood, and youth, I’ve got very fond memories of my grandmother, a Brisbane girl. She was a very nice old lady that used to take us out to the zoo and other outings like that. One of the last memories I have of my grandmother was when she was living in Brisbane here for a while with her sister at Yeerongpilly. Not far actually from where he (Edgar) was born. I was in Armidale at the time and I drioe up to take my grandmother out to the festival hall to hear Paul Robeson sing in the late 50s. As I say fond memories. I didn’t know Robert Samuel Ross at all, because he died within a few months of my birth. Throughout my childhood and youth, it was a revered name, it was really a name that was revered and associated with political events and political attitudes. And that was all. So it wouldn’t be surprising if I’d be very interested in reading the biography of Robert Samuel Ross. There’s no reason for you to be interested in reading the book, unless you were interested in biography as such. However, Edgar has not written a biography of his father. The book is accurately titled, a case study. In my life as an educationist, I meet lots of case studies. Now, well, what case studies is a very popular way of doing research into education these days, … case studies are very interesting to read. But I know very well, but one of the major problems with case studies is that frequently, they contain nothing that is generalisable. That there’s no message for anything other than that particular case. Now, if this book, were one of those case studies, again, some of you might be interested in reading it. But it wouldn’t have been written by Edgar Ross. When Edgar Ross writes something, it has a message and the message is there, plain for you to see.

Well, what is the message?

(Sings)

‘Ballad of 1891’
The price of wool was falling in 1891.
The men who owned the acres saw something must be done.
“We’ll break the shearers’ union and show we’re masters still,
And they’ll take the terms we give them or we’ll find the men who will!”

SEQEB Dispute 1985 

A few years ago (1985), sitting in a meeting, in the height of the dispute around the electricity supply workers (SEQEB dispute), it suddenly occurred to me listening to the speeches, that that song, which you’ve just heard the first stanza, written about the shearer’s disputes in the early 1890s. It occurred to me that that song, might well form the theme song for the SEQEB dispute. Edgar, of course, is more likely to relate the song to the miners dispute in 1949. So I guess he’ll be saying something about that later, when he comes to talk a little bit about The True Believers. In fact, I’d say that, at the height of the SEQEB dispute that thought occurred to me; subsequent events suggested it might have been even more appropriate than was obvious at the time. Those of you know the song will know that it finishes like this:

(Sings)

Ballad of 1891
“Then if Nordenfelt and Gatling won’t bring you to your knees,
We’ll find a law,” the squatters said, “that’s made for times like these.” 
To trial at Rockhampton the fourteen men were brought
The judge had got his orders.
The squatters owned the court.
But for every one was sentenced, a thousand won’t forget:
When they jail a man for striking it’s a rich man’s country yet!” – Ballad of 1891

Unions 

Of course, the relevance of that song to the present volume, is that dispute formed the background formed an early part of this case study; this case study that deals with the formative years of the formation of the labor movement, and the Left industrial and political movement in Australia. Well, back to the message in the book. Let me read you two quotes. Here’s the first,

Unity is Strength

‘The lesson of universal history. The teaching of universal experience is that union is strength. When the people have been united, they have won. When they’ve been divided, they have lost. The people’s own incredulity, ignorance, servility, division have enabled the robber classes to triumph in the days are gone and to date, all countries have had their working class revolts, all have seen the masses hindered and driven back by internal disagreement and disorder in disunion. All countries have seen the ruling class dominant and all powerful because it has stood solidified in protecting vested interests. The few have unceasingly held in bondage the many. The people struggle for better conditions for liberty and life, have been alone successful to the extent the struggles of being united. Hence the new commandment, Thou shalt not be divided. There are at hand incidents and events conditions and politics, passionate protests and overwhelming meetings, many traitors; all providing the grist for literary tales as fascinating and profitable to Australians, as the neighborhood revolutions of all in older lands to their prosperity. Identified with these events and their times are the extraordinary and captivating background and associations of golden nuggets unparalleled in the world exploits. (inaudible) damnably in realistically and romantically potential.  Picturesque personalities arraigned for sedition and high treason, felons with a price on their head reaching the gilded seats of parliament. And police, as always, crushing of people. A great flag flying an emblem of Republicanism. A conflict of classes of masses ending in the foundations of Australian democracy, direct action has created a political action. All this and more as magical manufactory of the stockade everlasting. These diggers march in a desperate army, you might hear them singing in defense of their stockade. It teaches the secret of manhood is the watchword of those who aspire that men must follow freedom that would lead through blood and fire.’ – Robert Samuel Ross.

 Here’s the second one. ‘History is rich in its lessons for the working class that tells them the victories of unity and the defeat through disunity. But the triumph of the principle of an injury to one is an injury to wall that tells them the accuracy and conservatism that can follow in the wake of unionism becoming a formal thing, with compulsory membership in the absence of education to combat illusions, and show the need for class consciousness that tells of the ferocity of the workers enemies, with the state intervening whenever necessary in support of the employers, mercilessly in its crushing of unionism, persecution of its leaders, in any situation, where in the lack of it, the backs to the wall. History too lays bare the tremendous pressures of the capitalist system to adapt union union policies to the perpetuation of the system, and indeed, to the immediate interests of the employers, with attractive offers for personal advancement to any prepare to abandon union principles for a role in a capitalist establishment. There is food for sobering thought, and the shedding of illusions in the large number of industrial militants who graduate into pillars of the capitalist system: in politics, the judiciary, and the Council of the employers. In blunt working class language, those who sold out. (Applauds). ‘- Edgar Ross, Histroy of the Miners Federation.

Writers 

There are quotes from the book is that you probably realize that though two different authors, one of the things that always intrigued me about the first author who was the subject of the president book, first author, Robert Samuel Ross, writing towards the end of his little book, Eureka, freedom strike of ’54. So one of the things that always intrigued me about Robert Samuels writing, is the flowery and rhetorical nature of the writing. He wrote for most of his life for the working class for the trade unions, so that that language was obviously acceptable … times change. The second quote was from Edgar’s history of the Miners Federation over 50 years later, times change, but the message remains the same Edgar summed that message up very briefly in his introduction to his little book of essays of storm and struggle, where he says, ‘history helps to explain present day problems, mistakes to be avoided in meeting them, provides inspiration to continue with the good work and guidance in charting the course ahead. Indeed, it has been well said any movement that ignores this task has no future.

Labor Party

As an aside, that little book of essays could well be the case study of Edgar Ross’s life. And, as a trivial aside, the titles of the two books indicate that Edgar, in common with his father, had a great love of quotation. Well, back to the book. The book, which deals with, as I said earlier, the formative period, you think surrounding the formative events in the period which thought the Australian working class movement in Australia in the industrial and political life, the book that deals with the conflicts and confusion, that lead, inevitably, to the disunity that Robert Samuel Ross spent most of his life, fighting against in the breaks his commute commanded the conflicts and confusions, not only among the various socialist groups that came and went throughout that period, the conflicts and confusions in the man himself. Because as you pointed out, we’ve got a man who, to the end of these days, so the Labour Party as the instrument for social change the instruments through which we would achieve socialism, through all he clung to that idea that it was a rather different labor party, a Labour Party that incorporated the communists. That is standard, John, I might get during the book, the last chapter of the book, wonder whether Robin Samuel Ross would have been able to maintain that stance 50 years later. I’m very pleased to be here, and I commend the book to you.

Edgar Ross 

Friends and any others. Thanks for coming. While I’m in the mood to thank, I’d like to thank a few more people … I’d like to publicly acknowledge firstly, the services rendered by my wife … essential backup in handling with the problems of publication of a book and then wrestling with the script writers of the television series are The True Believers of whom I’ll be saying something later. Oh, also want to thank our granddaughter, Amanda, who has played a (inaudible) part in the organizing function bill. So you see, it is very much a Ross show. And it’s not surprising that there has already been some confusion in this regard.

A family show 

Dr Ross refers to us being incestuous. The Ross family has been very important. In Queensland for instance, I extended to it the privilege of being my birthplace (laughing).

The Ross Family
Dr. Ross I understand, assists to keep the Griffith University on an even keel. His daughter is a student activist of the rival University over at St Lucia. As for my father. You know, he won a prize for diligence and good conduct at the South Brisbane Baptist Sunday school. He was also to the Secretary of the Junior Cricket Association of Brisbane and the Junior Football Association. He caused one hell of a row when he raised the question, that sport should be on a electoral basis.

Broken Hill
But to turn to less contentious matters. He was a member of the first socialist groups set up in Australia in 1887 as an early member of the Australian Labour Party in Britain. But early on he moved to that city, described by the famous writer C J Dennis, as ‘the city of silver, sin, and six penny ale the legendary Broken Hill’. There he became editor of the miners paper ‘Barrier Truth‘. He didn’t last long. He left his employment after a campaign launched by a united front of the Roman Catholic hierarchy and the Protestant ministerial Association. The campaign was waged against him. You won’t believe this. But I’ll swear it’s true on a stack of Bibles. The campaign against him was that he supported the holding of political meetings on a Sunday. ‘Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy’. Also, in his paper, he advocated the sin for practice of contraception, birth control. A far cry indeed I suggest, of the days of Falun Gong and vending machines.

However he got another job as city valuer at Broken Hill. Well I can assure you he could handle figures about as well as the son can. And that is saying something. Also, he became acting chip inspector on the mines. This was the official who polices the mines from a safety and health point of view, taking dust counts, monitoring the presence of gases and the like. Again I can assure you that the most intricate technology which he was capable of handling was a pen again like his son. However, he did have a good deal of talent in other ways.

Victorian Socialist Party
That was revealed when the family shifted to Melbourne. And he became Secretary of the Victorian Socialist Party. And in Victoria, he became a very prominent figure indeed, in the labor movement for the rest of his life. Propagandist educator, organizer, writer, public speaker, he had the lot. As I say he was secretary of the Victorian Socialist Party which was an extraordinary evangelical, atheistic party, which set out to provide services for everybody from cradle-to-grave. He had 10 commandments of socialism like: 1. Be courteous to all men, 2. honour o good men, 3. bow down to none. 4. Remember that all the good things of the earth are produced by labour. Whoever enjoys them without working for them is stealing the bread of the workers. When he began to apply his socialist principles, he started a cooperative bookshop, a cooperative bakery. A co-operative boot shop. Don’t ask me to explain how these particular enterprises turned his attention, but they did. He, as Secretary of the Victorian Sociaist party also edited its paper and produced the pungent periodical of his own called ‘Ross’s magazine’. You can see a copy of it over at the table. He wrote for every trade union paper in Australia. He became vice-president of the Victorian branch of the Labor Party. A member the founding executive of the ACTU. He’s also on the board of trustees of the National Art Gallery, on the council of the Melbourne University and a commissioner for the State Savings Bank. Quite a figure in the life of Victoria. Well, what about his son?

The True Believers

Well, for those who don’t know me, I’m the pub crawling, crazy fanatic that you saw in ‘The True Believers‘. Forever mouthing fiery phrases, and plotting Revolution, and so on. Well, with all due disrespect to Bob Ellis, and his team. I’m not like that at all. Matter of fact, I have the reputation, you know, of being a bit of a puritan in my work at the Miners federation. But in the ‘True Believers’ I’m not without a pot of beer in the hand, every time I appear, Generally using earthy language. If Bob Ellis had taken the trouble (inaudible), if he had come a seen me he might have discovered quite a different kind of person. They didn’t do that. He did ring the Miners Federation office and spoke to a woman called Noreen Hewitt who worked with me on Common Cause. And this particular member of the team. What is a trade union office is like, what the atmosphere was like, didn’t ask anything about me what she thought of me, or the miners officials who appeared in the true believers. The only result of this interview was the epic discovery that while I was pounding my typewriter, I always wore a light shade. They didn’t even get the colour right. In fact they never got anything very right at all. The ‘true believers’ has been called the ‘true deceivers.’ Santamaria, my friendly enemy, complained and said that the correct title of a true believers should be ‘the raving lunatics’. I’m inclined to agree with him. On the office that I’ve worked in the Miners Union. Santamaria complained there was a painting of a medieval reinterpretation of the Virgin Mary, that he said was also gotten a bit sad. But as I say, I really didn’t get anything very right at all in the True Believers. They claim to give a truthful account of the dramatic events in the decade following the Second World War. Highlighted by the coal miners strike of 1949, the so called ‘Red Bill’ and the Petrov Commission. They completely distorted each one of them. Starting with the last first … they didn’t even report the findings of the commission. Which I suggest had significance … because the findings were nil. The Petrov commission, contrary to the high expectations on it, didn’t find a single spy, didn’t find any evidence of treasonable activity. In fact it was almost a non event.

Doc Evatt 

The only thing in fact that’s it achieved really was to smear Doctor Evatt. Doctor Evatt was a brilliant intellect with an international reputation and they made him out to be a blithering idiot.

1949 Coal Strike 

But the worst example, was the one which I was closely associated was the coal strike of 1949. They declared that the coal strike was a communist conspiracy. Of course, this shouldn’t surprise us, should it? Since time immemorial, we might say, every major working class action has been attributed to agitators … they’ve been red raggers Sinn Féin-ers, Bolshies Commos. You know I was interested that Bob selected the beautiful ballad by Helen Palmer on the ’91 strike.

Repression
You know that that’s strike they used those exact words Communist conspiracy, to explain that strike, the coal strike … they if i might employ that rather, over used word, ‘classic’, a classic example of an industrial struggle in the pattern of the many struggles that punctuated the history of the miners of Australia. It was fought around the issues of long service leave and a 35-hour week. But you know, the coal strike was really a defensive action. It was a defensive action against the gathering offensive by the employers. The employers that sent out their decree that the drive of the working people for improved conditions, promised to them as a reward for their wartime service, had to be halted. In fact, the trend had to be reversed. The metal trades in Employers Federation, which was regarded as a pacemaker for the Australian employers called for the reintroduction of the 48-hour week, and a return of wages to pre-war level. The offensive was on, long before the coal strike. There was a strike at Port Kembla, … the Port Kembla Steel Works precipitated by the BHP as an anti-union action. There had been a big strike in Brisbane in the course of which the communist barrister, Fred Patterson, was battoned by police and hospitalised. Trade Union officials have been jailed, like Jack McPhillips of the ironworkers union. For the mildest of comments about the arbitration courts. Leading Communists had been framed on trumped up charges. The General Secretary of the Communist Party, Sharkey, had been charged and subsequently jailed. As was the editor of the Communist party’s Workers Weekly.

‘Communist Menace’

Then there was the notorious case of William ‘Diver’ Dobson. Dobson was an official of the Clerks Union. He crawled out of Sydney Harbour one night, saying that he’d been thrown off the Manly Ferry by communists, intending to drown him.

Someone (was it me?) from the audience interjects: “pity they hadn’t”

Subsequently he (Dobson) confessed that the whole thing was just a stunt to highlight, he said, the communist menace. It was established that Dobson (inaudible) … the Australian intelligence, the American intelligence and with the head of the Catholic Church, Gilroy, because he was active in an organization called the industrial groups, which set up to obey the dictates of the leading employers in Australia who detained(?) the trade union militants. Militant influence has to be removed from the unions. They were specified, not only the Miners Federation, the Waterside Workers Federation (WWF) and the Seamen’s union. (SUA) That was the atmosphere, the (inaudible).

Chifley 

Far from being a communist conspiracy, the coal strike of 1949 was discussed by the leaders of the Communist Party and they counseled against him … far from precipitating strike to bring down the Chifley the government’s Miners Federation in fact negotiated. The Miners carried a banner calling for support for the Left Book Club in a May Day procession. I attempted to the use like good officers with Neville to work out a deal to stop the coal strike. The deal was that the employers would agree to accept like 35 hour-week in principle, not to be implemented until all parties to the industry were agreed that coal production was meeting demand. This was the proposal the ACTU. What was Neville reply, no deal Edgar. Chif is determined to pull you on. In fact, Chifley had told the Labor caucus the Reds must be taught a lesson. Chifley could have stopped the coal strike by raising his little finger. Instead, he presented a clenched fist and said, it’s boots and all and the boots began to be put in to the miners of Australia. Some of this is revealed in the true believers but not all. They play it down. The measures adopted by the Chifley Labor government, to defeat the coal miners of Australia consisted in the most draconic (sic) measures ever used to break a strike in Australian history. Even the Sydney Morning Herald said ‘it was the first time an actual tactic of starvation, starving of miners and their families with used by the Chifley Labor government’, doing the bidding of the employers. It was the Chifley government which politicized the strike, not the miners.

Modernising coal

But one or two was about my own role. The ‘true believers’ presents me as the main instigator of the strike. Apart from being a somewhat absurd promotion, this was also an insult, for the thousands of mine workers who in the biggest vote in history, decided to go on strike. The coal owners had entered into a period of intense rationalisation. Mechanisation … the coal board itself said when our mechanisation program is fulfilled, let the majority of the mines in New South Wales will be closed as un-economic and the 35 hour week was put forward in an attempt to cushion the devastating effects that this would have on employment and the decimation of the coalfields community. But as for my own position, the script writers were really intrigued by the fact that they’re were two brothers on opposite ends of the political spectrum. And they really got carried away with it. They concocted three scenes which allegedly took place in our home in which brother Lloyd was trying to get me to give up my evil ways and return to the party rectitude. That wasn’t so bad … but they had my wife on his side. Trying to convince me on this matter.

Miner’s Daughter
Well, let me say about my wife, she’s a miners daughter. She supported the struggle of the miners all her life. Then she helped her raise funds for a big miners strike in Broken Hill 1919-20. When by the way if they won the 35 hour week, 30 years before, is it surprising that the coal miners were saying its time we got it. But Mr. Gallagher (Arbitration Commissioner) said ‘the basket is now empty’. No use coming back to me for further improvements, but preferred to be seen (inaudible) . So incredible were they, I suggest barring … artistic licence … they were incredible and I was invited to treat them with derisive laughter. But Tessa my wife was mad, can you blame her? …, During the Red Bill when they had me terrified at the idea being put into a concentration camp, burning my books, my wife crying, and so the pleading to the brother to help save our kids. This kid was then 19. His sister was 16, I suggest Well, they could look after themselves anyhow..

The Party
But that was the story of the Red Bill. … the measures of Menzies included in this I recited a poem in the Sydney Domain. ‘I declare you, Mr Menzies‘ because he said he was going to declare me and I called him a swine, the poem did. They took me before the court, and finally to quit using unseemly language in a public place. Returning to the film the script writers really got down into the gutter when they had my brother saying what you are doing, or not my father told me.

Which brings me to the book. Read the book, and you’ll see something about the relationship that exists between my father and myself. But as Bob has pointed out, the book is more than a personal record. It’s a book with a message. The book traces in outline form the history of the labor movement, socialist groups, and particularly the Labor Party. And the record is a very revealing one. It shows that while the Labour Party in government has been responsible for social reform, and every crucial period in history, where it’s had to decide on which side employers are the workers, it’s been on the workers have been on the wrong side. 1909-10, the New South Wales Labor Party fought an election. After the election, did it nationalize the coal industry? No way! Did it start a state owned steel works? No way. On the contrary, it gave all the money necessary, and all the legal authority to the BHP steelworks and it was long as you know, that come on, number one on Napoli in Australia, when the First World War, the Labour Party like other Labour Party throughout the world and save the world being prepared was a reactionary war, that the socialists of the world should oppose it. And even going further, they should use the situation created by the war to further the cause of socialists. The Labor government in Australia, on the country, all over the world, and began to suppress everybody who was opposed to it. My fahter, including looking back it seems to have been in and out of jail. But most of the time. A symbol of resistance to the war was the flying of the red flag. People who flew they red flag, they’d be put into jail. They would get out of jail and fly the red flag again, back again into jail.

Red Flag Riots
A recent book has been written by someone I am pleased to say is with us tonight, Ray Evans of the Queensland University, about the red flag riots in Brisbane. They were in every city, this was a symbol of resistance. I can remember visiting my father in jail, and they even had him in the condemned cell; you could see up through the windows the gallows in Melbourne. Nevertheless, they didn’t treat him too badly … Matter of fact, he used to have philosophical discussions with the governor of jail. With a dear friend of his by the name of Frank Hyatt, who was secretary of the railways union died, they let him out to go to the funeral and then he came back to the jail knocked on the door and they put it back in the cell.

War years

During the war of course things were pretty hectic. In his magazine he did what you would say lead with his chin. In Ross’s magazine. His verse he wrote God save the Queen God save the King God save everything. He wants you would call lead with his chin. Princeton’s has a verse that he had in Ross’s magazine. But throughout England, God saved the king, God, this god that comes to them nothing. God heard the battle nation shout, but God says something was.

So it was hardly a wonder that he was charge with Blas for me, he was sentenced to six months in jail but that was was reduced to a fine on appeal.

The Depression

Well, in passing on, of course, we come to the Great Depression. At the outset of the depression, the Prime Minister Jimmy Scullin said that there must be no sacrifices as far as the workers wages are concerned as a result of the depression. The Labor government organized the reduction of wages across the board, as they say. There was a big lockout in the northern coalfields when the miners  rejected the proposal that they’ve take a 12.5 % cut in pay.  And the Labor Party fought an election on the slogan: Vote Labor and open their mines and prosecute John Brown. John Brown being the head of the coal workers. The Labor Party won the election. The mines remained closed. John  Brown didn’t even get a rap over the knuckles.

Privatisation

Well, we can continue the story of course to the present day. Where we have a government which has told its own platform, all the copy from the latest lotus root platform contains statements like this. Labor’s key objectives are the protection of Australia’s national sovereignty through increased Australian ownership and control of our industry. Labor is committed to the maintenance of the Australian public sector. We totally reject conservative proposals of privatization of public enterprises. Labor recognizes the enormous economic power of phone based transnational corporations which may have interests contrary to those and labor in the nation. And that’s where these vested interests conflict with the national interest, they will be resistant. I suggest to you the life of government that day with its policy of deregulation is strengthening of the private sector, as against the public sector. As meant that this government, this country has virtually been run today by these vast transnational enterprises.

Early socialist groups

And funnily enough, the book. I suggest that the book offers an explanation for an explanation while the labour government’s behave as they do when confronted with major working class action. Why they behave as they do when crucial periods occur in the nation. This life This book was I said traces the origins and development in the labor movement. We should always remind ourselves and remind of it. But contrary to the viewpoint on many historians, the Labor Party was largely on the installation of socialists. In fact, most of the First Nations regarded themselves as socialists only brigade that claim they’re supportive of socialism. conference after conference of the Labour Party Eat since the turn of the century as a firm and reaffirmed the objective of the socialization of industry. Andrew Fisher elected from the miners constituency of Gympie, when he was elected prime minister said, ‘now we are all socialists’, and he outlined a program in his first speech for the transition to socialism.

The early socialist groups in this country, in fact were the training ground for Prime Ministers, Labor premiers, members of Labor government. In Brisbane, it was an organization called the social democratic vanguard. One of its members was a fella called Jim Dooley who became a premier of New South Wales, Labour premier. Another was W A Holman a member of the Australian socialist league in Sydney. Even the notorious Billy Hughes was a member of the Australian socialist league. But the most striking example was provided by the Victorian Socialist Party. You know, that turned out to Labour Prime Ministers. Jimmy Scullin and John Curtin. Three state labor premiers John Caine, father of the present incumbent, John Gunn, South Australia. And last but not least, Robert Heffernan Treasurer of New South Wales.

In fact, Bob Hefernan as was the custom in the Victorian socialist party had his first child baptised in to the secular religion of socialism on a red cushion with a little red flag in her hand and dedicated to the cause of socialism. Years later when the militant leader of the teachers Federation got to know of this when Hefernan was the Minister for education said lend it to me Edgar this report this baptism, I will confront him with it. Hefernan was a tutor in the Communist party.

You see this book, as Bob Ross points out, is a case study. And its thesis is that the Labour Party formed under the inspiration of socialists was, on the other hand, not a socialist party at all. But it was a party of the capitalist establishment and has been revealed to be such more and more with the passage of years .

I hasten to add. This was not my father’s version. As Bob has pointed out, my father had devoted his life to furthering the drive towards changing society on socialist lines. But he had thesis too, and his thesis was Russia was alright. In fact, the hailed the Russian Revolution praise the Bolsheviks, supported the Soviet Union throughout his life. He said, Russian methods were not applicable to Australia. He set out to find an Australian way of socialism. And as Bob has pointed out, he saw it as introduced by a Labor Party, backed by a powerful trade union movement with an independent Socialist Party as a sort of pressure group to keep on the line. The ultimate point in all of this was reached, in 1921 when a Labor Party Conference, reaffirming the socialization objective. Set up a supreme Economic Council, was going to set up a supreme Economic Council to run the country, backed by a trade union movement organized on industrial lines into one big union This was a concept. Mr. Hefferan, to whom I’ve already referred said, we are now entering the period of a 10 year transition the socialism. The conference set up a council of action to organise for the implementation of this 10 years program for socialism. Among Us men, this was my father. And also John Curtain, who became Prime Minister of Australia.

Well, why … is my father … was my father’s thesis valid? Is it valid today? You buy my book. Judge for yourself, there’s the record set out objectively. You read it and decide for yourselves.

Sectarianism of socialist parties and groups

Well, what is the way forward? Is his concept valid? Here we are, friends, in a situation where we have a Labor government, to express it mildly, does not stick any sort of perspective for a change in the social system. We have socialist parties in existence, a socialist movement, which, alas, is not making as much impact today that it made 50 years ago … even 60 years ago. I’m a member of the Socialist Party of Australia, because I believe it has a sound ideological position, but there’s also the original Communist Party, there’s with the Socialist Workers Party. There’s the Communist Party (Marxist-Lenninist); there’s the association for communist unity. There’s a rainbow groups in southern Australia, there’s a charter group. There are scores of others as well, with their particular ideas on what to do the way forward well indicate that this is beyond the scope of this sort of gathering.

But I do suggest again, that this case study, that my father has relevance for the polemics around these questions. There are those around that have turned their back on socialist cause that they once espoused, because they cannot face the difficulties of this period, admittedly, very great. They cannot face the setbacks that undoubtedly occur. Again, admittedly very grave setback they cannot face the problems that are obviously existing in the socialist sector of the world. And so they become opportunitists or take refuge in smartalec cynicism which leads them inexorably to the political right.

MC

And I’d like to thank the speakers once again. What’s the best way. And I’d also like to thank everybody for coming here. It’s a wonderful, wonderful turn up (laughs), turnout. But I’d also like to inform you that if you’d like to stay and talk to Edgar and Tessa Ross, that very happy to talk to you afterwards. Most important of all these things shall be selling up there not 19 goals now. There are also some refreshments. And there are two more announcements to tell you about. You’re all invited to the SPA’s six national congress international delegation from the CP Soviet Union. That’s Thursday, the sixth of October, and the miscellaneous Workers Union Building, here. And also that’s me, it’s possible on the SPA social it’s so unlikely once more to make again

Bob Ross 

Introductory remarks, commented on the support that my mother his wife gave me throughout the development of the books and of course, we’ve lived up to them. And we have a small token from those of us who’ve been involved. indirectly support token for Tessa in appreciation.

Addendum

For those confused about the Ross family, here is their family tree.

Robert Samuel Ross m Ethel Slaughter

Children: Lloyd & Edgar Argent

Lloyd Ross m Christina ? (Stina)

Children: Maria & David

Edgar Ross m Patricia Josephine McLachlan (Tessa)

Children: Robert Argent & Fleur Evelyn

Amanda Ross is the daughter of Robert Argent.

References

SIXTY YEARS OF AUSTRALIAN UNION SONGS –
The Australian Folk Revival and The Australian Labour Movement Since The Second World War
by Mark Gregory