“They do not, by and large, like politicians – I suppose that, by and large, they do not really like anyone much – but they have a certain respect for them the same way they might have for a horse or a gun dog. There is of course, a lot of Texan among this stratum of billionaire. A lot of them are sort of high-class John Wayne’s – enormously rich John Wayne’s who don’t feel it necessary to do their own barroom brawling.” – JOHN HEPWORTH on International Capitalists.
Notes of interview with Tim Briedis about a chapter on the Queensland street marches in a book about Radical Youth.
From the outset I should say that the struggle for democratic rights during the street marches from 1977 to 1979 was not a struggle of the young. It was a struggle of all ages that affected the lives of people throughout Queensland and further afield in other states and overseas. I wish to thank Tim Briedis for the time and patience that he showed in the preparation of this interview. – Ian Curr, 7 March 2025.
1. Tim: Can you introduce yourself and tell us how you got involved in the Right to March movement?
Firstly, movement is a misnomer. It was a struggle for democratic rights, including the right to march.
My name is Ian Curr, and I am a child of the anti-war movement in the 1960s and 70s. I became involved in the Right to March because of Fraser’s Australia’s Uranium Decision, where the federal government laid out its support for Uranium mining and export.
A small group of people from the campaign against nuclear power Friends of the Earth, some environmentalists and people from the learning exchange in West End met to discuss how to oppose uranium. Jessica and Don from the Learning Exchange came into the meeting and told the participants that they had contact with a worker on a uranium train that was coming down from Mary Kathleen and the Northern Territory.
People decided to picket the wharves, try to stop the train physically and to seek the assistance of the wharfies to prevent the loading of yellow cake. We had little real contact with the Waterside Workers Federation at the beginning of the campaign. However, we later spoke at meetings of the rank and file both on the job and at the Waterside Workers Club.
I participated in a march on the day that Malcolm Fraser released the decision, and the Premier of Queensland Joh Bjleke Peterson, on hearing of the march, declared the day of the political street march is over.
The Premier and his Ministers duly branded me along with actual members of the CPA, as a communist because of my participation in stopping the uranium trains from entering Hamilton number 4 wharf in Brisbane.
We delayed the export of uranium to Hamburg in Germany by sitting on the railway tracks. While we were still blocking the Australian Broadcasting Commission, we announced that we had been cleared off the tracks. This was an early lesson not to trust the ABC and how important it was to develop our own media (4PR – Voice of the People).
2. Tim: Can you give us the political context of Queensland in 1977?
The worst mistake that people from other states made about Queensland was that it was economically and politically and socially behind the rest of Australia in 1977. The evidence cited was misleading. True wages were below those of New South Wales and Victoria. True, the poverty rate was the second highest after Tasmania. True, unemployment was very high. There was a dearth of left-wing intelligentsia. Anti-intellectualism ran rampant. The sole university (UQ) in the lead up to the street march ban was a backwater of inaction, thoughtlessness ,and predatory competition for non-existent jobs. This was despite earlier forums espousing radical politics during the Apartheid Springbok tour and the American war in Vietnam.
Also Queensland had the largest May Day celebrations in Australia, and this continues to this day. However, in a world dominated by transnational capitalism, Queensland was at the centre of a struggle, which was to determine Australia’s history over the following decades. Like Western Australia, there was a free flow of mining capital into Queensland. To quote Angela Davis, if Queensland did not strike back against the Bjelke-Peterson government, then “they will be coming for you in the morning.”
3. Tim: Can you go over the early days of the campaign and what the rallies were like, and some of the political debates?
The main political debate was how do you get from being a popular front to a united front. One characteristic of the left in Queensland was its tendency to rush forward and then to run out of steam. This was caused by a number of factors. For example on 22 October 1977 there was a national mobilisation against the mining and export of uranium. In Melbourne, over 10,000 people marched. In Sydney, when 20,000 people marched, there were no arrests. In Brisbane and 5000 people assembled in King George Square and marched into the valley of death. 418 people were arrested. This was the largest mass arrest in defiance of a government edict in Australian political history.
The protest movement started at the University of Queensland but soon moved off campus. This is reflected in the arrest lists. The early marches showed a considerable number of students being arrested but this was soon replaced by a larger number of workers and unemployed being arrested in subsequent marches. In the early days of the campaign we saw the full flow of liberal ideas focusing on civil liberties but subsequently this was replaced by a struggle for democratic rights which included the right to organise. By 3 December 1977 it was trades and labour council that co-sponsored a defiant march against the street march ban. 210 people were violently arrested, many of them trade unionists, communists, Labor party members, and radical feminists.
During the anti-Vietnam war struggles student and militant trade union links had been made, but the anti-communism of the New Left made it difficult to hold everything together in the face of severe repression by the government. People were sacked. You could not join the state public service if you participated in the street marches. Special branch made sure of that.
By August 1978 the Civil Liberties Coordinating Committee became defunct when it departed from its objective of defying the ban on street marches and instead substituted a campaign against the federal budget. Fortunately Senator George Georges formed another group the civil liberties campaign group that continued to struggle until June 1979. By this time they had been over 3000 arrests and the government began issuing permits to march. Despite a 10% swing against the government on 12 November 1977 election adult primary objective of bringing down the government was lost. The Jo must go campaign had built enormous following throughout the state particularly during a summer campaign during the Christmas/New Year period of 1977/78.
4. Tim: What was the role of students and youth in the campaign?
We made a very early decision to move off campus. Students participated in the early marches but most of the campaign was waged away from the two conservative campuses, University of Queensland and Griffith University. QIT was an Institute of technology and not a university.
During the campaign the CLCC and later the CLCG met each Tuesday night at the old Trades Hall in Upper Edward Street in Spring Hill. On some occasions, meetings and public gatherings were held at the Waterside workers club near the Brisbane river in Adelaide Street.
5. Tim: How did you reach out to unions and anti-uranium mining campaigners and build alliances?
The unions were already involved. It was the Communist party that brought in the unions. The government banned street marches to put a stop to the anti-uranium campaign. Prior to the ban, the anti-uranium movement would rally people in the CBD and encourage people to participate in pickets down on the wharves to stop shipments of yellowcake to Europe. We formed an anti-uranium mobilisation committee in collaboration with the campaign against nuclear power CANP. Meetings were held on Thursdays at the Uniting Church buildings in Anne Street near King George Square. It was not unusual to have meetings well in excess of 100 people. The earlier meetings of the CLCC were quite large and on occasion numbered 300 or 400 people. The majority of participants came from the union movement, environmentalists, Friends of the Earth, Concerned Christians, unemployed workers, and some academics and students. This was partly because the government was attacking trade union organisers and threatening them with jail. The government also attacked Concerned Christians holding vigils in Queens Park. Under orders from special branch, Police attacked International Women’s Day in 1978 and 1979.
The most famous union case was that of Ted Zaphir who was a union organiser with the Storemen and Packer’s Union. Ted was prosecuted by the government with criminal charges for simply doing his job, organising members of his trade union. 400 students attempted to march in solidarity with Ted from the University of Queensland to the Roma Street forum but we were stopped at Checkpoint Charlie on the edge of the grounds by 200 police (no doubt with the collaboration of the University Authorities, the registrar Sam Rayner and the VC Zelman Cowen. Most of us continued to the Trade Union rally on the footpath. 200 Waterside workers marched on the footpath in the city to the rally where 5000 unionists were massed to protest the erosion of trade union and democratic rights. The issue of concern was the government’s attempt to limit the right to organise.
6. Tim: Do you remember the day of October 22, when there was a mass arrest of over 400 people?
5,000 people attended a protest rally in King George Square, 700 police were present. Australia’s premier poet Judith Wright, who was nearly blind, spoke for two hours in the scorching noon-day sun. A march in twos and threes proposed by Ian Henderson and Bob Phelps from CANP on the footpath; this was blocked and people were arrested. A second march was attempted as an act of civil disobedience, with participants holding their hands in the air to make it clear that they were not resisting arrest. Protestors were treated violently by police. A total of418 people are arrested in the largest mass arrest in one day in Australian history. The watchhouses and courts were brought to a standstill trying to process the people charged with unlawful possession, disobey a lawful direction, resist arrest, assault police, and disorderly manner. We raised over $35,000 bail money. The person who raised the money was charged by police for collecting alms in public i.e. begging.
7.Tim: Do you remember any other memorable moments in the campaign? Did you get arrested? What was jail like if so?
I remember there was an escape from the South Brisbane watchhouse on 22 October 1977. About 10 or so people manage to squirm under a roll-a-door that provided access to the many police vans that were bringing in prisoners from the march. One of the people, Carole Ferrier, who was heavily pregnant attempted to roll under the door but was too big and was apprehended by the police Sergeant in charge of the watchhouse. A number of the people returned to King George Square and one of them, Errol O’Neill, in his enthusiasm, wanted to make a public announcement of this small victory over the police. Wiser heads prevailed upon Errol that this was not a very good idea because it would simply result in more arrests and further charges.
During the early part of the campaign, I was arrested on about 10 occasions with charges ranging from disobey lawful direction, taking part in unlawful possession, speaking to attract a crowd, behaving in a disorderly manner, resisting arrest, obscene language, and contempt of court. I was jailed on two or three occasions in Boggo Road jail and always put in yards with murderers, rapists, and violent offenders. Later on in the struggle for democratic rights, this treatment was repeated. The jails where I was detained in Brisbane and in Townsville were built late in the 19th century, they did not have toilets and you had to it in a bucket and wait till the following day where you would be sent to a latrine to dump your excrement. In Townsville’s Stuart Prison, I spent 11 days on hunger strike. I was beaten up and a prison guard threatened to shoot me.
8. Tim: In the later days of the campaign, what were the main developments?
The campaign was run on democratic lines and there were many tactical decisions that were required. There were three main tendencies that arose in the struggle. They were idealism opportunism and populism. For example on 22 October Dan O’Neill and others argued that we should march into the valley of death in Albert Street with our arms raised in an act of civil disobedience. This took the form of an appeal to just masters, but who were they?
On May Day 1978, the union contingent was about 8000 strong and the Red Contingent was about 12,000 strong. There was an uneasy relationship inside the red contingent with the campaign against the nuclear power (CANP).
Idealism
Some had argued from the beginning of the ban on 4 September 1977 that we should delay marching and wait until the movement was “organised, systematic, non-violent ,and absolutely massive“. The Socialist Workers Party SWP would argue that we should not march against the ban but should hold public meetings and appeal to the unions, the churches, and the liberal institutions etc. SWP endlessly argued that we should conduct a transitional program against the government until it relented. Though never stated as clearly as this, it simply meant that if a government bans street marches, then we should hold public meetings; and if the government were to ban public meetings, then we should retreat into our houses; and if it began raiding our houses, we should go underground. The idealists were opposed to defying the ban from the get go.
Populism
Because of the unpopularity of the government, the national party never received more than 28% of the vote; the CLCC was attempting to run a popular campaign under the slogan Joh must go. This was a populist move because we needed to outline clearly an alternative to government’s embrace of transnational capitalism.
Opportunism
There were a number of groups that participated in the campaign whose primary objective was to sell their newspapers and to recruit members to their organisations. One of the worst examples of this were the International Socialists who would stack meetings by bringing cadre to vote down motions put by independents or other groups. I was one of the people that the IS tried to recruit, but I was of an independent bent and could not could not subject myself to the discipline of the party.
9. Tim: Why do you think the campaign was successful and what was its significance?
It was the longest period of mass political defiance of a government in Australian history with the exception of aboriginal resistance. We may have won back the Right to March but our objective of bringing down the government failed. We had to wait another 10 years for that. In the meantime a lot of lives were shattered. If we had held our organisation together we may have been able to assist SEQEB Workers when they were sacked en masse in 1985. This ruined the lives of many workers.
10. Tim: Anything else you’d like to add?
On 30th October 1978, Michael, Todd, Blackie, and some members of Task Force led a flying wedge of police up the steps of King George Square. People were thrown to the ground, others were quickly dispatched into waiting paddy wagons. But Michael held the crucial warrant that was to put this poor street marcher in Boggo Road jail for days instead of a few hours in the watch-house. Earlier in the morning Michael had recognised me as having a warrant out for my arrest. He told his mate Todd who kept an eye out to make sure I didn’t leave, as Michael went back to Police Headquarters in Makerston Street to pick up the paper work.
Michael was insistent that Todd wait for him, he wanted to do it by the book. His superintendent authorised the arrest after a brief discussion with Les Hogan, head of Special Branch. Hogan asked Detective Barry Krosch to keep an eye on me also. I had previously been charged with wilfully damaging magistrate William McKay’s lawn in Beenleigh by setting it alight in the night-time in protest against a previous conviction for disobeying a police direction. The magistrate’s lawn case was yet to go to trial. A freelance journalist, Denis Reinhart, immune from arrest, watched proceedings from nearby on the street looking up at thousands of demonstrators.
Superintendent Clifford issued a warning to the crowd in King George Square. He said Commissioner Terence Lewis had not issued a permit for the march and that any procession that took place would be illegal. Arrests had already begun, including that of Federal MP Tom Uren and Senator George Georges who had been threatened with dis-endorsement by the state secretary of the ALP, Gerry Jones, for participating in civil disobedience.
Back at police HQ, knowing time was short, Michael went searching for the warrant in the filing cabinet. “How does he spell his name“, he thought, “was it Kerr with a ‘K’ as in Governor-General Sir John Kerr who had sacked Prime Minister Gough Whitlam only a few years before?” “No, it begins with a ‘C’. Strange way to spell your name” he thought, “C-U-R-R, as in dog.” There it was, Ian David Curr, age 27 years, wanted for non-payment of a fine, arresting officer Senior Constable John Watt from Task Force, signed by acting-magistrate William Joseph Mackay. Sweet revenge for Mackay and brownie points for Michael. The police magistrate gets back at me, the police get some good publicity for clever police work, the government and the opposition both demonstrate that the only place for sensible politics is in the parliament, none of this extra-parliamentary opposition with thousands on the streets blocking traffic. Can’t leave it to the mob, especially violent ones who burn lawns after they have been done for trying to block shipments of yellow-cake (uranium).
Too bad that the first copper in court which resulted in the fine had lied and I had a video to demonstrate it. Magistrate William Joseph McKay took care of that, he stitched me up good and proper, telling the court that the video depicted events that occurred at another time. McKay’s parallel-universes theory for marchers looked shonky but who was going to challenge his authority when he had the backing of the government? Even Chief Justice Wanstall would refuse to turn this one over.
Of course Michael didn’t know all this, but he had seen a front page article in The Courier-Mail reporting that I had called a magistrate a ‘political puppet‘. “Curr got done for that too.” As Michael drove back to the rally he felt confident he was doing the right thing.
Or was he? Police Commissioner Whitrod had resigned two years before, alleging corruption in the force after Inspector Mark Beattie had bashed a banner-carrying woman over the head in a student march for higher Tertiary Education Allowances. Michael was a student himself, at Griffith Uni. He had met his special friend at the Gap High School. She was an art student. Cops had been encouraged by Whitrod to get degrees when studies revealed how poorly educated Queensland coppers were. His fellow officer, Todd, didn’t care for education. Todd’s dad, Cameron Todd, owned a successful Hi-Fi business on the southside and after a few years in the force, Todd would take over the family business and eventually hand it on to his own son.
Back in Adelaide Street, Krosch pointed me out. I was about five rows back. It was a Mexican standoff between 600 police and about a thousand demonstrators. Over a hundred people had already been arrested and were waiting in paddy wagons to be dispatched to South Brisbane watch-house.
The first wave of marchers had conformed to media expectations. They were led by parliamentarians, trade unionists, churchmen, and a few academics, slowly descending the steps of King George Square, in a kind of Gandhian waltz. The luminaries were prepared to surrender themselves, arms raised, to the waiting police. ‘The faces of many of the police indicated they did not relish their job’ academic Ralph Summy later reported in Social Alternatives magazine.
Federal MP, Tom Uren, an ex-POW and one of the first people to arrive at Hiroshima after the United States air force dropped an atomic bomb, had spoken at the rally. Uren invoked the words of Martin Luther King saying: “King and his people took a stand against oppression and saw the restoration of the basic rights, so do we. They took a moral stand against immoral laws, so do we.” After Uren’s speech, Waterside Workers Federation and Seamen’s union members went down the steps of King George Square and were arrested. Arm-chair tacticians deemed this to be the most effective march of the day.
Prior to the march, senior police told an assembly of 700 police at Lang Park that ‘an associate of Curr’s, Stefan carries a knife’ which he had used ‘to break out of a paddy wagon on Victoria Street bridge’ after he had been arrested in Queens Street after an earlier street march. Photos of Stefan and I were duly passed around. What they did not say was a drunken policeman on a motor bike ran into the back of the paddy wagon when the driver screeched to a stop. It was this police officer who had arrested both me and Stefan that put us in the paddy wagon in the first place.
I later spent four days cross-examining the motor cycle cop before Magistrate Bill McKay. The sergeant had driven the paddy wagon off over Victoria Street bridge with both doors swinging in the breeze with Stefan and I rolling around in the back. After coming off the bridge we were greeted with jocularity by the South Brisbane watchouse sergeant who knew us both. “So what have you two been up to? Come inside and I’ll process you both.” he said with familiarity.
Back at the demonstration on 30th October 1978, police blood was up. On Special Branch Inspector Hogan’s instructions, Task Force surged forward in a wedge followed by police constables Michael and Todd. People were knocked and pushed aside with some arrested by uniformed police. This police charge alone obtained eight scalps. Guilt by association. The scoreboard read:
Coppers 8
Marchers Nil
Special Branch officer-in-charge, Les Hogan was happy. The media had their sensation and the government showed it was on top of the anti-uranium movement. Nevertheless this last spate of arrests were described with disappointment by both interstate media and academic pundits:
“A third desperate wave was launched. Instead of delivering themselves up non-violently, demonstrators attempted to break through the police cordon that blocked an Square exit (sic). Finally ‘hit and run’ tactics by small groups of individuals were undertaken. Not only did these different approaches reflect the fundamental differences in outlook within the movement, but they confirmed the importance of discipline and extensive training in non-violence before embarking on a campaign – a point that has been stressed by all non-violent leaders from Gandhi to Danilo Dolci to Cesar Chavez.”
I wonder if the million people who lost their lives during India’s struggle for independence would see Ghandi’s Satyagraha (non-violence) as being the preferred way?
Yet we could not even resist. The melee produced by Michael’s desire to fit in the police force was misconstrued as a desperate charge by demonstrators. In fact, it was a carefully executed flying wedge by police. They trained for violence and ironically the pundits would have us train for non-violence. In the hubbub, Senior Constable Todd said to me: “We have a warrant for your arrest.”
“How much is the warrant?” I replied instantly. Michael said, “$50.” As an expression of instant solidarity an older man of about 60 behind me immediately produced a $50 note from his wallet. A young man on my right was filming with a Super 8 camera. The cops may have thought he was media and so left him alone. Todd grabbed me by the shirt and propelled me down the steps with the help of Michael and a task force member known as “Blackie”. They twisted my arm up my back and Blackie grabbed me in a headlock compressing my throat with his formidable biceps.
Special Branch officer Krosch moved forward to give assistance. None was needed. I recognised journalist Reinhart who had been a co-ordinator of community 4ZZZ radio then housed at the University of Queensland. I pleaded to Reinhart for help as I lost consciousness. This was the ‘valley of death‘. Reinhart was there in the role of impartial observer. As long as he stayed in character, police would allow him in their ranks and even to roam behind their lines. He stood there taking notes without responding to my pleas for assistance or even acknowledging that he knew me. A photographer was nearby to get the action shot. Reinhart had to file with Fairfax press before 4pm. I would get a paragraph:
“Curr, who had been arrested several times since the anti-street march law was introduced in September last year struggled violently before he was overcome by seven policemen. A police spokesman said Curr was wanted on a warrant for another offence.”
An arrest warrant is usually issued by a magistrate to bring a person before a court or to compel payment of a fine. No charge was mentioned. Did Reinhart ask what were the charges? What had Curr done? Reinhart was not present when I was tried for ‘resisting arrest.’ So he did not witness my acquittal nor report on the super 8 film showing that I had not resisted and that an old man had offered to pay the $50 on the warrant. Something that had unfolded before his very eyes. Why he reported it otherwise is beyond my comprehension. Especially given he was present at the briefing at Lang Park that morning where Stefan’s and my photographs were circulated among police.
Reinhart later helped orchestrate a meeting between Labor’s Peter Beattie and Joh Bjelke-Petersen when Joh needed opposition support after his own party had decided to dump him. In a later life, this jack-of-all-trades became a gold miner and was fined for poisoning ground water near his mine.
Michael and Todd threw me into the back of a paddy wagon already full with street marchers. Maria, one of the women arrested, called out for me to climb to the back of the paddy wagon. I was senseless and couldn’t move. People were shouting “Queensland, Police State!” from inside the paddy wagon and “The People United will never be defeated!” from outside. Just when it looked like the paddy wagon was going to be driven off. Michael, Todd, Blackie and another began unlocking the paddy wagon door, what was really a makeshift Ford panel van. Todd was armed with steel handcuffs. They grabbed me, semi-conscious, from the back of the van and wrestled me to the ground with Todd placing a handcuff tight on my left wrist. He then rotated the cuff swiftly around my wrist. This action must have severed a nerve because I lost all feeling in the back of my left hand for three months. They threw me into the back seat of the police car that Michael had driven from Makerston Street. I was stretched out with hands behind my back across the axle hump in the back seat. Blackie pinned me down while Todd and Michael sat in the front.
Contrast this to Federal Parliamentarian Tom Uren’s description of his own arrest earlier on the same day. With a tone of superiority, Mr. Tom Uren, described what happened on ABC Radio: ‘Well, the young officer who was on my left was a little excited. He did try to start to turn my wrist back to try and hurt me, and I just said: ‘Look son, I am not resisting you; now behave yourself, and immediately I said that he responded to my request.’ Coppers knew who the toffs were, even the working-class ones like Tom Uren.
Michael drove while Todd put his knees on my chest arching my back over the hump and pressing me into the handcuffed hands beneath. They drove to police headquarters in Makerston Street, ironically the same place police were to take Michael four months later when he threw his hat and career into the air. The police car pulled up in the underground car park. Todd and Blackie went to work. They dragged me out and pulled me over to the lift nearby and slammed me into the back wall making a sound that echoed throughout the car park. Michael began to look alarmed. Todd and Blackie were following a well-practiced agenda, which might turn sour. Michael was aware that they were all skirting the law by not taking me directly to jail. That was what was on the warrant: the money or the body. What were they playing at? Was McKay a customer at Todd’s Hi Fi business? He did live nearby at Beenleigh. Did the magistrate know Todd’s father? Were they both members of the National Party? Were they Mason’s? What I do know is that McKay was very drunk the night I turned up on his lawn.
As this was going on, Reinhart and other journos were already writing up their version of the day’s events. Reinhart didn’t get a byline on the front page of Fairfax’s Sydney Morning Herald but must have had a hand in writing the article because he had witnessed and told his own untrue version of what happened to me. Below the Sydney Morning Herald masthead the headlines bellowed:
“700 police face Queensland marches” and in even bigger letters, “280 in street protest held.” Brisbane. – Police arrested 280 demonstrators, including Senator George Georges and Mr Tom Uren MP in protest marches in Brisbane yesterday.
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Todd and Blackie got me out of the lift and paraded me in front of police ogling and making fun of me as I was dragged from floor to floor. I came to understand the term ‘police state’. Senior police joked to Todd, Blackie and Michael about their sorry prisoner. I was mute. “Hey Mr Civil Liberties, you won’t be giving any more speeches in King George Square for a while.”
Finally they got me to the 4th or 5th floor and put me in a small room, uncuffed, and told me to take off my clothes. As I did so they mocked me for being unfit, I was seven years older than them. I replied ‘if you had been through my life (of unemployment) over the last couple of years you would be unfit too.’ Michael left the room and Todd locked the door behind him. I was down to my underpants.
To the surprise of Todd and Blackie, Michael began banging on the door from outside shouting that they had to take me to Boggo Road Gaol. I said they were required to take me before a magistrate or jail depending on what was on the warrant (which I not yet seen). Todd and Blackie had other plans until Michael burst into the room with his shoulder against the door and said, “This is enough, we have to take him, now!”
So they drove me to Boggo Road, where I was hosed down and had my hair cut off and put in a yard with murderers and rapists. No one knew where I was until a sharp-thinking friend worked out that a warrant might have put me in Boggo Road and not in the watchouse where other marchers had ended up. So, three days after my assault by Michael, Todd and Task Force, I was released when my friend, Lachlan, paid the $50 on the warrant. I was then issued with a summons for ‘resisting arrest’ and yet another court case that was to turn everything on its head.
Events of the following months took a bad turn for police. I was acquitted of burning the magistrate’s lawn. Judge Bernard Michael McLoughlin dismissed himself after challenging a Supreme Court decision to release me on bail. Judge McLaughlin was the nephew of former Labor Premier of Queensland, Ned Hanlon who introduced the Special Branch in the late 1940s to keep Communists like Fred Paterson in check. People may well ask why is there a need for an extra-parliamentary opposition? There is only one house of parliament which is run by a two-party system where both are right-wing.
Another magistrate dismissed the charge of resist arrest that Michael and Todd laid on me. I produced super 8 film shot by the person standing beside me as evidence and, unlike Mackay, the magistrate accepted the film evidence. The beak opened the case by saying: ‘What have you got for us today Mr Curr, some video?’ May I ask if it is in colour?” The video I presented before Magistrate McKay had been in black and white.
Perhaps the magistrate was swayed in my favour because he had just sat on a case where land developers sold 14,000 plots of land below the high tide level. This was on Russell Island in Moreton Bay where the state government had gazetted land as being residential even though there were no roads or amenities and was under water for most of the day.
Government also promised prospective buyers on Minjerribah (Straddie) that it would be linked to the mainland via a bridge. This did not come to fruition because island residents campaigned against it under the slogan ‘Leave Straddie Unabridged‘ – a sticker thought up by my pocket knife wielding accomplice in the paddy wagon, Stefan. For whatever reason the Lebanese magistrate with an anglicised name treated me fairly that day, disbelieving both Michael’s and Todd’s synchronous evidence. At least one magistrate was skeptical of McKay’s parallel universe theory.
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Back to International Women’s Day where Michael threw his police hat in the air. Superintendent Jim Voight who had outranked Terence Lewis but was passed over for Police Commissioner by Bjelke-Petersen ordered that Michael be taken into custody back to Makerston Street HQ. I followed Michael along with some other marchers. We were worried about what would happen to him, perhaps a hiding like the one I had four weeks earlier lay in store for the copper who no longer wished to be bent in a banana state.
It was after the court case about my arrest at the anti-uranium demonstration and Michael had come to my house at 53 Wedd St., Spring Hill. It was about 7pm and a noisy Honda 750cc motor bike pulled up in the dead-end street outside our share house. The front door was open and in the street light I could see someone walking around near the front gate.
A housemate, Lloyd, called out to me, “Its him! It’s the copper who arrested you!” Lloyd had shot the super 8 film of the arrest that led to my being acquitted of the charge of “resist arrest“. The case had only been finalised a week before. I walked out cautiously with Lloyd beside me to see what was up. Michael said that he wanted to leave the force and asked for our help. I asked him why, thinking it may be a set-up.
Michael threw me by asking why I hadn’t cross-examined him in the witness box during the trial, especially after I had spent over three days cross-examining Todd for lying through his teeth. Michael said that I had helped arouse suspicion in the ranks that he was on the street marchers’ side. Michael said that senior police thought we were in cahoots. That floored me. I asked him how he got the warrant for my arrest. I later sought particulars from the court and found that acting magistrate MacKay had issued the warrant.
Michael asked how to go about resigning in such a way that it would help the civil liberties movement. I asked him to wait. So Lloyd and I went inside to discuss what we should do. We rang a friend who suggested that we tell Michael to ring Senator George Georges. We went back outside and told Michael we were unable to help, that he had overestimated our capacity to help anyone, but told him to ring George Georges’ office and to ask for the senator’s assistance. Michael seemed disappointed and left.
Later that week we gave Maris and Greg at Senator Georges’ office a rundown on what had happened and asked them to let us know if they heard from Michael. We did not see Michael until he turned up at the International Women’s Day rally and threw his hat in the air.
When police were escorting Michael away, I approached the woman whom he had tried to protect. She told me her name and that Michael and she were friends. She said that Michael had told her he wanted to leave the force. He hated arresting demonstrators for marching and lying in court.
Michael’s friend said that she wanted to do an interview with the media about what had happened so I said that I would take her to the ABC-TV studios in Toowong. I started to wonder if Michael and Jeanelle had planned the whole dramatic incident. She told an ABC journo what had happened and how Michael had tried to defend her against the plainclothes officer who had attacked her and that Michael wanted to get out of the force. I do not remember her version of events being broadcast on ABC TV that night. For the ABC to pass up on a story like that smacked of interference in the public broadcaster.
Another explanation is that the journo lacked the authority to follow up on a story like this. He would have had to go to his producer and seek permission to do an interview to camera with Michael’s girlfriend and then maybe a follow-up interview when Michael was released from police HQ. In an organisation like ABC TV, a program meeting may have been required. Not so with Mike Willesee who interviewed Michael two days later. Both the ABC and Channel 7 had missed the real story, that being the girlfriend being assaulted by special branch and Michael, a lowly constable, intervening. Instead Willesee took the angle that Michael was concerned about civil liberties and fabrication of police evidence in court. This was part of the wider story and may have been a real driver for Michael to resign. But in the moment, on that day in Adelaide Street, it was the attack on his close friend from school that drove Michael to chuck his hat into the air and his future with it.
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I didn’t tell J. how conflicted I was by taking her to the ABC studios. I had been there before after another rally on the 22nd of October 1977. On that occasion, 418 people had been arrested. Senator George Georges was arrested as well. I knew one of the film editors and asked her if I could see film of the arrests.
In those days the ABC shot news footage using 16mm film. I sat in the room with the editor and his assistant observing them selecting vision for that night’s 6:00 news broadcast. It was a Saturday and there was only one journalist to cover what was to be the main item on the national news. Some film had been shot by Michael Fanning who was later to give evidence on charges I faced from a later demonstration. Fanning had the knack of following an arrest from go to woe. He ran with the camera or sound microphone in hand keeping the device going all the time.
Yet the ABC didn’t use the best footage preferring to concentrate on the arrest of Senator Georges which was mild in comparison to many of the others. Worse still the journalist insisted on characterising the rally as being a civil liberties demonstration. Yet it was organised by the Campaign against Nuclear Power (CANP) and the anti-uranium mobilisation committee. This misreporting led many to think that the civil liberties movement had made a tactical error by diverting attention away from uranium to that of democratic rights. Pundits then claimed falsely that the civil liberties movement had fallen into a trap set by the pro-uranium government. One academic even characterised this as a move by Bjelke-Petersen of ‘manufacturing dissent‘ thus alluding to Noam Chomsky’s ‘Manufacturing Consent‘.
I challenged the ABC journalist’s understanding of what went on at one of the biggest mass arrests in Australian history. He told me to write a better intro. I wrote what was organised as an anti-uranium demonstration had become a democratic rights protest because Peterson had banned marching to prevent the anti-nuclear movement from mobilising people down to the wharves to stop yellow cake shipments. To my surprise, the newsreader read out my version.
Sadly after this foray into the media my sub-editor friend was sacked for allowing me into her workplace. This ended her career at the ABC. Bjelke-Petersen had the knack of destroying lives as SEQEB workers found out 6 years later. They never got their lives back. Some of them suicided with their marriages and families destroyed.
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After we left the ABC both Janelle and I returned to Makerston Street and joined some friends who were waiting for Michael to be released. It was some time before he was let go; this time no longer in uniform.
Michael then became a quasi-fictional character whom we read about in newspapers or saw on TV. We heard him on Channel 7’s Willesee At Seven on the 12 March, 1979. Commercial television had scooped both Channel 9’s A Current Affair and the ABC’s This Day Tonight on the biggest story of the week. Despite my natural instinct to take the policeman’s girlfriend to the ABC rather than its commercial competitors.
So Mike Willesee who had worked at the ABC in the 60s and early 70s read out the intro on Channel 7: “After his dramatic resignation from the police force, Constable Michael Xxx observed that the police ‘means of coping with the Queensland situation is dependent on the Premier’s statements in putting down these people. His (the Premier’s) description of them as ratbags and radicals, and, you know, not really describing them as people but setting them apart, makes them something different, something lower than people.”
‘I couldn’t stomach any more what was happening . . . I knew that was it. I knew I’d had a gutful and I didn’t want to be a copper any more . . . from that time.‘ He contended that ‘most of the violence in the early days was police provoked. ‘The press reported him as saying he saw incredible things, human chains of police manhandling people. ‘I was really disturbed. You’d come home and not feel like eating your tea (dinner). You felt like vomiting’.
According to Michael, ‘Some police wanted a ‘blue’, and moved in while others held back.’
At the rallies he was disturbed that police would not allow demonstrators to disperse peacefully but harassed them as they attempted to leave the square. He said that he had resigned out of concern for civil liberties, hatred of the potential violence, and disgust at police fabrication of court evidence.
Among the many accusations he levelled was that at the last demonstration ‘the Government was sending in undercover people. The Special Branch runs through the crowd stirring them up, pushing people over and going hysterical. But when you send in under-cover, that’s something else. Only a cop would recognise it.’
Whilst he was disgusted at the police’s general handling of demonstrations – finding it incomprehensible why in other states demonstrations could be controlled by a very small number of police – his resignation was provoked because he knew the woman involved from his early school days. ‘It was just that I knew this particular girl which it (sic) brought it back on a personal level to me and that was the real crunch, and I could no longer look for any extraneous reasons for trying to justify what I was doing there as a policeman.’
Though Michael claimed ‘most policemen thought that enforcement of the State’s march laws was a waste of time’, the force’s only resignation came when the matter was placed ‘on a personal level‘.
We heard stories about Michael being harassed by other police.
We heard that Michael eventually had cracked and was riding around West End in Brisbane on his motor bike with a shotgun strapped to his back threatening to shoot any copper who came near him. So we rang his older brother, Ron, who managed to find out where Michael was and get him off the streets for his own safety.
After that we heard that Georges had arranged for Michael to get a train to Melbourne.
How did Michael feel leaving Queensland on that train? Elation? Relief? What life did he have in front of him, after having stood up against a corrupt and lying police force? His troubles certainly weren’t over. One day he would have to return to Queensland, he knew that. What kind of work could he hope for in a state ruled by the mighty dollar?
Michael did return to Queensland. Police harassment did not end. He lived in share houses in West End and Dutton Park, raided by police with false warrants. Michael took it in his stride as best he could. Eventually he got a job with a big company but didn’t like it there because they wanted him to work on their redundancy program, shafting workers.
Many years later his girlfriend wrote about Michael and her experience in Bjelke Blues under the title Sometimes I Wonder. It took the Labor Party over 40 years to turn back the clock on democratic rights and to push coal mining in the same way Bjelke-Petersen did with uranium.
Yet no uranium has been mined in Queensland since Mary Kathleen was shut down in 1982. I wonder if the new generation of activists will be able to say the same of coal in 40 years time.
Was it all worth it? I don’t know. That is for Michael to decide. And for the many others who lost their jobs and livelihood as a result of a ‘gun dog’ , Bjelke-Petersen, working for a ‘stratum of billionaires‘ who ran Queensland in those days.
Ian Curr
6 March 2025
Further Reading Queensland: Fight to Live, Live to Fight