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LABOUR HISTORY NEWS
Labour History Society (South Australia) Incorporated
Summer 2019-2020
Adelaide Oval Cricket 1897. Courtesy SLSA PRG 631/2/70
Included in this Issue National conference, Vale David Combe, ACTU health and safety, Declaration of Human rights, Modern Russia, Don Dunstan book review, A history of the Australian Treasury, Vietnam moratoriums Songs of Struggle, Suffrage 125.
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History in the making
Ensuring Integrity Bill
This afternoon the Morrison government's anti-worker, anti-union attack was busted in the senate. After months of intense campaigning by union members across the country Labor, Greens, One Nation and Jacqui Lambie voted against the Ensuring Integrity Bill meaning the Morrison government and Centre Alliance could not pass it into law. Members from unions all over the country campaigned to stop this law. Workers from all walks of life made the case to the Senate cross bench about why the bill was bad for workers, jobs, wages and Australia. Congratulations on all your hard work. Without your efforts and the efforts of hundreds of thousands of working people across Australia a law designed to hurt the rights of working people would now be law. Working people have stood up against an attack on democratic rights and won. This campaign has shown that union members work in all parts of Australia, doing all kinds of jobs and are all kinds of people. Union members stand up for secure work, fair pay and decent treatment both in our workplaces and our communities.
We do not give up. Join your union.
Sally McManus ACTU Secretary http://www.australianunions.org.au/ 28.11.2019
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President’s Report
Update on February 2021 State Conference The working party under the direction of Dr. David Faber is proposing 5 February 2021 as the date for the LHS State Conference. The draft title for the conference is: ‘Unity in Diversity; Labor in SA 1836 to the Present and into the Future.’ The lists of speakers including the presenter of the keynote address are still being finalised. However, it has been agreed that the list will include Workers, Trade Unions, Academics, Community Activists and Labor Historians. The Conference venue will be at Flinders University in the City (Victoria Square). It is proposed to have an official conference launch in mid-June at a venue to be determined. The working party is happy to receive further thoughts and ideas for the Conference from LHS members and supporters. Please email them to either [email protected] or [email protected]. The coming year 2020 The As we head towards the end of the year, of what could have been a totally disastrous one for the Labor Movement had not the worst Anti-union/worker legislation not been defeated in the Senate as a Labor History Group we need again to look to the past to renew and recreate and the future of the movement. As a group of mainly mature age labour movement supporter how can we channel our experiences to the younger generations? We are asking Labour History Society members and supporters to consider how this can best be done. Please forward ideas to the Executive so that during 2020 we can have a general discussion at one of our meetings to try to set a course. So please give serious thought to how can we help the future of the labour movement. The Executive are finalising the guest speakers for 2020, but in doing so have determined that the October general meeting will be a discussion on the 100 year anniversary of the Communist Party in Australia. The April general meeting because of Easter and other activities has been forwarded to Sunday 10 May so that we can celebrate the 50-year anniversary of the SA Moratorium Movement. This will also be our contribution to SA History Month.
Doug Melvin President
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Activism, Struggle & Labour History
The 16th Biennial National Labour History Conference Perth
The Conference kicked off with the keynote address by British Professor Ralph Darlington on the Suffragette insurgency in the context of the strange death of Liberal England on the eve of the Great War. Darlington concluded that the supposed isolation of the female franchise cause from contemporary labour movement upheaval was not as absolute as is usually supposed. While the radical Suffragettes as opposed to other feminists did decry their labour allies, divergent tendencies even within the Pankhurst family were echoed elsewhere amongst the sisterhood and obtained a labour movement response, for example from Keir Hardy’s Independent Labour Party. Immediately thereafter, yours truly presented on the 1934 Ingham Weils’ Disease health and safety strike in the Queensland cane fields, overrun with rodents disseminating a lethal pathology of the internal organs of the mostly Italian district cutting force. The 1934 strike was the opening engagement in a dispute, which regionalized the length of the Sugar Coast the following year. The employers gaining a pyrrhic victory, only to implement the workers’ demands and fire the cane to drive out the vermin in 1936 and remedy the problem which had occasioned an outbreak of social apprehension or a Great Fear. The strike proved the demonstration of the virtue of fighting to a finish industrially. Phoebe Kelloway presented on the NSW Northern District Coal Lockout 1929-30, featuring the police occupation of a proletarian community and the killing by police fusillade of Norman Brown. Phoebe convincingly undercut the conservative myth of Communist instigation of the strike given the exiguous presence of the CPA on the northern coalfields. It is gratifying to see the esteem in which Phoebe has come to be held nationally. Marjorie Jerrard of Queensland reported on the Meat Workers’ Union Blockade of Hamilton Wharf 17 October 1978, when the live export fight came to Brisbane, a struggle fought without the support of ACTU Secretary Robert James Lee Hawke, much to the disappointment of the workers on strike. Jimmy Yan of Melbourne related the peregrinations of Political Travellers in Revolutionary Ireland, including South Australian Bill Denny, war hero and later South Australian Attorney General. Julie Kimber and Phillip Deery revised the case of the Truama and Tragedy of a Cold War Defection. Evdokia Petrov, bringing to light the ambiguities in the motivation and memories of a woman conditioned from youth to dissemble and deflect as second nature. These were but some of the intellectual highlights of a successful Conference which emphasized the viability and vibrancy of our discipline. The principal organizer of the Conference, Bobbie Oliver, was much congratulated. The AGM of the Australian Society for the Study of Labour History was celebrated within the ambit of the Conference. The Meeting was resolved to sail resolutely into the financial headwinds the Society is addressing. Accordingly, the election of officers was conducted under the sign of stability. Professor Stuart was re-elected President, Dr Julie Kimber Secretary and Dr Phillip Deery Treasurer. David Faber briefly reported the decision of the SA Branch of the Society to celebrate a State Conference on Saturday 5th February 2021, addressed to the SA labour movement as a whole, addressed to activist and scholars and drawing on the organizational culture, traditions and strength of its institutions.
David Faber
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David Combe 26.4.43 – 21.9.19
Extracts from an article by Richard Whitington in the Sydney Morning Herald 30.9.2019
David Combe was a significant and accomplished figure not only in Australian politics but in business and international trade, with an unwavering commitment to social justice and civil liberties. Harvey David Mathew Combe died on September 21, aged 76, after a long and gruelling battle with cancer. David Combe was born in Adelaide on April 26, 1943 and educated at Prince Alfred College.
At the University of Adelaide, where he completed a BA in 1963, he soon became involved in Labor politics. After 32 years of conservative government in South Australia, it was the dawn of the Don Dunstan era, which transformed South Australia and, in many senses, Australia, too. Combe served on Dunstan’s staff when Labor finally won government in 1965. Then, at the age of 26, in a ground-breaking battle between the “new” and the “old” in Labor, he succeeded Mick Young as the ALP’s state organiser in SA: the first ever appointment from outside the ranks of trade union officials, and a boy from a private school! A year later he became SA State Secretary. In 1973, Combe, again, succeeded Mick Young, this time becoming the youngest National Secretary in the Labor Party’s history, at the age of 30.
Combe professionalised the national secretariat beyond recognition, creating the administrative and financial foundations from which many of his successors helped engineer victories for Hawke, Keating, Rudd and Gillard. Not least of these was the purchase of John Curtin House, home to the party’s national HQ in the Canberra suburb of Barton. The party’s national conferences became public showpieces rather than the closed-door mysteries they had been in the past, vulnerable to media and opposition lampooning.
After four national election campaigns in eight years, Combe left his role with the ALP in mid-1981, setting up a political consultancy. He was rightly regarded as being well placed and connected with Bob Hawke’s government when it took office in early 1983. ASIO agreed, concerned that Combe’s dealings with the Russian Embassy in Canberra posed a risk to Australia’s security.
The Hope Royal Commission found that while the Russians had targeted Combe as a potential agent of influence, there was no proof of intelligence breaches or of any threat to national security.
The episode ended Combe’s career as a lobbyist, although it can be credited with prompting the Government to establish a register of lobbyists and, on the recommendation of the Royal Commission, to implement protocols for better oversight of ASIO.
The Attorney-General at the time, Gareth Evans, later expressed his regret to Combe at what many saw as a cynical and opportunistic exercise by Hawke and ASIO. The ALP’s National Conference in 1984 passed a motion specifically restoring Combe to favoured-son status for his service to the party. The 1984 olive branch from the ALP allowed Combe to move on, professionally at least, and his undoubted talents, energy and intellect were recognised with his appointment in 1985 as Australia's senior trade commissioner in Western Canada. He served in a similar role in Hong Kong from 1990 to 1991.
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Bob Hawke with Combe at the University of Adelaide in 1976.
He returned to Sydney, with Southcorp, in 1995, as Senior Vice-President International and ran its entire export operation. His time with Southcorp coincided with the great flowering of Australian wine’s popularity overseas, with the annual value of Southcorp’s own exports increasing from $40 million in 1991 to $300 million in 2000.
In 2000 he was named Australia's Top Export Salesman by Overseas Trading magazine and was included in the list of "Twenty-Five Most Influential Australians in Asia" published by Business Asia magazine. Thus, although after the mid-eighties, for more than 30 years, Combe pretty much disappeared from the Australian political scene, he made new friends and impressed new people. He always behaved with complete grace, courtesy, good humour, integrity and decency; generous and engaging. In later years, David fought and conquered an alcohol problem and had his last drink more than a decade ago.
In semi-retirement he did a little consulting, managed some investments and took an active role as a board member of an NDIS registered disability organisation with a commitment to empowering people.
Many others who knew him attest to Combe’s openness, respectfulness, a gregarious and deeply intellectual persona, an ability to listen and to make people feel that they mattered.
For more than most, the twists and turns in David Combe’s life and career demanded courage and resilience of him and he displayed those qualities, consistently and in abundance. He was a product of the Labor movement and a servant to it, motivated by strongly held beliefs in individual rights and Australia’s potential as a more caring, compassionate and independent nation.
Richard Whitington was a member of Gough Whitlam’s staff from 1974 to 1977.
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If world leaders choose to fail us, my generation will never forgive them
This is the speech Greta Thunberg delivered to the United Nations Climate Action summit in New York on Monday 23 Sept 2019.
This is all wrong. I shouldn’t be standing here. I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean. Yet you all come to me for hope? How dare you! You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words. And yet I’m one of the lucky ones. People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction. And all you can talk about is money and fairy-tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you!
For more than 30 years the science has been crystal clear. How dare you continue to look
away, and come here saying that you are doing enough, when the politics and solutions needed are still nowhere in sight.
With today’s emissions levels, our remaining CO2 budget will be gone in less than 8.5 years.
You say you “hear” us and that you understand the urgency. But no matter how sad and angry I am, I don’t want to believe that. Because if you fully understood the situation and still kept on failing to act, then you would be evil. And I refuse to believe that.
The popular idea of cutting our emissions in half in 10 years only gives us a 50% chance of staying below 1.5C degrees, and the risk of setting off irreversible chain reactions beyond human control.
Maybe 50% is acceptable to you. But those numbers don’t include tipping points, most feedback loops, additional warming hidden by toxic air pollution or the aspects of justice and equity. They also rely on my and my children’s generation sucking hundreds of billions of tonnes of your CO2 out of the air with technologies that barely exist. So a 50% risk is simply not acceptable to us – we who have to live with the consequences.
To have a 67% chance of staying below a 1.5C global temperature rise – the best odds given by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – the world had 420 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide left to emit back on 1 January 2018. Today that figure is already down to less than 350 gigatonnes. How dare you pretend that this can be solved with business-as-usual and some technical solutions. With today’s emissions levels, that remaining CO2 budget will be entirely gone in less than eight and a half years.
There will not be any solutions or plans presented in line with these figures today. Because these numbers are too uncomfortable. And you are still not mature enough to tell it like it is.
You are failing us. But the young people are starting to understand your betrayal. The eyes of all future generations are upon you. And if you choose to fail us I say we will never forgive you. We will not let you get away with this. Right here, right now is where we draw the line. The world is waking up. And change is coming, whether you like it or not.
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Press Release from ACTU. 12th August 2019
Four in five working people injured or ill due to work. Nearly 80 percent of working people have been injured, or become ill, or both as a result of their work, according to a survey released today by the peak body for working people. The same number of people say existing penalties for employers are not enough to make them take safety seriously.
The Work Shouldn’t Hurt work health and safety survey carried out by the ACTU in July exposes an underbelly of unsafe work practices that has led to unacceptable numbers of working people dying as a result of their work, being exposed to trauma, experiencing violence, or sustaining psychological/physical illnesses and injuries. More than 26,000 working people responded to questions about their experiences of work health and safety, including the sorts of working conditions they had faced in the past 12 months. Areas surveyed included exposure to traumatic events – like the death of a colleague, occupational violence, hazardous conditions, poor management, and remote or isolated work.
In their survey responses, working people talked about injuries as a result of their work, from being physically assaulted (punched, and kicked), being held hostage by a patient, to being crushed, electrocuted, or burnt at work. Others said they had broken major bones or had been left traumatised or depressed by work conditions. The results highlight an alarming growth in the rate of psychosocial (mental) injury as a result of high exposure to hazards at work. Three in five working people surveyed had experienced psychological illnesses or injuries such as stress, depression or anxiety at work. This needs immediate attention and regulation. In 2018, the Government commissioned a report into model work health and safety legislation resulting in the Boland review, which made 34 recommendations to strengthen work health and safety laws. The ACTU has called for all recommendations to be implemented across all states and territories. We need a strong commitment from the Morrison Government and all states and territories to prevent all workplace deaths and end all forms of workplace injuries, including the increasing level of psychosocial injuries. We need better rights for workers’ representatives to enforce safety so that no one is hurt at work. Work shouldn’t hurt. Unions play a vital role in making sure work is healthy and safe. Key findings: • 78% of respondents had been physically or psychologically injured or ill as a result of their work; • 78% of respondents knew someone who had been seriously injured or ill as a result of their work; • 16% of respondents knew someone who was killed at work, or died from a work-related disease; • In the last 12 months 47% of respondents were exposed to traumatic events, distressing situations or distressed or aggressive clients/customers; • 66% of respondents experienced high workloads; • 31% of respondents had experienced occupational violence (abuse, threats, or assault at work by clients, customers, the public, or co-workers). • 61% said they has experienced poor mental health because their employer or workplace had failed to manage of address these poor work conditions;
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• 91% of people did not make a workers’ compensation claims in relation to this poor mental health; • Of the 9% that did, only a third of them were approved; • 55% said they were aware of existing conditions in their workplace that could cause serious injury or illness if not addressed. • 80% said the penalties were not significant enough to make employers or companies take safety seriously; • 91% said employers or companies who cause the death of a worker through gross negligence should face serious jail time (up to 20 years); • 98% of respondents said they believed unions had a role in work health and safety; • 91% said unions should be able to immediately enter workplaces to address health and safety issues; • 97% said unions should be able to take employers and companies that break health and safety laws to court; Quotes attributable to ACTU Assistant Secretary Liam O’Brien: “Everybody should go to work free from the fear of being killed, injured or getting ill. Work shouldn’t hurt; all workers should come home from work mentally and physically safe. “The survey highlights a horrifying level of unsafe work practices in our workplaces. Working people are paying with their lives or are left seriously injured or ill as a result of unsafe work practices. “Unions are playing a crucial role in making sure that work is safe, but the Morrison Government’s laws are failing working people. We need an overhaul of model work health and safety laws. “We call for urgent action to prevent workplace deaths and injuries and illness as a result of work. All 34 recommendations of the Government’s own sweeping review – the Boland Review – must be implemented. “The rate of mental injuries in Australia is on the rise. The Morrison Government must urgently act to ensure that there are real deterrents in place which will force employers to take safety seriously. “Unions play a crucial role in pushing for work health and safety legislative reform to ensure that all forms of workplace injuries - including the increasing level of psychosocial injuries - and deaths at work end.”
Media contact: Lachlan Williams 0447 682 027, ACTU Media: 03 9664 7315 ___________________________________________________________________________
In the last issue we forgot to include details on our new committee member Pat Wright. Pat WrightI was a teacher in public high schools from 1962 to 1974 before working on curriculum development and giving lectures in 538 schools and colleges for the Commonwealth Institute all over the UK. In 1978 I became a Lecturer in Sociology at Adelaide Teachers College, later SACAE, where I helped found Labour Studies, which opened up Higher Education for working people. Ultimately, Labour Studies became part of the University of Adelaide, where I worked until until 2005, apart from a two-year secondment to IR Branch of SA Department of Labour 1990-91. My union involvement included Hon Sec of SACASA, UTLC delegate, National President of FC A and UACA, ACTU delegate, Branch President NTEU, Foundation Life Member NTEU.
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Remembering the UDHR at its 70th Anniversary
I remember when Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted by the United Nations
General Assembly in 1948. I was 15. In other circumstances perhaps I would not have been aware of
that momentous event, and I certainly could not have foreseen that I would later spend many years
working in human rights. But the Declaration touched me and our
family, because my Uncle Bert was at that time President of the
General Assembly of the UN. The idea of human rights was close
to his heart. Some years before he had showed us the Norman
Rockwell posters of Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms. He wanted those
rights and freedoms — of speech, of worship, freedom from fear
and freedom from want — to be part of the new and better world
which surely must follow the horrors of war. I may have hazarded
the view that the Declaration was a good thing. My father was a
little hesitant. ‘It’s all very well’ he said, ‘but you can’t use it in
Court.’ He and Bert would dearly have loved to see legally
enforceable human rights.
Bert had already made a great contribution to setting up the new international order of the United
Nations, and to giving it an important role in regard to human rights. He went on, in his role as
foreign minister, to ensure that Australia was closely involved in the drafting of the Declaration.
Australian efforts were directed not only to civil and political rights, which were well understood at
that time, but to the relatively new areas of economic rights and social justice, including labour
rights, the right to an adequate standard of living, and social security [articles 22 - 27.] Bert had
wanted legally enforceable rights, but that was a bridge too far.
The Commission on Human Rights completed its task relatively quickly. Eleanor Roosevelt, as Chair
of the Commission, managed the drafting process, keeping control of her disparate Commission, by
inviting carefully chosen groups of members to tea. At the adoption ceremony in the General
Assembly, which took place in Paris, Bert acknowledged, perhaps with some regret, that the
Declaration does not impose binding or enforceable rights. Still, he said, it is the first occasion on
which the organised community of nations has made a declaration of human rights and fundamental
freedoms. It has the authority of the body of opinion of the United Nations as a whole.
He had worked hard to ensure there were no negative votes, though eight States had abstained, six
Soviet bloc countries [USSR, Czechoslovakia, Byelorussia, Poland, Yugoslavia, Ukraine], South Africa
and Saudi Arabia. [When voted on individually, 23 of the 30 articles had been accepted without any
dissent.] Looking back, it is nothing less than miraculous that in a world rapidly descending into the
tensions of the Cold War, there should have been a consensus, even if an uneasy one, on a
statement of universal human rights.
Bert saw the Declaration as a first step in an evolutionary process. In this he was right. Over the
years that followed, the United Nations has created many human rights Covenants and Conventions.
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These are based on the principles of the Declaration, but they go further by creating legally binding
obligations for those States which sign on to them.
Bert did not live to see Australia become a party to any of those instruments, but I have worked for a
number of years as a member of the independent monitoring body for two instruments, the
Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination against Women and the International
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The monitoring bodies strive to persuade States to fulfil the
international legal obligations which they have freely undertaken.
They have to use their powers of persuasion, because although the obligations are legally binding
under international law, there are no enforceability mechanisms. Although there is now an
international criminal court, and several regional human rights courts, there is no UN sponsored
international Human Rights Court. This leaves an important gap in the international enforceability of
human rights. Too many States, including Australia, have failed to live up to their undertakings.
In December 1988, at the 40th anniversary of the UDHR, I was invited to present Australia’s
statement to the General Assembly. This statement revived the proposal which Australia had made,
back in the 1940s when the Declaration was being drafted, for the UN to set up an international
Court of Human Rights. This is an idea still waiting its time.
When you read the Universal Declaration of Human Rights you will see that it describes a utopian
world. A world where everyone has their basic needs for food, clothing and shelter satisfied; where
everyone has access to education, employment, cultural life, social security and health care; where
everyone has the right to equal treatment without discrimination; where no-one is subjected to
oppressive government, to arbitrary arrest or to torture; where everyone is free to participate in or
to criticise government and to follow his or her own religion. And it is not inappropriate to mention
in today’s climate that everyone has the right to a nationality, and to seek and enjoy in other
countries asylum from persecution.
Bert, in speaking of the Declaration, emphasised two significant points. First, he stressed the
universality of these rights for men and women and children all over the world. Second, he
emphasised that these rights also bring with them duties. He echoed the preamble in its call to every
individual and every organ of society to strive to secure the universal and effective recognition and
observance of these rights. That is the duty for all of us if we are to bring about ‘a social and
international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully
realised.
Elizabeth Evatt Hon. Elizabeth Evatt AC is an eminent Australian lawyer, jurist and reformer whose extraordinary
career has included serving as a member and later chair of the United Nations Committee on the
Elimination of Discrimination against Women (1984-1992) and as the first Australian to be elected to
the United Nations Human Rights Committee (1992-2000). These are her introductory remarks on the
70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration, presented by the Evatt Foundation and Sydney Ideas
at the Seymour Centre, Sydney, on 9 December 2018.
Source: Evatt Foundation paper 20.7.19
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Snippets from Modern Russia
My partner and I recently had a three week trip to Russia. We cruised for 15 days up the Volga River from Volgograd/Stalingrad to Moscow and then went on by very fast train to St Petersburg/Leningrad. We were able to chat to a number of Russian citizens about today’s Russia and to observe many aspects of life in Russia today. A few interesting conversations were had with our tour guides, especially one who was a Russian historian and gave talks to the guests regarding the history of Russia from around 900 CE to the present with no holds barred. Naturally my main interests were the lead up to the fall of the Soviet Union to the present day and also the Stalin years. Our historian, I shall call him V, spoke of the great achievements of the Stalin regime not only the second war world leadership he showed but the achievement of taking Russian from an 18th century society, economy and living standards to a country that caught up to the west in two decades. V acknowledged that there were mistakes and there was a human cost, but was adamant that without these advancements, Germany would have most likely won the war. As we know from history, after the death of Stalin in 1953 the Soviet Union went through a number of leaders, each with their own influences on Russian society. They were Khrushchev (1953 – 64), seen as the exposer of the faults of Stalinism and the leader in the space race with the USA; Brezhnev (1964 – 82) seen as a stabiliser of the Soviet Union bringing certainty to the people. This was followed by the short time leadership of Andropov and Cherenkov (collectively 1982 – 85). V thinks that if Kosygin’s reforms to allow an introduction of limited private enterprise had been implemented then the Soviet system would have most likely survived. Unfortunately the Political Leadership would have none of it. Then the changes began following the election of Gobarchev in 1985. While he was seen in the West as the great reformer, establishing Glasnost (openness and transparency) and Perestroika (reconstruction). As V explained, while Gobarchev was the darling of the West (Reagan and Thatcher in particular), the people of Russia could not stand him or many of his reforms. They especially hated his wife who they saw as floating around the world in the latest fashions and expensive fur coats while they had little to eat and their standard of living was falling. Poverty was enormous and people actually had ration cards for the necessities of life like bread and sugar. Of course, the Western press never reported that while the Russians now had the right to talk freely they also had no food. For 10 years the county and the people were paralysed. Few understood what was happening to them and their society. State enterprises were sold off, unemployment-exploded, crime rates went through the roof and no one really knew what was going to happen next (a bit like the poms and Brexit). There appears to have been a void in the education process between Communism and the capitalist systems. However after about 10 years the new capitalist class rose and took over the country’s assets and exploited the new working class. V said that since the transition the rich are very well off, the middle classes have grown, the working class continue to struggle and the vulnerable and poor are just being left behind (sound familiar?). Following the Gobarchev changes along came Yeltsin, elected on an anti-corruption program. Nonetheless, we were told that not only did he provide his mates with lucrative business
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opportunities, he became a total embarrassment for the people, especially after his episode in Ireland when he failed to get off the plane for an official State visit due an attack of vodka! V informs us, and from what we observed of the Russian economy, regardless of the separate sanctions the EU and US have in place. The country is travelling well and that 70% of the population fully support Putin as they see him as solid and fighting for Russia against the anti-Russian forces of the West. Our Observations. The people are very disciplined; they all walk on the right hand side of the footpath; stand on the right hand side of escalators to allow people to walk up on the left; the streets are litter free in all places we visited from 15million plus population of Moscow to 1400 population of Pylos. Each morning water trucks clean the major roads; police cars in the bigger cities appear to have their blue light flashing permanently as a warning to drivers. With the growth of the middle classes, the demand for cars is high but the infrastructure in Moscow and St Petersburg just cannot cope, and traffic flow makes Sydney’s traffic flow seem like a speed track! Given the growth of the automobile manufacturing plants in Russia, cars are extremely competitively priced which adds to the road saturation problems. Like all cities there are very many high-rise blocks of flats, and the funny thing is that the most sought after are the ones built in the Stalinist era, as they are well built, large with high ceilings. Funny thing that! That’s aside of course of the multimillion dollar flashy apartment blocks that the oligarchs occupy. We found it interesting that as we travelled further north along the river the less there was of talk or statues reminding people of the defeat of Germany or the heroes of the Soviet era. Every town and city has a church on just about every street corner regardless of an only 10% attendance rate. Given the churches were closed down for over 75 years, and used from museums to childcare centres and storage barns, we found them astonishingly well-kept and maintained. We did not spend much time in Moscow, but workers store GUM is now a high stakes shopping centre with all the expensive global brands available for the top end of town! Prices for every day shopping there and in St Petersberg are very high, compared to other places we visited on this trip. The travel to our final stop was by high-speed train to St Petersburg (St. P). The train was the real deal covering over 700 kms in fewer than 4 hours and very comfortable. St Petersburg is an amazing place with a colourful history with three main events, the construction of the city by, that thieving murdering bastard Peter the Great, and the time of (same adjective) Catherine the Great. The pair built a multitude of enormous palaces while much of rest of Russia was living in abject poverty. Unfortunately, our official guided tour concentrated on Palaces, Churches and Peter and Catherine, not the other two major events, the 1917/19 revolutions and the defence of the city against the Germans. It seem that the City has found the tourism bug and therefore recent history must be ignored as people are only interested in the nice/pretty overdone Palaces and churches and to hell with revolutions and the heroics of defending the city. It is amazing that tour guide's talk briefly about the defence against the Nazis and not the Germans, one can only surmise it would upset the German tourists if they said defence against the Germans! We did have a special visit to the home of Lenin and his school in Ulyanovsk. It was quite overwhelming to think we were walking in his footsteps. (Although we think most of our fellow passengers would not understand our reaction). The US travellers were very unhappy when our guides spoke several times of Lenin as the greatest politician of the last century.
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Photos taken at Ulyanovsk where Lenin grew up: His home and the school he attended. A funny conversation We were in the supermarket just looking at what was on the shelves (you could be in any supermarket anywhere in the world and it’d be basically the same goods) when the lead tour guide, (who comes from Moscow) came over and said, “Your bag where did you get it I have not seen anywhere we have visited, a shop that sells such goods?” I advised him that it was in fact the Adelaide May Day tote bag and I explained a bit about our May Day committee and the celebrations in Australia. He was quite bemused and admitted that he thought May Day was just a Soviet era parade and celebration, and was totally unaware that it was a worldwide celebration for workers.
Doug Melvin
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Don Dunstan by Angela Woollacott
Angela Woollcott’s comprehensive biography of Don Dunstan shows just how much he transformed Adelaide, South Australia but also modern Australia. Dustan born in Fiji, and raised between there and Adelaide, laid the foundations for his political views on race in later life. Thus, he fought against the White Australia Policy (WAP) and for land rights for Indigenous Australians. A man well known for wearing pink shorts in Parliament shows that he broke every mould of a politician to that date and even now! His open marriages and sexuality would of course, disrupt the moral guardians of the day. However, he was able to remain a very popular Premier throughout the ten years of his time in power. During this time he was able to transform the social and cultural milieu of South Australia. He was able to bring the “people” of South Australia along with him something that modern “leaders” are unable to achieve. This book made me realise his contribution not only to the modern Australian Labour Party (ALP) at the state level but also, at the Federal level too.
Often people think of Gough Whitlam as the great reformer but Don Dunstan came before him and I think paved the way for his success at a national level. Also, Don Dunstan was able to be a longer serving leader of a reforming ALP government, which suggests a greater political acumen. The Australia of today: alfresco dining, the Arts, Land rights, and of the WAP, sex discrimination legalisation and more would be vastly different without leaders like Dunstan. Think of current ALP serving members who voted against the Sex Discrimination Bill, this would have made Don Dunstan turn in his grave today. Yet another example of the non-visionary leadership of the current ALP leaders. Post Politics, Don and his partner ran successful restaurants and appropriately named “Don’s Table,” and wrote cookbooks to enhance his knowledge and passion for food and wine, thus reflecting the cosmopolitan and cultural diversity which was central to his core beliefs throughout his life. However, Woollacott does tackle the controversial issues
associated with Don Dunstan. His weaknesses as a person in not being able to take criticism, his relationship with John Ceruto and the sacking of Harold Salisbury. Also, for some his unorthodox personal relationships and the subsequent emotional hardships that came from these are addressed. I would recommend this book as a great example of a historian’s interpretation of one of the most inspirational and influential reformist leaders of Australia.
Reviewed by Elizabeth Di Cesare Allen and Unwin, 344 pages and $32.99
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Changing fortunes: A history of the Australian Treasury by Paul Tilley Institutional histories can be dull. In this book Tilley, a former Treasury economist, has written a history which traces Treasury’s development from a department of bookkeepers at Federation to a powerful institution of Government. Along with the Prime Minister’s Office, and the Department of Foreign Affairs, it became a leading department of State and the premier source of economic advice to Government. Tilley has written a narrative of what became an influential institution. It is not dull. Discussion
At the creation of the Commonwealth Government in 1901, seven Departments of State were gazetted. Treasury was one. Initially it was the book-keeper and budget manager for the fledging federal government. In those days, the States were the dominant force in the Federation and Treasury staff were drawn from them. The Depression hit Australia in 1929. It saw unemployment reach 20% and output fall by 30%. Treasury was largely ineffectual. It remained dominated by accountants and did little to contribute to a vigorous policy debate between those who advocated, “reflating” the economy and those who stood for a more conservative approach of balanced budgets and cutting wages. Ultimately, it demonstrated the paucity of Treasury’s role as an adviser to government on economic policy and it led to a commitment for a more targeted approach in recruiting Economics graduates as well. Treasury gradually became a source of economic policy advice, alongside the Commonwealth’s growing power as it assumed greater taxing power (see the Uniform Tax Act 1942).
Treasury became exposed to an international economic policy debate sparked by the publication of J M Keynes General Theory of Employment, Interest And Money. Essentially Keynes argued that if left to itself the economy would not achieve full employment. Equilibrium, that is, where the demand equals its supply. Tilley argues that Treasury remained “old school” and stuck to adherence to old-fashioned neo- classical economics. This argues that the market is the dominant force in the economy and the price of any commodity, in this case labour, is determined by its supply and demand, while neo-classical economics assumptions can be challenged, and has been by numerous scholars and others. Treasury remained oblivious. It was not until the end of the Second World War, with the advent of younger economists and expanded role for Government that Keynesian ideas became dominant and Treasury’s influence was cemented. Tilley writes that this standing continued during the Menzies ‘’golden years,” that is, that time of relative economic and price stability. While this description of the Menzies era is highly arguable in his mind, Treasury influence was at a highpoint in the Canberra bureaucracy. This was not to last during the Whitlam years. The new Government regarded Treasury with suspicion and this was reciprocated. This was reinforced by the so-called, “Loans Affair.” Briefly one Minister in particular, Rex Connor, tried to borrow a very large amount of money, $4 billion, through unofficial channels. Treasury was mortified. Although the loan never transpired once Whitlam became aware of it, Treasury’s view of the Government as irresponsible was confirmed. Later Treasury influence was maximised during the Hawke-Keating years. The float of the dollar, the deregulation of the financial sector and the opening up of the economy generally all occurred under
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Treasury’s watch. They regarded all these changes and more as “reform.” Treasury dominance of the Canberra bureaucracy was confirmed. Although the floating of the dollar was met initially with scepticism. The next big challenge facing Treasury was its split into two Departments of Treasury and Finance. Arguments as to the merits of the split had raged in Canberra since the mid-60s. As Tilley says, Treasury was given responsibility for economic policy advice and Finance looked after expenditure within Government. While it was argued Treasury was too big for one Minister, in reality it was a demonstration of the Fraser government’s determination to break the power of Treasury which had opposed the Government’s decision to devalue the currency by 17.5%. The split occurred in December1976. From 1976 to the present day, Tilley argues that Treasury influenced waxed and waned. It regarded the Howard-Costello reign as another period of “reform,” particularly with the introduction of the GST (Goods and Services Tax). The book has several weaknesses. Firstly there is virtually no mention of how any of the debates in economics influenced Treasury. It could be argued that they did not, as Treasury’s star was firmly fixed on a neo-classical approach and is inherently conservative. Secondly, it made no distinction between the Hawke-Keating era and that of the Howard-Costello period. On a minor note, it seems to assume all readers are familiar with economic acronyms. They are not. On the whole, a good read for those who want a greater appreciation of how the Commonwealth grew and why Treasury was so influential in that journey.
Steve Acton _______________________________________________________________
Important dates for next year
Dates for our Executive meetings are 16 January, 19 March, 21 May, 16 July, 17 September and 19 November. Our General meetings are 16 February, 10 May (Special Vietnam Moratorium movement 50th anniversary, 21 June, 16 August (AGM) and 18 October. Please put these dates in your diary.
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VIETNAM MORATORIUM CAMPAIGN-50 YEARS ON
On 9th May 1970 Adelaide witnessed on of the biggest and most peaceful street marches ever seen here. Estimated at somewhere between 5000 and 10000 and comprising most sections of the community, the march proceeded from Elder Park to Victoria Square where it heard from a number of speakers including the then Premier, Don Dunstan. Similar marches and other events were held at the same time in all other States and Territories. This part of the paper will traverse the events leading up to this march. In the next edition the events post 9th May will be related.
Prior to the establishment of the Vietnam Moratorium Campaign (VMC) in November 1969, there were a number of small peace groups operating in Adelaide. Only one, however, concentrated specifically on Australian involvement in Vietnam until the emergence of the Campaign for Peace in Vietnam (CPV) in July 1967.
The CPV’s objectives were determined to be: 1. To work towards the end of Australia’s military involvement in Vietnam 2. To work towards an end to general hostilities in Vietnam. The CPV had an Executive Committee of about seven who were responsible to a General Committee of around 100, many of whom were well-known in the community. The CPV’s membership grew rapidly from a few hundred to in excess of 2700. It raised not insignificant sums of money, which was mainly spent on educational brochures and election material. The CPV had only limited success in enlisting the support of the Trade Union movement, but did succeed in co-opting a number of prominent members of the ALP, both State and Federal. It campaigned strongly in marginal seats in the 1969 Federal Elections on the issue of taking Australia out of the war, and was partially responsible for the significant swing to the ALP in South Australia. Arising out of national consultations in early 1970, the CPV was instrumental in the arrangements which led to a large number of organisations meeting and then forming a VMC Co-ordinating Committee in early 1970. Despite a not inconsiderable element of disquiet about these developments within the ranks of the Executive and General Committees of the CPV, the majority view prevailed and the newly elected Co-ordinating Committee proceeded to organise and stage a program of some 45 events leading up to Moratorium Day.
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However the ‘main radical elements’ of the VMC decided to hold a separate demonstration on the evening prior to the main march.
An Anti-Imperialism Rally attended by about 2000 demonstrators was marred by violent behaviour towards the marchers and an apparent lack of action by police to protect the marchers. Nonetheless the following day saw a huge turnout of marchers in Adelaide with considerably greater numbers participating elsewhere in Australia. Shortly thereafter preparations began for a second Moratorium to be held in September 1970. It would be fair to say that at this point a more radical outlook began to prevail both nationally and in Adelaide. This brought about a fresh range of tensions and issues that eventually split the peace movement in SA and almost destroyed the CPV in the process.
This article has been based on a paper given by me and titled ‘ Campaigning for Peace in Vietnam The Adelaide Mobilisation 1967-1972’ at the 14th Biennial Conference of the ASSLH in Melbourne in 2015. To be continued in our next newsletter.
Greg Stevens First Chair of the VMC Co-ordinating Committee 1970 Photo: Adelaide Remember When
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Songs of Struggle
As we approach the 50th Anniversary of the Adelaide Moratorium movement I thought a look back to the songs of struggle artists of that time would be appropriate. Don Henderson Don Henderson was an Australian folk singer and songwriter. Henderson's songs, which include The Basic Wage Dream, Boonaroo, and Put a Light in Every Country Window, are widely played and sung, in the folk music tradition. He was well known in the trade union movement with songs such as ‘I Can Whisper’ about the Mt Isa in the mid 1960’s, ‘Westgate Disaster’ (1970) and ‘Picket Line’ (1979) written for the Seaman’s Union about the struggle for the employment of Australian crews on Utah ships. Don also wrote anti-war songs, the best known being ‘Boonoroo’ (1967) about who would load a ship of weapons bound for Vietnam after the Federal government ordered the Navy to take over the supply ship Boonaroo. This song was one of eight Australian songs included in the US collection ‘The Vietnam Songbook’. In 1965 a group of peace activists travelling to a demonstration in Canberra arrived singing Don’s song ‘It’s On’ a song that sums up the peace movements (of then and now) argument about the utter wastefulness of war. Don died in 1997. The album I have of his songs (released in 2009), was partly sponsored by the Brisbane Labour History Association along with a couple of unions and folk societies. Anti-Vietnam War Songs I recently came across a selection of Anti-Vietnam War Songs playlist on Spotify created by Hendrik Marmulla. The Playlist opens with Edwin Starr’s ‘War’ and finishes with the Doors “The End’. It has 132 songs and goes for about 9 hours (and no I did not sit down for 9 hours listening to it). I looked through the Playlist and was pleasantly surprised at some of the titles and artists. While, it incudes all the old favorites such as, Joan Baez, Tom Paxton, Phil Ochs, Donovan, John Lennon, Country Joe etc., it also includes artists such as John Prine (Sam Stone), Black Sabbath (War Pigs), Lou Reed (Kill Your Sons), Bobby Darin (Simple Song of Freedom), Don Mclean (The Grave), Moody Blues (Question) The Association (Requiem for the Masses), Stepphenwolf (Draft Resister), Redgum (Only 19), Dixie Chicks (Travelling Soldier) and many more songs and artists not necessarily associated with the anti-war movement. So spend 9 hours of your life and download it!
Doug Melvin
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Songs of Struggle discussed over the past year or so. The Little Red Song Book and the Little Red Book of Protest Songs (Various Artists) Classic Labour Songs (Various Artists) Songs of the Spanish Civil War (Various Artists) Medicine Songs (Buffy Sainte Marie) Songs of Resistance (Mark Ribot) Songs My Mother Taught Me (Fannie Lou Hamer) Rifles and Rosary Beads (Mary Gauthier) Chants for Socialists (Darren Hayman) Last Testament of Bilocca (The Unthanks) Black Tenere (Kel Assouf) Songs of Our Native Daughters (Amythst Kiah, Rhiannon Giddens, Leyla McCall, Allison Russell) Relevence of Woodie Guthrie Songs Today (Woodie Guthrie) Don Henderson (Australian Folk Singer) Anti-Vietnam War Songs (Various artists)
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Suffrage 125: Women, suffrage and self-determination
Did female suffrage signal the end of gendered double-standards, or was it more a major stepping stone in the ongoing struggle for equality?
In the nineteenth-century, under British common law, women were subordinate to men. This was reflected in the fact that women were legally subject to their fathers until they married and then to their husbands. Prior to the passing of the Married Woman’s Property Act in South Australia in 1894 all property, ‘goods and chattels’ a woman might own became her husband’s upon marriage. While this Act meant that, “a wife became a person in her own right as far as financial transactions were concerned,” for decades to come both her body and the children she bore remained the legal custody of her husband.
German bride and groom, Adelaide, 1885 SLSA B38412.
Well prior to their gaining of the vote, women in South Australia actively challenged this sexual double standard calling for legal, economic and social reforms. Groups such as the Ladies’ Social Purity Society and the Women’s Christian Temperance Union petitioned to Parliament for an end to drunkenness, domestic violence, conjugal rights, and women’s economic dependence. They also campaigned to raise the age of consent from 12 to 16, and to institute a range of protections for married women. For these women the vote provided a key mechanism for women to play a role in “procuring a proper set of men for the Parliament”. We want, wrote one League member in a letter to the South Australian Register published in 1888,
“the sort of men that will pay more attention to the rights and needs of women, and the rights and needs and defence of the home, than the men hitherto found in our Legislature. All those a woman loves are injured or benefited by the laws of the land and by the administration of the laws. Without a vote the woman is powerless to mould or amend these laws”.
Gaining suffrage was only part of the battle: while the right to vote gave women powers they did not previously have, it did not guarantee them rights over their own bodies. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries South Australian women continued to work together, forming maternal and child welfare clinics, opening women’s hospitals, pressuring for the maternity and old age allowances, and demanding better education and equal pay. Issues of consent, conjugal rights and domestic violence were discussed more publicly than ever before, in a manner often strongly reminiscent of the later women’s liberation movement, with its call that the ‘personal is political’.
Sources: Jones, Helen (1986) In Her Own Name: Women in South Australian History, Adelaide: Wakefield Press, p.18. Zenobia, ‘Women’s Franchise’, South Australian Register, 23 July 1888, p.7
Source: September 5, 2019 Centre of Democracy
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Aims and Objectives
The Australian Society for the Study of Labour History was founded in 1961 to study “the working class situation … and social history in the fullest sense.” The Society aims not only, to encourage
teaching and research in labour history but also the preservation of the records of working people and the labour movement. It desires to make history a vital part of popular consciousness, a matter
for reflection and debate, at a time when it is under attack from prominent conservative intellectuals.
Executive Committee
2019-2020 President: Doug Melvin [email protected]
Vice President: David Faber [email protected] Secretary: Sue Marks [email protected]
Treasurer: Kevin Kaeding [email protected] Committee
Ralph Clarke [email protected] Allison Murchie [email protected]
Ken Bridge [email protected] Don Jarrett [email protected]
Elizabeth Di Cesare [email protected] Pat Wright [email protected]
Leah York [email protected] Anne Fisher [email protected]
Except where explicitly stated, news, commentary and discussion are provided for educational and information purposes and do not represent the official position of the Society
Meetings are usually held at the Box Factory in Regent Street South, Adelaide and are advertised in the newsletter, by email and by post to members and friends. Admission is free and all are welcome. This newsletter is a publication of the South Australian Branch of the ASSLH. It is not affiliated to the Australian Labor Party or any other political party. Members are encouraged to make contributions
to this newsletter. General enquiries can be made to the President.
