The ABC was happy to portray the fight between the dockers and their bosses over who was to rule the wharves as a courageous fight of the common man against his inhuman bosses.
The conduct of the watersiders in the second world war shows them in a rather different light.
Hal G. P. Colebatch (The Australian 18.5.07 p.14.) is writing a book on “Wartime strikes and sabotage”,and there were plenty,on the wharves supplying the Pacific front.
Read the book when it is published to learn the full details,I will only detail two:
As the Japanese attacked Milne Bay in 1942 and the Australians and Americans tried to rush reinforcements to the troops holding there,Townsville watersiders refused to load heavy guns unless paid treble or later quadruple time. A small group of U.S. soldiers,under a U.S. Colonel,eventually threw the watersiders off the wharf and loaded the guns themselves.
The rest of the convoy had sailed and the guns arrived too late to be of use.
When advance elements of the 7th Infantry Brigade on the SS Tasman reached Milne Bay in 1942 proceeding straight into battle they found that watersiders at Townsville had broken into the radio vans and removed the accumulators from the radio sets.
According to Colebatch there were “literally hundreds of incidents of wartime strikes and pilfering on the wharves from 1939-1945,as well as outright sabotage.”
The fact that the Australian government did nothing was criminal. The watersiders should have been conscripted and given the option,to the front or behave on the wharves.
Now only 15% of the work force is unionised,do you want that 15% to rule Australia. The Labor party has never stood up to the Unions not even in the face of enemy attack.
