One of the Boys

I have just finished watching Bastard Boys, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's two-part mini-drama about the "docks dispute" in 1998.

I won't talk about the show itself: it has attracted enough superlatives, all of them richly deserved. Nor will I talk about the politics of the dispute, or the right or wrongs of the issues by which it was underlined: plenty of commentators more qualified than I have already undertaken this task.

What I want to talk about are my memories of that dispute - because I was there, on Swanson Dock, on the picket line. Not as one of the wharfies; but as a white collar union official, and as a citizen supporting the Maritime Union of Australia.

Bastard Boys understandably concentrates on the "headline" features of the dispute: the experiences of the MUA and its members, the motivations behind the actions taken by their employer, Patrick Stevedores, the involvement of the Howard Government in precipitating the dispute, and the courtroom machinations that eventually decided the dispute's outcome. But what went unremarked at the time and afterwards is how soon the dispute ceased being an industrial confrontation and became a community protest.

Many people felt that the involvement of the Federal Government in this dispute, and the measures utilised by the employer, represented both an assault on citizens' rights to be members of a union and not suffer prejudice in their employment, and a violation of the much-vaunted Australian "value" of a "fair go". And this was a feeling that crossed the divides of socio-economic standing, political opinion, or industrial attitude. I met many people on the docks who didn't like unions, who were politically conservative, and who believed industrial relations in Australia needed to be reformed. But they were nonetheless participating in the picket because they objected to what they regarded as the illegitimate measures utilised by the Government and Patrick. Which didn't mean they regarded the MUA and its members as benighted martyrs or innocent angels; rather, that the mechanics of Australian society had to operate on a higher plane than mere industrial flexibility or economic advantage.

I don't think either Patrick or the Howard Government expected the public to react in this way. Indeed, I suspect they thought they would be able to rely on the stereotype of portraying the MUA and its members as a small cabal of corrupt, blue-collar thugs in order to win the public-relations war. However, by being too clever by half - and by engaging in behaviour that could be shown, prima facie, to amount to a conspiracy to subvert the law - Patrick and the Government surrendered the high moral ground.

Sadly, the MUA's success in using the law against the government resulted in the union movement being hoisted on its own petard. Having gained control of both houses of Parliament at the last Federal election, the Howard Government promptly passed the so-called "Workchoices" legislation that spelled out in tortuous detail the prohibitions and limitations on union activity. In other words, the Government weren't going to take any chances of their own legislation being used against them; freedom of association was going to mean the right to not belong to a union - or the right to belong to a union that could do bugger all to help you.

But I digress. As I say, the dispute quickly turned into a community protest. And it was amazing to see the variety of people down at the docks during the long, cold nights of the dispute. Elderly men in business suits; suburban housewives; professional people; tradespeople; young folks from the city fringe; old folks from the leafy inner suburbs. There were musicians and entertainers, food vendors and first-aid workers. A barrier of twisted iron railings dubbed the "community art project". Cut down steel drums to serve as braziers, and chairs, sofas, and improvised seating for all to share.

And the atmosphere was remarkably relaxed. A general air of bonhomie prevailed; there was no drugs, no drinking, no violence; a truce been the police and the protesters had been agreed and kept by both sides. After the initial drama and anger of the lockout, the prevailing mood was of good-natured, though always defiant, resistance.

For myself, I remember two things: how cold it was at night, and how constantly exhausted I felt. The union I worked for at the time somehow managed to draw the midnight to 6am shift on the pickets; we divided into two shifts of three hours each, but that still meant getting up at hellishly early hours to be on the docks, and then having to go to work during the day. I lived at Ocean Grove at the time, down on the Bellarine Peninsular, an hour's drive out of Melbourne. I think I lived on Jolt Cola and Mars Bars, hoping the caffeine and guarana and yerba mate would keep me awake! And I don't think there wasn't a shift when it wasn't bitterly cold, and it didn't matter how close to the braziers you stood, you could never get warm enough.

Well, it was a long time ago now. The political and economic and social and financial and industrial and legal consequences of that dispute have played, and are still playing, themselves out. I only know this: that however tangentially, I was on the side of the boys, I was one of the boys. And I was proud to be so.

Talk to you soon,

BB.

Quote for the Day: It is always a minority who occupy the front line. (Major-General Orde Wingate)