Iron Heel: Australia : Melbourne Indymedia

IRON HEEL: AUSTRALIA

Critical responses to the Howard government’s IR changes and anti-terrorist legislation, including the reworking of laws relating to sedition, tend to imply these changes are un-Australian. I beg to differ; anti-Australian certainly, but not un-Australian. Historically, the changes are in keeping with the political behaviour of Australian conservatism in government.

Back in 1926, and later in 1928, for example, conservative Prime Minister Stanley Melbourne Bruce variously and aggressively tried to transfer state industrial powers to the Commonwealth and abolish arbitration entirely. His plans were thwarted by the lack of public support, the strength of ‘states rights’ arguments, and political divisions within conservative ranks. But there are marked similarities between what Bruce set out to do, and what Howard is in the process of doing.

AUTHORITARIAN GOVERNMENT.
For many Australians, including John Howard, the 1950s are golden years of comfortable suburban values presided over by the paternal sobriety of Prime Minister Menzies, all under the maternal care of the British crown.

While Robert Gordon Menzies has been air-brushed by history, the fact is the Liberal Party founder and hero of John Howard yearned for authoritarian government. We glimpse this on 6 November 1938 when he told a Presbyterian church audience that a government “founded on licence would destroy itself ”, and went on to call for more “national powers” to help the development of a “national spirit”.

A fortnight earlier he had told a Melbourne audience that the enthusiasm for service to the State evident in Italy and Germany “could well be emulated in Australia”. His comments were based on his European tour earlier in 1938 which took in Nazi Germany, and high level Nazi briefings courtesy of the recommendations he received from the Nazi Consul-General in Sydney and the Nazi Ambassador in Britain.

As Prime Minister (1939-1941) Menzies was an appeaser of considerable magnitude. In London on 3 March 1941, as part of a four-month visit, Menzies told an international audience of business representatives, journalists, and diplomats, that Australia had no quarrel with Japan, and wanted to “draw closer to Japan and appreciate its problems”. We would draw closer all right; Pearl Harbour was nine-months down the track.

In mid-1940 his government had pressured Britain to close the Burma Road, effectively starving China of vital supplies required for its struggle against Japan. Earlier, in 1938 as Attorney-General, Menzies had used draconian powers to smash the ban by Port Kembla (NSW) wharfies on the export of pig-iron (“war supplies”) to an aggressive, expansionist Japan. It was during this dispute that Menzies earned the derisory nickname Pig Iron Bob.

HARASSMENT OF THE LEFT.
During the 1930s a vocal, growing and energetic Australian Left increasingly opposed fascism, Nazism, Japanese militarism, and appeasement.

Conservative Federal and State governments retaliated with harassment, including special legislation, extensive use of security services and police, prosecutions, imprisonment, the curtailment of civil liberties, while the thuggery of anti-leftists was tolerated.

Censorship was a repressive feature of Australia during the 1930s. Some 5000 titles were banned, including many left-wing works. Australia ranked as the most repressive English speaking nation.

DRACONIAN MEASURES.
Still largely hidden from public view are the draconian measures Cold War political conservatives, and the capitalist order they served, were prepared to use against militant trade unions and the Left generally. Menzies, again Prime Minister (1949-1966), featured prominently in these measures.

The public face of these measures is evident in tactics like the Communist Party Dissolution Act 1950, and the subsequent Referendum; the Petrov Affair; and the intrusive and intimidating work of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO).

Less known is Operation Alien, 1950-1953, a comprehensive plan to use the armed forces against organised labour. This top-secret operation was under the control of Prime Minister Menzies, and planned by a select group of government, service and industry leaders. It was part of a wider Cold War strategy to smash militant unionism in Australia.

Directly under the control of Menzies, a special staff of military personnel, and the Assistant General Manager of Shell Oil, the plan was for the routine mobilisation and deployment of the armed forces in industrial disputes, especially in areas where essential services were involved, and in the stevedoring and coal industries.

Cabinet documents suggest that elements in the government sought to inflame industrial disputes during the period, particularly in the maritime industry, with a view to extending areas of dispute and justifying the implementation of Operation Alien.

The first use of the plan was in May 1951, in response to Australian solidarity actions during the New Zealand waterside workers’ strike. Troops and naval ratings were used to break union bans; trade union offices were raided by State and Commonwealth security agencies; the Crimes Act was used to prosecute prominent unionists. Partially implemented a number of times between 1951 and 1953, Operation Alien never went into full swing. Wary targeted unions failed to provide sufficient provocation.

INTERNMENT CAMPS
Internment Camps were also on the conservative agenda. Using the excuse of an expected Third World War, the Director General of ASIO, Colonel Spry, began the compilation in July 1950 of a list of people who needed to be interned in time of national emergency. Whole families, including children, were scheduled for rounding up and incarceration in camps.

By December 1950 the list included 750 ‘selected’ communists. Less than a year later this figure stood at 1100 ‘suspected’ communists.

Enemy Aliens were also included; these were mainly Eastern Bloc, Chinese, Korean, and Indo-Chinese people between the ages of 16 and 65 who had entered Australia after 1945. With the inclusion of these people, the list blew out to 16,660 people by April 1955. Predictably, former European “Nazis and Fascists”, amongst them war criminals, were specifically exempted from Enemy Alien status, some of them variously cementing themselves within the Liberal Party organisation.

Camp sites were located, staffing requirements calculated, and legislation drafted. To be interned one did not have to actually commit an offence in any legal sense.

Internees were to be arrested by state police. The camps were to be run by the Army and under the control of Military Intelligence.

Many thousands of ASIO files now in the Australian Archives indicate that during the Menzies era it was regarded as ‘offensive’ and ‘suspicious’ merely to criticise the government or society in general, and to exercise democratic rights.

The internment plan lapsed in the 1970s, by which time the project had become too expensive and was bureaucratically unmanageable. Both it and Operation Alien were hidden from scrutiny until 1992-1993, revealed by the patient Archival research of Associate Professor Les Louis (University of Canberra).

DEATH PENALTY
The Death Penalty was another tactic considered by the Menzies government. Fuelled by anti-communism, and speculation by ASIO and the armed forces that Australian communists were likely to spy against their own nation and engage in acts of sabotage, legislation was drawn up to execute Australian communist “spies”.

The drafted legislation was cavalier in regard to civil liberties and inconsistent with normal legal processes. Federal Cabinet rejected it in late 1952.

Rejection was not based on distaste or any issue of principle. Rather, Cabinet felt that the legislation would be too hard to sell to parliament and the people, and that it would generate “unnecessary” public debate.

People seeking a precedent for Howard’s anti-terrorist legislation need only go back to 1969. The anti-Vietnam War movement was increasing momentum and seriously challenging the pro-war politics of, and public support for, the conservative coalition government. In response, Liberal Prime Minister John Gorton’s Cabinet drafted draconian legislation to stifle criticism and debate, similar to the sedition proposals of Howard’s current legislation. Wiser, cautious, legal heads prevailed at the time and the legislation never went public, remaining a Cabinet secret until the release of Cabinet papers in 2000.

MARTIAL OPTION.
Conservative Australian governments have variously used the armed forces against the trade union movement. The armed forces generally were mobilised as back-up during the 1923 Melbourne Police Strike and also provided strike breaking assistance; army and naval personnel were used to variously break bans by the Seamen’s Union of Australia (SUA) and the Waterside Workers Federation in 1951, 1952, 1953, and 1954; the navy was used to break an SUA boycott against the Vietnam War in 1967.

Since a 1993 election campaign threat by Liberal Party leader Dr. John Hewson to use troops on the waterfront ‘as a last resort’, the martial option has been a shadowy dimension of Liberal Party industrial policy; the nature, extent, and involvement of defence force personnel in the 1998 War on the Waterfront (a Howard government initiative) is yet to be fully understood.

Unfortunately, the use of armed forces personnel against Australian workers is not confined the Liberal Party or its ancestors. The first post-Federation peacetime use of troops as strikebreakers was by Ben Chifley’s Labor government during the seven week 1949 Coal Strike. This intervention set the precedent for subsequent use of the armed forces for industrial and political purposes. And it was ALP Prime Minister Robert Hawke who used the navy and air force to help smash the Australian Federation of Air Pilots and its industrial campaign of 1989.

The now born-again liberal Malcolm Fraser, also put his finger in the pie. In February 1978, as Liberal Prime Minister during the Commonwealth Heads of Government Regional Meeting (CHOGRM) in Sydney, Fraser established a dangerous precedent for the domestic peace-time use of troops against civilians in the name of counter-terrorism.

Early on Monday morning, 13 February 1978, a bomb exploded in a garbage bin outside the Hilton Hotel (Sydney) where the CHOGRM guests were staying, resulting in the deaths of two city council workers and a policeman. In response Fraser deployed 2000 military personnel, some 800 of them fully armed, and militarily took over the small rural town of Bowral, 128 kilometers south-west of Sydney, for three days when CHOGRM relocated to the town.

Arguably, this bombing, and Fraser’s military response, are significantly responsible for our current anti-terrorist political-legal climate. It was a major factor leading to the creation of the Australian Federal Police (1979), placed national security firmly on the national agenda, helped strengthen the power of the Federal government in domestic affairs, created a precedent for using the Army to deal with counter-terrorism, placed terrorism beyond the ambit of civilian policing, and helped introduce into Australian law the slippery concept of “terrorism”, capable of political definition and manipulation.

Great article. Let's fight them every inch of the way.

Don't forget the Alternative Liberal Party's record
Bill Hughes criminalising the IWW during WWI
Bren Chifley Sending army into coalfields during WWII
Hawke federally and Cain in Victoria deregistering BLF
ACTU and Hawke busting the Airline Pilots etc.
Two sides of the same coin minted by the bosses !

There was power in a union
Submitted by Communard on Tue, 2005-09-06 15:20.

Attending the June 30, trade union rally was fairly exciting. There is a buzz in being surrounded by 10-15000 angry workers. The crowd cheering, booing and giving vocal abuse to John Howard made it hard to hear the speakers. Not really a loss that. But the entire event did remind me of being at the football, with the beer, team colours and general blokey culture.Definitely the most exciting sight was seeing the MUA marching down the street behind bagpipes, with cheers like "Bring it on Johnny". Various unionists had stories of a sustained fight, a co-ordinated education campaign, union solidarity, grass-roots organising in the workplace, and voting in a Labor government.

The most disappointing aspect (except for the pro-labor party rhetoric) was the realisation that for the size of this angry crowd, the Queensland police mobalised less riot police then they do for 60 hippies at a Reclaim the Streets party. This reality demonstrates that the police consider 15000 protesting unionists (many of them drinking beer) to be less of a threat to 'public order' than a handful of dissidents.

This was disappointing because it demonstrate how fully the union movement was been incorporated into our societies status quo which was resulted in disarming the organised working classes. It is also disappointing because this in turn demonstrates how reactionary and vicious Australia's ruling class has become, that even the institutionalisation of the trade unions is intolerable and that even this little piece of workers rights is to be destroyed.

The Liberals Industrial Relations reforms are nothing short of an act of class war, and it should scare the hell out of everyone who doesn't live off the ownership of capital. It is part of the same process of destroying welfare and the social wage, the privatisation of public resources, the militarisation of society and the promotion of "free" trade (although it is far from being free). It's part of the grand scheme of neo-fascist/corporate dominance of our society, that the right-wing think-tanks, like the H.R. Nichols Society, (and now the Institute for Pubic Affairs and the like) have been organising for since the 1970's.

Currently the trade unions are the largest, best organised and most able movement in Australia to resist this particular right-wing assault. Time will tell if they can be successful. However they will never be able to put an end the class war - as long as people can privately profit from capital and labour, they will seek ways to reduce their labour costs. The union philosophy makes no room to abolish private ownership of capital, and therefor can never end class conflict and the conditions of exploited and controlled labor.

At best the trade union objective is to negotiate a "better deal" for the workers, through processes of reform and social democracy. While these reforms do improve the immediate standard of living of workers, it is ultimately the philosophy of servitude. When there is a slave revolt, they don't say "we'll return to work in exchange for better meals, health care and more toilet breaks". Liberty and freedom is all that counts, and the same should be true for todays waged slaves.

As we are seeing now, all the rights and living standards won by generations of union struggle and social democracy, are being eroded by the counter-offensive. This is because at the peek of union power, no attempt was made to destroy the fundamentals of the current system. Instead they argued to retain and strengthen them; such as parliament (vote Labor), private ownership (workers should own their housing privately, not collectively or co-operatively for the better of future society), the waged system (full employment not full lives), and the Law and bureaucracy (which takes the struggle from the grassroots to the Industrial Relations courts for lawyers and officials to control, amny of whom are not sympathetic to the plight of the blue collar waged labour).

This philosophy of reform and servitude endemic in the unions means that workers rights will always be under threat from cost cutting capitalists. The "struggle" will never end it will just be continually "negotiated" by union organisers.

Australia's labour history also demonstrates that any type of liberation movement that seeks to capture and control the State will ultimately be betrayed by the same State apparatus. For example, the workers movement of 1890 was destroyed by State violence. So they pragmatically formed the Labor party to prevent the State from being used against the workers. Within 10 years of the world's first Labor government in Queensland, the same Labor party was suppressing Australia's first general strike in Brisbane. The Bolshevik government of revolutionary Russia, Castro in Cuba, the Chinese Communist party are all further examples.

If Australian workers are to ever be genuinely in control of their lives they need to organise around the objectives of democratising the workplace and the community, collectivising or communalising the economy (not nationalising it) and abolishing the concept of employment and private markets. They need to develop a radical critique of our society, organise non-hierarchically, and develop dynamic and diverse tactics and strategies including general strike clubs, community councils and workers co-operatives.

Of course the majority of Australia's workers may actually prefer a life of waged servitude and passive consumption. To bad for the rest of us.

by the Communard
well thought out responses welcome

A timely article. This should be compulsory reading for every Australian. Voting papers for Howard in the future, assuming we have not become a one party state, should contain the warning, 'Be very, very afraid'.

My union is circulating copies of this and I picked it up in the lunchroom. Didn't know much about this sort of thing in Australian history. I can now see where Howard and his mates are coming from. Really gives me the creeps. My thanks to the author for setting all this down.

Regarding Fraser and the 1978 Hilton bombing, informed speculation has it that the mysterious Hilton Bombing was the work of elements in Aussie security community. Seems it may have been a bomb scare that went wrong, an attempt by the spooks to grab some glory when their public profile, ASIO in particular, was in a post-Whitlam era tailspin, needing to be loved and funded and centre stage. The plan was not for the bomb to explode, only to be found. That would be enough to create a sense of fear, and everything else would follow. On this last score, what's changed?

After reading this article I know its time we took the gloves off in the struggle against the Howard regime and his Australian version of an Argentinian General's wet dream. No more Mr Nice Guy. Hello Mr Sabot.

Hey Cahill, I've read your stuff agin Brother Bolt, and now this crap. I hope they put you inside in the first round ups of traitor trash.

Knew a lot of this before. The ASIO Internment scheme is a new one for me; thanks Rowan.

This essay makes pertinent reading given today's revelations about Howard's propsals to use troops on Australian streets.

Rowan Cahill's Iron Heel makes chilling reading. For those of us who grew up in the liberating 60s and 70s, the present stripping of our basic rights and freedoms under the banner of 'the fight against terrorism' is nothing less then sickening. But Iron Heel reveals it as nothing more then the conservative forces going about their business as normal. Howard knows no other way. Beazley and the ALP should know better. Howard's police state mentality is a waste of time and money - the billions should be better spent on health, education and welfare for Australians, not going into the pockets of war mongerers and overseas corporations. But as I said, that is Howard's way and he knows no other. Pity us all. Michael Organ