Here to Stay

PHOTO: We beat the bastards - Paddy Crumlin, Patrick wharfies and MUA members toast their jobs and ‘MUA Here to Stay’

Wharfies celebrate the 8th anniversary of the failed 1998 conspiracy, with beer, books and some homemade drama

Eight years on and most waterside workers, veterans of the 1998 dispute, still remember the drama of the mass sackings, the national lockout, the international picket and the conspiracy case fought out in the courts and on the ground.

Soon they will get to relive it.

Filming for Bastard Boys, a four part docodrama to go to air on ABC TV in 2007 was scheduled to start in Melbourne in May.

Written by Sue Smith (Brides of Christ, Leaving Liverpool) and directed by Ray Quint (WaterRats) the the series tells the cloak and dagger gut retching account of the greatest conspiracy in Australian labour history from four perspectives -- that of ACTU secretary Greg Combet and former national secretary John Coombs, MUA solicitor Josh Bornstein, the then Patrick managing director Chris Corrigan and a fictitious wharfie/delegate living on the Melbourne picket line.

At the same time a book on the dispute is due for completion this year.

To date the 1998 dispute has been the subject of the ITF produced documentary short Power in the Union, two plays (Harbour which opened the Sydney Festival in 2005 and a Melbourne play); painting exhibition Hugger Mugger: Docks 98 by Melbourne artist Bill Hay, two books -- War on the Waterfront: A cartoon history of the 1998 Patrick dispute, and Waterfront: the dispute that changed a nation by Fairfax writers Anne Davis and Helen Trinca; as well as a newsphoto exhibition Confrontation: Images of the Patrick Dispute at the Australian National Maritime Museum