A Few Rough Reds

stories of rank & file organising

By Anne Skinner, MUA librarian

Edited by Hal Alexander and Phil Griffiths
Australian Society for the Study of Labour History, 2003

The rough reds of this book are not the bottled variety - they are Australian activists who tell the stories of their involvement in struggles for social change.

All were members of the Communist Party of Australia (CPA) Three of them were members of this union.

They included a communist alderman on Sydney City Council in the 1950s, a union organiser in the Northern Territory after the bombing of Darwin in the 1940s and a wharfie subversive running an underground radio station in the Top End maintaining crucial contact with East Timor after Indonesia invaded in 1975.

Murray Norris was an organiser with the North Australian Workers' Union (NAWU) from 1942 to 1951. He was instrumental in successfully achieving gains for civilians working on military projects around the Territory during WWII.

Soon he was organising wharf labour and assisting in early struggles by Aborigines for wages justice.

What strikes the reader is the doggedness of the man in taking on these struggles in what was a huge, isolated, hostile environment, with very few physical resources and a long way from the "big unions down south".

Life in the Top End is also portrayed in stories told by retired MUA member Brian Manning and Chris Elenor. They were members of a small team who established and maintained covert radio contact with Fretilin during the years of East Timor's struggle for independence.

Their skilled organisation, which required constant vigilance against detection by the Army and Federal Police, ensured that the East Timorese could get their message out to the world and that the leadership, living externally, could communicate with their forces at home.

Not mentioned however was the important role that SUA member and seafarer Geoff Swayne played in the campaign. Geoff died tragically at sea and the MUA training school was named after him in honour of rank and file activism in our union.

Notably, a number of other stories have connections with the maritime unions. Drew Cottle's piece about the Chinese Seamen's Union is one. Another comes from one of the communist aldermen on Sydney City Council in 1953, Ron Maxwell, who also worked full time on the wharves and was an official of the Waterside Workers' Federation.

Ron, along with Tom Wright of the Sheet Metal Workers' Union, agitated while on the council for the many families who were being evicted from their homes to make way for the commercial and industrial development of Sydney. Among other things they also successfully campaigned to save the Domain Baths -- a little known precursor to the famous Green Bans era of the 1970s.

Ben Bartlett tells how the Workers' Health Centre came into being and Kevin Cook tells of his time with the BLF, the Land Rights Movement and Tranby Aboriginal College. Hal Alexander, one of the editors of the collection, describes the work of the CPA during the 1940s and 50s in the inner city "Red Belt" of Sydney.

The telling of history can be dry if it is restricted to a chronological account wrapped in ideology. This book has added the personal to the political to good effect. The stories are enlivened by humour and a bit of larrikinism, and this helps the reader gain a sense of how things worked "on the ground" - against the odds, with scarce resources, but with a strong commitment to social justice and a belief in the power of organised action.

Rough Reds is available from Bookmarks. Call (02) 9211 2600 or got to http://www.bookmarks.org.au