Voices from the Ships

Seafaring is more than a job; it is a way of life. A ship is a place, a home, a community, and a university. Seafarers are world citizens and their identity is inseparable from their work and their union.

Voices from the Ships: Australia's seafarers and their union by Diane Kirkby was launched at the Australian National Maritime Museum in Darling Harbour, Sydney, in conjunction with National Council on April 7, 2009.  The book focuses on the last two decades of the union before its amalgamation with the Waterside Workers' Federation to become the Maritime Union of today.

It follows an earlier history published by the union to commemorate 100 years of unionism in 1972.

Voices from the Ships highlights the unique international nature of seafaring and its distinguished history of political activism and union organisation.

"In this book I tell stories of campaigns conducted by the Seamen's Union where union political action anticipated larger movements, protected Australia's sporting traditions, preserved Australians' resources for future generations, defended humanitarian ideas and marched for peace before others were aware of the issues," historian and academic Professor Kirkby writes in the preface.

Black bans and protests against the apartheid regime in South Africa, the war in Vietnam, military juntas in Greece and Chile, support for Aboriginal land rights at home and exploited crews on ships of shame abroad, are all chapters in the union history alongside industrial issues of the workplace - wages and conditions, not least the right of Australian seafarers to work in the Australian coastal and export trades.

Diane Kirkby said she aimed to produce a union history "that connects the workplace to the larger social and economic world, and locates the actions of workers in the political history of democracy in this country and worldwide."

The history is also about leadership on the world stage and at home and within the union, profiling union democrat, diplomat and 'people's man' Pat Geraghty, the legendary EV Elliot and partner Della, who kept the union 'on course' for generations of seafarers.

But most of all the book explains the internationalist identity unique to maritime unions, not just on board ships but in home ports around the dockyards and wharves where maritime workers would mix and find out what was going on; talk about their hardships and governments.

There is an old saying among seafarers: 'The sea divides the world, to the seafarer it unites it'.

Voices from the Ships: A history of seafarers and their union

Published by University of NSW Press