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The 1949 Australian coal strike was the first time that Australian military forces were used during peacetime to break a trade union strike. The strike by 23,000 coal miners lasted for seven weeks, from 27 June 1949 to 15 August 1949, with troops being sent in by the Ben Chifley Federal Labor government to the open cut coal mines in New South Wales on 28 July 1949, with the workers returning to work, defeated, two weeks later. [1]
The Australian Coal and Shale Employees' Federation (often known as the Miners' Federation) was heavily influenced at the time by the Communist Party of Australia (CPA), and the strike is widely seen by the Australian community as the CPA applying Cold War Soviet Union Cominform policy in challenging Labor reformism, and promoting a class conflict to promote communist leadership of the working class struggle, at the expense of the Labor Party. [1] The strike was seen as a continuation of the industrial confrontation in the 1948 Queensland Railway strike. [2]
The miners' demands had been lodged over the preceding two years and had included a 35-hour week, a 30-shilling increase in wages, and the inclusion of long service leave as a normal condition of employment. [3]
Two days after the strike began, the Labor government passed legislation that made it illegal to give strikers and their families financial support (including credit from shops). On 5 July, union officials were ordered to hand over union funds to the industrial registrar. On the following day, union officials were arrested and the respective union and CPA headquarters raided.[ citation needed ]
At the end of July, seven union officials were sentenced to 12 months' jail and one to six months, with fines being imposed on other officials and three unions. Chifley told the Labor caucus, "The Reds must be taught a lesson", [4] while Arthur Calwell was reported by the union publication The Australian Worker to have that said communists and their sympathisers were only fit for concentration camps. [5] On 1 August 1949, 2500 soldiers commenced coal mining at the open cut mines of Minmi (near Newcastle), Muswellbrook and Ben Bullen, with seven more fields operated later. [1]
At the height of the dispute, Labor senator Donald Grant, a former member of the Industrial Workers of the World imprisoned as part of the Sydney Twelve, told the miners: "I come to Cessnock for one reason. In 1917 ... everyone was behind the workers [in the general strike], but they got beaten. Why? Because the State was against them. I have come here to tell you you won't beat the State." [1]
It is possible that Chifley's decision to use troops to break the strike was influenced by Cold War hysteria or as a reluctant last-minute solution to a major industrial problem.[ citation needed ] Chifley received regular reports from the Commonwealth Investigation Service (the forerunner of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation) on the campaigns and policies of the CPA.[ citation needed ]
Early in the strike, the legality of using troops was investigated, and planning immediately formulated for Operation Excavate potentially as early as the first week in July. [1] On 14 July the Government was said to be on the point of enlisting the support of the anti-communist Australian Workers' Union to break the strike, with an agreement of the Australian Railways Union (likewise anti-communist) to transport the coal. It appears that such negotiations amounted to a bluff and a political ploy to distract attention from the military operations being planned. According to historian Phillip Deery, with 1949 being an election year, Chifley wanted to demonstrate his Government's anti-communist resolve, but the tactics proved insufficient, and the Menzies Government was elected in December 1949. [1]
The use of troops to break the 1949 coal strike was used as a precedent by the Robert Menzies government's intervention on the waterfront at Bowen, Queensland in 1953, [4] and in disputes in 1951, 1952, and 1954 against seamen and waterside workers.
Later, Harold Holt used the navy to break a Seamen's Union of Australia boycott (1967).[ citation needed ] Malcolm Fraser's government used the Royal Australian Air Force to transport passengers during the 1981 Qantas dispute; Bob Hawke did the same during the 1989 Australian pilots' strike. [4]
The Australian Labor Party (ALP), also simply known as Labor, is the major centre-left political party in Australia, one of two major parties in Australian politics, along with the centre-right Liberal Party of Australia. The party forms the federal government since being elected in the 2022 election. The ALP is a federal party, with political branches in each state and territory. They are currently in government in Victoria, Queensland, Western Australia, South Australia, the Australian Capital Territory, and the Northern Territory. They are currently in opposition in New South Wales and Tasmania. It is the oldest political party in Australia, being established on 8 May 1901 at Parliament House, Melbourne, the meeting place of the first federal Parliament.
Joseph Benedict Chifley was an Australian politician who was the 16th prime minister of Australia from 1945 to 1949. He held office as the leader of the Australian Labor Party (ALP) from 1945, following the death of John Curtin on 5 July, until his own death in 1951.
Arthur Augustus Calwell was an Australian politician who served as the leader of the Labor Party from 1960 to 1967. He led the party to three federal elections.
The Communist Party of Australia (CPA), known as the Australian Communist Party (ACP) from 1944 to 1951, was an Australian political party founded in 1920. The party existed until roughly 1991, with its membership and influence having been in a steady decline since its peak in 1945. Like most communist parties in the west, the party was heavily involved in the labour movement and the trade unions. Its membership, popularity and influence grew significantly during most of the interwar period before reaching its climax in 1945, where the party achieved a membership of slightly above 22,000 members. Although the party did not achieve a federal MP, Fred Paterson was elected to the Parliament of Queensland at the 1944 state election. He won re-election in 1947 before the seat was abolished. The party also held office in over a dozen local government areas across New South Wales and Queensland.
The Australian labour movement began in the early 19th century and since the late 19th century has included industrial and political wings. Trade unions in Australia may be organised on the basis of craft unionism, general unionism, or industrial unionism. Almost all unions in Australia are affiliated with the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU), many of which have undergone a significant process of amalgamations, especially in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The leadership and membership of unions hold and have at other times held a wide range of political views, including communist, socialist and right-wing views.
On 22 September 1951, a referendum was held in Australia which sought approval to alter the Australian Constitution to give Parliament the power to make laws regarding communism and communists, so that the Parliament would be empowered to instate a law similar to the Communist Party Dissolution Act of 1950. It was not carried.
Donald MacLennan Grant was a leader of the Industrial Workers of the World in Sydney, a member of the Sydney Twelve charged with conspiracy in 1916, and later a member of the Australian Labor Party who was elected to Sydney City Council, appointed to the New South Wales Legislative Council, and elected to the Australian Senate in 1943 where he served for sixteen years.
Black Friday, in British labour history, refers to 15 April 1921, when the leaders of transport and rail unions announced a decision not to call for strike action in support of the miners. The epithet 'black' derives from a widespread feeling amongst labour radicals that the decision amounted to a breach of solidarity and a betrayal of the miners.
Timeline of trade union history
Usually referred to as the "New South Wales General Strike", but referred to by contemporaries as "the Great Strike", it was in fact neither general nor confined to NSW. The strike was however a mass strike, involving around 100,000 workers, mostly in NSW and Victoria. It began in the Australian state of New South Wales and spread to other states over six weeks from 2 August to 8 September 1917 when the official leadership declared the strike over. It took two weeks for all the railway strikers to return, however, as rank and file meetings initially rejected the official capitulation. Outside the railways, significant groups such as the waterside workers in Sydney and Melbourne, and the Hunter Valley coal mines remained out until November as in their case the use of strikebreakers had turned the strike into a lockout.
Frederick Carl Katz was an Australian trade unionist and politician. He had a long association with the Australian labour movement, holding senior leadership positions with the Federated Clerks' Union, Federal Miscellaneous Workers' Union, and the Melbourne Trades Hall. He served as a Senator for Victoria from 1947 to 1951, representing the Australian Labor Party (ALP).
The Chifley government was the federal executive government of Australia led by Prime Minister Ben Chifley. It was made up of members of the Australian Labor Party in the Australian Parliament from 1945 to 1949.
The history of the Australian Labor Party has its origins in the Labour parties founded in the 1890s in the Australian colonies prior to federation. Labor tradition ascribes the founding of Queensland Labour to a meeting of striking pastoral workers under a ghost gum tree in Barcaldine, Queensland in 1891. The Balmain, New South Wales branch of the party claims to be the oldest in Australia. Labour as a parliamentary party dates from 1891 in New South Wales and South Australia, 1893 in Queensland, and later in the other colonies.
The Waterside Workers' Federation of Australia (WWF) was an Australian trade union that existed from 1902 to 1993. After a period of negotiations between other Australian maritime unions, it was federated in 1902 and first federally registered in 1907; its first general president was Billy Hughes.
The Black Armada was a name applied to Dutch merchant and military vessels which were prevented from sailing to the newly proclaimed independent Indonesia from Australian ports due to waterfront strikes or 'black bans' by maritime trade unions from 1945 to 1949.
The history of trade unions in the United Kingdom covers British trade union organisation, activity, ideas, politics, and impact, from the early 19th century to the present.
Rupert Ernest Lockwood was an Australian journalist and communist activist.
The Dalfram dispute of 1938 was a political industrial dispute at Port Kembla, New South Wales, protesting the export of pig iron from Australia to Japan during the Second Sino-Japanese War. It became famous for providing the nickname of Pig Iron Bob to Attorney General Robert Menzies, later to serve as Prime Minister.
The Australian Coal and Shale Employees' Federation was an Australian trade union representing workers in the coal mining industry from 1913 to 1990.
Edward Charles Roach (1909–1997), was an Australian trade unionist, long-time leader of the Waterside Workers' Federation (WWF) and prominent member of the Communist Party of Australia. He was a key organiser of the 1938 Dalfram dispute, when dock workers, concerned with the occupation of China, refused to load ships destined for Japan with Australian pig-iron, a raw material for munitions. He was twice imprisoned for his industrial activity. As a leader in the WWF during the introduction of containerisation, he was responsible for winning significant improvements in working conditions for those in the Australian stevedoring industry.
