
Issue No 117		26 October 2001

LaborNET	Ask Neale	Tool of the Week

Politics

Defending the Faith

Launching 'Brothers', Premier Bob Carr gave his own take on the allegations that union leaders worked with security agencies during the Cold War.

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The eight brothers are, in sequential order:

- Jim Kenny, Ralph Marsh, John Ducker, Barrie Unsworth, John MacBean, Michael Easson, Peter Sams and Michael Costa.

I didn't Jim but I know Nancy and I knew Alan and I pay my respects to Nancy tonight and honour the memory of Jim Kenny.

I did know Ralph who is no longer with us, of course, and in a spirit of remembering our departed comrade, I pay tribute to Ralph Marsh who was a great human being, a very generous and very straightforward human being, and I honour his memory tonight. He recruited me as Education and Publicity Officer of the Labor Council. He really was a terrific fellow.

Dr Dodkin's book is interesting on several scores. It's a critical study of the notion of leadership and leadership of the Labor movement in a democratic society, the Labor movement in a society shaped by a social democratic party.

So it's a study of a particular kind of leadership and it would rank with other studies, including the famous study by Max Weber of leadership in the German Social Democrats concluded in the early years of the last century.

It is a study of leadership.

It's a study of the Right faction, so it also provides insight into the grouping that Paul Keating called "the moderate ballast" of the Australian Labor Party and of the trade union movement.

So it's more than a series of political biographies, it's a generous slice of the history of NSW Labor and it sets the background and rise to power of these men against major events of the period from the 1930s to 2001 - the Great Depression, World War II, the Cold War, the wars in Korea and Vietnam, the Split, Labor's regeneration, Whitlamism and all it represented, right up to the relations between the Government I head and the Labor Council, including the dispute over WorkCover and Michael Costa's retirement. It examines the relationship between the Labor Council and the ALP.

Kenny, Marsh, Ducker, Unsworth, were all both MLCs and Labor Council Secretaries; John Ducker was President of the NSW Branch of the Labor Party; Unsworth, Premier of NSW after the resignation of Neville Wran in 1986. Now we have Michael Costa extending this tradition, moving from Labor Council leadership into politics. All gave allegiance to a particular organised strand within NSW Labor, what's referred to as the Right or Centre Unity.

Their efforts are integral to the electoral success of NSW Labor from 1941. Fascinating is the account of the genesis of these relationships, this political style, these associations going right back to Jim Kenny winning the presidency in 1946 and becoming Assistant Secretary within six months of that.

His role in forming the Industrial Groups, as a member of the so-called Movement as a fervent anti-communist is all charted there. He was a leader in the fight against the Communist Party in the trade union movement. I acknowledge the presence of Laurie Short here tonight.

Kenny visited the United States in May and June 1951 on a grant from the US State Department. He was well thought of, I'm advised, by the American administration as any anti-communist trade union leader would have been, turning up in Washington in the middle of the Cold War. Vice President Richard Nixon visited the Sydney Trades Hall in 1953. I think Laurie Short was associated with that as well.

Now there's something I want to say - this is pure Bob Carr here:

- I don't think you can understand any of this history without reminding yourself of what communism was at that time.

We're not talking about a benign debating society getting together in one of the rooms in the Trades Hall. You're talking about a Communist Party in Australia that was linked with the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and looked to it as the leading party. Democratic centralism prevailed in the relations between communist parties, the Community Party in Australia looked to that of the Soviet Union as being its leader.

And while the anti- communism of people then in the Right may by our standards look rhetorical, even strident, panicky, you've got to understand what the climate was then. It was a different climate and people who were Labor or Social Democrat were in prison or labour camps in nations around the world that were ruled by Communist parties.

I would passionately defend in any forum exploring Labor history the legitimacy and the honour of the anti-communist tradition within the Labor Party. I exclude from this the Santamaria movement. It's what I refer to as Labor anti-communism, which is a very defensible tradition.

Now Dr Dodkin found a series of documents dated July 1956 in the Labor Council archives headed "Communism and the Peace Movement" reporting on the activities of 79 people allegedly linked to the peace movement. She suggests the documents came from ASIO as the notation on the first page "K49" leads to the conclusion that that was Kenny's code name.

Now I haven't combed through this chapter in the sort of detail and attention to footnotes that would enable me to comment on that, but as Nancy Kenny and I agreed a moment ago, it wouldn't matter if it were true and wouldn't affect the legitimacy of Jim Kenny's political position. I never knew him but I respect his position. The legitimacy of his political position is eminently defensible in the climate of the 1950s.

Dodkin argues that Kenny's involvement in the peace movement and as a critic of foreign policy in Vietnam was interesting in this light. Of course, reflecting on this and speaking as someone who shaves with Occam's razor, the best explanation is the most obvious explanation and I think it's quite legitimate that someone who is an instinctive anti-communist could in the 1960s have emerged as someone who wanted an opening towards China and wanted to criticise the Vietnam War.

So these are things to think about as you read the book.

Another theme that emerges is the Catholicism of Kenny, Easson, Sams, brought up as Catholics, and Marsh, Ducker, Unsworth and MacBean, converts. Occasionally you'd find someone in the Labor movement who had a conspiratorial view. This is the kind of thing that would appeal to some people, a conspiratorial view of this, especially John Ducker's conversion - you had theories from time to time.

But frankly, as a non-Catholic employed by these people, I found the whole atmosphere pretty benign and relaxed and there wasn't a trace of Catholic passion or prejudice in the whole thing. Their anti-communism was based on quite other grounds as I saw it. Michael Costa was brought up in the Greek Orthodox Church as it happens.

These things are just worth noticing in passing because I think one of the very, very attractive things about our democracy is that religion doesn't count here as it does in American politics.

At the first Young Labor Council meeting I attended as a school boy from Matraville High, brought along by Tom Gleason, my maths teacher, I was fifteen or sixteen. Someone called John Forrester got up and moved for the reintroduction of the Industrial Groups in NSW. Bob Gould opposed it. This is not surprising. So did John Ducker who argued that the time wasn't right and, in a famous diplomatic position from John, who argued there was value in part of the case raised by John Forrester. The time wasn't right and this would have a divisive effect on the Australian Labor Party.

But the book charts Ralph Marsh's and John Ducker's involvement in the Industrial Groups and Rank and File Rights Committee.

It shows how the Labor Council went from a small organisation servicing a large membership to a large organisation servicing a declining union membership base. One of the challenges that began to emerge for the union movement, I think especially in Michael Easson's period as Secretary, was the impact of societal change and change in the structure of the Australian economy and union membership and the role of the Labor Council.

The great historical and fundamental contribution of the Labor Council of NSW is really captured by Bede Nairn in his writings and acknowledged implicitly by Marilyn and that is the civilising of capitalism. It's been an amelioration of the excesses of our economic system that has been the contribution of the Labor Council of NSW in association with the Labor Party that it established in early 1891.

The long hold on power by one of the factions of the Labor Council is due to a very interesting succession system based on a tradition of apprenticeship and seniority but this in itself, the more you think about it, is a reflection of the pattern of succession that exists in individual trade unions on the Left and on the Right. And it creates a strength and a continuity I think of Left unions to which this principle would hold.

It produces experienced leaders, it produces a logical line of succession, it minimises or eliminates disputes within that line of succession, it underpins a cohesion in leadership that I think, on reflection, has been a great source of strength.

We live in a plural society. It's a robust plural society. This is a knock down, drag out democracy in NSW. It is the New York of Australia. It has cosmopolitanism and a capacity to debate - everyone on the street corner has got an opinion, every taxi driver is resolved to run the affairs of the State better.

But in the middle of this very vigorous democracy sits the Labor movement, the Labor Council of NSW. If you're a Labor council employee - education officer, publicity officer - and if you're ever walking along the streets of Sydney with one of these men at their side, as their assistant, you saw the judges and the company directors walking past tipping their hats and saying, "good morning Mr Marsh", "good morning Mr Ducker", "Mr Unsworth". In a sense it's because this is a Labor town and it counts in this city to be Secretary of the Labor Council of NSW.

If you can get a job there on the staff as an Education Officer that can lead to good things too!

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Issue 117 contents

Interview: Brothers In Arms
Labour historian Marilyn Dodkin explains how she exposed ASIO ties with Labor Council's Cold War leadership.

Politics: Defending the Faith
Launching 'Brothers', Premier Bob Carr gave his own take on the allegations that union leaders worked with security agencies during the Cold War.

History: Surviving the Split
In this extract from 'Brothers' Marilyn Dodkin, looks at the manouverings around the establishment of the DLP.

International: Viral Attack
Postal unions in the USA are mobilizing to protect their members from the widening repercussions of an apparent bio-terrorist attack.

Unions: A Living Wage
The ACTU this week unveiled its claim for the 2002 Living Wage Case. Here's what they'll be arguing.

Campaign Diary: Week Three: Wave Them Goodbye
In a week when our boys and girls went off to war, Labor fought a desperate battle to fight the election on the home front.

Human Rights: Colombia's 'Dirty War' Against Unions
It might be tough being an organiser in Australia under the Howard Government, but spare a thought for Colombian trade unionists.

Review: Red Rag Unfurls
Ian Syson is an upfront, knockabout bloke. He heads up a new, small, independent publishing outfit called Red Rag Publications.

Satire: New Hope for Labor: Mackerras Tips Liberal Win
The electoral hopes of the Labor party have revived dramatically, after the perennially unreliable analyst Malcolm Mackerras forecast a huge victory for the Liberals.

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