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  Issue No 34 Official Organ of LaborNet 08 October 1999  

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News

Confronting Images on Display

By Zoe Reynolds

Confrontation and camaraderie were features of the war on the waterfront. Now an exhibition of photos on show at the Australian National Maritime Museum Sydney commemorates both.

 
 

The exhibition captures the agony and the ecstasy of the Patrick Dispute - the invasion of the docks, confrontation between police and pickets, the key adversaries, the angst when battles were being lost and the jubilation when justice was being won.

These photos are not simply images, they are icons - the shadowy balaclava clad figure in the Patrick shed, the dogs at midnight, a jubilant national secretary held high by waterfront workers celebrating a court victory, - brief moments during the month long confrontation immortalised.

And behind every picture is an untold story. The photographer sacked for withholding an image he believed could be misused; another shunned for breaking ranks and providing a photo his colleagues had agreed collectively would give the wrong picture.

Camaraderie on the picket was not confined to maritime workers. Photographers from competing publications worked together. Friendships were made. So were enemies.

'Confrontation' is a compilation of 19 works by nine of Australia's top news photographers. It is on show until November 14, after which it will go on permanent display in the union rooms.

Freelance photographer Dean Sewell (formerly Fairfax) brought the collection together, the union paid for the prints and the Maritime Museum provided the hanging space.

"I covered the dispute from day one," says Dean. "I guess I must have shot around 600 rolls of film. That's over 20,000 photos." Multiply that by around 40 photographers working on the dispute and you end up with around half a million images.

"The hardest thing was choosing what photos were going in," he says. "We really needed to hire a whole building to do it justice. Rarely does any story hold page one like the waterfront dispute did. It captivated the imagination of all Australians. It was the biggest confrontation I'd ever covered in this country. Since then I've covered Timor. But it is still unforgettable."

Museum curator Susan Sedwick describes the 1998 confrontation between Patrick Stevedores and the Maritime Union of Australia as one of the most bitter disputes in the history of the waterfront: "It threatened the survival of the union. These photographs show the full force of the confrontation from both sides."

The exhibition begins at Midnight on the docks (below) - the only picture recording the events of April 7, 1998, when Patrick Stevedores sacked all its 2000 unionised employees nationwide. The photograph shows the security guards and their dogs invading and securing the wharves - the beasts eyes luminous in the night lights, make for an evocative image.

The photographers were back the next morning to capture on film the helicopters hovering above the portainer cranes at Port Botany. Private transport records how, for the first time in an industrial dispute in this country helicopters were used to ferry non union labour over the picket line.

During the long, cold days and nights that followed the photographers stood vigil ever watchful, recording the sometimes lone worker hunched by a campfire on a Rainy Day; groups of unionists complete with binoculars Watching the scabs, a sea of bodies Holding the Line at dawn as a thousand individuals form one human barrier and the police move in and the confrontation begins once more.

They shot busloads of scabs hiding their faces behind balaclavas or under jackets, unionists and their families shaking their fists, thumping the sides of the vehicle, the frustration and the fury. Like Masked Man by Fremantle photographer Tony Mc Donough these photos were key images of the industrial war, swaying public opinion to the side of the sacked workers.

And when the High Court ruled the union members had been sacked unlawfully and a settlement was reached, the photographers were there to capture The decision, the Victory hug, the Winning Grins, and, finally, the Unlocking of the gates and the workers reclaiming the wharves.

The Maritime Museum exhibition records the milestones of the dispute. A book of some 50 works by the same photographers is also proposed for publication.


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In this issue
Features
*  Interview: A Crack to the Skull
Rail, Tram and Bus Union state secretary Nick Lewocki took on the Carr Government�s radical rail refrom agenda and walked away a winner. He looks back on the week the trains stood still.
*
*  Economics: Green Backs and Dirty Dollars
Paul Ehlrich says the real culprit behind the environmental crisis isn't so much the huge numbers of people in the world or conspicuous over-consumption in the West but an economic system that confuses price with cost.
*
*  Unions: Tally Ho!
A landmark meat industry decision might not have the impact the reith cheer-squad hopes for.
*
*  History: The Western Express
West Australian historians are undertaking a project to chronicle that state's rich rail history.
*
*  Republic: The Referendum: A Spot of Reading
John Passant looks a the propaganda passing as information in the lead-up to the referendum.
*
*  Indigenous: Australia Snubs Nose at the UN
The United Nations General Assembly will be told that Australia has breached an international convention on racial discrimination that Malcolm Fraser�s Government ratified 24 years ago.
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*  International: Desert Flashpoint
The United Nations has confirmed that demonstrations were suppressed in Western Sahara last month.
*
*  Review: Temper Democratic
Humphrey McQueen has been a fearless critic of received opinions across a range of subjects for many years, and as a consequence has been criticised or more often ignored in debates in Australia.
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*  Satire: Tax Cuts Come in the Nick of Time for Struggling Packers
Welfare groups have called upon on the Federal Government to bring forward the date of proposed capital gains tax cuts.
*
*  Labour Review: What's New in the Information Centre
Read the latest issue of Labour Review, a resource for union officials and students.
*

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»  Cowboy Behaviour at the Equestrian Centre
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»  Wanted: Hardened Hacks with Hearts
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»  Security Employers Break Law in West
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»  Confronting Images on Display
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»  Rooting and Rocking for the Republic
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»  Organiser of the Year to be Announced November
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»  Fears for Timorese Who Got Out
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Columns
»  Guest Report
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»  Sport
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»  Trades Hall
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»  Piers Watch
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Letters to the editor
»  Off With Their Funds!
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»  At the Child Care Coalface
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»  Walsh Bay Development Backed
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