Louisa L.
In memory of
Mick Christoforou, Ernie Matthews and the ordinary heroes of Cockatoo Island
Dockyard, who dared to imagine the future.
Pause
a moment. Imagine a fire and the night-time silhouette of a giant crane, the
Titan, towering above a group of workers. Hanging from the Titan's huge arms
are a Eureka flag and an Aboriginal flag.
For
Shop Committee Secretary and rigger, Max, that image burns deep within. For
three months, from May 10 to August 14, 1989, Max and 1200 striking workers
from seventeen unions reaffirmed their collective commitment to the occupation
of an island in the heart of Sydney Harbour.
For
Max, it's important that the workers themselves took the initiative. “The union
officials, except the Painters and Dockers and the MUA, were very slow to react
to the announcement of Cockatoo's closure.
“A
lot of officials had mixed allegiances because they were ALP members. They felt
an affinity with [Defence Minister] Beazley [who'd announced the closure] and
[Prime Minister] Hawke.
“A
lot had never been involved in major industrial disputes, because of the
Accord. For them the role of unions became corporate, rather than building a
movement involving all their members,” says Max.
Meanwhile
taxpayers gave Kerry Packer's ANI, which ran the dockyard, $2.5 million during
the dispute. Happily, the occupation catapulted Cockatoo into the public
imagination, killing Packer's plans for a resort there.
Another
beneficiary was Transfield, then owner of Australian Shipbuilding Industries
(ASI). ASI began submarine refits previously done at Cockatoo. ASI dropped the
first sub, causing $300,000 damage, then wrecked the periscope. The sub sailed
to Singapore for repair – on the surface.
Unfinished
business
Noel,
an electrician reckons his comrade, Claude, summed up the occupation as a
lesson that needs to be followed everywhere.
Says
Noel, “We have to get back to real action, for the whole of the working class.
It comes down to the slogan, 'The workers united will never be defeated', but
unless we extend our tactics to the occupation of places, and push further, to
put political calls for revolutionary change, it boils down to glorified
reformism.”
Only
a handful of workers shared all Noel's views. Times are certainly tougher now,
and revolutionary change is still not on the immediate agenda. But within
immediate struggles, other tasks are.
“I
think we need to point out that the working class are the only producers of
real value in society, and we need to take control of that wealth instead of
producing surplus value for a bunch of parasites, for capitalists. Profit is
just unpaid labour,” says Noel.
That
task is ongoing business. But, for now, reflect a moment, on a fire that burnt
on an island in Sydney Harbour. For the occupiers it was “a beacon of the
working class, to the working class, that there's a struggle going on, and it
will stay alight till the struggle's finished.”
And
think of that day, twenty-five years ago, when a manager ordered workers to
leave and they replied, “You get off! This is our island!”
Cockatoo
Island Dockyard workers dared to imagine the future, a vision we as communists
share and work towards each day.
*Information
for this article comes from recent interviews and 'No Surrender; the story of
the 1989 Cockatoo Island Dockyard Dispute' by L. Kelly, Australian Society for
the Study of Labour History
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