The Money Men by Chris Bowen (i wanna iguana read aloud .TXT) 📗

Like the key industrial dispute that had bedevilled both the Bruce and Scullin governments, the 1949 dispute first arose in the Hunter Valley of NSW. Here, mining unions were working to fix real issues: unsafe and inefficient mines were run by aggressively anti-union employers.31 To deal with these issues, the Chifley government, together with the William McKell Labor government in NSW, had established the Joint Coal Board in order to arbitrate improvements. But the unions were not satisfied with the progress being made. More concerning to the prime minister, they were increasingly falling under communist control.

Chifley rightly saw the growing militancy of the coal unions through the prism of the similarly increasing radicalism of coal unions in the United Kingdom and France, which, under communist leadership, were engaging in a deliberate campaign of industrial disputation to derail the Marshall Plan—the American economic aid plan for postwar Europe—and disrupt economic recovery from World War II. Their ultimate aim was to make circumstances conducive to the advancement of communism.32

In February 1947, the coal unions lodged a log of claims with the government asking for a 35-hour week, three weeks’ annual leave and significant wage rises. Chifley was not moved by this request, seeing it as an appropriate matter for the Joint Coal Board to deal with. But the industrial impasse in the Hunter Valley deteriorated rapidly in 1949. In March of that year, Lance Sharkey was charged with sedition when he claimed that Australian workers would welcome the invasion of Soviet troops because it would bring liberation for the working classes.

In June, coal workers finally went on strike in support of their log of claims, while the Joint Coal Board was still considering them. Chifley, while a lifelong advocate of the trade union movement, was also a longstanding adherent to arbitration. The unions going on strike while arbitration was still underway was an affront to him. The union claims were also a threat to his attempts to reduce inflation. Inflation had increased strongly in 1949, and the large wage increases sought were likely, if approved, to flow through to the rest of the economy. These two factors, combined with the knowledge that the shots in the relevant unions were being called by communists who had no sympathy for his government, and no truck with the entire capitalist system, meant Chifley was disinclined to any sort of negotiation, contrary to his normal approach. David Day captures the strength of Chifley’s approach:

From the start, Chifley refused to negotiate with the miners. Instead, over the objections of Eddie Ward and several other Labor Members of Parliament, he legislated to freeze the funds of the union and make it illegal for anyone to donate to their strike fund.33

These were dramatic actions, but more were to come. Eight coal-mining officials were sent to jail. This was a stern approach compared with what Labor governments before (and after) the Chifley government would have done; in fact, it would have been a controversial action even if taken by one of Australia’s conservative governments. The coal miners’ strike morphed into a general strike as sympathetic unions called on their members to take industrial action. A nation already testily chaffing under ongoing rationing was now asked to absorb more sacrifices—Sydney, for example, suffered blackouts as the coal strike affected electricity generation.

After five weeks of ongoing industrial disputation, Chifley took perhaps the ultimate anti-union action: he brought in the military to break the strike. Soldiers were bussed into the mines to undertake the work that would normally have been done by the striking workers. This was hugely controversial, and in defeating the coal miners’ strike, Chifley paid a huge political price. His tough action alienated a substantial proportion of Labor’s base: its traditional, pro–trade union supporters. Equally, the length of time it took Chifley’s hard-line actions to have their desired effect meant that it appeared to great swathes of swinging voters that the government was not in control of a key area of the economy. Chifley’s government was already dealing with the political fight in the bank-nationalisation debate, so he could ill afford the time, headspace and political capital required to take on this fight as well.

Yet, despite the fallout on all the key issues related to the coal dispute, Chifley made the right decisions. The coal unions were clearly under Communist Party control, and dealing with a radical group required a radical response. Chifley was also dealing with stubborn inflation. Letting the coal unions’ campaign go unanswered would have left open the possibility of wage increases that were unsustainable in such an inflationary environment.

The 1949 Election

Chifley fought the 1949 election on too many defensive fronts. The controversy surrounding bank nationalisation was still fresh and filled many middle-of-the-road voters with apprehension over Labor’s intentions. The coal dispute had split Labor’s base and portrayed a government not in control of the economy. Perhaps most importantly of all, Chifley still refused to compromise on the need for rationing, both out of concern for inflationary tendencies in the economy and to maximise the resources that Australia could make available to Great Britain—he actually reintroduced petrol rationing during the election campaign. Opposition leader Robert Menzies showed a greater understanding of the community’s concerns in relation to rationing and promised its end.

Chifley was robbed of the opportunity to build momentum in the election campaign by the intervention of his old nemesis Jack Lang, who had entered federal parliament as the independent member for Reid in 1946. Chifley had been instrumental in the ousting of Lang from the Labor Party, and Lang took his revenge during the 1949 campaign. Lang revealed documents that showed Chifley had benefited from being a money lender in the Depression, asserting that he had profited from other peoples’ misfortunes, despite his professed concerns for the downtrodden.

It was an outrageous slur and misrepresented what had taken place. But like all of the most damaging political allegations, it had the one necessary ingredient to be lethal: there was