MARITIME UNION OF AUSTRALIA CELEBRATES 150 YEARS

25 RMT helpline 0800 376 3706 ::january 2023 :: RMTnews Australia’s National Maritime Museum on Sydney’s historic waterfront was the setting for an international conference hosted by MUA President, Christy Cain and National Secretary, Paddy Crumlin. Maritime unions took part from across Asia and the Pacific delegates from Hawaii, Vancouver, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. Conference was opened by Aunty Rhonda Dixon, an Australia’s First Nations elder and daughter of legendary MUA ‘wharfie’ Chicka Dixon. Chicka Dixon, a leading MUA member in the Aboriginal rights movement recalled challenging a racist colour bar at a Sydney hotel in the 1950s. “The bartender said: `I’m sorry… We won’t serve Aborigines.’ “`Well that’s all right,’ Chicka replied, ‘tomorrow evening I’ll have 300 waterside workers up outside your joint. Nobody’s going to get in because we’re going to blacklist this hotel. Then I’ll get the Trades & Labour Council and the Liquor Trades Union to pull the barmaids out. Well, he did a complete about face. Remarkably, blacks are welcome down there now!’” The MUA’s 150th anniversary celebrated a union always at the heart of struggles for workers’ and peoples’ rights both in Australia and internationally, ever since the first Sydney Wharf Labourers’ Union and Melbourne Seamen’s Union were founded in 1872. Australian Council of Trade Unions secretary Sally MacManus recalled the SS Dalfram dispute at Port Kembla in 1938, when the Waterside Workers' Federation, MUA’s forerunner, refused to load pig iron for Japan’s war in China. Again in 1945 Australian maritime unions tied up 559 military supply ships in port - "the greatest boycott of its kind in Australian history” - when the Dutch tried to reclaim their colony in Indonesia. In 1948, the Seamen’s Union of Australia boycotted arms and equipment shipments to the British army suppressing Malaya’s independence movement. In 1950, when the SUA banned shipment of war supplies during the Korean war, the Attorney-General charged the SUA Executive Committee with treason under the Commonwealth Crimes Act. In 1967, the Australian government sent the Boonaroo to carry bombs to South Vietnam, and again crews refused to take military cargo. SUA Victoria branch secretary Bert Nolan stated: "We have no intention of taking the ship to load explosives that could be used for any purpose". Great workers’ leaders such as E.V. Elliott, Secretary of the SUA, and WWF General Secretary, Jim Healy led from the front with their proud internationalism and political trade unionism. Australian maritime unions struck against Apartheid in South Africa and in 1966 brought practical solidarity to 200 Aboriginal Gurindji workers and their families who took strike action against international food giant, Vestey Brothers at Wave Hill in Australia’s Northern Territory. Their actions brought about the first law giving First Nations peoples a legal right to their ancestral lands. MUA’s conference in Sydney concluded by unveiling The Wharfies’ Mural as a National Maritime Museum permanent exhibit. Wharfie artist Rod Shaw designed The Wharfies’ Mural in partnership with WWF leader Tom Nelson between 1953 and 1965. Wharfies painted the mural themselves to portray their story on their canteen walls. When Sydney’s waterfront was redeveloped in the 1990s, MUA Sydney branch secretary Jim Donavan saved The Wharfies’ Mural from destruction. It was removed in 12 sections and found a new home at the National Maritime Museum. MUA150 International Conference_Andy Gordon MARITIME UNION OF AUSTRALIA CELEBRATES 150 YEARS RMT president Alex Gordon and NEC maritime rep Andy Gordon joined RMT’s sister union to celebrate 150 years of organising Former Sydney MUA branch secretary Jim Donavan with his Wharfies' Mural with RMT president Alex Gordon