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BLF - FRYER |
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Fryer My pleasures from
researching in the Fryer have been book-ended with early morning and
evening journeys on the Rivercat to and from St Lucia. My next treat of
the day was a bowl of Muesli downstairs in the café, before the library
doors opened at 8 a.m. Patrons be advised that an order for more than a
beverage and muffin will be delivered only after reminding the staff. No
such delays impede the day’s labour on the fourth floor. Three times in the
past year I have spent days in the Fryer, burrowing through the minutes
of the Queensland Branch of the Builders’ Labourers Federation, from
the late 1920s to 1970. Most BLF records are with the Butlin Archives at
the ANU. Some materials are in Australian Archives. ASIO was not as
thorough as I would have liked. The idea for a
history of the BLF came in 1993 during the negotiations to create a
single union for the construction industry, which became a Division of
the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU). Because of
the rancour left over from the 1986 de-registration of the BLF, its
stalwarts decided to focus on the issues that united the leadership of
the new body rather than rake over those that divided them. In 2004, Liz
Ross published her account of the 1980s battles, Dare
to Struggle, Dare to Win, with Vulgar Press, run by ex-Queenslander
Ian Syson. By letting multiple voices be heard, Liz’s book persuaded
CFMEU officials that it was time to revive the promise of a history of
the BLF. One driving spirit
in this proposal was the Division’s Victorian President, the late John
Cummins. He, Liz Ross and I were in a group talking about her book after
a meeting to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Eureka
Stockade. “Cummo” complained that he could not find anyone to take
on the assignment. Liz felt that she had given enough of her life to
that cause. Another member of our circle, with whom I had just discussed
the increasing difficulty of earning a living as a freelancer, chimed
in: “Humphrey will write it.” The erstwhile BLs
wanted a survey of all States and the ACT from the start of the union.
They were not sure when that had been. That uncertainty was one reason
why they needed their story set down. They hope to see the union whole,
and not just as the Jack-and-Norm show over Green Bans and secret
commissions. They like my proposed title – We
built this country, a history of builders’ labourers and their unions. From the first,
John Cummins made it clear that I was going to have to write an
unofficial history: “No two officials would agree about anything.”
The sub-committee given carriage of the project insulated it both from
interference by union officials and from the Federal government’s
attacks on the union’s existence. Although under no obligation to show
any of the manuscript to anyone in the union, past or present, I shall
do so to protect the account from errors about the strength of concrete
or the terminology for scaffolding. What is a put-log? Some idea of what I
have gained from the materials in the Fryer is available in my study of
the 1927 claim by the Building Trades for a forty-hour week published in
the Queensland Journal of Labour
History, number 3, for September 2006. [Individual subscription at
$20 per annum for two issues, PO Box 5299, West End, QLD, 4101] The
correspondence about that matter in the Fryer brought key players to
life and provided insights into the level of organisation around
regional centers, especially Townsville. Of course, those files needed
to be supplemented by holdings at the Oxley and in Canberra, as well as
police files at the State Archives. The latter had to be reached by
train and foot – the least appealing journey to work that I can recall
from nearly 40 years of research. The Queensland
minutes correct the picture of the Federal Office and other States that
I glean from their records. When the Branch officials returned from
national meetings, they told executive meetings about the personalities
and deals. This gossip went into their minutes whereas the Federal
papers recorded only the outcomes of the debates. Since July, I have
stopped ploughing through boxes of records. My days and nights are now
devoted to shaping what I have drafted into a publishable account. Its
style and structure are aimed to appeal to union activists. Research is
now focused on cross-checking what I have, or finding the trivia needed
to tuck-point. Far from suffering from writers’ block, I am
intimidated by the cutting required to stay within my self-imposed limit
of 100,000 words. My draft for the article on the 1927 dispute ran to
over 16,000 words. I cut back to the 12,000 in print. For the book, I
shall have to excise another 8,000. Instead of slashing and hacking
two-thirds out of what is in the computer, I have selected issues and
themes for twenty chapters. Each will be 4,000 words long. My hope is to
fill those empty files from the overflowing drafts. The remaining
20,000 words will be short pieces, between 500 and 1,500 each. Most will
be first-hand accounts from labourers about their lives and work. The
rest will take up topics such as “Mr Booze” who undid several
officials, including Queensland organiser Jim Taylor by 1966. Several
small segments will give accounts of the work of organising around job
sites. The Fryer holds an organiser’s diary which records his
hour-by-hour doings. We built this
country will also recognise the office staff, all women, on whom the
officials relied but who are rarely mentioned in union histories. Mrs
Drew, for example, helped prepare the Award Log and did the accounts for
the Labor Day Committee. Another recurrent
problem was the embezzlement of union funds. A few job delegates and
shop stewards were charged with keeping the dues they collected. In most
cases, the union Executive tried to retrieve the money and rehabilitate
the offender. At the top level, a left-wing Branch Secretary, Joe Brice,
made off with ₤1,000 in 1924; right-wing State Secretary and
Federal President, Ted Farrell, admitted to taking almost as much in
1962; the union deducted the loss out of his entitlements. The records
also reveal a saga about an erstwhile official over whose land the BLF
held a lien from around 1924. The surviving minutes start too late to
explain the origins of this relationship which dragged on for thirty
years, popping up to mystify each new cohort of office-bearers, not to
mention their historian. Hall Greenland used
some of the Fryer materials for his biography of Nick Origlass
(1908–96), Red Hot. Nick had
been a “shovelless man” in the early 1930s before moving to Sydney
as a militant. Origlass will be familiar to Friends as one of the
characters in the Rats in the
Ranks documentary about Leichhardt Council. After We
Built This Country is published, my research notes and rough drafts
will be posted on a website to provide researchers with a platform of
ideas and data upon which to build accounts about the union in each
State, for limited periods or on particular topics such as job safety.
The interviews and illustrations that I have collected from Queensland
officials will be deposited with the Fryer. Writers a hundred years
hence will have information about the daily lives of labourers in the
post-war years. Trawling through
the minutiae of Executive minutes has helped me to specify the larger
forces transforming the BLF in Queensland. Empirical research need not
end as Empiricism. Until the mid-1940s, the Queensland Branch had been
led by Left-wingers, including a few Communists. After that, its
officials were Right-Wing Queensland Labor. The latter chugged along
committed to the State Labor government and to Arbitration, spurning
direct action. Their comfortable world fell apart in 1957 with the Labor
Split, the arrival of a non-Labor government for the next 32 years, the
start on high rises in the CBD, such as Torbrek
on Highgate Hill. The BLF records are a foundation for architectural
history. The effect of the
urban growth was small compared with the impact of the resources boom in
central Queensland. From the early 1960s, infrastructure projects
upended the way the union operated. Servicing construction camps dragged
officials out of the metropolitan area and onto sites where the members
were as new to industrial disputes as to their organisers. The
Queensland Branch has never been the same. The Fryer is a
precious resource. Its type is threatened with extinction. The Mortlock
in Adelaide is now no more than an empty, elegant salon. When I sought
assistance in researching South Australian trade publications, the staff
at General Reference told me that a “Change Agent” had dispersed the
South Australiana holdings. The Mortlock’s specialist staff had been
“Multi-skilled”. I told the desk staff that I had suffered from that
elsewhere. They encouraged me – insisted even – that I fill out a
complaint form. The Butlin Archives at the ANU and the Fryer came under
threat and were saved, like the Allport in Hobart, by vigorous
campaigns. At the State Library of Victoria, the LaTrobe exists only in
name. The Battye was flourishing when I was in Perth two years ago. I am
anxious to see whether the Oxley returns to Southbank with the grandeur
we have been promised. The Mitchell and the Petherick are being squeezed
for hours of access for ordering materials and for professional
assistance. The neo-Classical
economists who justify giving the haves more money on the grounds that
it will trickle-down to the poor do not extend this sophistry to
research for Australian history. The push to promote ‘1788 and all
that’ in the schools assumes that the facts to be crammed into
students’ heads are already known. Research implies revisionism which
suggests subverting the biases cherished by the culturally
quasi-literate. The fact is that
the history available to primary schools trickles down from reservoirs
such as the Fryer. The flood of knowledge about Australia that has
enriched our understanding of every cranny of our experience began with
the expansion of supports for research in the 1960s. Any shrinkage of
those resources, whether in libraries or post-graduates, is being felt
in classrooms. The managers
don’t see the world that way. Their future lies in on-line access to
digitalised data. The value of access to original documents and hard
copies is disparaged by self-styled “digital natives”, few of whom
have never done any research. We all benefit from Google and Libraries
Australia. Yet we are also at risk from the destruction of hard-copies
in the name of preserving them. Nicholson Baker
documented the scale of this vandalism
in Double Fold (2001). My research into
the 1927 dispute mentioned above revealed another instance of primary
sources that have gone missing in action. The organiser for the Building
Trades, J. B. Miles, addressed a rally in Toowoomba, analysing the
political economy of the claim for a shorter week. The Chronicle published the speech in full, over two columns. This
report is valuable for what more than one dispute. Miles went on to
become General Secretary of the Communist Party. The speech was one of
the longest expositions of his thinking. The problem about gaining
access to this source began when the Toowoomba
Chronicle was bound with the bottom 10 cms folded back. In hard
copy, this treatment made it ticky to read the lower sections. The firm
that microfilmed the Chronicle copied the pages with the bottoms turned up so that their
readers now lose 20cms of copy. Will this vandalised remnant be
digitalised by NPLAN? Collections are
useless without staff whose duty statement requires them to become
familiar with the holdings. A research library cannot do its job by
staffing its reference desk with clerical assistants trained to do no
more than point the inquirer towards a computer terminal. A friend of
the Fryer will preserve its standard of service to guarantee the value
of its collections. |