When Australian workers took on the American war machine
Italian dockworker Romeo Pelliccaria, whose union galvanised October’s mass general strike for Palestine in Italy, explained to US outlet Drop Site News in the lead-up to the action: “[Dockworkers] are fortunate to work at the port because we do not see the horizon, we have only the sea ahead. And the sea allows you to dream constantly”. Pelliccaria and his comrades are part of a long, worldwide tradition of radical maritime workers with socialist convictions and internationalist politics. Indeed, Romeo’s father was also a dockworker and joined a humanitarian flotilla to Vietnam in the 1970s to break the US blockade.
That war generated significant resistance in the West. Most people have heard of student radicals, draft dodgers and the big marches against the war in the late 1960s and early 1970s. But there’s also a history of maritime union action against the war. In particular, the Seamen’s Union of Australia (SUA) took anti-war strike action years before most people even opposed America’s and Australia’s invasion of Vietnam. Its members argued for workers in other unions to oppose the war and later took a leading role in the mass movement that eventually developed, protecting conscientious objectors and instituting work bans on US vessels. This history is detailed in two books—Rowan Cahill’s The Seamen’s Union of Australia, 1872–1972: a history and Voices from the ship: Australian seamen and their union by Diane Kirkby—from which the following account is largely drawn.
The seamen’s anti-war strikes highlight three points that socialists make about the working class. Their actions to prevent arms shipments to Vietnam revealed the (usually dormant) power of organised labour to cripple the global war machine. They demonstrated that workers are often motivated not only by their own economic interests, but also by political questions. They also highlight the importance of socialist politics in the union movement—many rank-and-file members were motivated by a vision of socialism, influenced by the SUA’s Communist Party officials.
Years of isolation
The SUA had a very left-wing, active culture. Before the Vietnam War, Australian seamen campaigned for Chinese and Indian seamen’s rights under the White Australia policy, for Indonesian independence, against armaments for Britain in its war against a communist insurgency in Malaya, for unionists’ rights under the Greek military junta, for Nauruan independence and against war supplies to help the American-led invasion of Korea. They were standing up to the right-wing government, media and courts, often sticking their necks out alone.
The internationalist streak came from the experience of the rank and file. Australian seamen were largely white, mainly of Irish and English backgrounds, with an increasing number of European migrant workers by the 1960s. As seafarers, they carried cargo across oceans and interacted with workers of every nationality. Their working lives fostered solidarity across borders, giving them a sense that they were part of the international working class.
They were also influenced by the Australian Communists’ internationalism, which, as CPA historian Stuart Macintyre explains, involved opposition to “Anglo-American imperialism”, support for the anti-colonial independence movements and upholding the Soviet Union as “a servant of peace”.
At their 1948 annual general meeting, the seamen declared their “implacable active hostility to imperialists’ war designs” and committed to a “peace offensive” against war. During the Cold War years, the seamen championed an anti-American, anti-imperialist position as a counter to the do-nothing Labor Party-aligned unions. The SUA’s Communist officials took defiant industrial action while other union bureaucrats opposed political strikes that could upset Labor’s electoral fortunes or discredit the ACTU.
Communist Party member Eliot V. Elliott, elected SUA federal secretary during the Second World War, cultivated a high level of union member activity and engagement through fortnightly stop-work meetings and the monthly Seamen’s Journal, edited by Kondelea “Della” Elliott. Significantly, Cold War anti-communist hysteria meant the CPA officials would not have won support for anti-war boycotts without genuine rank-and-file support.
The first action in solidarity with Vietnamese independence was in April 1954 against the French military’s ongoing attempt to crush Ho Chi Minh’s guerrilla forces in Vietnam. When British freighter the Radnor docked in Sydney, the crew sent a note to the SUA: “[T]his crew do not wish to carry the present cargo of guns, bombs and ‘ammo’, etc., to fight the war in Indo-China”. (French Indochina was a confederation of colonies, including what are today Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam.) The Radnor’s cargo was black-banned by the maritime unions. The following month, the Viet Minh won a crushing victory against the French in the battle of Dien Bien Phu. Vietnam was partitioned, and Ho Chi Minh’s forces formed a government in the north.
When the US later moved to prop up the pro-Western puppet government of South Vietnam, which was facing an insurgency coordinated by the northern government, Robert Menzies’ Liberal government began sending military aid. Between 1962 and 1965, the government sent dozens of military instructors, RAAF personnel, aircraft and then the first battalion of troops. At the time, only a minority of Australian society opposed the war. Opposition grew with the introduction of conscription in late 1964, but it still took years for it to become widespread.
Maritime unionists took the lead. In March 1965, Sydney waterside workers struck for 24 hours, delaying 37 ships. After the first deployment of troops the following month, 2,500 Waterside Workers’ Federation members walked off the docks in Melbourne, and 500 seamen and watersiders picketed the US embassy in Brisbane.
The SUA annual general meeting resolved to oppose the war and called for the withdrawal of Australian troops. After the meeting, SUA tug workers in Melbourne refused to dock the warship USS Vancouver and the submarine USS Megregal for a commemoration of the Second World War battle of the Coral Sea. Their strike garnered much publicity for the anti-war cause. The ACTU also adopted a policy against the war and in favour of troop withdrawal, but remained vague on its support for industrial action to end the war.
Raising the stakes: the Boonaroo and Jeparit disputes
The following year, 1966, Harold Holt’s Liberal government coerced seamen into sailing the Boonaroo, a merchant ship carrying general war supplies. At a meeting of the Department of Shipping and Transport, a representative of the Australian National Line (ANL) declared that the union was expected to deliver the supplies to the Australian military in Vietnam. When the news spread, 66 SUA crews sent outraged messages and reaffirmed their anti-war position. The Empress of Australia crew wrote: “We strongly protest Government’s decision to send Australia ship Boonaroo to Vietnam. We Seamen’s Union members sail for peace not war”.
However, the Sydney Morning Herald misleadingly reported that the cargo would be “supplies of food, wood, cigarettes and beer for the troops” implying there were no military materials. The attacks on the SUA didn’t end there. The Holt government, the ANL bosses and the media united to “break the Union boycott”. Even Labor leader Arthur Calwell joined the pro-war chorus. The ACTU, too, backed the government and urged the SUA to fall in line. Other maritime unions left the SUA out in the cold. Despite rhetorical opposition, the ACTU and Labor refused to countenance industrial action against the war.
Even the SUA’s traditional ally, the Waterside Workers’ Federation, refused to support their action. Federal Secretary Charles Fitzgibbon bowed to the government’s intimidation, saying his union would not take “any action that would prejudice the carriage of supplies to Australian lads forced into this war”. Two decades earlier, Communist Jim Healy had overseen the Federation’s black ban of Dutch ships in Australian ports to support the Indonesian anti-colonial independence movement. The federation’s reluctance to take action against the Vietnam War was a major blow against the SUA.
On 18 May, at the Sydney Engagement Centre, a call went out for seventeen seamen to staff the Boonaroo. All 29 SUA members present refused and were penalised by the superintendent, losing their attendance money and being put last on the work roster. Then the union received notice that the Industrial Court would act if the ban wasn’t overturned. The threat of the courts was no small matter.
The Commonwealth Crimes Act contained punitive powers, including the death penalty, for anyone acting “by any means whatsoever with intent to assist an enemy”—even in the case of an undeclared war. Further, a person could receive a life sentence for “assisting or not informing” on “those who intend to take such acts”, or twelve months’ jail for “obstructing or hindering the performance of services”. The latter could include strikes, boycotts or pickets. According to Pat Geraghty, who later became the union’s national secretary, SUA offices had been raided when the union opposed the Korean War, and an editor of the Communist newspaper Tribune was jailed for eighteen months due to anti-Korean War content.
That workers were willing to face down public demonisation, fines and punishment on the job, and very serious penalties if the courts ruled against them (which was common), showed their deep political convictions against the Vietnam War. However, they were left isolated by the union movement. At the next stop-work meeting, SUA members voted to staff the Boonaroo “with great reluctance and under protest”. The Seamen’s Journal explained this decision, reporting that the unionists didn’t “fear a clash with the Federal Government nor were intimidated by threatened Industrial Court action, they were prepared to face such challenges (as they had in the past) but they were not prepared ‘to go it alone’”.
The seamen used this chance to make political arguments about why they had opposed sailing ships to Vietnam. In the Seamen’s Journal, an article titled “Volunteers or conscripts? Voluntariness or coercion?” slammed any notion that the Boonaroo crew were “volunteers” when they were coerced to sail by the government. It rebuked “the conscription of civilians for an undeclared war”. (While the Australian military had invaded Vietnam, Menzies never formally declared war.)
The crew immediately set out to make it known that the Boonaroo sailed as an SUA peace ship. The crew hung banners on the vessel declaring “Boonaroo Seamen Oppose War in Vietnam”, “Y Dy for Ky” and “No Kids for Ky” (Ky refers to South Vietnam’s puppet Prime Minister Ky Nguyen). Before departure, the SUA members staged an anti-war protest at the port. The ship set sail the same day the Australian’s front page revealed news of the first Australian conscript killed in Vietnam.
A month later, in June 1966, the ANL bosses announced a second merchant ship, the Jeparit, would deliver war supplies. The SUA held up the ship for a few days in protest, but then sailed. They were still isolated, the anti-war movement still being in its infancy. The same month, the pro-war frenzy led to an assassination attempt on Calwell for his anti-conscription position.
Both the Boonaroo and the Jeparit crews distributed anti-war publications in Vietnam, fraternised with Australian troops and Vietnamese workers. They condemned America’s “kill-all burn-all destroy-all” and “shoot everything that moves” policies and the napalm bombing of schools and hospitals. They met the American conscripts opposed to the war and exploited Vietnamese labour in South Vietnam’s ports.
If the government thought it had intimidated the SUA, it was sorely mistaken. The January 1967 edition of the union journal argued for more action and that staying silent made them an “ally” of America. In December 1966, the government upped the ante by including four 40mm cannons in the Jeparit’s cargo, which was loaded but then unloaded after union protests.
Then the real test arrived. In February, the Boonaroo crew refused to load bombs destined for Vietnam at Port Wilson Explosives Depot near Geelong. Two days later, they rejected a second order to sail to the depot; their three spokesmen were fined. They were notified that the ship had been chartered to take 2,153 tons of aircraft bombs, three tons of detonators, 82 tons of non-explosive components, plus general supplies.
Australian Council of Trade Unions President A.E. Monk shamefully urged no industrial interference with the loading and transportation of munitions. Liberal Minister for Labor and National Service Leslie Bury attacked the union’s Communist leaders. “I hope the crew will follow the Australian flag and not the hammer and sickle”, he said. When the seamen refused for a third time to be complicit in America’s “filthy” war and the “slaughter” of the Vietnamese, the government was forced to retreat and enlisted the Navy to sail the ship instead.
Soon, the union was told that the Jeparit would sail with combat weapons and ammunition. Stop-work meetings held across the country on 8 March overwhelmingly endorsed a non-cooperation policy of sailing armaments to Vietnam. Only eleven members voted against this policy. One opponent in Sydney spoke against the war but feared the action could “destroy” the union. Members in favour said they would refuse to ship ammunition for a war against the Vietnamese people, but reiterated their “willingness” to sail Australian troops home from the “filthy, unwinnable war”. The Sydney Morning Herald suggested that the union was more concerned with “ensuring the triumph of Hanoi” than protecting Australian troops. Later in the day, the Navy took over the Jeparit.
To make their stance known to other trade unionists, the SUA produced 100,000 copies of a four-page leaflet, “We cannot support a war against children”. The centre spread included testimony from six of the ex-crew members of SUA peace ships, which was published in the Australian and other newspapers. One ex-Boonaroo crew member, Basil Box, explained his view:
“I have been at sea for fifty years ... I went right through the 39-45 war in Australian troop ships. I’ve been through bombings and my ship’s been sunk. I did this in a war against fascism but I won’t be conscripted into this filthy business to blow up women and kids.”
Another seaman, Raymond Greenhough, asked: “What’s the point in blaming the German people for the rise of Nazism if we Australians co-operate in the oppression of Vietnam?” A third, Raymond King, remarked: “I was in Vietnam when they were getting rid of the French, it’s ironical that the government is now trying to railroad us into helping the Yanks take over the country”.
In 1967, most trade unions in Australia either supported the war or refused to take any action to oppose it. By publishing and distributing their arguments, the seamen wanted to set an example for the rest of the working class to follow. But the SUA’s anti-war industrial campaign did not end there.
The mass movement arrives
In December 1969, at a meeting of shop stewards and delegates at Fitzroy Town Hall, the representatives of 26 left-wing trade unions voted to “encourage those young men already conscripted to refuse to accept orders against their conscience and those in Vietnam to lay down their arms in mutiny against the heinous barbarism”. The same month, Sydney watersiders voted for Federation member Harry Black’s motion to stop loading cargo onto the Jeparit, which, with a Navy crew, was still sailing war supplies to Vietnam. Wharf workers finally joined the seamen’s industrial boycott of arms shipments.
The war had become increasingly unpopular. Students burned draft cards, and protest numbers swelled. Seamen and dockers’ economic power strengthened the mass marches and anti-conscription campaigns. It is a small glimpse into how different a world run by workers could look.
The 26 unions, known as the “rebel unions” after splitting from the Labor Party-dominated Trades Hall Council, took a lead in Victoria by pledging to appoint a full-time organiser for Vietnam moratorium responsibilities, sponsor an advertisement in the Sun calling on rank-and-file unionists to stop work on 8 May 1970 and join the moratorium demonstration.
The Seamen’s Union provided the moratorium campaign with its “staunchest and most valuable allies” according to M.J. Saunders, who wrote a PhD on the Australian moratorium movement. At the first moratorium march, seamen stopped work for 24 hours across the country, affecting 47 passenger and cargo ships. Saunders suggests that “in most, if not all cases”, the decision to strike was taken by crews of particular ships, and they were the only union whose branches in all states struck for the entire 24 hours. The day before, the union was taken to court to prevent the action. One seaman, outraged by the war, spoke from the gallery:
“We were at sea when the last stop-work meeting took place. We have never been in touch with an official, but we, the crew, voted 100 percent for this stoppage. We have let our conscience guide us in this war of attrition ... People have been killed needlessly ... we do not condone the US forces nor the Australian intervention in Vietnam ... we held a meeting ... and passed the motion that we would stop in protest and in support of the moratorium.”
Banning US ships
On 8 May 1972, President Richard Nixon announced Operation Pocket Money, which involved the navy mining ports in North Vietnam. The following day, the US Air Force began a continuous bombing campaign. In response, the port of Fremantle was “paralysed” when 70 members of the Seamen’s Union and the Maritime Workers’ Union walked off their ships to protest the escalation. The port strike marched to the US consulate offices in Perth, where L. Troy, a tugman, addressed the maritime workers and then delivered the union resolution opposing Nixon’s actions.
In December, Nixon ordered “torrential aerial bombardment” against North Vietnam. Operation Linebacker II was the heaviest bombing campaign since World War Two. Australian unions responded with protest resolutions. The SUA sent a telegram to Nixon threatening “reprisals” if he did not “cease most savage and cruel bombings”. The union then threw down the gauntlet, imposing a black ban on all US shipping to Australian ports. The seamen showed the whole world that workers could stop American trade and their war machine overnight.
The right-wing press and farmers’ organisations were apoplectic. Dozens of telegrams from rural producers were sent to the SUA, demanding that the ban be lifted. They labelled the ban “anti-Australian and trade destroying”, urged an end to “RIDICULOUS POLITICAL STRIKES” and to “NEVER VOTE LABOUR AGAIN”. Yet dozens more congratulatory messages arrived. One telegram read: “CONGRATULATIONS ON ACTION ON VIETNAM THE HUMAN SPIRIT IS STRENGTHENED BY SUCH AN ACT OF INTERNATIONALISM”. Another handwritten note summed up the mood: “Dear Sir, Please convey to all your rank and file members and officials who are responsible for the black ban on U.S. ships my deepest admiration. It has given me and I’m sure many others, the finest New Year’s present of my life.”
The Australian reported a Farrell Lines assistant manager complaining about “800 tons of frozen meat and crayfish” being wasted at the port. The liner Monterey had 200 American passengers held up for eleven hours off Sydney Harbour, eventually resorting to lifeboats to bring people ashore. The Austral Envoy, carrying cargo and passengers, was unable to dock in Melbourne.
Early in the new year, the right-wing-controlled International Longshoremen’s Association in New York imposed a retaliatory ban on Australian ships, claiming “discrimination against American seamen”. But Waterside Workers’ Federation members at Port Melbourne voted to join the boycott of American vessels. They endorsed a resolution: “We tell [union leader Teddy] Gleason of the USA East Coast Dockers to stick his nose out of our business and fight for conditions for American wharfies comparable to ours”. The case demonstrated that left-wing politics is essential for the union movement everywhere. The workers also demanded that America “remove its bases” and “its troops” from Australia.
On 9 January, a Seamen’s Union stop-work meeting voted to suspend the ban, pending the outcome of peace negotiations in Paris. Eighteen days later, a treaty stipulating a US military withdrawal was signed. The North Vietnamese had defeated the American war machine.
Solidarity forever
The Seamen’s Union didn’t stop their support there; each member agreed to donate $5 of each week’s wages for a month to the reconstruction efforts in North Vietnam. The union raised $75,979 despite anti-communist press slander. Della Elliott later recalled:
“[In] 1974 the Vietnam Embassy advised of a proposal to use the SUA Aid to build a kindergarten in Hai Phong Port. The SUA replied it could ‘think of no more fitting way for seamen to donate than towards helping to develop the future generation of Vietnam in a seaport’.”
Most histories of the anti-war movement fail to account for the working-class resistance. Universities and schools are reluctant to teach about workers’ power, solidarity and the opposition to US imperialism. Similarly, socialist politics are often relegated to an era that’s long past.
For activists fighting against Israel’s war on Gaza, Italy’s mass political strikes for Palestine, spearheaded by Genovese dockworkers in October, point the way forward. The working class has the power to bring military empires like America to their knees. Workers, especially seamen and dockers with socialist and internationalist politics, have been critical to challenging wars in the past. Workers’ power, however, remains latent most of the time. The story of the Australian seamen against the American imperialist machine shows the need to get organised.
