The world has lost a working-class hero with the passing of Fred Moore on 21 January, and we have lost a dear friend and mentor to so many on the Wollongong left.
On the South Coast of New South Wales, Fred was legendary for his life of struggle for anyone in need: workers, First Nations people, women, refugees, the disabled. He was an activist, a socialist and an internationalist; a friend, comrade and mentor who brought out the best in everyone he dealt with. His presence at any rally was an inspiration to activists, especially young socialists.
Fred was born in Cobar on 5 September 1922 and moved to Dapto with his wife and children in 1952. He attended his first May Day march aged 10 and entered the mining industry when he was still a child, at 14. Fred’s father was a coalminer, and Fred grew up in the Great Depression, a period of incredible suffering and intense working-class resistance, particularly in the mines. This had a lasting impact on his sense of working-class solidarity. 
Despite being pulled out of school early to help the family make a living, Fred always maintained a love for the harmonica, literature and boxing. Right up until his death, he was an avid reader of Red Flag, Green Left Weekly and the Illawarra Mercury.
Fred, along with emerging First Nations leaders, established the South Coast Aboriginal Advancement League in 1961. The league brought together Indigenous and non-Indigenous activists to fight segregation through working-class action. At the time, businesses up and down the coast were subject to an unofficial “colour bar”. There were cinemas with separate seating and entrances for Aboriginal people, and dress shops, bars and cafes where Aboriginal people simply could not enter. 
He worked tirelessly to end segregation on the South Coast. The Aboriginal Advancement League’s strategy of throwing the industrial power of unions behind the campaign quickly led to victories. One story was of going into a cafe with a couple of Aboriginal activists and threatening the owner, who refused to serve them, with a union ban on all deliveries. “He pretty quickly changed his tune after that!”, Fred said.
He was a champion of getting better housing for local Aboriginal people, who were pushed into appalling living conditions by a combination of unequal wages and racist landlords and local councils. Fred worked with Aunty Mary Davis (whose family was living in a car), Aunty Dolly Henry and others to ensure public housing at Coomaditchie.
Fred was at the forefront of the battle for the 1967 referendum to have Indigenous people recognised in the census. He collected tens of thousands of signatures, going around the mines, the steelworks and the community. Through this activism, he became great friends with Faith Bandler and Aboriginal leaders, who counted Fred as a comrade.
Around the same time, Fred was instrumental in touring Vincent Lingiari, one of the leaders of the Wave Hill walk-off. He organised meetings up and down the South Coast and collected thousands of dollars to send to the striking Gurindji workers.
Fred’s insistence that Aboriginal people be the ones to lead the struggle for their rights, and that the trade union movement support them in any way possible, led to him being initiated as a blood brother of the Jerrinja people and later named as an honorary elder of the local Aboriginal community.
Fred worked in the southern coalfields, particularly the Nebo mine, where he was a union delegate. Later he became an organiser with the Miners’ Federation, of which he was the first ever life member, and one of only two male life members of the Miners’ Women’s Auxiliary. He represented that union on the South Coast Labour Council for many years and was always at the forefront of the struggle to improve workers’ conditions in the mines, the steelworks and on the wharves at Port Kembla. He co-authored two books on the history of the Southern coalfields: At the Coalface and Back at the Coalface.
During the 1982 Kemira mine dispute and sit-in, Fred organised the top of mine picket and led marches of the Wollongong community in support of the striking workers. He was right at the front when the striking miners, steel workers and their supporters stormed Parliament House in Canberra.
<img alt="Fred at the Kemira mine dispute." src="https://cms.redflag.org.au/sites/default/files/inline-images/Fred%20at%20Kamira.jpg" />
He was a life member of the <a>South Coast Trades and Labour Council</a> and in 2002 the Wollongong Trade Union Centre was renamed “Fred Moore House” in his honour. Fred had a union slogan for any occasion to capture the lessons of working-class struggle. Some of his favourites were: “Not a penny off the pay, not a minute on the day” and “What has been gained must be retained”. Most of all, Fred lived and embodied “Touch one, touch all”. 
Fred had a passion for the annual May Day march. He attended the marches in both Wollongong and Sydney every year. He led both marches in his later years and was famously seen in Wollongong, with a megaphone, hailing each contingent as it passed. He was proud to say that he had not missed a May Day in 88 years.
In 2020, when there was no march due to COVID, Wollongong May Day moved to the front lawn of his home in Dapto, where dozens of workers from across the region planted flags and banners to ensure he didn’t miss it.
He was the president of the South Coast May Day committee for more than twenty years, during which time he welcomed everyone’s involvement. When a small Trotskyist group, the Socialist Workers Party, emerged in Wollongong in 1979, it was Fred who insisted, against opposition from the entrenched Communist Party and Socialist Party members, that anyone fighting for workers’ rights should be welcome on the committee.
Fred was a great supporter of women’s rights and marched on International Women’s Day every year. He was always willing to learn and take on new ideas. He told me once that he had wanted to keep the May Day Queen—a beauty-queen-style award in which a local young woman would don a tiara and sit on a float—as part of the annual march, and was soundly chastised by Sally Bowen, an activist from the Communist Party. “I learned an important lesson that year: that the women were coming out of the kitchens and wouldn’t be stopped”, he said.
When the Wollongong Women’s Centre was established in 1979, Fred organised a crane to install a demountable in the backyard. He also worked to clear the yard for the first women’s refuge in the Illawarra.
He was a staunch supporter of the “Jobs for Women” campaign, which demanded that the BHP Port Kembla Steelworks hire women as highly paid steelworkers, not just in the canteen. At its outset, he attended their tent embassy and brought coal to keep them warm, and he continued his support for the whole fourteen years (1980-1994) until they won a historic victory.
Fred always said, “Without the support of the women, nothing could be won”, but the Jobs for Women campaign was a new era. “The strength of the women, their determination was the thing. We’d never seen women in a struggle like that ... but here was a group of women that went straight to the front line and made the company give ground”, he said.
Fred always espoused the idea of the international working class, and an abhorrence of racism and war. He never missed a Wollongong Palm Sunday refugee rally or a Hiroshima Day commemoration.
In the 1930s, as a schoolboy, Fred attended anti-fascist rallies against the New Guard and was strongly opposed to fascism. He was active in the anti-apartheid struggle and was a leading member of the Cuba Friendship Society, the Chile Solidarity Committee and the Committee in Solidarity with Central America and the Caribbean. In later years, he was always present at Wollongong rallies to free refugees from mandatory detention.
On Fred’s passing, a statement from the South Coast Labour Council and the CFMMEU said: “The working class, social justice and international solidarity movements have lost a giant but gained so much from his leadership, comradeship, courage and principle”.
It is impossible to fully convey the extraordinary person who was Fred Moore. He held fast to his principles, always cared deeply for the working class, loved his family and opened his heart and his home to all in need of friendship, advice or just a nice cup of tea and a chat.
Fred was a strong believer that political victories aren’t granted from on high but are won through struggle from the bottom up. He was fond of saying, “When the workers march in the streets, the streets belong to the workers”.
His spirit, like Joe Hill’s, will be with us wherever we stand shoulder to shoulder to fight for a better world.
Where workers strike and organise
That’s where you’ll find Fred Moore
That’s where you’ll find Fred Moore.

Marg Perrott

‘United we stand, divided we fall’: celebrating the life of Fred Moore

Nearly 200 workers at the Dendrobium coal mine, near Wollongong, walked off the job on 14 August over casualisation.
A BHP subsidiary, South 32, has been negotiating with the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union for nearly 18 months over the mine workers’ enterprise agreement, which expired in April last year.
The Dendrobium CFMEU Lodge president told Red Flag that the company has been increasingly pressuring contractors on the site to casualise their workers, by limiting contract lengths and forcing small businesses to change their workers’ conditions or lose contracts.
The workers directly employed by South 32 want all permanent ongoing positions to remain that way. “We’re even prepared to accept redundancies if a position is no longer needed”, he said, “but we refuse to see permanent positions casualised”.
Workplace agreements at South 32’s nearby mines at Appin and West Cliff expired last month, and workers there will be closely following this dispute.
A picket is in place at the mine entrance on Cordeaux Road, supported by the South Coast Labour Council and the community.
The Illawarra region has traditionally relied on coal mining, steel production and the port as the backbones of its economy, and has a proud history of workers’ struggles. As a picketer, David, said, “The strike is for future job security. You just can’t roll over”.

Illawarra coal miners strike against casualisation

Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) officials are furious at the Department of Immigration’s revocation of the visas of 11 striking seamen from the Egyptian coal carrier Wadi Alkarm, currently docked in Port Kembla.
Maritime visas are guaranteed under international law, according to the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF).
The seamen had gone on strike to protest a policy of no access to food between 7pm and 7am and the halving of their wages. While in Australian waters, the workers felt confident in alerting the ITF to their grievances.
ITF Australia assistant coordinator Matt Purcell said the Egyptian government-owned coal carrier was in breach of the Maritime Labor Convention, and although Egypt is not a signatory, the carrier is bound by the convention while sailing in Australian waters.
“The men have also been called treasonous by their employer because they did the right thing and flagged their issues with the ITF”, he said.
MUA southern NSW secretary Garry Keane talked to the workers aboard the vessel. The MUA organised tickets home for them and accommodation on shore until they could leave.
“The Immigration officials told them if they left the ship they would end up in Villawood Detention Centre”, he said. Keane said the men have stated they would not crew the ship and would remain on strike at Port Kembla until their demands are met.
“These men want the policy of no food between 7pm and 7am reversed permanently, not just until they sail out of Australian waters, and they want their previous wages reinstated with back pay from June, when the wages were cut”, Keane said.
“These blokes don’t have a desire to stay in Australia; they want to go home, and to be treated like criminals by Immigration is just not on.”

‘United we stand, divided we fall’: celebrating the life of Fred Moore

Illawarra coal miners strike against casualisation

Immigration dept fails Egyptian sailors

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