1948-1968
INTRODUCTION
Aborigines, Australia, communists, cattle stations, unionists, human-rights, strikes and Vincent Lingiari.
The Vestey’s group were nominally the largest international landholders in the country, spanning a period of more than fifty years. Holdings in the Pilbara, Kimberley and the Northern Territory (NT) made up the larger portion of their cattle empire. The Victoria River District (VRD) of the Territory was theirs, and the many cattle stations. ‘Wave-Hill’ and the Gurindji people were one, and they are the focus of this article. In particular, the ‘walk-off’ and especially the identities of people, their activities in the strikes, the dialogue, interest groups and Government actions during and before the August 1966 walk out. Whilst the central theme here is the walk-off, the peripheral contributing factors and the people involved all combined to create an incident in Australian social development that was certainly complex, significant, and a signpost in Aboriginal social history. The aim is to discuss all of these contributors as a history cluster that includes many of the formal advancements made by the Commonwealth in Human-Rights affairs.
Aboriginal human rights issues became predominant in Australian social discourse in the lead up to the establishment of human rights interest groups in the eastern states. Melbourne saw the creation of the Democratic Rights Council, the original institution that inspired other welfare groups nationally. Aboriginal rights issues flourished in parallel to the evolution of Federal and global Rights standards; this is a key feature in the events that surround the Wave-Hill walk off. It did not simply occur due to racial or supposed communist agitation, but it evolved as ‘Human Rights’ concepts swept the world after World War ll.
The continuos evolution of
welfare and aboriginal ordinances, however, arguably did little to alter the
social cleavage between the ‘white’ and ‘black’, peoples of the Australian nation.
Proposals and alterations to federal policy carried forth government
willingness and aboriginal wishes to reconcile, but this was met with apathy
and measures of indifference. A good dose of nihilist fatalism coupled with the
concept of eugenics (not unlike the story of Capricornia by Xavier
Herbert), that was likely still present in the social discourse and collective
belief of the older Northern Territory generations; probably compounded the
friction, cleavage and racial attitudes within the state.
Consequently, Darwin
Aborigines went on strike in December 1950. There was a series of strikes, and
they signalled the beginnings of Aboriginal intent to formally fight the
white-mans way of treating them. This style of resistance against a foreign
power was not the usual way Aborigines conducted their affairs. Following the
creation of APAHR
(Australian
Peoples Assembly of Human Rights) in Melbourne in 1950, Darwin Aborigines sat
down at the Bagot and Berrimah communities. The strike was unsuccessful and the
urban Aborigine was verbally ‘threatened with starvation’.
In December 1950 and January
1951, the NT Aboriginal Department of Native Affairs went on strike. The
December strike leader Laurence was jailed with four months hard labour, and
the January leader Fred Waters was extricated twelve-hundred kilometres away
from his Larrakia homelands in Darwin; to Haasts Bluff. However, he had been
returned by the end of March. The NAWU (North Australian Workers Union) had
established a large campaign, which in September 1951 saw the issue addressed
by Jack McGinness at the annual ACTU (Australian Council of Trade Unions)
congress in Melbourne.
Margaret Franklin asserts: ‘It is clear that great changes had occurred among the Aboriginal population since the strike in Darwin in 1951’. Joe McGinness says these events were the beginnings of the first attempts by the indigene population to reverse the abysmal social status and living conditions they were found to be in. However, the State used dislocation of persons as a tool toward halting the flow of what it termed ‘trouble-makers’ and the subsequent disquiet surrounding these new Aboriginal activities. Supposedly ‘undesirable’ types were gathered up and relocated to other areas. The natural consequence of the subsequent human contact could only have been the dispersal of knowledge about rights based issues and the growing push for improvement.
The likelihood of Aborigines
being invigorated toward a new recognition of identity and rights may have had
its genesis in the realisation that Australia had entered into international
treaties denouncing human rights abuses. As the news of this reached the
spiritual hearts and minds of the elders and educated indigenous populations, a
stronger and more focused effort can be seen in the historicism of the
Aboriginal transition from the ancient practice of hunter-gathering to a
comparative third-world underclass.
Robert Manne recognises the
formation of pro-Aboriginal organisations such as FCAA (Federal Council
Aboriginal Advancement) in South Australia and other groups as intrinsic in
disseminating knowledge in the community: ‘The 1950s and 1960s saw a blossoming
of inter-racial organisations’. With these came the shift in Federal and State
policy and social attitudes: ‘these changes had, in turn, a major impact on the
policies and aims of Aboriginal organisations’.
WHICH ONE RIGHTS?
In 1958, ordinances were
challenged by Victorian Aborigines and the proceedings became front-page news.
Famous Albert Namitjira was involved; ultimately he was humiliated by
incarceration on minor unrelated circumstances that led to his death. The
indignation, humiliation and utter degradation that Aborigines suffered at the
hands of the white occupiers, ultimately led to a series of strikes and walk-offs
in Australia’s north. The northern regions played a considerable part in the
social degradation and destruction of the ancient culture.
In 1948, the Australian
Government signed some of the international conventions on Human Rights,
including the convention on the prevention of genocide. This was signed on the
11th of December and entered into force on the 12th of
January 1951. The had NAWU set out to improve the performance of their
organisation in early 1949, by appointing two new recruits from the eastern
states. One George Gibbs and Arthur Olive; both were professional communist
party members. The younger Gibbs had, by the end of 1949, travelled some
seventy-thousand kilometres throughout the Northern Territory, including visits
to the Alice-Springs and Tennant-Creek union branch offices.
In 1949, Federal Parliament
was briefed on the details of a supposed communist threat in the North;
McAllister Blair had a list of eighty-three suspects who were known communists.
Monthly reports by the newly re-organised ASIO (Australian Security
Intelligence Organisation) led Blair to believe, on the basis of the
intelligence, that the NAWU and the Darwin Standard (Newspaper)
were ‘definitely communistic’; there was a hint of ‘treason merchants’ in the
reports. Consequently, the Federal Government colluded with a Canberra
publisher (Eric White Associates) in 1952, to establish a counteractive
newspaper for the NT, eventually the Standard failed.
A 1950 Conciliation
Commission meeting administered by Portus concluded: ‘I have no power to fix
the rates [wages] for Aborigines’. Cattleman’s Union pressure had been brought
to bear upon the proceedings; however, Portus’ arguments neutralised the merits
of the claims. J, H, Kelly found the Commissioner was in fact empowered to
alter the legislation in favour of Wages and Welfare for Aborigines. Jack
McGinness was sent by NAWU sometime after August 1951 to the ACTU annual
congress; his landmark presentation challenged the ‘status quo’ about
Aboriginal Welfare. Subsequently, the resolve of the ACTU was to call for the
abolition of the Aboriginals Ordinance. Native Affairs Officer Evans
travelled to Wave-Hill in 1951; ‘he was optimistic of a change in labour
relations on the stations’. Nevertheless, he was to struggle against
paternalism and a history of control. On the 9th of December 1953,
Australia signed an amendment to the Prevention of Slavery convention; it came
in to force on that day.
By 1964, the Social
Welfare Ordinance replaced the old and disputed Welfare Ordinance on
the 15th of September 1964. This was supposed to allow equal pay,
however the Wards Employment Ordinance remained in force, which
subsequently allowed an avenue for exploitation by employers. Racial
Discrimination was formally abolished on the 13th of October 1966,
but it was not to come into force until the 30th of September 1975.
Forced labour was abolished
in Australia on the 7th of June 1960, and the legislation entered
into force one year later. FCAATSI (Federal Council Aboriginal Advancement
& Torres Straight Islanders) was formed in the late 1950s and proceeded to
lobby the ACTU (Australian Council Trade Unions); after a series of congress
meetings in 1959, 1961 and 1963, the council accepted a policy of
anti-discrimination in favour of Aborigines. In 1962, the Federal Government
amended the electoral act, giving the NT indigene a right to vote at elections;
a right that had been denied them previously. On the 13th of May
1963, Australia entered into an agreement with the UN (United Nations) for the
role of police in protecting Human rights; this agreement was in force as of
that day.
YEARS AND YEARS…
As early as 1948, ‘Quinn’
was identified by the Director of Native Affairs, Frank Moy, as a possible
social agitator; after questioning the locals, Patrol Officer Sweeney reported:
‘They have never heard of Quinn making trouble among the natives’. ‘So Moy…had
begun to wonder if perhaps the Aboriginal resistance in the pastoral districts
was an organised one’. In time this would prove to be correct, particularly as
union involvement became more prevalent.
The January 1952 NAWU
elections were called after factional cleavage could not be resolved.
Aboriginal Jack McGinness (the brother of Joe) appeared on both sides of the
ballot ticket, received the most votes and thus unified the union under a
commitment of ‘half-caste’ rights. Brian suggests that this period ended a
strong communist influence over the NAWU. Brian also argues: ‘Since the defeat
of the left wing leadership in 1952, little interest had been shown in the
situation facing Aboriginal workers in the Territory’. A considerable number of
Aborigines had walked of Wave-Hill station in 1952. ‘Quite a few of these had
not returned’. There was a severe drought in that year and Wave-Hill was the only
station to stand down workers.
Sandy Moray was a key figure
in the agitation and education of the people toward salvation and extrication
from oppression. Riley Young recounts some history of Moray in Rose. Some time
around 1950, Young remembers Moray (a Wave-Hill Aborigine) traversing the
country from Canberra (where he met with the Water Side Workers union) to
Darwin and the NAWU. He would meet with unionists and tell the stories of
illness, mistreatment and the will to retrieve the land. A letter addressed to
the NAWU in perhaps 1951, hails the union: ‘Dear Comrade’, and proceeds to
state that the NT Indigenes have approached them (seemingly the Communist Party
Australia, the CPA) for assistance in the Aboriginal movements.
Minoru Hokari’s research finds
that Captain Major had led the Newcastle-Waters Aborigines out on a strike on
the 1st of May 1966, encouraged by Dexter Daniels; but not without
the express coaching of Frank Hardy. Hardy reckoned: ‘I said the best way is to
strike’. Having discussed at length with several elders, Minoru Hokari was led
to believe that Sandy Moray was the originator of the walk-off movement in the
VRD, and that this was before Lingiari became important in the scheme. Moray
travelled extensively with Alex Moray (no relation; but his namesake) and it
was in this way that he came to discover social differences. Oral social
history from the elders about Moray go on to say that he and Lingiari travelled
to the Queensland border so that Lingiari could gain a better perspective of
conditions and social interaction.
The elders had said it was
possible that he met Queensland unionists at some point in his journeys and
that this may be where he learnt the skills of unionism. This indicates that
the concept of a strike -and perhaps more- had been present in the social
discourse at least since the 1950s. Hokari cites an oral record of Moray
handing over the leadership of the movement to Lingiari, as Moray was already
old; anthropologist Patrick McConvell gives credit to Moray for creating the
idea.
It was also through the
media that the Aborigines gained a semblance of legitimacy for their cause;
Frank Hardy, Douglas Lockwood and Christopher Forsythe were their Journalistic
allies in the top-end. Support had come from church groups also; a Reverend
Arthur Preston saying: ‘Aborigines had their hopes dashed by Federal
Government’s refusal…’. Bill Jeffrey also gave his support to the movement;
aligning himself with Frank Hardy.
Hardy was arguably the prime
white man who urged the Aborigines to do as much as possible with the strike;
to resist pressure to return to work. And, to ignore the harassment that would
inevitably come to Aborigines who would dare to strike against the small or
non-existent wages and other issues. The Greenleft organisation credits
ongoing ‘greater public exposure’ with diluting the worst abuses against
indigenes since the late 1940s when old award wage rates were initially granted
to them. As well, ‘The Communist Party of Australia used its considerable
influence to mobilise and educate a broad and active support base for the
Gurindji’.
Stan Davey of the Victorian
AALV (Aboriginal Advancement League Victoria) had convinced Hardy that two
Aboriginal support groups should be set up in the NT to operate parallel to each
other: ‘one should be composed solely of Aboriginal people; the other a broadly
based group of white supporters’. The NTCAR (Northern Territory Council
Aboriginal Rights) was formed at Rapid Creek on the 27th of December
1961; its agenda was to push for equal pay for Aborigines, a majority of the
membership was indigene.
Gibbs and Brian Manning are
credited with the formation, and both were members of the CPA. The constitution
of the new organisation was structured around UN Human Rights principles. Davis
Daniels and Jacob Roberts were elected secretary and president at the first
AGM; both were indigene. Manning maintained a lesser role along with Terry
Robinson; the chairperson and CPA member.
WALK EM OUT!
Bernie Brian discloses the
mixed reactions of the NAWU in the years before the strike; their support would
be strong on some issues, and non-existent on others. Allegiance given to a
union did not necessarily guarantee support from it on unpopular internal
unionist interests. It was not until after the walk-off and the subsequent
establishment of Daguragu that the NAWU threw full public support behind
the actions. Some of the other identities involved in the strike and in
particular the Daguragu ‘sit down’ after 1966 are listed by Franklin as
she cites a land claim petition given to the Governor-General in 1967.
Brian credits Sydney James
Cook with the 1965 walk-offs, after he had been appointed as a union organiser
to the NAWU. However, Cook did not remain in the role long, as he was replaced
by Dexter Daniels in June 1965. Riddett describes the moment when a Gurindji
Wave-Hill woman first sited a mob of people who had left a distant station and
were arriving at the Wave-Hill police station. She was a Narwula skin
woman sitting; watching the glinting billycans come closer and closer to the
station, led by old Julama. They were then a large group on the third stage of
a trek from old Wave-Hill station to Wattie-Creek; the future sit-down place.
Daniels was one who had
encouraged the series of strikes, says Bernie Brian. The Newcastle Waters
station saw a strike motivated by him. Paddy Carroll (NAWU Secretary) merely
wanted ‘token’ strikes but Daniels would go further. Union funding was a
concern for Carol, and in this point there may be a clue to NAWU involvement.
Indigenous workers were paid very little, if at all, for their labour; mostly
with meagre rations. Vestey’s had withheld wages for years. NAWU documents held
at the National Archives Australia (NT) may indicate that what little pay they were receiving may have been
redirected to the union accounting register. This, in part, may explain the
unions unusual unwillingness to support a strike action. ‘In spite of Carroll’s
objections to extending the strike, Daniels went ahead and encouraged a further
walk-off in August’.
August saw the Wave-Hill
walk off; NAWU was dismayed when they discovered Helen-Springs became strike
bound later. They issued a statement ‘disassociating the union from the
activities of Gibbs, Daniels and Hardy’. The array of confusion now left the
union questioning the appointment of an Aboriginal organiser (Daniels), the
apparent lack of Aboriginal membership, communist insurgency and the generally
unnoticed historical precedents.
However, NAWU was highly
praised by indigene countryman; according to ASIO. It had carried out extensive
surveillance of the movement since the 1949 reformation of the organisation. At
one particular NTCAR meeting in Darwin, sometime before the 3rd of
August 1966, a group comprising Gibbs, Roberts and others drafted suitably
worded documents to address issues that would be advanced by a strike. They
discussed slanderous anti-Aboriginal rhetoric, the issues of mixed culture
womanising, alcohol, wages, a future appeal to the UN and national disgraces in
breach of the United Nations charter.
In the lead up to the
Wave-Hill strike, Aboriginal Phillip Roberts of the health department had just
returned from a tour of his peoples communities. There he had talked with the
people about current restlessness, and about the recent strike actions in 1965.
Later, he Gibbs and Carroll met to discuss the pending ACTU wage claim. Carroll
gave instructions to extend the restlessness past the court dates (August 3) in
order to assess the outcomes of the case. Robert’s reply was: ‘All right, Mr
Carroll, thank you. But remember this: if you don’t take action-my people
will’. They then agreed that a strike of mainly Aboriginal people would be
necessary some time after the August 3rd wage claim. The NT News
carried a large article on the 25th July, announcing the contents of
the program. Carroll was quoted: ‘I urge you to get right behind Phillip
Roberts, Davis Daniels and the others who have done such a good job for you’;
he said to the crowd.
By July 29, an eleven-point
draft of grievances had been consolidated. Two-hundred people had gathered for
a public meeting at the Rapid Creek inlet where each of the points were put to
the vote; and an election was held for union seats. On closing the meeting,
Roberts announced: ‘If the conference fails we will act -if necessary alone’.
About one month later, on the 16th August, Aboriginals staged
demonstrations outside the Territory Legislative Council. They were pushing the
Eleven-point resolution from the Rapid Creek meeting, handing out pamphlets and
talking to people. The group proceeded on to the NAWU office, where a public
statement was later issued. The NT News reported: ‘The union would do
all it could to break down all the iniquitous old station
system…[that]…provided constant sources of cheap labour’.
A week passed and then there
was another round of argument in the pastoral dispute, the NAWU clashing with
pastoralists; Carroll was paraphrased: ‘the truth of the matter was that the
Government had to intervene…because the pastoralists would not budge on the
issue’. On the 24th, the NT News reported that Canberra had
now received six petitions from five states, and one from the day before;
asking Government to repeal the Wages Ordinance. Canberra thus had been
experiencing nationally supported campaigns at least since December 1965.
CONCLUDED
On August 3 1966, Jack Meaney approached Carroll and suggested he should be prominent in the dispute. Carroll had been at the August 3 ACTU commission in Sydney where he had apparently failed to make enough concessions with Federal Government. The result in Darwin was an air of apprehension and excitement as the concerned parties manoeuvred toward their next actions.
It was determined that a
visitation to the VRD stations was paramount. Carroll agreed, but only that it
should be a survey trip. Daniels; a wharfie named Nick and Walter Rogers
volunteered. The strike was imminent, Daniels was sure. He spoke to Hardy on the quiet; Hardy
saying: ‘You don’t start any strikes but don’t stop any’; and Daniels said:
‘That right Frank, if that Wave-Hill mob want to walk off I don’t stop them.
Well, I couldn’t stop them’.
Ida Bernard, a Gurindji
woman, worked in the station kitchen. She talks about Vincent Lingiari and how
he arrived from Darwin on the plane. He and Frank Hardy convinced the people
there that it was time to take decisive action. They had to walk-off the next
day; go down by the river at Wattie-Creek. ‘In one of the first actions of the
land rights movement, six-hundred Gurindji workers and their families walked of
the station’. This place became Daguragu.
The strike made front-page news in the Territory on August 26:
Native Wages Issue Blow Out:
200 walk off at Wave Hill.
The Aborigines’ leader is a middle-aged stockman named Vincent Lingiari.
The Vestey’s pastoral boss
had subsequently flown from Sydney and upon arrival, tried to gain a return to
work. The NT News records the exchange on page three between Lingiari
and Peter Morris. Station manager Tom Fischer weighed in to the debate, however
Lingiari refused to return, saying he was going to wait until Dexter Daniels
came back. In October of 1966 Major and Dexter Daniels were in the southern
states with the help of the CPA, it was there that they attracted funds and
help from interest groups to support the strike. ‘Daniels was well known to
southern Unionists. In 1965 he had addressed meetings in southern cities and
appealed for funds’.
Big Mick Kankinang claimed
his portion of the accolades that might be due him in 1984. He recorded a message
to Prime Minister Bob Hawke saying: ‘I’m the bloke that went on strike from
VRD. And all the Pigeon Hole [mob], I striked them. No1, 22 [stock
camps], I striked them’…That’s all the strike mob. And all the station mob, all
come to me’. He was referring to the mass exodus that sat down at Daguragu
soon after the Wave-Hill walk-off. He talked about the help they received from
university students to shift camp; and that Geise and others from the Darwin
welfare branch tried to persuade a return to work. Three unions; NAWU, WWU
(Waterside Workers Union) and AE (Actors Equity) gave national support to the
cause.
However, Julie Wells offers
a dialectic argument to this. Citing Hasluck and Welfare Minister Harry Giese,
the NT public service is implicated in rumouring and rhetoric. ‘Cheeky’ and
‘sophisticated natives’ as legitimate protagonists were held by the upper-class
to be: ‘responsible for eroding much of the good work undertaken by his
Ministry in the previous decade’. As were the media, and the lobbying
activities of any interest groups. J, H, Kelly argues that Territories
Administrator Paul Hasluck (in office for twelve years since 1951) had
reasonable intentions toward the Aborigines and the ‘New Deal’; he advances the
argument that possibly, cattle industry elites may have subverted these good
intentions.
Wells found a greater influx of White Australian public servants
in the 1950s and 1960s had contributed to social dislocation: ‘Not all groups
in the Northern Territory, however, shared equally in the benefits of the boom
times’. An article in the NT News reflected the conditions of
Australia’s rural and remote areas. Aborigines were filtering into urban areas
of all states seeking the prospect of equal wages and better social conditions.
Correspondence from NTCPC
(NT Cattle Producers Council) prodding the Federal Minister of the Interior in
Canberra displays the inherent racism, supposed cultural superiority, the
supposed communist threat, and the willingness of cattle people to hide behind
these stances in order to reign supreme. Particularly after: ‘the exodus of the
residue of the Gurindji from the strike camp’.
It is unclear as to exactly
where the communist phobia was leaching from; was it coming from the pastoral
industry in the form of rumours suggesting a loss of heritage and hegemony. Or,
from the Territory general-public in the form of racist propaganda and
rhetoric. It seems unlikely however, that the Federal Government was
responsible, as it appears they took an observatory role using a diligent and
prolific ASIO presence throughout the period of the movement.
CONCLUSIONS.
Right–wing groups had perhaps been responsible in part for fermenting the bigotry directed toward the indigene; in July 1968 an article was released by them that was inherently misguided about the intentions of both the Federal Government and the Aboriginal movements:
The
Christian Church in Australia promoting a petition by the Federal Council for
the Advancement of Aborigines and Tortes Strait Islanders has harnessed itself
to the machinery of this revolutionary political agitation. As with racial
agitation the world over, the objective is not the welfare of the native
peoples, but their ruthless and cynical exploitation to promote warfare between
the races. The final objective being the destruction of stable government.
NTCAR and NAWU records kept
as a memorial put together by Frank Stevens for the period and events in
question; holds a large collection of documentation and correspondence from the
many interest groups and parties involved in the Aboriginal movement of the
era. In the collection, a letter from Mr and Mrs Carter of NSW refer to Article
1 of the UN Human-Rights declaration; this suggests that by 1965, Aborigines
were fully aware of the covenants. Interest came from all sectors of society
and even internationally; secretary Davis Daniels even received a letter from a
member of the New Zealand Jewish community.
In all, the Aboriginal movements in the period in question, and in the region of the VRD, were as complex as the Aboriginal society itself. They were intent on being able to re-determine their destiny, and to do this they managed to enlist all types of assistance throughout the country. Many interested persons devoted their lives to the cause, and many causes were found in the search for ways to alter the entrenched view of the indigene. The later achievements of the movements were a signpost in Australian social history as the people went on to land claiming and dignification for themselves. The supposed communist threat that permeated the social discourse of the time, the thread that was elusive yet seemingly present and ultimately harmless, was but one aspect of the paranoia that pervaded the cattle industry as they lost their hegemony.
Stripped of oppressive
attitudes, the Northern Territory saw a new cultural awareness emerge; the
Wave-Hill walkout allowed identities from all sections of society to make use
of the new rights movements and mandates. With this came a sweeping change that
in the space of twenty years would launch Australian society into a new
paradigm that was overdue and well deserved by the Aboriginal peoples.
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