Radical Times: Brisbane in the Sixties and Seventies

Abstract

This conference organised by the fledgling Brisbane Labour History Association with the assistance of the Queensland Council of Unions was long overdue. If its organisers were inspired by the apparent success of the earlier Sydney Labour History Conference, which traversed similar themes and issues, the Brisbane show emphasised how different its historical context and political experiences were. The conference participants did not engage in amnesiac nostalgia for radical times past. Instead, they offered analyses and testimonies of how radical their social movements were within the confines of the big country town of Brisbane where racism, political repression, and social conservatism held sway. Only Dan O'Neill spoke briefly but incisively about the roots of Brisbane's sunny oppressiveness and its reaction to the first stirrings of political engagement by a moderate minority of university students to the American war in Vietnam, military conscription, institutional and casual racism, South African apartheid, sexism and women's liberation. The jack-boot tradition of Bjelke-Petersen's police force to any manifestation of a student political rally, march or demonstration deepened their political radicalism and swelled their numbers. Unlike Sydney or Melbourne during the same period, there were few Queensland trade union leaders and rank-and-file unionists who actively supported the student struggles. This point was emphasised by the 'southerner,' Alan Anderson who was a Plumber's Union delegate to the Brisbane Trades and Labour Council. 'Ando' stressed that most ALP union officials were either indifferent or openly hostile to the emerging civil liberties movement, led by the St Lucia students. The few Communist Party union leaders may have been personally sympathetic to the students, but never attempted to agitate for these causes as Jack Mundey and Norm Gallagher had done on Sydney and Melbourne BLF building sites. Nevertheless, Left trade union leaders, through Anderson's encouragement, allowed the student radicals to establish 'Foco' within the portals of Brisbane's Trade Hall. 'Foco' became, for a time, a weekly gathering for the alienated young. Rock music, underground posters, and the subversive ideas of the New Left found a willing 'Foco' audience. If some of Australia's best rock bands played their first gig at the Brisbane Trades Hall, many 'Focoists' became radical activists against war, racism and poverty. Only when 'Foco' was forced to vacate its union bastion because of exaggerated complaints about noise and refuse did the police raid and close down every other venue in Brisbane hired by the 'Foco' organisers.