The A.R.U. in Queensland: Some Oral History

Abstract

The railway construction era began in Queensland in 1865 and within twenty years unions of employees had been established within the industry. While some, like the Engine Drivers, Firemen and Cleaners, followed the familiar craft organisation pattern, a determined and conscious effort was directed towards the organising of all railway employees, from top to bottom of the department, into an 'all grades' industrial union. By 1886 such a union was functioning under the name of the 'Queensland Railway Employees' Association'. The Q.R.E.A. attempted to embrace a complex range of occupation and status, but a variety of factors, then and later, prevented the com plete realisation of all-grades unionism within the railway service. The policy of victimisation of the leaders of the Q.R.E.A. which was fol lowed by the early railway commissioners, together with the effect of the great strikes of 1890-94 on trade unionism generally, put the Q.R.E.A. out of existence; nevertheless by 1896 it had been reconstituted on the basis of branches at Ipswich and Brisbane. Thereafter, for some years, the union had an up-and-down exis tence, but by 1910 three separate and independent Q.R.E.A.s were in operation, corresponding to the three divisions of the railway system southern, central and northern. Some degree of consolidation was achieved in 1911, with the amalgamation of the central and southern divisional organisations, under the name of the Queensland United Railway Employees' Association, to be followed, in the aftermath of the 1912 general strike, by the inclusion of the northern railway men into a union which, in 1913, underwent a further change of name to Queens land Railway Union. Two years later, trouble between the Council of the Q.R.U. and the Townsville Branch led to the latter's breaking away and forming another all-grades union?the Amalgamated Railway Union ?but by 1916 the errant branch had returned to the fold and organisa tional unity was at last achieved. In September 1920, five State all-grades unions federated into the Australian Railways Union (with Western Australia eventually affiliating with the national body) and from that date, the Q.R.U. became the A.R.U. (Queensland Branch) ,1 It would be no exaggeration to claim that with the obvious excep tion of the A.W.U., from 1920 until the mid-1950s, at least, the A.R.U. in Queensland was the largest (in membership) and most powerful union in the labour movement. Its reputation as a left-wing militant organisation stemmed in part from the philosophical beliefs of its leaders in industrial unionism and workers' control of industry. The views quoted in this paper were recorded on tape during August 1967 and April 1969, when I was fortunate enough to be able to arrange interviews with three former officials of the A.R.U., all of whom had played significant roles in the union's formative years, during its early industrial struggles, and in the labour movement generally.2