The Trade Unions in Australia and Opposition to Vietnam and Conscription: 1965-73

Abstract

Between 1965 and 1973 opponents of United States and Australian involvement in Vietnam and of conscription for Vietnam constantly sought support for their aims, and participation in their activities, from as broad a section of the Australian community as possible. Most concern was expressed about enlisting the support of 'the working class'. It was a point frequently raised at organisational and public meetings and often highlighted in propaganda. Thus in late 1970, the year in which the anti-war movement staged two strongly-supported and in that respect highly successful anti-Vietnam war campaigns, a trade union official lamented that the movement's 'biggest weakness' was 'the lack of par ticipation' in anti-war activities by the trade union movement.1 This was a commonly-held assumption in the movement and it was therefore not surprising that it persisted in making the achievement of greater working-class support a matter of the highest priority. At the largest and possibly the most important gathering of anti-war movement leaders during this period?the national anti-war conference in Sydney in Feb ruary 1971?the movement accepted a proposal from another trade union official 'that the whole anti-war movement make the main direction of its activities towards achieving a forthright effort at all levels of the working class and labour movement for mass consciousness and action for the aims' with the object of achieving 'the goal of a mass political strike'.2 What is surprising is that those few academics who have taken a professional interest in the anti-Vietnam war movement have almost com pletely ignored the role of the trade unions within it. Albinski, who studied the impact of the war and conscription on Australian politics and society up to 1968, made almost no mention of sections of either the working class or the trade union movement in the anti-war move ment.3 Although political parties, academics, students, artists, veterans, and clergymen are given special treatment the only space he allots to the trade unions are two paragraphs on an incident involving the Sea men's Union in March 1967. And Summy, in an article dealing with the Australian peace movement between 1960 and 1967, after noting that left-wing trade unions constituted the nucleus of the peace movement up to the advent of Vietnam and conscription, completely ignores their role thereafter.4 The deficiency, then, is obvious. This article attempts to fulfil three objectives: to describe, firstly, trade union opposition to Australian involvement in the war and to conscription between 1965 and 1969; secondly, trade union support for and participation in the anti-Vietnam war movement during the period of the moratorium campaigns in 1970