Australia's Spies and Their Secrets
ASIO worked with unions and bosses
In Australia's Spies and Their Secrets, author David McKnight uncovers a shadowy hand behind the events which shaped Australian politics from the end of the second world war to the 1970s. In this period the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) acted as an arm of the Liberal and Country parties in the cause of unbending ultra-conservatism. From drawing up plans for the internment of up to 10,000 people in the event of war; to feeding illegally gained material to media proprietors and journalists, in an effort to discredit those with non-conformist ideas; to working with Liberal opposition leader Billy Snedden against the Whitlam Labor government — ASIO and the conservative political establishment combined to undermine the very thing they were pledged to defend, Australian parliamentary democracy.
From its foundation in 1949, ASIO regarded the Communist Party of Australia (CPA), a legal organisation, as the embodiment of "subversion" and evil — it was public enemy number one. In the cold war years an anticommunist, and ultimately anti-democratic, consensus stretched from the boardrooms of big business via the Liberal and Country parties into the right-wing of the Labor Party and trade union movement. We reprint here extracts from Australia's Spies and Their Secrets, in which it is revealed that vetting writers, media workers and government employees was all in a day's work for ASIO.
The practice of vetting spread far more widely than the Commonwealth Public Service, through its application to people who worked in the "key points" for defence. These were ports, electricity commissions, oil refineries and other vital installations usually under the control of state governments and private enterprise, and which would play a key role in wartime ... The great fear was that in wartime a communist would call strikes in these industries or in some way sabotage them in the interests of the USSR. Thus while not every steelworker in BHP was vetted, those with access to key areas such as the control room of a BHP blast furnace were.
Key points vetting naturally entailed that ASIO information that a metalworker or an engineer was a "security risk" became known to company management. The opportunity was thus wide open for political discrimination and there is no doubt this happened frequently whenever an adverse report was made. [ASIO'S] Eric Nave laid down a policy which recognised that this was inevitable but adopted a stance of pious rectitude:
"It must be appreciated that the question of the employment of individuals is entirely one for the department or firm concerned and in no circumstances should any recommendation be made that any individual be dismissed. In the present situation a tactful transfer would probably be the best solution ... In an emergency or wartime a more positive approach would be necessary ..."
The vast sweep of vetting in private enterprise necessitated special precautions to maintain secrecy. "[S]erious embarrassment could ensue if any disclosures were made that security reasons were responsible for any action taken. Consequently all dealings will be carried out verbally ..." Inevitably close relations developed between the management of major factories and ASIO. Another spin-off was the use of management as "talent spotters" for agents. All of this in turn contributed to the growth of "unofficial vetting" for the sake of good relations with management of key points. In most cases this was practised upon potential employees while in others it amounted to personal favours, for instance checking a teacher at the school of an employer's daughter. Such favours were usually given by more senior ASIO officers. This pattern was duplicated in other fields as contacts multiplied between ASIO officers and employers, top public servants, senior military brass and so on. By the late 1960s contact between ASIO officers and right-wing ALP officials was such that the latter would check suspected communists who tried to join the ALP. Just how widespread this practice became will probably never be known ...
[The sixties] saw an upsurge in trade union militancy as well as intellectual revolt. According to left-wing mythology at the time, ASIO worked hand in glove with the bosses. In fact the myth was very close to reality.
"Blacklisting" is a nasty word and no ASIO officer interviewed for this book ever admitted to conniving with employers to get rid of workers with "undesirable" political views. However, one ASIO officer described his dealing with BHP in the following terms: "All [management's] doors were open to you ... the day to day stuff was at middle management level but it was sanctioned at higher levels." Such contact with BHP saved "an awful lot of time and effort". Indeed it was a symbiosis. The BHP industrial officer would tell the ASIO field officer of comrade x's daytime leadership of the shop committee while the ASIO man filled in comrade x's after hours activity in the local metalworkers' union and peace movement. "[BHP] saw it as a common interest, after all, what we were doing was assisting stability in the community at large", said an officer who maintained such contact for several years in Newcastle.
ASIO'S surveillance of the union field was based on its "legitimate" interest in the CPA. This meant that all CPA tactics and strategy were carefully studied in order to oppose it. However, because CPA trade union members and leaders were intimately involved in the wider industrial movement, this meant that ASIO had to keep in contact and understand the whole of the Australian trade union movement. The activity of the CPA in each union was not hermetically sealed and around the dwindling number of CPA militants was a periphery of non-party militant workers who respected their leadership. As well, the CPA dealt with Labor Left figures which sometimes resulted in power sharing arrangements in major unions. Shifting alliances with the unions also saw the CPA deal with centre and even right-wing factions of the union movement. Thus when ASIO mounted operations to spy on individuals whether they were steelworkers or union bureaucrats they were interfering directly in an aspect of political life — the labour movement — in breach of their charter ...
The central figure in the liaison between the NSW branch of the ALP and ASIO was Jack Clowes. Clowes first made contact with members of the Industrial Groups just before the great Labor split of 1955. His period of closest liaison was from the late 1950s until 1971.
As part of the research for this book I interviewed two former officials of the NSW Right who held various senior positions in the union movement, one during the 1960s and 1970s, the other in the 1970s. The first, "Mr Smith" explained that as a member of an Industrial Group and an up-and-coming trade unionist he had first met Clowes around 1954. In succeeding years a close relationship grew up between "Smith" and other Labor and union officials and Clowes. The group, which included union leader John Ducker, shared all manner of information and gossip and often met for lunch at the Knights of the Southern Cross Club in central Sydney with Clowes.
The alliance between John Windsor Clowes and the anti-communists in the NSW branch was not that of puppeteer and puppets, but rather of people who shared the same ideological stance and who were useful for each other ...
From Smith and others in the ALP [Clowes] gathered up-to-date inside information on the union movement, the CPA and the state government, which was Labor-controlled until 1965. In return, Clowes happily shared information drawn from his access to telephone taps and physical surveillance ...
But the key area of co-operation between "Smith" and ASIO concerned the running of an ASIO agent who was a national official of a key Left union. The official, who cannot be named, was identified to this author by "Smith", by another ALP official and by two retired ASIO officers. One described him as "an industrial link man between the CPA and the Labor Left". The agent also held a key position in the local electoral machine of a very senior figure in the Whitlam government. He was thus able to report in intimate detail on the trade union Left and the CPA — and keep an eye on a top Labor figure of interest to ASIO ...
So close were the links between Clowes and leaders of the NSW Right that when he retired from ASIO in late 1971, he was employed for two years as a research officer in the NSW Labor Council library.
[Next week: ASIO conducts "operations" against the peace movement.]