Chris Slee, Melbourne
Fifty people attended a July 4 meeting organised by the Socialist Alliance to discuss working-class resistance in Australia today.
The theme of the meeting was "Bad laws are meant to be broken", and the discussion was introduced by Craig Johnston, the former Victorian state secretary of the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union (AMWU), recently released from jail after serving a nine-month sentence for actions taken in defence of 29 sacked workers.
Johnston argued that it is often necessary to use civil disobedience to get undemocratic and anti-worker laws changed or made ineffective.
He cited examples from Australian history, beginning with the Tolpuddle martyrs, who were jailed and exiled from Britain to Australia for forming a trade union.
Johnston cited some victories won through campaigns involving "illegal" actions. After Tramways Union secretary Clarrie O'Shea was jailed in 1969 for refusing to hand over the union's books to the government, 1.5 million workers stopped work, resulting in the freeing of O'Shea and the rendering of the penal powers of the arbitration system ineffective.
Workers at the Altona petrochemical complex won a 35-hour week through strikes and sit-ins, including a long sit-in at Union Carbide.
During the 1998 maritime dispute, mass picketing occurred at Melbourne's East Swanston Dock in defiance of an injunction, but nobody was arrested because of the scale of the defiance.
Johnston cited numerous other examples of workers defying the law, including the shearers strike of the 1890s, the Industrial Workers of the World anti-conscription campaign during the first world war, and mass picketing during industrial disputes such as those at Martin Bright Steels and Feltex.
Commenting on the present situation, Johnston said: "Howard's laws are bad — but what's new?". He argued that it is necessary to make employers and the government fearful to actually use the new laws.
He advocated mass delegates' meeting to plan further actions on the scale of the June 30 protests, or even larger. He also advocated selecting particular disputes where workers are being harshly treated by their employer or the government as a focus for mass solidarity action in defiance of the laws. Examples include the threat to fine Visy workers for attending a rally in support of asbestos victims, and similar threats against Australia Post workers for attending the June 30 rally.
From Green Left Weekly, July 13, 2005.
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