Towards Peace: A Worker's Journey
By Phil O'Brien
SHAPE, 1992. 224 pp., $5 (plus $2 postage)
Reviewed by Lisa Macdonald
Phil O'Brien was a soldier for six years, a waterside worker and trade unionist for 30 years and an antiwar campaigner almost all this life. Towards Peace is his story, originally written for his family and close friends, and told with honesty, humour and compassion. The main objective of his autobiography, he says, is to persuade present and future generations to become involved in the world peace movement.
The author grew up in a working-class family in Queensland. His childhood experiences during the Great Depression led him to question the injustices of this society early, but it was his tour of duty with the Army Services Corps during World War II that fuelled his determination "to do something to prevent the next generation from experiencing war".
From when he joined the army in 1939 until 1945, O'Brien kept a diary, which forms the basis for five chapters of the book, recounting the experiences of ordinary soldiers fighting in Middle East, Greece, Turkey, New Guinea and Borneo.
O'Brien met many communists and other leftists in the army, and their ideas influenced his later involvement in the anti-Vietnam War movement and Draft Resisters Union.
O'Brien's account of his experiences as a unionist on the waterfront from 1948 until his retirement in 1976 is rich with stories of hard struggles, many defeats but more victories. So much of the history he documents is still relevant today.
He describes his membership of the Waterside Workers Federation (WWF) and involvement in industrial, political and social events of the postwar years as "the most meaningful part of my life". A branch executive member from 1958 to 1974 and a committed rank and filer, O'Brien participated in long struggles to win permanency of employment, better wages and long-service leave, and against infiltration of the union by the right-wing National Civic Council and Democratic Labour Party.
Two chapters of the book are devoted to reprinting dozens of songs, poems and yarns dealing with life on the waterfront. They are fiercely pro-worker, sometimes humorous, sometimes tragic accounts of the work, politics and men on the wharves.
Another very entertaining chapter records many of the nicknames used on the wharves, and of course their derivation. It gives a colourful insight into the workplace culture: "Bartlett Pears" was always in the can; Gunner Walsh was always saying "I'm gunna do it shortly", "Martin Place" was always full by lunchtime and "Singlets" (a supervisor) was never off your back.
O'Brien's first effort at political activism was campaigning against Menzies' Communist Party Dissolution Bill. Believing that "It is impossible to divorce politics from unionism", he worked with many well-known communist leaders in the WWF (but never joined the party) and argues the case for the union's support for the ALP while "also put[ting] forward many of our own progressive objectives which were far in advance of the official Labor policy".
It was during his involvement in trade union activities that O'Brien perceived that "among workers, the life and death questions of war and peace were always discussed. This prompted my activity in the peace movement. I was convinced of a need for a local, national and international movement for peace."
During the 1960s and '70s, many trade unions formed peace committees. O'Brien became secretary of the Waterfront Peace Committee, was active in the campaign against the first round of French nuclear tests in the Pacific in the 1960s and attended the 1962 world congress for peace and disarmament called by the World Peace Council in Moscow as a representative of the trade union movement. In 1990, he was made a world peace councillor.
Phil O'Brien's book is a valuable piece of Australian social history which is written with the confidence and honesty of a genuinely conscious member of the working class. Copies can be ordered from SHAPE, PO Box 5093, West End 4101.