Norm Gallagher, the BLF and the Australian Labor Movement

324 Pages·2013·3.21 MB·English

by  Phillip Deery

“It was all about the working class”:
Norm Gallagher, the BLF and the
Australian Labor Movement

Aidan Moore

College of Arts
Victoria University

2013
Doctor of Philosophy Declaration

“I, Aidan Moore, declare that the PhD thesis entitled ‘It was all about the working class’:
Norm Gallagher, the BLF and the Australian Labor movement, is no more than 100,000
words in length including quotes and exclusive of tables, figures, appendices, bibliography,
references and footnotes. This thesis contains no material that has been submitted previously,
in whole or in part, for the award of any other degree or diploma. Except where otherwise
indicated, this thesis is my own work”.

Signature: Date:

ii
Contents

Abstract ii

Acknowledgements iii

Abbreviations iv

Chapter One:
Introduction 1

Chapter Two:
Literature Review 12

Chapter Three:
Whose Party Was It? 28

Chapter Four:
Norm Gallagher, a short biography 63

Chapter Five:
Bringing Labor Back to Labor 86

Chapter Six:
Get Gallagher: Industrial Encirclement Begins 119

Chapter Seven:
From Newport to Loy Yang, the Struggle for Power 138

Chapter Eight:
Signalling Intent 167

Chapter Nine:
It’s Not All about the Working Class 183

Chapter Ten:
Formula For Success: Don’t Mention the War 216

Chapter Eleven:
Deregistration: The Game Anyone Can Play 247

Chapter Twelve:
Conclusion: 284

Bibliography 291
i
Abstract

The deregistration and dismemberment of the Builders Labourers’ Federation (BLF), which
was executed by Federal and State Labor Governments, was one of the most significant
events in Australian industrial relations history. The union and its general secretary, Norm
Gallagher, continue to excite passionate debate whenever their names are invoked. Portrayed
as the ugly face of trade unionism, Gallagher and the BLF provided national and state Labor
Party reformers with a timely mechanism through which they could both assert their
dominance over the Party and broaden its electoral appeal. This thesis incorporates BLF
activities into the larger story of Labor Party transmutation that occurred between the 1960s
and 1980s. By examining these shifts in the Labor Party through the prisms of Gallagher and
the BLF, we can better understand Labor’s decision to deregister and ultimately destroy the
union. The thesis argues that the trajectories taken by the BLF and the ALP were sufficiently
divergent that conflict was inevitable. Drawing on a range of key sources, this thesis provides
a new assessment of BLF deregistration, the schisms it opened up within both the Labor Party
and Conservative interests, and the way in which destruction of a union represented a critical
moment in Australian political and industrial history.

ii
Acknowledgements

I wish to thank profoundly my Principal Supervisor, Professor Phillip Deery, who also
supervised my 4th year Honours thesis on Norm Gallagher, and Associate Supervisor,
Professor Robert Pascoe, for all the assistance, expertise, encouragement and inspiration that
they have provided across the research and writing stages of this thesis. Their compassion,
friendship and support have made my journey as a PhD candidate highly enjoyable and
extremely rewarding. I also wish to acknowledge the support that I have received from
family, friends and colleagues, particularly over the last year of this project. To Michelle,
Ailish and Emily; to Tommy, Dessie and their families; to Mark Armstrong-Roper and all the
staff at Victoria University Library; to the staff of the Noel Butlin Archives Centre, the State
Library of Victoria, the University of Melbourne Archives and the Public Records Office of
Victoria; and to everyone who helped me in every way along the way, I simply say ‘thanks’.
This thesis belongs to all of us.

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List of Abbreviations

ABC Australian Broadcasting Commission
ABCE&BLF Australian Building Construction Employees’ and Builders Labourers’
Federation
ABS Australian Bureau of Statistics
ACTU Australian Congress of Trade Unions
ADF Australian Defence Force
AEU Amalgamated Engineering Union
AFCC Australian Federation of Construction Contractors
AIFS Australian Institute of Family Studies
ALP Australian Labor Party
AMP Australian Paper Mills
AMWSU Amalgamated Metal Workers and Shipwrights Union
AMWU Formerly, Amalgamated Meltal Workers Union (later, the Australian
Manufacturing Workers Union)
ANZAS Australia and New Zealand Association for the advancement of
Science
ARU Australian Railways Union
ASC&J Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Joiners
ASIO Australian Security Intelligence Organisation
ATUA Australian Trade Union Archive
AWU Australian Workers Union
BLF Builders Labourers’ Federation
BWIU Building Workers Industrial Union
CDRHWU Coastal Dock Rivers & Harbour Workers Union of West Australia
CFMEU Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union
CPA Communist Party of Australia
CPA-ML Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist)
CPSU Communist Party of the Soviet Union
DLP Democratic Labor Party
DOGS Defence of Government Schools
EMG East Melbourne Group
EPA Environment Protection Authority
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EPT Electric Power Transmission Pty Ltd
EYL Eureka Youth League
FCU Federated Clerks Union of Australia
FEDFA Federated Engine Drivers and Firemen’s Association
FIA Federated Ironworkers Association
FPLP Federal Parliamentary Labor Party
ICAL International Combustion Australia Limited
ICI Imperial Chemical Industries
ILO International Labor Organisation
IRB Industrial Relations Bureau
MBA Master Builders Association
MBAA Master Builders Association of Australia
MBAV Master Builders Association of Victoria
MBFA Master Builders Federation of Australia
MCC Melbourne Cricket Club
MCG Melbourne Cricket Ground
MTIA Metal Trades Industry Association
NBAC Noel Butlin Archive Centre
NCC National Civic Council
NLF National Liberation Front (South Vietnam)
NSW BLF New South Wales Builders Labourers’ Federation
NSW MBA New South Wales Master Builders Association
NSW TLC New South Wales Trades and Labor Council
OPDU Operative Painters and Decorators Union of Australia
OPEC Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries
PGEU Plumbers and Gasfitters Employees Union
PLP Parliamentary Labor Party
PROV Public Records Office Victoria
SBS Special Broadcasting Service
SDA Shop Distributive and Allied Employees’ Association
SECV State Electricity Commission of Victoria
SEQEB South East Queensland Electricity Board
SPA Socialist Party of Australia
v
SUA Seamen’s Union of Australia
TUDC Trade Union Defence Committee (Victoria)
TWU Transport Workers Union
UAP United Australia Party
VBIA Victorian Building Industry Agreement
VCE Victorian Central Executive (Labor Party)
VPD Victorian Parliamentary Debates
VTHC Victorian Trades Hall Council
WWF Waterside Workers’ Federation
YCW Young Christian Workers

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Chapter One
Introduction

On 20 August 1981, the Federal and Victorian Conservative Governments of Malcolm
Fraser and Lindsay Thompson announced a joint Royal Commission into the affairs of
the Building Construction Employees and Builders Labourers Federation (ABCE&BLF),
or BLF,1 as the union was more commonly known.2 Allegations that the general
secretary, Norm Gallagher, had received secret commissions in the form of labour and
materials for a holiday home that he was building at McLaughlins Beach, Victoria,
provided the raison d’etre for the inquiry. Pre-empting any findings the Royal
Commission might make, Prime Minister Fraser formally commenced what John Cain
suggested were ‘half-baked deregistration proceedings’ against the BLF.3
First mooted in February 1981, Fraser’s deregistration efforts had been hampered
by Liberal Party in-fighting and a paucity of support from employers, for whom an
industry free of Gallagher and the BLF might have been an obvious choice.4 But in
running deregistration and Royal Commission actions simultaneously from late-
September 1981, Fraser and Thompson hoped both to reinvigorate employer support for
their anti-union measures and to amplify the conflict and confusion that such an overlap
would produce.5

1 Except where direct quotes record the name of the union differently, this thesis will use Australian
English spelling when referring to the Builders Labourers’ Union. The thesis will also refer to the union in
terms that ascribe ownership to the labourers, rather than the builders who employed them. The exception
will be where direct quotes ascribe ownership to the employers, as in Builders’ Labourers Union, or to
both, as in Builders’ Labourers’ Union. When referring to labourers employed by builders, the term used in
this thesis will be builders’ labourers, or simply labourers.
2 Age, 21 August 1981, p.15; Brian Boyd, Inside the BLF: a union self-destructs, Melbourne: Ocean Press,
1991, p.31; John Cain, John Cain’s Years: Power, Parties and Politics, Melbourne: Melbourne University
Press, 1995, p.119. Cain identified the Royal Commission as being instigated in Victoria by the
Government of Rupert Hamer. However, Hamer had been replaced as Premier by Lindsay Thompson on 5
June 1981. The decision to hold a Royal Commission may have been made during Hamer’s premiership,
but was in fact implemented under Thompson.
3 Cain, John Cain’s Years, p.119.
4 For plans to deregister the BLF, see for example, Age, 17 February 1981, p.1; Bulletin, 17 February 1981,
p.22. For the Liberal Party in-fighting and lack of employer enthusiasm that undermined Fraser’s attack on
the BLF, see Chapter Nine of this thesis.
5 John Cain, ‘The Builders Labourers’ Federation – Unions and Government’, Unpublished Diary Notes,
p.8.
1
Whilst supportive of Fraser’s attack, media outlets such as the Age newspaper
nevertheless acknowledged that it was cynical, politically-motivated and calculated to
boost the Federal Government’s flagging electoral stocks.6 Not even right-wing
academic, Frank Knopfelmacher, could condone such actions. He used the letters section
of the same newspaper to describe the manoeuvre as a straight-out case of union-
bashing.7 The BLF was being punished, Knopfelmacher insisted, because it had proven
too able to ‘protect the honor and dignity of the blue-collar strata against [the] social
disprivilege and offensive snobberies’ that impinged upon them from ‘above’, and
because Gallagher threatened to ‘extract the maximum amount of profit’ for his
members’ labour.8 Knopfelmacher’s views resonated with rank-and-file members of the
BLF. A concrete finisher and unionist of 25-years standing captured the mood when he
stated: ‘If they’re putting this much [effort] into having a go at us, we must have been
doing something right’.9
The broader labor movement response was more ambiguous. Somewhat
determined along state lines, support for the BLF was strongest in Gallagher’s home state
of Victoria, and weakest in New South Wales (NSW), where his mid-1970s takeover of
the BLF branch had caused serious consternation. In Victoria, those union leaders most
committed to Australia’s system of arbitration and conciliation had least reason to
applaud BLF militancy and Gallagher’s uncompromising style. For them, every BLF
success was a double-edged sword: their members benefited from and revelled in the
gains that builders’ labourers made, yet had naturally to ask why it was that their own
officials left all or most of the running to Gallagher and his comrades. But if Victorian
union leaders harboured resentments towards the BLF and its militant leader – because,
for example, arbitration offered a safer, though less rewarding route to incremental wage
gains – their enmity was constrained both by the pro-BLF sentiments of their members,
and by the viciousness of Fraser and Thompson’s assault.
As an open letter penned by Building Workers Industrial Union (BWIU)
organiser, Allen Sargent, implied, it was really only when federal and state Labor

6 Age, 18 February 1981, p.13.
7 Age, 5 March 1981, p.12.
8 Ibid.
9 The B.L. No. 3, March 1981, p.7.
2