Comparing the Australian Labour Movement's Responses to World War 1 and the Vietnam War
by Bastian Simrajh
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This essay will seek to analyse the responses of the Australian labour movement to the wars of the twentieth century. Looking specifically at the First World War and the Vietnam War, this essay will argue that in both instances the actions of the Australian labour movement in actively campaigning against war were sporadic and lacking, particularly in contrast to the actions of comparable labour movements throughout the world. Taking examples from the Melbourne (and later Victorian) Trades Hall Council, this essay will demonstrate how in both instances, it was predominately the prospect of the introduction of conscription which eventually galvanized the campaigning power of Trades Hall and the unions in wartime.
The early twentieth century can fairly be described as a high water mark for the power and influence of the labour movement in Australian society. Whilst suffering a significant downturn between 1890-1910 as a result of economic depression, by 1914 just under half of the entire workforce was a member of a union.1 With the election of the Australian Labor Party to majority government in the new federal parliament in 1910, the power of the labour movement and its ability to influence change was even further bolstered.2
Accepting this political environment as relatively favourable to the labour movement, the absence of a united labour campaign against war in 1914 is most curious. Across the world, organised labour was strongly influenced by internationalist and socialist ideology and thus a persistent goal of organised labour was the eradication of war. Resolutions of the Second International Socialist Congress called for actions to be taken by unions to oppose war, such as a refusal to manufacture war materials, general strikes and prohibitions on enlisting to fight.3 Such actions however were seldom taken in Australia and once war was declared, these ideological objections were almost entirely ignored.4
The noted absence of the Australian labour movement taking an active role in the lead up to the eventual war is a topic that has drawn attention from scholars of comparative history. Following the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, Archer notes that the response of European labour movements to the crisis was strong. In Europe, labour movements acted collectively, calling emergency meetings and conferences, decrying moves towards conflict and organising mass meetings and protests of the working class.5 In Australia there was an absence of effort, “opposition, such as it was, was almost entirely limited to small socialist parties, a handful of Industrial Workers of the World activists and pacifist organisations.”6 Records from the meeting of the Melbourne Trades Hall Council from 13 August 1914, the first meeting held following Britain’s declaration of war on Germany on 4 August, make no mention whatsoever of the event. Minutes show the issue of the war would not be mentioned in a meeting of the Melbourne Trades Hall Council until late September and then only in passing by a guest speaker.7 The first motion passed by the Council on the matter would not come until October, which was a motion merely requesting that the Defence Minister seek permission from the wives of servicemen before sending them overseas to fight.8
The question is then, why, given the strong actions of the labour movement in so many aspects of life in the young Australia, was the movement so lacking in input on what was largely the greatest challenge the nation had faced since federation? Additionally, given that the vast bulk of the fighting men for Australia’s war effort would come from the working masses the trade and industrial unions represented, why did the movement not work as hard to prevent their lives being risked on the battlefield as they did on the factory floor?
The answer is no doubt a complex one; factors such as a loyalty to the mother country (Britain) and geographical separation would play a role. Additionally, that the Australian labour movement’s political arm, the Australian Labor Party, was a party of government unlike in the case of other comparable nations may also have played a role. The declaration of war coming during a federal election campaign period, the Labor Party would have sought to emphasise its affinity to the generally popular notion “Empire loyalty” by not making the issue one on which the election would be fought.9 A look at the minutes of the Melbourne Trades Hall Council would support this hypothesis; that winning the election, which Labor had lost previously by just one seat, was perhaps the most primary concern. In the period of May to September, just once was a motion put in relation to the discouraging the outbreak of war, yet there were three motions put in relation to activity on the election campaign directly and a number of guest speakers who broached the topic when speaking to the Council.10
We can gather thus that the response of the Australian labour movement in campaigning against the prospect of Australian involvement in the First World War was, compared to other movements around the world, lacklustre. In the period from the outbreak of war until the breakout of the conscription debate, labour movement attitude was one of ranging from resigned consent to tacit approval. In fact, at a meeting of the Melbourne Trades Hall Council of 15 October 1915, a motion was passed condemning the Commonwealth Bank for refusing a leave of absence to an employee seeking to enlist in the military, calling on the bank to not “prevent its employees in answering the call of their country”.11
The proposal for the introduction of conscription served as a turning point in the relationship between the Australian labour movement and the ongoing war effort. Whereas in the years prior, the response of the unions to the war could be characterised as divided or disinterested, following Prime Minister Billy Hughes’ moves to introduce conscription in the fledgling nation during 1916, the movement rapidly mobilised to campaign strongly against the proposal.12
Hughes was a Labor prime minister, however on his return to Australia from a tour of Europe in 1916, was convinced of the need for the introduction of conscription in order to maintain the nation’s presence on the European battlefield. By the time he arrived back in Australia on 31 July 1916, the anti-conscription fight was already on. In a Melbourne Trades Hall Council meeting on 10 March of the same year, a motion was passed which called for a congress to “discuss the question of conscription and the official position of the industrial movement thereon.”13 By 8 June this question was settled with the newspapers reporting the Melbourne Trades Hall Council, along with major unions and the Victorian Branch of the Labor Party were holding secret meetings to “evolve a scheme to combat any attempt […] to introduce the conscription of life and labor”.14
The reason for the labour movement’s opposition to conscription was based on several concerns. A wariness towards empire, a desire to avoid entanglement in foreign conflicts, a moral opposition to state compulsion to fight, as well as an objection to the conscription of labour and not capital, all form part of this reasoning.15 In a manifesto by the Australian Trade Union Congress, the movement argued “conscription has been used not merely as an instrument of nation defence, but as a bludgeon to break down the standard of the industrial classes.”16 The manifesto, written at Melbourne Trades Hall in July 1916 by senior Melbourne Trades Hall Council figures, C.J. Bennett and E.J. Holloway, highlighted another key concern: that conscription in practice was a method of “working class subjugation”.17 Unionists feared that a conscriptionist Australia would be an increasingly nationalistic and militaristic Australia where working conditions would be threatened by “the bugle and the drawn sword.”18
The anti-conscription campaign eventually led by the labour movement throughout 1916 and 1917 is one of the movement’s proudest achievements to date. Emblazoned on the walls of Melbourne Trades Hall are records of the campaign, one example being the results of the two referenda on the matter. Written in large gold lettering, the mural on the interior of the building near the east entrance shows that in both referenda, 1916 and 1917, the question was resolved in the negative.19 Shortly following the events of the July 1916 Australian Trade Union Congress, an Australian Trade Union Anti-Conscription Committee was established to prosecute the campaign.20 Its secretary was Melbourne Trades Hall Council president, E.J. Holloway and its campaign organiser was Australian Workers Union delegate to the Council (and future Labor Party prime minister) John Curtin.21 Records of the Melbourne Trades Hall Council meetings in 1916 show that in the six months leading up to the referendum in October that the Council dealt with no less than 19 motions mentioning the issue of conscription whereas in the six months leading up to the break out of war in 1914, just a single motion mentioned war.22 This shows clearly the effect that the issue of conscription had on mobilising the labour movement. The campaign lead by the movement was large and powerful and is regarded by some historians as a crucial element to the success of the ‘no’ vote.23
There is obviously a curious contradiction between the movement’s opposition towards conscription and its lack of opposition to the war itself. Concerns such as an aversion to imperialism and to Australian involvement in far-flung conflicts as noted above clearly serve as strongly as arguments against Australia’s role in the war itself than they do about conscription. Explaining this is not easy although one explanation could be that it wasn’t until the conscription issue was raised, that the war came to have a direct impact on the union movement. The ideological fear held by labour leaders of the time that conscription was one step towards despotism and a complete domination by the capitalist classes, as noted by Curtain in a pamphlet written in late 1916, demonstrates the widespread nature of this fear.24 Another explanation could be that the labour movement was highly susceptible to popular opinion. Supporting the empire in war in 1914 was a rather popular notion in an Australia so dominated by British descendants as it was at the time.25 Equally as the results of the two conscription referenda show, conscription was not popular in the majority of the Australian community. The labour movement, itself being a mass movement, would be susceptible to public opinion just like any other similar organisation is society.
The labour movement response to the outbreak of the Vietnam War, and its response to the subsequent implementation of conscription in 1964, shares some significant parallels to that of the First World War. Although unlike in 1914 circumstances for the labour movement and leftist activism in the early 1960s were significantly less favourable (due to it being the height of the Cold War), the same reluctance to campaign strongly against war was very present.26 As Saunders notes, the lack of participation by the labour movement in the anti-war protests at the beginning of the Vietnam era serves as one of its greatest missed opportunities.27
The Vietnam War, from an Australian context at least, began in 1962 with the deployment of a small number of military ‘advisors’ to support the pro-Western forces of the South. In 1964, conscription was implemented for men aged 20 years, who were chosen by a lottery system. Within six months of the implementation of this conscription regime the first battalion of Australian combat troops were deployed to the small Asian nation in support of South Vietnamese and United States forces. Initially, trade union opposition to the deployment of military advisors in 1962 and the entanglement of Australia in the conflict was scattered. Although the movement as a whole largely was opposed to the conflict, as in 1914very few examples of industrial action to discourage Australian participation in the conflict were seen.28
As the conflict drew on, conscription was implemented and Australia’s commitment ramped up with boots in the ground, cracks formed in the labour movement over what should be their response to the war. In Sydney, maritime unions began industrial action targeted at disrupting the war effort.29 Waterfront workers called 24 hour strikes and refused to load, unload or crew ships carrying supplies for the war effort.30 All the while, the Australian Council of Trade Unions (the ACTU) was reluctant to support any action that would lead to the disruption of the flow of supplies and equipment to Australian’s fighting in the war.31
The Victorian Trades Hall Council would prove to be the battleground over this conflict between the anti-war ‘militant’ unions and the reluctant-to-act union establishment in the ACTU. In 1967, 27 unions representing about two-thirds of unionists in Victoria disaffiliated from the Victorian Trades Hall Council.32 Although these unions, which largely constituted the political ‘left’ of the movement in the state, did not abandon Trades Hall solely on the issue of the Vietnam War and conscription, it was certainly a contributing factor. The break away unions would go on to play a “critical role” in the union offensive on Vietnam and other issues of the late 60s and early 70s.33 Free from the constraints of the ACTU, these unions would actively support anti-war efforts. They conducted stop-work actions, encouraged draft dodging and financially supported other anti-war movement such as the Save Our Sons group.34 These unions would constitute “the strongest organised working-class support that the anti-war movement received in any state”.35
How much of this response was due to conscription specifically and how much due to other factors is a cause for debate. What is certain though is that the implementation of conscription served as the first instance where involvement in Vietnam was heavily scrutinised and acted upon by elements of the labour movement. Opposition to Vietnam and conscription was not universal across the movement, but in the unions where the opposition was strong, the events of 1964/5 served to swing the labour campaigning machine into action in a significant manner.
It can be seen that the Australian labour movement’s response to both the First World War and the Vietnam War were initially substantially lacking. Despite global labour movement beliefs against both nationalism and war, such ideological concerns were not present in the early stages of both conflicts. Coordinated campaigns against war were minimal to non-existent and in the case of the First World War even objections in rhetoric were scant. From these two examples it is clear that conscription played a major role in energising the labour movement’s campaigning powers.
The reasons for this are somewhat paralleled as well. In the early stages, the community at large broadly supported Australia’s involvement in these wars and so union objection was minimal. As the engagements drew on they became less popular and union objection to both in the end was quite strong. This strengthens the hypothesis that the labour movement, as a mass movement, is often just as susceptible to popular opinion as the government itself, even in instances where popular opinion is contradictory to labour ideology.
Regardless of the reasoning, by the end of both of these two conflicts, the labour movement was divided. The conscription debate in the First World War would lead to a Labor Party split that would see it remain on the opposition benches for over 10 years. The Vietnam War would see labour, in Victoria at least, significantly divided with the biggest mass disaffiliation from the Melbourne/Victorian Trades Hall Council in its near 160 year history.36 Despite the labour movement in both instances emerging from the events rather battered and bruised the cause or at the very least the beginning of this pain, and the emergence of the energetic labour campaigning the movement is known for, was conscription.
References
[1] Ray Markey, “A Century of the Labour Movement in Australia”, Journal of the Illawarra Branch of the Australian Society for the Study of Labour History, 4, 1 (2004) 57.
[2] Carlotta Kellaway, Melbourne’s Trades Hall: The workingman’s parliament (Carlton: Victorian Trades Hall Council, 1988), 8.
[3] “Solidarity? A comparative study of trade unions in the conscription debate in New Zealand and Australia during the Great War,” Robert Pearce, University of Adelaide, accessed 5 October 2015, https://digital.library.adelaide.edu.au/dspace/bitstream/2440/60393/8/02whole.pdf
[4] Ibid, 5.
[5] Robin Archer, “Stopping war and stopping conscription: Australian Labour’s response to World War I in comparative perspective”, Labour History, 106 (2014), 48.
[6] Ibid, 51.
[7] 'Trades Hall Council Meeting Minutes’, 10 September 1914, Minute Book, 1914-1921, p67, 1978.0082.0010, Trades Hall Council Papers, Melbourne University Archives, Melbourne.
[8] 'Trades Hall Council Meeting Minutes’, 1 October 1914, Minute Book, 1914-1921, p71, 1978.0082.0010, Trades Hall Council Papers, Melbourne University Archives, Melbourne.
[9] Nick Dyrenfurth, “Conscription is not abhorrent to Laborites and Socialists: Revisiting the Australian labour movement’s attitude toward military conscription during World War One”, Labour History, 103 (2012), 145.
[10] 'Trades Hall Council Meeting Minutes’, May-September 1914, Minute Book, 1914-1921, p35-69, 1978.0082.0010, Trades Hall Council Papers, Melbourne University Archives, Melbourne.
[11] 'Trades Hall Council Meeting Minutes’, 13 October 1915, Minute Book, 1914-1921, p158, 1978.0082.0010, Trades Hall Council Papers, Melbourne University Archives, Melbourne.
[12] “Trade Unions”, Andrew Reeves and Simon Booth, University of Melbourne School of Historial and Philosophical Studies, accessed 5 October 2015, http://www.emelbourne.net.au/biogs/EM01507b.htm
[13] “Conscription”, The Queenslander, 18 March 1916, http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/23603212
[14] “Anti-conscription: Melbourne Trades Hall meeting, strictest secrecy observed”, Brisbane Courier, 9 June 1916, http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/20144114
[15] Dyrenfurth, “Conscription is not abhorrent”, 157.
[16] Australian trade unionism and conscription: being report of proceedings of Australian Trade Union Congress, together with the manifesto of the National Executive (Melbourne: Australian Trade Union Congress, 1916), 3.
[17] Ibid, 3.
[18] Ibid, 5.
[19] Jeremy Sammut, “Busting the anti-conscription legend”, Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society, 1 (2005), 1.
[20] “Opposing conscription in Victoria”, Curtain University, accessed 6 October 2015, http://john.curtin.edu.au/battles/victoria.html
[21] Ibid.
[23] A. R. Pearson, “Western Australia and the Conscription Plebiscites of 1916 and 1917”, RMC Historical Journal, 3 (1974) 21; R. Robertson, “The Conscription Issue and the National Movement in Western Australia, June 1916-December 1917” University Studies in Western Australian History, 3, 3 (1959) 5; Bobbie Oliver, “Rats, scabs, soolers and Sinn Feiners: A reassessment of the role of the labour movement in the conscription crisis in Western Australia”, Labour History, 58 (1990) 48.
[24] Manifesto No. 2 (Melbourne: Australian Trade Union Anti-conscription Congress, 1916)
[25] Archer, “Stopping war”, 62
[26] Tom Bramble, Trade Unionism in Australia: A History from Flood to Ebb Tide (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008)
[27] M.J. Saunders, “The trade unions in Australia and opposition to Vietnam and conscription”, Labour History, 43 (1982), 64.
[28] “Trade unions and the Vietnam War”, Tony Duras, Australian National University, accessed 6 October 2015, http://www.anu.edu.au/polsci/marx/interventions/workers.htm
[29] M.J. Saunders, “The trade unions in Australia and opposition to Vietnam and conscription”, Labour History, 43 (1982), 65.
[30] M.J. Saunders, “The trade unions in Australia and opposition to Vietnam and conscription”, Labour History, 43 (1982), 65.
[31] Bramble, Trade Unionism.
[32] Saunders, “The trade unions”, 72.
[33] Bramble, Trade Unionism.
[34] Duras, “Trade unions and the Vietnam War”.
[35] Saunders, “The trade unions”, 74.
[36] Cathy Brigden, “Creating labour’s space: The case for Melbourne’s Trades Hall”, Labour History, 89 (2005), 125.