1946 Pilbara strike
Encyclopedia
The 1946 Pilbara strike was a landmark strike
by Indigenous Australian pastoral workers in the Pilbara region of Western Australia
for human rights
recognition and payment of fair wages and working conditions. The strike involved at least 800 Aboriginal pastoral workers walking off the large Pastoral Stations in the Pilbara on 1 May 1946, and from employment in the two major towns of Port Hedland
and Marble Bar
. The strike did not end until August 1949 and even then many indigenous Australians refused to go back and work for white station owners.
It is regarded as one of the longest industrial strikes in Australia, and a landmark in indigenous Australians fighting for their human rights, cultural rights
, and Native title
.
European attacks and brutal shootings of whole family groups of indigenous Australians are part of the history of the region, though often not well documented. One attack took place at Skull Creek
near Barrow Creek
in the1870s, which resulted in the bleached bones and thus the name for the place http://www.connectingthecontinent.com/ctcwebsite/stories/story5.htm. There is a well documented account of a massacre in 1926 by a police party on the Forrest River Mission (now the Aboriginal community of Oombulgurri), in the East Kimberleys
. Though there was a Royal commission
into the Killing and Burning of Aborigines in East Kimberley, none of the police responsible were ever brought to trial and convicted.http://www.quadrant.org.au/php/article_view.php?article_id=501
(see List of massacres of indigenous Australians).
As well as proper wages and better working conditions, Aboriginal lawmen sought natural justice arising from the original Western Australian colonial Constitution. As a condition for self-rule in the colony, the British Government insisted that once public revenue in WA exceeded 500,000 pounds, 1 per cent was to be dedicated to "the welfare of the Aboriginal natives" under Section 70 of the Constitution.http://www.treaty.murdoch.edu.au/Conference%20Papers/Steven%20Churches.htm Succeeding colonial and state Governments legislated to remove the funding provisions for 'native welfare'. Aboriginal plaintiffs from Strelley Station finally commenced an action in the State Supreme Court in 1994 http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/AboriginalLB/1996/54.html, seeking a declaration that the 1905 repeal was invalid. In 2001, after protracted litigation, the High Court held that the 1905 repeal had been legally effective http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/cases/cth/high_ct/2001/47.html.
for a short period. According to McLeod in his book, How the West was Lost self-published in 1984, the strike was planned at an Aboriginal law meeting in 1942 at Skull Springs
(east of Nullagine
), where a massacre had previously occurred. The meeting was attended by an estimated 200 senior Aboriginal law men representing twenty three language groups from much of the remote north west of Australia. Discussions were protracted with the meeting lasting six weeks. McLeod was given the task of chief negotiator. The strike was postponed until after the Second World War had ended.
Crude calendars were taken from one station camp to another in early 1946 to organise the strike. The efforts, if noticed by the white people present, were dismissed and laughed at. When 1 May 1946 occurred hundreds of Aboriginal workers left the pastoral stations and setup strike camps.
The strike was most effective in the Pilbara region. Further afield in Broome
and Derby
and other inland northern towns, the strike movement was harshly suppressed by police action and was more short lived. Over the three years, occasionally strikers went back to work, while others joined or rejoined the strike.
Don McLeod was an Australian Workers Union delegate at Port Hedland wharf at the commencement of the strike in 1946 and was able to motivate support by the Australian labour movement
. The Western Australian branch of the Seamen's Union of Australia
eventually put a blackban on the shipment of wool from the Pilbara. Nineteen unions in Western Australia, seven federal unions and four Trades and Labour council
s supported the strike. The strike stimulated support from the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, who helped establish the Committee for the Defense of Native Rights. This organisation raised funds for and publicised the strike in Perth including organising a public meeting in the Perth Town Hall attended by 300 people.
Many of the Aboriginal strikers served time in jail; some were seized by police at revolver point and put into chains for several days. At one stage in December 1946 Don McLeod was arrested in Port Hedland during the strike for 'inciting Aborigines to leave their place of lawful employment'; the Aboriginal strikers marched on the jail and McLeod was freed. McLeod was gaoled a total of seven times during the period, three times for being within five chains
(100 m) of a congregation of natives, three times for inciting natives to leave their lawful employment, and once for forgery.
In one incident during the strike, two policemen were sent out to the Five Mile Camp near Marble Bar. When they arrived they commenced shooting the people's dogs, even when they were chained up between their legs. Shooting the dogs of Aborigines was considered by some frontier Europeans as a sport. On this occasion the endangering of human life angered the strikers who quickly disarmed the two policeman. The local strike leader, Jacob Oberdoo, and other strikers held the policemen until they had regained some composure and then arranged their own arrests insisting they be taken into custody.
Jacob Oberdoo was jailed three or four times and suffered humiliations and deprivations of many kinds during the strike, but maintained his dignity and solidarity for the length of the strike. In 1972 he was awarded the British Empire Medal
but turned it down. McLeod described Oberdoo's reply to the Prime Minister rejecting the medal:
The strikers were forced to sustain themselves by their traditional bush skills, hunting kangaroos and goats for both meat and skins. They also developed some cottage industry which brought some cash payment such as selling buffel grass seed in Sydney, the sale of pearl shell, and in surface mining.
Wages and conditions were eventually won by the strikers on Mt. Edgar and Limestone Stations. These two became a standard, with the strikers declaring that any station requiring labour would have to equal or better the rates of pay and conditions operating on these two.
By August 1949, the Seamen’s Union had agreed to blackban wool from stations in the Pilbara onto ships for export. On the third day after the ban had been applied, McLeod was told by a government representative that the strikers’ demands would be met if the ban was lifted. A week after the strike ended and the ban was lifted, the government denied making any such agreement.
After the strike concluded many Aborigines refused to go back to working in their old roles in the pastoral industry. Eventually they pooled their funds from surface mining and other cottage industry to buy or lease stations, including some they had formerly worked on, to run them as cooperatives.
, visited Port Hedland in 1946 and wrote the poem Clancey and Dooley and Don McLeod about the strike, which has subsequently been put to music by folk musician Chris Kempster and recorded by Roy Bailey
. In 1987 a documentary film was made of the strike by director David Noakes, titled How the West was Lost.
Strike action
Strike action, also called labour strike, on strike, greve , or simply strike, is a work stoppage caused by the mass refusal of employees to work. A strike usually takes place in response to employee grievances. Strikes became important during the industrial revolution, when mass labour became...
by Indigenous Australian pastoral workers in the Pilbara region of Western Australia
Western Australia
Western Australia is a state of Australia, occupying the entire western third of the Australian continent. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Great Australian Bight and Indian Ocean to the south, the Northern Territory to the north-east and South Australia to the south-east...
for human rights
Human rights
Human rights are "commonly understood as inalienable fundamental rights to which a person is inherently entitled simply because she or he is a human being." Human rights are thus conceived as universal and egalitarian . These rights may exist as natural rights or as legal rights, in both national...
recognition and payment of fair wages and working conditions. The strike involved at least 800 Aboriginal pastoral workers walking off the large Pastoral Stations in the Pilbara on 1 May 1946, and from employment in the two major towns of Port Hedland
Port Hedland, Western Australia
Port Hedland is the highest tonnage port in Australia and largest town in the Pilbara region of Western Australia, with a population of approximately 14,000 ....
and Marble Bar
Marble Bar, Western Australia
-North Pole:An ironically named locality nearby is known as North Pole , no doubt for its heat. It is the location of rock formations considered to have evidence that puts the origin of life on earth back to 3,400–3,500 mya, due to stromatolites in particular rock sequences...
. The strike did not end until August 1949 and even then many indigenous Australians refused to go back and work for white station owners.
It is regarded as one of the longest industrial strikes in Australia, and a landmark in indigenous Australians fighting for their human rights, cultural rights
Cultural rights
The cultural rights movement has provoked attention to protect the rights of groups of people, or their culture, in similar fashion to the manner in which the human rights movement has brought attention to the needs of individuals throughout the world....
, and Native title
Native title
Native title is the Australian version of the common law doctrine of aboriginal title.Native title is "the recognition by Australian law that some Indigenous people have rights and interests to their land that come from their traditional laws and customs"...
.
Working Conditions for Aboriginal Pastoral Workers
For many years Aboriginal pastoral workers in the Pilbara were denied cash wages and were only paid in supplies of tobacco, flour and other necessities. The Pastoral stations treated the Aboriginal workers as a cheap slave labour workforce to be exploited. If they tried to leave the Station, they were found and brought back by the police, according to McLeod.European attacks and brutal shootings of whole family groups of indigenous Australians are part of the history of the region, though often not well documented. One attack took place at Skull Creek
Skull Creek
Skull Creek is a common name for a number of creeks and waterways in Australia. In each case, it is named so due to the killing of Aboriginal people in the area....
near Barrow Creek
Barrow Creek, Northern Territory
Barrow Creek is a very small town, current population of 11, in the southern Northern Territory of Australia. It is located on the Stuart Highway, about 280 km north of Alice Springs, about half way from there to Tennant Creek. The main feature of the town is the roadhouse/hotel...
in the1870s, which resulted in the bleached bones and thus the name for the place http://www.connectingthecontinent.com/ctcwebsite/stories/story5.htm. There is a well documented account of a massacre in 1926 by a police party on the Forrest River Mission (now the Aboriginal community of Oombulgurri), in the East Kimberleys
Kimberley region of Western Australia
The Kimberley is one of the nine regions of Western Australia. It is located in the northern part of Western Australia, bordered on the west by the Indian Ocean, on the north by the Timor Sea, on the south by the Great Sandy and Tanami Deserts, and on the east by the Northern Territory.The region...
. Though there was a Royal commission
Royal Commission
In Commonwealth realms and other monarchies a Royal Commission is a major ad-hoc formal public inquiry into a defined issue. They have been held in various countries such as the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and Saudi Arabia...
into the Killing and Burning of Aborigines in East Kimberley, none of the police responsible were ever brought to trial and convicted.http://www.quadrant.org.au/php/article_view.php?article_id=501
(see List of massacres of indigenous Australians).
As well as proper wages and better working conditions, Aboriginal lawmen sought natural justice arising from the original Western Australian colonial Constitution. As a condition for self-rule in the colony, the British Government insisted that once public revenue in WA exceeded 500,000 pounds, 1 per cent was to be dedicated to "the welfare of the Aboriginal natives" under Section 70 of the Constitution.http://www.treaty.murdoch.edu.au/Conference%20Papers/Steven%20Churches.htm Succeeding colonial and state Governments legislated to remove the funding provisions for 'native welfare'. Aboriginal plaintiffs from Strelley Station finally commenced an action in the State Supreme Court in 1994 http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/AboriginalLB/1996/54.html, seeking a declaration that the 1905 repeal was invalid. In 2001, after protracted litigation, the High Court held that the 1905 repeal had been legally effective http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/cases/cth/high_ct/2001/47.html.
The Strike
The strike was coordinated and led by Aboriginal lawmen Dooley Bin Bin and Clancy McKenna; and Don McLeod, an active unionist and member of the Communist Party of AustraliaCommunist Party of Australia
The Communist Party of Australia was founded in 1920 and dissolved in 1991; it was succeeded by the Socialist Party of Australia, which then renamed itself, becoming the current Communist Party of Australia. The CPA achieved its greatest political strength in the 1940s and faced an attempted...
for a short period. According to McLeod in his book, How the West was Lost self-published in 1984, the strike was planned at an Aboriginal law meeting in 1942 at Skull Springs
Skull Creek
Skull Creek is a common name for a number of creeks and waterways in Australia. In each case, it is named so due to the killing of Aboriginal people in the area....
(east of Nullagine
Nullagine, Western Australia
Nullagine is an old goldrush town in Western Australia's Pilbara region. It is located on the Nullagine River 296 km south-east of Port Hedland and 1,364 km north-north-east of Perth on the old Great Northern Highway....
), where a massacre had previously occurred. The meeting was attended by an estimated 200 senior Aboriginal law men representing twenty three language groups from much of the remote north west of Australia. Discussions were protracted with the meeting lasting six weeks. McLeod was given the task of chief negotiator. The strike was postponed until after the Second World War had ended.
Crude calendars were taken from one station camp to another in early 1946 to organise the strike. The efforts, if noticed by the white people present, were dismissed and laughed at. When 1 May 1946 occurred hundreds of Aboriginal workers left the pastoral stations and setup strike camps.
The strike was most effective in the Pilbara region. Further afield in Broome
Broome, Western Australia
Broome is a pearling and tourist town in the Kimberley region of Western Australia, north of Perth. The year round population is approximately 14,436, growing to more than 45,000 per month during the tourist season...
and Derby
Derby, Western Australia
Derby is a town in the Kimberley region of Western Australia. At the 2006 census, Derby had a population of 3,093. Along with Broome and Kununurra, it is one of only three towns in the Kimberley to have a population over 2,000...
and other inland northern towns, the strike movement was harshly suppressed by police action and was more short lived. Over the three years, occasionally strikers went back to work, while others joined or rejoined the strike.
Don McLeod was an Australian Workers Union delegate at Port Hedland wharf at the commencement of the strike in 1946 and was able to motivate support by the Australian labour movement
Australian labour movement
The Australian labour movement has its origins in the early 19th century and includes both trade unions and political activity. At its broadest, the movement can be defined as encompassing the industrial wing, the unions in Australia, and the political wing, the Australian Labor Party and minor...
. The Western Australian branch of the Seamen's Union of Australia
Maritime Union of Australia
The Maritime Union of Australia covers waterside workers, seafarers, port workers, professional divers, and office workers associated with Australian ports. As of 2011 the union has about 13,000 members. It is an affiliate of the International Transport Workers' Federation and represents the...
eventually put a blackban on the shipment of wool from the Pilbara. Nineteen unions in Western Australia, seven federal unions and four Trades and Labour council
Labour council
A labour council, trades council or industrial council is an association of labour unions or union branches in a given area. Most commonly, they represent unions in a given geographical area, whether at the district, city, region, or provincial or state level...
s supported the strike. The strike stimulated support from the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, who helped establish the Committee for the Defense of Native Rights. This organisation raised funds for and publicised the strike in Perth including organising a public meeting in the Perth Town Hall attended by 300 people.
Many of the Aboriginal strikers served time in jail; some were seized by police at revolver point and put into chains for several days. At one stage in December 1946 Don McLeod was arrested in Port Hedland during the strike for 'inciting Aborigines to leave their place of lawful employment'; the Aboriginal strikers marched on the jail and McLeod was freed. McLeod was gaoled a total of seven times during the period, three times for being within five chains
Chain (unit)
A chain is a unit of length; it measures 66 feet or 22 yards or 100 links . There are 10 chains in a furlong, and 80 chains in one statute mile. An acre is the area of 10 square chains...
(100 m) of a congregation of natives, three times for inciting natives to leave their lawful employment, and once for forgery.
In one incident during the strike, two policemen were sent out to the Five Mile Camp near Marble Bar. When they arrived they commenced shooting the people's dogs, even when they were chained up between their legs. Shooting the dogs of Aborigines was considered by some frontier Europeans as a sport. On this occasion the endangering of human life angered the strikers who quickly disarmed the two policeman. The local strike leader, Jacob Oberdoo, and other strikers held the policemen until they had regained some composure and then arranged their own arrests insisting they be taken into custody.
Jacob Oberdoo was jailed three or four times and suffered humiliations and deprivations of many kinds during the strike, but maintained his dignity and solidarity for the length of the strike. In 1972 he was awarded the British Empire Medal
British Empire Medal
The Medal of the Order of the British Empire for Meritorious Service, usually known as the British Empire Medal , is a British medal awarded for meritorious civil or military service worthy of recognition by the Crown...
but turned it down. McLeod described Oberdoo's reply to the Prime Minister rejecting the medal:
- "he was unable to do business with, or accept favours from Law-carriers in bad standing. "You pin medals on dogs" was how he explained the real message underlying the award."
The strikers were forced to sustain themselves by their traditional bush skills, hunting kangaroos and goats for both meat and skins. They also developed some cottage industry which brought some cash payment such as selling buffel grass seed in Sydney, the sale of pearl shell, and in surface mining.
Wages and conditions were eventually won by the strikers on Mt. Edgar and Limestone Stations. These two became a standard, with the strikers declaring that any station requiring labour would have to equal or better the rates of pay and conditions operating on these two.
By August 1949, the Seamen’s Union had agreed to blackban wool from stations in the Pilbara onto ships for export. On the third day after the ban had been applied, McLeod was told by a government representative that the strikers’ demands would be met if the ban was lifted. A week after the strike ended and the ban was lifted, the government denied making any such agreement.
After the strike concluded many Aborigines refused to go back to working in their old roles in the pastoral industry. Eventually they pooled their funds from surface mining and other cottage industry to buy or lease stations, including some they had formerly worked on, to run them as cooperatives.
Aftermath
The poet, Dorothy HewettDorothy Hewett
Dorothy Coade Hewett was an Australian feminist poet, novelist, librettist and playwright. She was also a member of the Communist Party of Australia, though she clashed on many occasions with the party's leadership.-Early life:Hewett was born in Perth and was brought up on a sheep and wheat farm...
, visited Port Hedland in 1946 and wrote the poem Clancey and Dooley and Don McLeod about the strike, which has subsequently been put to music by folk musician Chris Kempster and recorded by Roy Bailey
Roy Bailey (folk singer)
Roy Bailey MBE , is a British socialist folk singer. Roy began his singing career in a skiffle group in 1958.Colin Irwin from the music magazine Mojo said Bailey represents "the very soul of folk's working class ideals.....
. In 1987 a documentary film was made of the strike by director David Noakes, titled How the West was Lost.
External links
- Pilbara: Australia’s longest strike Green Left Weekly
- Pilbara Strike (1946 - 1949) - Brief description
- Peter Coppin, Pilbara elder and lawman ABC TV Messagestick program broadcast 1 April 2005
- Photos of the Strike Leaders Strelley Nomad Group
- The role of unions in the dispute - Jennie George, ACTU President
- Rebel of the Pilbara newspaper article transcribed from the AgeThe AgeThe Age is a daily broadsheet newspaper, which has been published in Melbourne, Australia since 1854. Owned and published by Fairfax Media, The Age primarily serves Victoria, but is also available for purchase in Tasmania, the Australian Capital Territory and border regions of South Australia and...
2 May 1996 - Aboriginal Citizens and the Western Australian Constitution: Judamia & Ors v State of Western Australia
- Yougarla v Western Australia (2001) HCA 47 (9 August 2001)
- The Story of a Promise made to Western Australia's Aborigines Dr Steven Churches, Barrister and Senior Lecturer in Law, University of Adelaide
- How the West was Lost (1987) Ronnin Fims