The Argonauts Civic and Political Club

In Australia, between the two world wars, there was a tendency for strikes that originated as disputes between trade unions and employers to develop into struggles between the unions on the one hand and the Arbitration Courts and the Government on the other. The Federal Government made various disciplinary attempts which applied in particular to transport workers; and during the 1920s there was a running battle between seamen and waterside workers, and the State. From 1919-1924, the Australian Seamen's Union, under the militant leadership of its President, Tom Walsh, and its Secretary, Jacob John son, called a number of minor stoppages over wages, accommodation, management of ships, dangerous practices and many other items. These stoppages were frequently confined to a single ship and often lasted only a few hours or days. By 1924 such tactics had won a substantial increase in wages for the union's members. However, in 1925 a major strike occurred when British shipowners reduced seamen's wages from ?11 to ?10 a month. The Secretary of the British Seamen's Union accepted the reduction, but was repudiated by the men, who began a world-wide strike. British seamen began to walk off their ships in Aust ralian ports, and the Australian Seamen's Union refused to man the idle ships. Indeed, Tom Walsh and Jacob Johnson became the leaders of the British strikers in Australia. Because of the involvement of the Australian Seamen's Union in the British strike, the Arbitration Court deregistered the union early in 1925, which meant that the wage increases earlier won by the Aust ralian Seamen's Union and incorporated in a new award in 1924, now no longer applied. This led the Australian Seamen's Union to call a complete strike in an endeavour to force shipowners to include the conditions of the 1924 award in the terms of employment to seamen. Mr. Stanley Bruce, the Nationalist Prime Minister, believed that the effect of this waterfront unrest on Australia's economy was cata strophic

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• Reaction to radicalism

  Keith Richmond•Journal of Australian Studies•1979

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