Connecting work identity and politics in the internationalism of ‘seafarers … who share the seas’

Internationalism across the seas?

Some seafarers emphasise the conditions of shipboard life as innately international and encouraging of tolerance, ‘like being in the United Nations, because you had seafarers of all nationalities, of all cultures, and different religions’. ¹² Being all together in the ship, they got to know people. Travelling to other countries meant that experience relayed through stories told to other seafarers developed an international outlook. Being on board a ship felt ‘like being in a world city’ and, in their t-shirts and shorts, they were ambassadors for world peace. Added to the fact of travelling was the ease of immigration – the ability to ship out on foreign-owned vessels, or to jump ship in a foreign port. So it was not just on board ship: internationalism was also apparent in home ports, around the docks and wharves, where seafarers would mix, developing an affinity with seafarers from other countries, ‘talking about seafarer problems’. ¹³

To some, the internationalism of the SUA lay in the fact that the union’s membership and its leaders – and their ideas – came from all around the world. To others, it was the issues with which the SUA was concerned. Their identity as seafarers came with a sense of a shared humanity. What they saw and heard from their own experience of meeting people from all parts of the world, ‘who’ve come through a hard life too’, inspired a shared ideal of internationalism that many also connect with the development of socialist politics. Yet internationalism was not a simple adherence to socialist ideology dictated by orders or published in a manifesto: it was a lived experience and a personal morality; it was doing things because they were right. ¹⁴

Internationalism meant identification with the struggles and plight of other people. Seafarers travelled to the poorest countries in the world where they could see for themselves ‘the disparity, the difference between what was available to some in society and what wasn’t available to the deprived people of different countries’. ¹⁵ The docks where ships tied up were generally in the poorest neighbourhoods: ‘seamen weren’t jumping in taxis and going anywhere, you were working’, walking through the areas where workers were, playing football at the missions to seamen, and seeing for yourselves how working people were treated. ¹⁶

This meant ‘You couldn’t ignore what happened in South Africa in terms of apartheid … and you couldn’t ignore what happened in Chile … and you couldn’t turn a blind eye on other things …’ such as the military takeover in Greece. ‘They’re the things that workers should be involved with internationally because ultimately if you don’t … then you become isolated politically and ignorant’. ¹⁷ Seafarers’ internationalism was driven by the nature of their work and was an expression of their connectedness across the oceans as their shared workplace, uniting them with their fellow workers. The strengths of their own observations and the reality of their experiences fuelled an internationalist outlook that blended easily with a socialist philosophy, and this created a rebellious activist tradition within the SUA.

While solidarity actions for the same causes were pursued by other left-wing and progressive unions in the context of the wider social movements of the 1970s, the maritime connection lent a particular inflection to seafarers’ activism. Australian seafarers liked to say the initials of their union, SUA, also stood for its principles: solidarity, unity and action. ¹⁸ They were the principles on which the union drew in its campaigns for democracy for workers in whatever country they lived, particularly where democracy had been denied on the basis of racial difference or replaced by fascism and military dictatorship. They felt a responsibility to take action, ‘even if we suffer economically’, for ‘seamen will oppose oppression and fascism wherever it appears, and will take whatever action is in their power to bring about its downfall’. ¹⁹ Their bonds were international and they saw both great opportunities and great responsibilities in spreading the ideology of internationalism ‘to the four corners of the earth’. ²⁰ This we can see happening in the actions they took for the restoration of democracy in Greece, Chile and South Africa.

‘Our Greek workmates’

Greece was very prominent in Australian seafarers’ lives, not least because of the prominence of Greek shipowners in Australian waters. The SUA first came to the assistance of Greek seafarers during the Second World War, while in 1948 when left-wing unionists, including Tony Ambatielos, General Secretary of the Federation of Greek Maritime Unions, were gaoled, the union joined international protests and boycotted Greek shipping in Australian ports. ²¹ Consequently Ambatielos and several others were saved from the death penalty and in 1964 he was finally released from prison, only to be rearrested in 1974 after a coup in 1967 by Greek army generals. The SUA had hosted a visit from Tony Ambatielos and his wife Betty in 1970. They toured various Australian ports and met maritime workers, unionists and members of the local Greek community and the Australian Labor Party (ALP), including Gough Whitlam, who was to become prime minister. ²² Ambatielos’ detention for a second time on the grounds of high treason alarmed the SUA and gave them reason to oppose events in Greece due to this personal connection.

The SUA officially protested the junta from the outset and branch meetings around the country demanded the restoration of democracy. Tug boat operators refused to attend to Greek freighters. ²³ Other unionists called in person on the Greek consul in Melbourne to express their concerns, with SUA officials protesting that ‘Greek seamen need our support and … we have to make sure they get it’. ²⁴ Greek shipowners were the ‘pillars of economic and political support of the fascist government’, the SUA claimed, as it campaigned to get trade unionists released from gaol by continually harassing Greek-owned shipping. ²⁵ They got press and television coverage, thus making even more people aware of the situation in Greece and their reasons for delaying Greek ships. ²⁶ Their members also raised or donated much-needed finances for the Greek Resistance Movement. Moving letters expressing feelings ‘of deep emotion and gratitude’, and ‘sincere friendship’, ‘to all of you who are sailing the seas and pay close attention to the struggles of peoples’ were published in the Seamen’s Journal. They promised that action and further bans on Greek shipping would continue until the authorities released all political prisoners. ²⁷

It was not just the leadership pushing a political line. In ports throughout Australia, seafarers denied tug assistance to Greek-owned ships, even those chartered by other countries to carry Australian wheat. ²⁸ By putting pressure on the charterers, the SUA hoped to have an impact on the profits Greek shipowners were making and thereby economically boosting the junta. One vessel was held up at Hay’s Point by Mackay tugs for over a month before it could load its cargo for Japan. ²⁹ Ships’ crews sent protest telegrams, joined members of the Greek community in confronting the Greek consul, and held up passenger liners in port until their resolutions were transmitted to the Greek authorities. ³⁰

In the actions taken to support Greek maritime unionists we can see how direct personal ties could also be influential. ‘Our Greek workmates wish to prevail upon you’ was how one ships’ crew wrote when asking the Greek President Karamanlis to recall the Greek consul from Australia. Send instead of ‘this fascist lackey’, they said, ‘someone who has pride in the democratic achievements and aspirations of the Greek people’. ³¹

With the high level of immigration to Australia, particularly in the post-war period, there were bound to be personal connections driving SUA sympathies with the Greek trade unionists’ cause. Members of the SUA like Tony Papaconstuntinos, who was federal secretary from 1992 to 1998, and his three brothers, also SUA members, were the sons of a Greek seafarer who had emigrated to Australia in 1953. He had been involved in the Greek resistance to Nazism during the Second World War. ³² Della Elliott, née Zenodohos, who ran the SUA office and edited the SUA journal, was also the daughter of a Greek immigrant, who had been deeply involved in raising money for political prisoners in Greece. ³³ After the war, Della became secretary of the League for Democracy in Greece, an Australian labour movement initiative that supported left-wing resistance.

‘You couldn’t ignore what happened in Chile’

Australia’s population of immigrants from Chile, and South America in general, was not as large as that from Greece. Therefore the support for democracy in Chile was not generated by close family or community ties. Indeed, solidarity with Chilean activists was a rare moment of Australian union involvement with events in a Latin-American country. ³⁴ In that, it was more a collective connection to trade union solidarity that reflected the complex dynamic of the relationship between the leadership and the rank-and-file membership. There was, however, a personal dimension to the relationships union officials and members had formed through working across the globe with their counterparts from other countries. This was apparent when the socialist government of Salvador Allende, which was elected in Chile in 1970, was overthrown and replaced by the military dictatorship of General Pinochet on 11 September 1973. On that day, the presidential palace was bombed, Allende was killed and thousands of workers, trade unionists and other political activists were rounded up and taken to a football stadium where many of them were tortured and killed. Australian maritime workers then became part of an international movement of solidarity with the efforts of the Chilean people to restore their democratic rights.

Their initial opposition was shared by ALP members of parliament, and the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU). ³⁵ It was also an action they took personally. Having met some young trade unionists from Chile while overseas on union business, John Garrett, an FDU official, said on the day of the coup ‘the six people I’d become close to were all killed. I was involved’. ³⁶ Another FDU official, Don Henderson, was also ‘involved’. He revealed ‘the coup in Chile happened on my birthday. It stuck in my craw because it was a denial of human rights, a President elected democratically and thrown out undemocratically…’. This was an expression of a person-to-person commitment that meant personal responsibility for others: ‘We see ourselves as internationalists and we involve ourselves in all issues of economic and industrial matters’. ³⁷

The first action was instigated by the union leadership. At its first meeting after hearing the news, in September 1973, the Committee of Management (COM) of the SUA passed a resolution condemning the military takeover of the ‘legitimate elected Allende government’ and it resolved to participate in ‘any action of protest, to arouse public opinion, reject any diplomatic recognition and speed the restoration of trade union and civil liberties to the Chilean people’. ³⁸ Along with the WWF, that same month the SUA imposed a boycott on trade with Chile. This ban was not lifted until after the end of the Pinochet regime in 1989. It became the longest boycott in Australia’s history, and significantly affected Australia’s export trade in wheat, for which Chile had, in the previous few years, become a major customer. Members of the SUA followed this lead. At stopwork meetings throughout the country, ‘seamen condemned the military regime’s armed overthrow of the democratically-elected Allende government’ and urged the Australian Labor Government to assist in the speedy restoration of democracy. ³⁹ Crew members aboard ships unanimously condemned the coup in their own cables sent from sea.

While there was a general solidarity movement among progressive organisations throughout the world, the maritime unionists’ adherence to their principles also put them at odds with other factions of the left. ⁴⁰ When the ALP government recognised the Pinochet regime, Prime Minister Whitlam had to explain to the SUA membership how this was in accordance with the actions of other countries and did not imply endorsement of the military government nor its takeover from ‘the authentic representative’ of Chile’s ‘noble … democratic tradition’. ⁴¹ The Sydney stopwork meeting in November 1973 called on the government to send a fact-finding mission to Chile. When members of other trade unions, however, accepted an invitation of free passage from the Chilean Airline, LAN-Chile, SUA officials declined the offer on the grounds that the airline was under the control of the Pinochet regime. As Pinochet had replaced genuine trade union leaders with puppets, they held that any mission could not be undertaken as a truly independent inquiry. ⁴² At a meeting of six unions in late January 1974 to discuss the proposal to visit Chile, only the WWF of the other five unions agreed with the SUA’s opposition. Given that the SUA had called for a parliamentary and trade union delegation, their position now seemed hypocritical. Yet Elliott pointed out ‘there was a vast difference between a fact-finding commission going to investigate … and being the guests of a fascist Government and its airline’. Subsequently pressed by the Australian Metalworkers’ Union to guarantee the delegation ‘free interview of prisoners without surveillance, no victimisation of people visited, free movement, safe conduct, etc’., the Chilean Foreign Ministry withdrew the invitation. At that point, the SUA claimed their position had been vindicated. ⁴³

When the Transport Workers’ Union boycotted a LAN-Chile airliner at Sydney airport a few days later, the president of the airline sent a new, reworded, invitation. At the several meetings held by the unions to discuss the matter, the SUA held firm on its opposition to the delegation, while supporting the action the transport workers had taken against the airline. ‘The Seamen’s Union’s leadership is confident of the correctness of its political and industrial assessment and its conclusion not to be the guests of the Chilean junta, and is strengthened in its approach by the February decision of its members’, the Seamen’s Journal reported. The SUA wanted a fact-finding commission headed by representatives of the International Labour Organisation, World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) and other international and national trade unions, even while recognising that such a commission ‘backed by world-wide trade union opinion’ would still have difficulty in a country ‘dominated by a fascist military junta’. ⁴⁴

Despite this opposition from the SUA, in conjunction with the WWF, a delegation of trade unionists did go to Chile in March 1974. They were accompanied by a translator, Argentinean-born Carmel Bull, wife of WWF official Tasnor Bull. On their return, they published a report entitled 12 Days in Chile. ⁴⁵ The delegation succeeded in making contact with the underground trade union movement in Chile, and was responsible for the release of some notable political prisoners. ⁴⁶ They returned with the important and encouraging information that the boycotts the maritime unions had imposed had the support of fellow unionists within Chile. Early in 1974, that boycott would be put into effect. In May, two ships were to be loaded in Fremantle with wheat contracted between the Australian Wheat Board and the former Allende government. The SUA first refused to tug them, until the ACTU intervened, when the WWF refused to load them. After discussions with the Wheat Board a compromise was reached, through which the ships would be loaded so contractual obligations could be met, but all future shipments were banned and no further contracts were to be signed. The union’s stand was firm: ‘Ships for Chile would not be handled at Australian ports’. ⁴⁷ Wheat was not shipped to Chile until 1995–1996.

Internationalism was a long-held ideological commitment among the SUA leadership that had aligned with the World Federation of Trade Unions during the Cold War. Their solidarity with the Chilean people was undoubtedly supporting a ‘struggle for the respect of human rights, freedom, democracy and the lost living standard of all Chile’s working class’. ⁴⁸ Clodomiro Almeyda, the executive secretary of Unidad Popular Chile, Allende’s political party, told the SUA their boycott was working to stimulate activity among the workers of Chile. In that, it was part of the worldwide working-class struggle. He also said it was ‘a curb to the repression of those in power who want to destroy the trade unions and physically liquidate their leaders. Without your solidarity, our people would have lost many more lives’. ⁴⁹ For many members of the SUA, this prompted a personal conscience and strengthened their belief in their struggle against the fascist regime in Chile, as it did for Greece and South Africa. Their collectivised responsibility was to end the repression of their fellow trade unionists, dockworkers and maritime workers, who had been gaoled, tortured and killed for their resistance activities. This was a position in which they could, and occasionally did, find themselves. They were touched directly.

One important example bringing this home was the Chilean navy square-rigged training vessel Esmerelda, which had visited Australian ports on several occasions to very friendly receptions. Ron Barklay, the South Australian Branch secretary, revealed it had been used as a prison ship after the coup. The most prominent members and supporters of the Allende government had been sent to the Esmerelda and there subjected to ‘the most inhuman and barbaric tortures’. The crew ‘excelled in brutality and savagery’. Barklay wanted SUA members and the general public to know that the Esmerelda had played a part in the coup against the Allende government. When the ship once again came to Sydney, its entry to the port was blocked. ⁵⁰

Dissemination of information through union circulars, letters and their journals was the greatest assistance the Australian unions gave to the Chile solidarity campaign because it enabled the creation of mass support for an issue far removed from the usual daily concerns of Australian workers. ⁵¹ The SUA also sent a representative to the third International Commission of Inquiry into the Crimes of the Military Junta in Chile that was held in Mexico City in February 1975. Don Henderson, FDU general secretary, later reported that ‘the only trade union representatives on the Commission came from Australia and the Soviet Union’. ⁵² Henderson presented a message on behalf of the SUA and succeeded in having the commission distribute a letter calling on trade unions throughout the world to place bans on trade with Chile, urge their governments to end economic and diplomatic relations with the junta, campaign for the release of prisoners and the end of torture, and demand a return to democracy.

By 1976, 30,000 Chilean people had been killed, more than 100 trade-union leaders murdered, universities had been closed, and newspapers and radio stations shut down, while 300,000 people were in exile and 750,000 were unemployed. ⁵³ The SUA kept events in Chile in the forefront of members’ concerns by reporting at length on conferences such as the International Conference of Solidarity with Chile, held in Athens in November 1975, and the World Congress of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) held in Mexico City in October 1975. The Seamen’s Journal reported the strong calls for international solidarity that came from trade unions and organisations throughout the world, and the protests the SUA officially sent demanding their release when workers’ leaders (such as Socialist Party leader, Exequiel Ponce Vicencio) were arrested and gaoled. On other occasions, Chilean refugees were given space to address stopwork meetings, films about Chile were shown, and members were asked, ‘What activity can your ship undertake …?’ While travelling to foreign ports, seafarers also engaged in international solidarity actions. ⁵⁴

Former Allende government members, such as Luis Figueroa, one-time Minister for Labour and President of the Chilean Trade Union Centre, visited Australia, where they met with SUA officials and addressed the ACTU Congress. Hugo Miranda, another former senior member of the Allende government, visited Sydney courtesy of the Committee for Solidarity with the Chilean people, a loose amalgamation of left-wing activists, trade unionists and Chilean refugees. He was the special guest at a lunch organised by the Sydney Water Transport Group of Unions consisting of the seagoing and waterfront unions – the SUA, FDU and WWF. Federal Secretary Elliott told Miranda, ‘We are brothers in struggle … until you have restored in struggle the true definition of democracy’. ⁵⁵ Seamen’s Union of Australia Sydney Secretary John Benson spoke of the support being given by the NSW Labour Council, ‘not a Labour Council with a history of revolutionary decisions or actions’, nevertheless another source of declarations and actions of solidarity, and from unions not associated with the waterfront. ⁵⁶

A feminist note was injected into the campaign as the SUA also hosted the visits of notable Chilean women such as Beatrix Allende, daughter of the slain President, who visited in 1974 and took part in Brisbane’s May Day march. In July 1975, Joan Jara, widow of Victor Jara, Chilean songwriter and leader of the New Chilean Song Movement, accompanied the exiled song group Quilapayun on their concert tour to eastern Australian cities. Della Elliott, an active member of the Union of Australian Women, interviewed Joan Jara for the Seamen’s Journal and reviewed their Sydney Town Hall concert at great length. Lyrics were published in the Seamen’s Journal and copies of Victor Jara’s recordings were available for purchase through the union office. Joan Jara sent a message to the membership through the Seamen’s Journal, once again reiterating the connectedness of seafarers:

We know that of all working people, seamen have overall a greater contact and therefore appreciation of the world and its people, and possibly understand better than many others how international solidarity helps in the struggle of the people all over the world. ⁵⁷

Where the maritime workers differentiated themselves was in relation to the boycott they imposed on trade with Chile. Under constant pressure from the Australian Wheat Board, the National Farmers Federation, the Australian Meat and Livestock Corporation and other business concerns, the ACTU at the end of 1977, lifted its ban on trade with Chile. The SUA and WWF then came under renewed pressure to lift their boycott of shipping. However, stopwork meetings held in January 1978 voted to retain the ban and send a firm message to the ACTU pointing out that it was working: ‘the continued condemnation by the United Nations, national governments, international and national trade union organisations had secured the release of many prisoners … and is fully approved by the Chilean national trade union organisation in exile’. The SUA rejected the claim that economic harm would befall Australia – ‘the trade with Chile never was important or vital to any section of our people’ – while emphasising the leadership Australia was showing on the other hand: ‘our continued boycott will enhance the overseas and national democratic principles of the Australian people’. ⁵⁸

Their stance was supported by others. At an International Peace Conference held in Sydney in July 1978, delegates passed two resolutions of solidarity with the Chilean people. The second of these ‘noted with deep satisfaction the recent decision of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions to call for a continuation of trade boycotts … and urges the Australian trade unions to respond to this call in a positive manner’. ⁵⁹ At the congress of the WFTU held in Prague in April that year, ‘the largest in the history of the organisation’, a joint declaration was adopted by participants from Australia and New Zealand with the External Committee of the Chilean peak trade union organisation. It said, in part: ‘The Chilean workers firmly believe that the best forms of support which can be offered to the Chilean people in their struggle is to carry on and extend the boycott of the dictatorship’. Not satisfied just to keep the boycott going, the declaration called for ‘an intensification of the boycott campaigns and all other forms of solidarity actions’. ⁶⁰

The SUA was approached on several occasions by representatives of the wheat industry asking them to lift their ban, usually in the economic interests of the wheat farmers who claimed to be having a tough time. Elliott’s response was simple: ‘Every time seamen refuse to handle a ship their action depletes their earnings’. He thought the farmers could do the same and ‘put basic principle before their earnings’. ⁶¹ ACTU President, Bob Hawke, officiated in opening the 1979 COM representatives’ meeting of the SUA, and he tried to convince officials to lift the embargo, ‘to act in unison with the ACTU’, because it was economically detrimental to Australia, and because of his hope that ‘moves at present taking place in North and South America would develop into an international trade ban on Chile’. ⁶² This was to be a short, two-day boycott organised by the ICFTU, a substantially different proposition from the blanket ban sustained by the waterfront and seagoing unions. Hawke argued that as the US peak trade union body was undertaking a delegation to Chile, the SUA could reimpose their ban afterwards if they so wanted. Pat Geraghty, federal secretary, suggested to the COM representatives that they should not lift the ban. His argument was that if the US delegation found that things had changed in Chile the SUA could then very easily lift their ban. It would, however, be difficult to reimpose it if they lifted it now. The seafarers were convinced, and ‘to the everlasting credit of the delegates’ they voted to keep it on. ⁶³

It was not until December 1989 that SUA officials recommended that the ban on trade with Chile be finally lifted following the election of a new president, supported by progressives, who ‘resolutely defeated’ the Pinochet right-wing candidate. ⁶⁴ Officials also voted to donate money to assist the Chilean waterfront and maritime union CONGEMAR and commended the solidarity action of the membership, particularly the tug seamen, whose actions in maintaining the boycott were carried out under significant pressure. It was an illustration of the activism ‘motivated by the goodwill and good sense’ that several scholars have identified as characteristic of Australian socialists. ⁶⁵

‘So close to our door’: Apartheid in South Africa

Perhaps even more than their solidarity actions with workers of Greece and Chile, Australia’s maritime workers identified opposition to apartheid in South Africa as their own struggle and used their workplace and its strategic position to take meaningful effective action. The apartheid regime in South Africa began with the election of the National Party Government on a policy of white minority rule in 1948. By 1960, opposition parties had been outlawed and driven underground, and by the mid-1960s South Africa had become a police state. ⁶⁶ An international Anti-Apartheid Movement developed slowly as South Africans in exile cultivated international support for their cause of freedom, while progressives demanded the release of political prisoners and an end to white minority rule. Australian maritime workers were among the first to take action against the apartheid regime.

To seafarers, racism in South Africa was not an abstract problem and their opposition to it was not divorced from the mundane reality of their work and life at sea. The ‘sense of community’ that Erik Olssen spoke about linking crews of small coastal traders working on the New Zealand coast in the late nineteenth century extended to long-haul ships on international voyages. ⁶⁷ Alastair Couper even uses Benedict Anderson’s term of an ‘imagined political community’ to identify the bonds formed between members of this seagoing workforce. ⁶⁸ As more than one seafarer has said, the internationalism of ships’ crews meant they ‘couldn’t be racist’, given that they lived together for months at a time, and depended on each other for safety and companionship. ⁶⁹ Their opposition to the undemocratic and racialised system of governance known as apartheid drew strength from these bonds and the collective identity that evolved from the work they did. They were acting in accordance with their principles of internationalism, which were made personal and fuelled by their own first-hand knowledge and experience of racism against their fellow maritime workers. This was especially the case for the ships’ crews calling at South African ports, the number of which increased during the 1960s, exposing them to the realities of apartheid, either first hand or indirectly through talking with their shipmates. ‘While not all of us had been to South Africa we probably knew someone who had, and on many ships that I sailed I heard stories …’ of the experience of living under the apartheid regime. ⁷⁰ New Zealand seafarers make the same claims of being ‘directly touched by apartheid in their industry’ as South African authorities refused to issue visas for Maori and Pacific Islanders and only allowed all-white crews to sail to Durban. The New Zealand Seamen’s Union developed an anti-apartheid policy in defence of their members. ⁷¹

Today, former members of the SUA do not identify other sources of knowledge about the apartheid regime, but can recount incidents they themselves observed. Apartheid was often taken as a direct attack on themselves, their seafaring mates, and the close, almost familial bonds they formed over months on board. ‘Coloured’ seafarers could not come confidently ashore in South African ports. South African crew members could not return hospitality they had received from Australian seafarers by inviting them home or drinking together in a pub. Visiting seafarers were warned in pamphlets distributed by the South African Seamen’s Welfare Committee that their behaviour in port could land them in gaol: that under the apartheid system sexual intercourse between racially different people was a criminal offence punishable by a gaol term, while just being in the company of ‘Indian, Coloured or Native Women’ was taken as an intention to commit such an offence. Parts of town, however, were to be avoided. ⁷²

Their own first-hand knowledge and experience of racism was then translated into action which, as they became officials in the union, they also then promoted as union policy. Pat Geraghty was an SUA official from 1968, and federal secretary from 1978 to 1993. He first experienced the impact of apartheid as a deck boy on a voyage that took him to the port of Durban in the 1940s. There he witnessed a police officer beating a man with a big hunk of wood. When he intervened the police officer gave him a cuff and marched him back to his ship with a warning not to come ashore again. On another occasion he witnessed the refusal of medical treatment to a dangerously ill member of the crew: ‘because he was black, or brown or whatever colour … he didn’t qualify’ to be taken on board a nearby hospital ship. He died shortly after they got him to port. These incidents fuelled Geraghty’s personal determination to help end apartheid in South Africa. During his term as an official, the SUA actively educated the membership about South African realities that many of the rank and file reinforced through their own memories. One recalls that they were active in this way because ‘we were anti-racism, we knew all about the apartheid conditions in South Africa, and it was union policy that we all agreed’. ⁷³

It was not simply an impromptu campaign. Officials attended conferences organised by the United Nations and international bodies like the World Federation of Trade Unions, the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, the International Labour Organisation and the World Peace Council, all of which had active policies of opposition to apartheid. There they met South Africans, sometimes individuals who had been arrested and tortured under the harsh laws, and were able to reveal the brutality of the repression, ‘dramatically, at our conference’. ⁷⁴ Other first-hand knowledge came through the experience of working overseas for the SUA and meeting young South Africans in exile working with the outlawed African National Congress in London. ⁷⁵ Having the opportunity to talk to people, hear the dialogue at conferences and see things for themselves prompted deeper personal commitment. These issues mattered ‘as an injustice and an elimination of human rights. Human dignity was taken away’. ⁷⁶ Others claim to have been inspired by being in South Africa at key moments such as during the Sharpeville riots and massacre in 1960. ⁷⁷

To some SUA members, the institutionalised racism of South Africa was a particularly personal offence. Lew Cleaver, whose wife and four children were black, wrote of an Easter weekend he had spent in Durban. Even before going ashore, the only coloured member of the crew had been ‘called to the bridge and informed by the skipper regarding what he could and could not do … [also] that nothing could be done for any of us if we fell foul of the law’. Despite being aware already of the laws, ‘it still left us a little cold in the guts to have it so close to our door’. Cleaver was outraged by the inequalities in wealth he saw and described the segregation system as ‘stupid’, signs everywhere saying ‘Blacks Only’ meant on one occasion he could not sit on a seat at a bus stop. African workers, he said, had ‘no amenities and hardly any wages. Their work … was to fetch and carry, help the white tradesman, do menial tasks. Their day is long or short, hard or easy depending entirely on the white boss’. ⁷⁸ Consequently, as one SUA official said, ‘why would you not be passionately against what was happening there, apartheid, when you saw blacks … loading trucks of coal in chains, and getting whipped by white guards. You couldn’t see it if you weren’t there but of course we were associated because the coal bunkers they were loading were actually for our ship’. ⁷⁹

The anti-apartheid cause took on a personal dimension for Australian seafarers when Sheila Suttner addressed the Fremantle stopwork meeting in November 1987 about the imprisonment of her son Raymond in South Africa. Sheila was a naturalised Australian, while Raymond was a senior academic in International Law at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg who had been imprisoned for ‘furthering the aims of a banned organisation’. The SUA Western Australia Branch Secretary Terry Rawlings was so moved by Mrs Suttner’s talk to the Fremantle members that he asked her to submit an article to the Seamen’s Journal, and in March the following year a special feature appeared, written by SUA life member Lal Troy. Raymond was released six months later. The Western Australian Branch of the SUA subsequently set up a Committee for the Victims of Apartheid Material Aid to organise a campaign of support for others. Action by the SUA also involved refusing to allow South-African goods and produce to be imported into Australia, or served on ships’ menus. New Zealand seafarers made ‘Sharpeville Day’ an annual stopwork day because ‘they were (and are) internationalists [who] embraced this cause passionately’. ⁸⁰

Seafarers’ personal awareness of South-African racial injustices was shared with waterside workers who were engaged in loading and unloading ocean-going merchant vessels working alongside, or through meeting people who had first-hand knowledge of political events unfolding in South Africa. Moreover, many members of wharf gangs served at sea before making a permanent home ashore, and were therefore likely to have had their own experience of visiting South Africa. Wharf labourers in the WWF were therefore similarly opposed to apartheid from a position of internationalism. Waterside workers imposed their own bans on shipping. ⁸¹ It was not, however, just empirical observations that drove their commitment. Internationalism also came from their political orientation, for it was union policy and was pushed by the leadership. The maritime unions’ stance on anti-racist politics developed under their Communist leadership (E. V. Elliott who led the SUA from 1941 to 1978 and Jim Healy who led the waterside workers WWF from 1937 to 1961) and it was actively encouraged among members by these leaders.

Arguably, rank-and-file commitment was derived also from this ideological stance and anti-racism was more than just an empirical perspective. In line with Communist Party directives, which embraced the condemnation of racial oppression in 1949, the SUA had officially opposed apartheid since its beginnings. This gave members a way of interpreting their experiences when they encountered racial prejudice and a political awareness of world events that saw them actively supporting many different democratic movements in other parts of the world, including the campaign against apartheid in South Africa. It also explains why they were very early participants. Well before there was a broad social anti-apartheid movement, Australian, New Zealand, Scandinavian and US seafarers and dockworkers were already taking action by, for example, refusing to handle South African cargo. ⁸² Over the following 20 years, the character of their protest evolved from sporadic and local boycotts to collective and well-coordinated world-scale campaigns, culminating in the formation of a new organisation, the Maritime Unions Against Apartheid (MUAA), in 1984.

This was driven both by an internal ‘bottom-up’ demand by union members willing to support their South-African fellow workers, as well as a top-down policy from union officials forging international links for organised actions. Internationalism had members paying close attention to the development of political events outside their home country. It was thus a mutually reinforcing dynamic that shaped their identities as workers of the world. It was the membership who sparked and carried forward the action. Their initial protests were a spontaneous response to the extension of South Africa’s pass laws for black workers, and the subsequent massacre of peaceful protesters at Sharpeville in March 1960. ⁸³ In so doing, Australia’s maritime workers were among the first of those outside South Africa itself to take action against apartheid. ⁸⁴

The SUA campaigned against apartheid alongside many other trade unions, both in Australia and overseas, in what was an international movement. The International Labour Organisation of the United Nations established a Committee on Apartheid, which passed a Declaration Against Apartheid in 1964 – updated in 1981, and again in 1987 – that urged trade unions as well as governments to exert pressure on companies and mobilise workers. ⁸⁵ By the 1980s, the SUA was collaborating with the Danish and British Seamen’s Unions to enforce the United Nations oil embargo. It began when the Danish Seamen’s Union exposed a major breach of the arms embargo, resulting in the arrest and prosecution of a Danish shipowner. It became a truly international initiative backed by the WFTU, the United Nations Committee Against Apartheid and the International Transport Workers Federation. What empowered their strategy was the importance of shipping in sustaining the boycotts against South Africa. A Shipping Research Bureau (Shirebu) was established in Amsterdam in 1980 to monitor the oil trade and track tankers, shipping companies and charterers on behalf of the UN Special Committee Against Apartheid. Depending on details provided by crews and port workers, this organisation was able to keep highly accurate information on the methods used to circumvent the embargoes. ⁸⁶

The oil embargo on South Africa was the international campaign of ‘the most personal importance’ to Wally Pritchard, an SUA member who was instrumental in the formation of the MUAA. He became aware of the strategy when he saw that the policies of the ICFTU and the WFTU both endorsed the oil embargo on South Africa. The Danish Seamen’s Union was exposing violations of the arms embargo by a Danish shipowner filmed discharging cargo in South Africa. At that point, Pritchard says, ‘we then decided to embark on a campaign to get the trade unions round the world to implement what their peak bodies had already agreed on’. Also involved and lending their support were Oliver Tambo, ANC President in exile, John Kadaman, ANC secretary, and Archbishop Huddlestone – all of whom were in London at the time.

The oil embargo proved costly to the South-African Government. Oil became the highly visible focus of the anti-apartheid campaign as it was synonymous with South-African military power, and also an economic weak spot because South Africa had no commercially viable oil deposits of its own. ⁸⁷ It was dependent on imports, and therefore shipping. Enforcing the oil embargo was crucial, as to meet its oil needs South Africa was forced to pay premiums to oil companies in secret trading deals to break the embargo, thus draining the South-African economy of millions of dollars annually. ⁸⁸ The MUAA conference, held in October 1985, stated publically that the unions could contribute significantly by delaying sailings, increasing the risks and thereby the costs of oil transport by making companies unreliable as charterers. In December 1985, the SUA boycotted two vessels whose owners had provided tankers to carry US oil to South Africa. In November 1987, Transworld Oil, the major supplier of oil to South Africa, announced it was withdrawing from the business. ⁸⁹

The SUA adopted a policy of condemning racial oppression in 1949. Specific actions by leaders were taken after the Sharpeville massacre, with Federal Secretary Elliott writing a letter of protest to the South-African prime minister. This was followed by a consumer boycott of South-African goods, demonstrations against sporting tours, and letters to prominent sportsmen urging them to boycott South-African cricket. The SUA worked with the South African Congress of Trade Unions to strengthen the arms embargo in what the Seamen’s Journal called ‘the most concerted international trade union action in the war against apartheid – the Maritime Oil Embargo on South Africa’. ⁹⁰ In 1990, the SUA finally welcomed a freed Nelson Mandela in person to Sydney.

Opposition to apartheid was the longest and probably most significant campaign for democracy the SUA had run and one where their personal sense of internationalism arising from the work identity was most apparent. They made a tangible contribution to the global struggle for democracy in South Africa through the connectedness of oceans for maritime workers ‘who share the seas’.

Conclusion

A belief in their own personal internationalism was expressed frequently by Australia’s seafarers who ‘absolutely’, ‘wholeheartedly’ and ‘definitely’ agreed with the claim made in their journal by one of their members, that ‘seafaring brings out the socialist and internationalist side of people’s attitude more strongly than any other occupation’. ⁹¹ Most seafarers readily saw internationalism inherent in their work – ‘it’s that kind of occupation’ – and believed it shaped their own and their union’s politics. In the words of one former official, ‘The very calling makes you an internationalist [and] The SUA was always an international union’. ⁹² Internationalism had been present at its birth and socialist internationalism was a shaping force in the history of the labour movement.

Yet it was too easy for opponents of the SUA to dismiss their activism as merely ideological and directed by a higher authority and political purpose. Listening to the seafarers themselves has shown it was in fact deeply grounded in the reality of their own experience and identity. It arose from their sense of connectedness with all who labour on, and share, the seas. Moreover, it was actively cultivated by their own agency, ‘the sailor, [who] … sees dimly the vision of a higher life’. ⁹³ If indeed internationalism was ‘the language of seafarers’, as they claimed, it was nevertheless a learned language that was alive because it spoke of their experiences and connections across the oceans on which they sailed.