This interview with George Petersen (1921-2000) was made by Tim Anderson in 1993.
Wilfred George Petersen (1921-2000) became a communist as a soldier during the Second World War, after growing up poor in Queensland during the Great Depression.
Disillusioned with Stalinism by the mid-1950s, he joined the ALP, later representing the Illawarra in NSW state parliament as an MP, from 1968 to 1988.
He remained a backbencher when Labor was in government, campaigning on many working class, social justice and environmental issues, but was eventually expelled from the party in 1987, for voting against the party in parliament on the issue of workers compensation.
George remained politically active outside and after parliament and wrote a book called How Labor Governs in New South Wales.
This interview with George is by Tim Anderson in 1993.
Photo of George by Mairi Petersen
George you write in your book about being a child in the Depression. How much of an impression did that period make on you?
Oh it made a big impression on me; it was a period of mass unemployment and very poor social services. I think at one period my father was unemployed with five children to maintain, getting one pound eight a week from relief work. He was also a small builder on the perpetual edge of bankruptcy, with money owed to him all over the place.
He was a carpenter and I think also a cane cutter?
He was a carpenter; he used to go cane cutting occasionally when he couldn’t get work as a builder. Last time he went cane cutting he was forty-seven years of age and it just about killed him, despite the fact that he was a man in very good physical condition. He’d held the half mile cycling championship of Australia for years. He was much more physically fit than I ever was!
Your grandparents were farmers; had they gone broke by the time he was born?
My grandparents on both sides were farmers. My mother’s parents were Swedish and English, and Grandfather Ingstrom had actually been a tenant farmer for the Colonial Sugar Refinery and he’d led the tenant farmers in a revolt against the CSR over the conditions under which they supplied their cane to the mill [in Childers, Qld]. Then he took up a dairy farm at Mount Larkin, near Rockhampton in Queensland, and I stayed quite a bit of time on the dairy farm and it struck me as being hard physical labour for very little reward. Mount Larkin was not the most fertile area of Australia. Two of my mother’s brothers who were on the dairy farm, both of whom married quite late in life, were Douglas Social Creditors and quite fanatic about the Douglas Social Credit theory. I certainly absorbed the radicalism of Douglas Social Credit, without being able to swallow the — it was only the banks that were at fault.
They were hostile to the banks, which were repossessing the land in the Depression?
Everyone hated the banks, and in the case of some of them it shaded off into anti-semitism. Now two of my father’s brothers were cane cutters in Tully, North Queensland, and I had quite a bit to do with those two brothers and they were both leaders in the 1935 sugar strike. It was there radicalism which introduced me to — for want of a better term I’ll call it Marxism, actually it was stuff that was being put out by the Communist Party.
You would have been about 14 then, so when you were starting to think seriously …?
When I started to think seriously and I was influenced by both sets of uncles. I believed myself to be a socialist. I’m not quite sure of the order in which I read these books, but I know I read The Ragged Tailed Philanthropist and Ten Days That Shook the World.
Were you at school then?
I was at school then, yes. I left school at the age of fifteen, in 1936, oh 37 actually. In 1937 I took a job as a telephonist in the post office. I took the first job I could get that paid money because practically all my school mates didn’t get work at all until world war two came along.
So you did the public service exam for that one, didn’t you?
Oh yes: arithmetic, spelling and handwriting! Also in Bundaberg, where I got the job in the post office, I met a number of men who worked at the Bundaberg foundry, which then had a shop committee which was led by communists and was well and truly under communist control, as in fact virtually all the militant unions were, on the Queensland coast …
But you actually joined the Communist Party during the war?
I joined during the war in 1943.
And you had to deal with the issue of being a communist soldier, and doing a little bit of work for the CP on leave? How was that: being a communist and a soldier?
Oh well it was very easy really. It’s very difficult to conceive of it now but being a communist during world war two and getting all the glory of the Russians defeating Hitler! It meant you were given a respectability which I found quite strange, particularly when I’d had my experience of meeting communists who were militants in the Bundaberg foundry, or militant cane cutters, and who were regarded as the ‘scum of the earth’ by the establishment.
The climate was different then to that of the cold war, later on?
Ah yes, I don’t think it was as bad then. The communists were attacked because they were militants, not because they were communists — the same way as the super left gets attacked now for actually standing up for labour principles by the fake left — the communists were attacked because they ‘weren’t true Australians’ or because they took up ‘stupid causes’ and fought unnecessarily, all that sort of stuff. Now the cold war was quite a different period, particularly after the 1949 coal strike there was a hatred towards communism in the general community that hasn’t been seen now for many years.
Organising for the party would have taken up a lot of your time?
Oh it took up all my time. I had to spend all my life dashing from one meeting to another. What the hell I achieved by it I’ll never know! But, there was something about, the Stalinist system of organisation is terribly bloody boring. Because you spend your whole life dashing from meeting to meeting. And trying to whip up an enthusiasm which just isn’t there. It was different with workers who actually belonged to the militant unions. The rest of us, who were engaged in occupations where there was no class struggle going on, found ourselves just being bored out of our minds! One exception was during the period of the coal strike, where we all engaged in activities to support the coal strike. Another period was the period of the CP dissolution bill.
What did you see were the strategies of the CP then, in the late 40s?
I think they thought they were on the verge of power. And when Sharkey said “if Soviet troops in pursuit of an aggressor should enter Australia, Australian workers would welcome them” (check this quote??), I think he really did believe that the cold war was going to be a hot war, and the Russians would win that war and then communism would be imposed by Russian bayonets.
Like in Eastern Europe?
Like in Eastern Europe, yeah.
You hesitated to join the CP initially because you were reading in the late 1930s about the show trials and there were things you couldn’t reconcile with the ideals of Marxism.
Oh it was simpler than that really. The simple fact was that I’d read about all the people in Ten Days That Shook the World – Bukharin, ??, Zinoviev, ??, and above all Trotsky. And these were the people being denounced as agents of imperialism and I was prepared to believe that maybe one or two of them would scab, but I couldn’t believe that the whole lot were traitors.
So still you overcame your doubts in the early 40s because the CP was the rising star, basically?
I suppose so. It wasn’t much of a rising star, it was the fact that Russians were winning. And I really believed a new world would come at the end of the war.
But you continued to have problems when you were in the party?
Well I would say from 1946 to 1956 I was so busy working I never had time to really examine what it was all about. I read very little. It’s one the great regrets of my life that (a) I didn’t enrol in a university course and (b) I didn’t actually read much Marxist material. I didn’t read volume one of Capital until 1957. Which is a bit bloody late for me, reading volume one of Capital. If you’re a Marxist!
So coming to the south coast was the big turning point?
Oh it was a big turning point.
What made you come down here?
Oh just that my then wife, Elaine, wanted to come back to NSW. She was born in Sydney and her parents lived in Sydney. And I had a chance to get a promotion in the Wollongong office of the Department of Social Services, so I took it and came down here. And we got a house with it, in Unanderra.
You came down south in 1957, but the Hungarian uprising happened before that, so you were actually in Brisbane when you followed all those events.
Yes well, what happened was I made contact. The events of 1956 in the CP made less impact in Australia than it did practically anywhere else in the world. This was basically due to the proletarian nature of the CP. Because the people in it were militants, and were communists because they were militants. And to break with the CP means losing your contact with the militants. And [they were] not overly literate, most of them too, and so they were willing to believe that, for example, Krushchev’s speech at the 20th Congress of the CPSU was an invention of the American State Department, and that the Hungarian revolution was a counter-revolution instigated by the United States and the remnants of the old Hungarian aristocracy.
And no-one in the CP in Brisbane was questioning that?
Not a single one, matter of fact I got up at a CP district congress in 1956 at the time of the invasion of Suez and the Hungarian revolution, and condemned both of them – I mention in my book what happened – but I said we have to condemn both of them and Claude Jones started to talk. The next day he said, look we should study what the CP of France is doing, I said “Oh break it up Claude, the French party’s the most Stalinist CP outside the Soviet Union”, and he said ..
You used that expression then?
Yeah! I actually used it, yeah. And he said “You know, I think what your trouble is George is that you’ve lost your faith.”
So, really you were on your own questioning these things, up in Brisbane?
Up in Brisbane, yeah. Oh and there were very few in Sydney either, for that matter. The only two that I knew of were Jim Staples and Bob Walsh.
What was it that so impressed you about Krushchev’s speech then – the denunciation of Stalin – how did you relate that to the CP here?
Well what impressed me about Krushchev’s speech was it merely confirmed all the doubts I’d had for years about the Moscow trials and the Stalinist frame-ups, and what sort of regime existed in the Soviet Union. It was clearly no invention of the State Department.
How did you relate the denunciation of Stalin by Krushchev at that time, and all your doubts about the Soviet regime, with the CP here? Was it because the leadership was so closely locked in? What implications did you see it had for being a member of the CP here?
Well one implication that I saw was that if the CP came to power in Australia I know whose head would be on the chopping block: it’d be mine! I said that to one woman party member and she looked absolutely shocked that I should even think such a thing!
You were really concerned that there would be no room for discussion or dissidents?
Oh no, in actual fact, all you would establish would be another monstrous tyranny. In the thirties it was different, you had a choice between two monstrous tyrannies, and there was no doubt which was the worse of the two. Although I’m not so sure of that nowadays! Some of the material I’ve seen indicates that Hitler killed a lot fewer Germans than Stalin killed Russians!
There is a problem I think with the CP, I’ve said this on several occasions, I just couldn’t reconcile the fact that these people were so dedicated, so self-sacrificing, but accepted the leadership of a monstrous tyranny. As if the revolution led by Lenin had anything in common with the Stalinist dictatorship.
A communist in the ALP
Now when you made your final break, or when you were in Wollongong with the CP..
Oh I didn’t actually join the CP in Wollongong. My membership lapsed. They’d sent my transfer down, and it lapsed and I didn’t bother renewing it. After about six months I joined the ALP.
Did you see some room to move in the ALP down here, as opposed to Brisbane, because of the expulsion of the groupers?
Because of the expulsion of the groupers, and also because the ALP members down here were different from the ALP members in Brisbane. The ALP members down here were in the main radical male workers. They weren’t as good as the communists, but they were pretty good by comparison to those I’d met in Queensland.
The Ironworkers union was right wing dominated
Right wing controlled, yeah.
The wharfies were different.
Oh the wharfies were different. The waterside workers in Port Kembla were an unusual situation. It had about 800 members and almost 200 members of the CP. It was the one place I’ve ever seen where it was an advantage to be a communist.
So what happened when you first joined the ALP down there? What were your first moves and what were your plans? You were still in the public service union?
I was still in the public service union, yeah, I became secretary of the section committee and once again I was delegate to its state council, and in 1963 we almost got them out on strike for the first time! Until all of a sudden the bureaucrats in Sydney woke up to what I was doing and they came down on me like a ton of bricks and stopped it!
When you first joined, there were three state members down here: Howard Bowles, Rex Jackson and Rex Connor. As a union rep at that time, and an ALP member, what connection did you have with the pre-selection processes and dealing with the state members?
Oh yes, I ended up to my eyeballs in it, you know, because as a branch secretary I kept the branch records, made sure people attended meetings to be able to vote in pre-selection ballots, supported or opposed people in ballots for elections to the council, the state parliament or to federal parliament. I stood for pre-selection for a position of alderman on Wollongong Council, and got beaten by 28 votes to 20; and then immediately made my peace with the woman who beat me by acting as her campaign director.
And she later supported you?
Oh, she supported me in four subsequent pre-selections.
Course by then, we’re talking the mid to late fifties, being a communist in the Labor Party had much more significance than it did earlier on, with the struggle over the dissolution bill, the cold war, and so on. You would have seen your position in the Labor Party in much more stark terms than you would have earlier on, I would presume?
Well yes, actually I was influenced a great deal by the Trotskyists. I joined Nick Origlass’s Trotskyist group and didn’t stay in it long.
Nick’s group had a policy of ‘entrism’ to the ALP?
Oh but all Trotskyist groups did at that time. Based upon the fact that the Trotskyist groups weren’t going anywhere, and their idea was to go in and join the mass movement and when the revolution comes it’ll come through the mass party of the working class and we’ll be there in a position to lead the struggle.
Create a new party, or?
Maybe create a new party, it was left open. As it happened of course, that never happened.
Did that idea though appeal to you, that there was a group within a group at that time? How long did that stay with you?
Oh that idea stayed with me right up to the time I was elected to parliament as an MP. And the only thing was – I was failing in this respect – after I left Nick’s group I wasn’t allied with any Trotskyist group and the ones that I saw acting subsequently, as Trotskyist groups, didn’t impress me at all. I didn’t want to be attached to the Socialist Workers League.
I got a shock when I joined Nick Origlass’s group to realise this was all there was. Nick and Issy, that’s all there was. And a few people like Denis Freney, Alan Roberts and a couple of others who joined too, and drifted in and out. And then the Socialist Workers League suddenly appeared from nowhere, and then the Socialist Labour League came along, after I became an MP and the International Socialists didn’t happen till much later. I must say I found the defects of the Socialist Workers League, and later the Socialist Labour League and the International Socialists, they all possessed the same defect: that they were going to bring everybody to the one true faith. Everyone had to listen to the words of their guru.
Like a religious group?
Like a religious group: Healy or Cliff or Mandel. Well I must say the most rational was the Socialist Workers League [which later became the Socialist Workers Party, and is now the Democratic Socialist Party]. They were the most rational of them, I found I could work with them most of the time, although what really gave me the shits about them – as the other groups did too – was that everything was secondary to actually building the party. And they’d build the party by every unscrupulous means around the place, and they’d destroy any movement at all to get half a dozen recruits.
Have you see much change in that?
Nah! Have you seen it?!
Ha, I haven’t seen it as long as you have! I wondered whether things had changed in that respect; they’ve certainly changed in other respects?
Oh look the SWP today and the IS today both appeal to me, but I’ve still got this nagging feeling in the back of my mind, you know, that they regard themselves as the superior elite.
So the defect of Trotskyist groups, despite the critical approach to the left of Trotskyist groups appealing to you, that sectarian defect has always ..
I don’t think it’s sectarian, I think it’s the belief that they’re superior to everybody else. I don’t know if you’d actually call it sectarianism.
So you were really more of a Marxist after you left the Communist Party?
Oh yeah, much more so. Oh I wasn’t a Marxist [in the CP] I was a Stalinist, and there is a difference. Stalinism is not Marxism.
Did you see yourself as being a Stalinist in those days …?
No, no, I didn’t see myself as being a Stalinist.
But looking back …?
Oh looking back I was.
In what sense?
In the sense that I was acting as an agent of the Stalinist empire. And I lacked that basic capacity that Rosa Luxemburg said, when she said “doubt everything”. I doubted nothing, and I concealed my doubt by being so involved in various activities that I never had a chance really to question what I really believed.
You seemed to have some regrets about that …
Great regrets.
So, when you joined the Labor Party down here, you developed quite a close relationship with Rex Connor, was that fairly early on in the piece?
Fairly early on, rather early, because you know Rex had the great defect: he never had the company of his intellectual equals. I was the nearest person to him intellectually, or with whom he’d come in contact.
In the sense that you liked to discuss things …?
Oh I liked to discuss theory; and Rex was very similar in a lot of respects to [former British Labour MP] Nye Bevan: a self-educated, widely-read man. He’d read Marx, but he wasn’t a Marxist. I don’t know whether he’d read it in any depth. He certainly hadn’t read Trotsky. He had read Lenin.
What were the sort of things you’d discuss with him?
What was happening in the whole world. Rex had a knowledge of science that was far greater than mine. But then I knew more about politics, and he used to have to ask about various political things.
You must have had some coincidence of … short term, objectives?
Oh … Rex believed in public ownership, he believed in the direction of the economy, he believed in nationalisation – admittedly he didn’t do much about it when he got there and was in a position to do something about it – but certainly his concept and mine was the ‘statist’ concept that if the state gets control of the means of production, you can make a new world, and get rid of the parasites.
He became known, later on, for the “buy back the farm” idea … that was a far cry from the things he was discussing with you?
It was, but it was a variation of what he was discussing with me. He was much more radical with me than what he became subsequently as a minister. I don’t know whether – I think he actually believed in it, but … it’s the sort of thing I struck with Jack Ferguson. Jack Ferguson when I first met him was much more radical than he became as Deputy Premier. Jack [would say] “politics is the art of the possible”, and I think Rex Connor really believed that politics was the art of the possible.
When you began your own move towards preselection, you had to develop a new base, in a way, in new branches.
I had to form a new branch at Unanderra. Actually the branch I lived in, when I joined the ALP in 1957, was Figtree branch, and the branch used to cover a large area which is now covered by Figtree, Unanderra and Dapto. After I’d been in that branch for a while all I could see largely consisted of old people, and I broke away to form another branch of my own at Unanderra, and that gave me a base.
And that was a new branch there. You got support from an existing branch in Mt Kembla wasn’t it?
Mt Kembla is a branch that’s been in existence for over a hundred years, dating back to the time when Mt Kembla had a bigger population than Wollongong. Irene Ryan in Mt Kembla branch stood against me for preselection and beat me 28-20, and I supported her, and became her director, and she supported me in any preselection I ever stood in.
Apart from Unanderra and Mt Kembla, what were the others branches that you got support from in the early days?
Berkeley branch, which was a newly formed branch, mostly of British migrants. They were all British migrants until Stewart West came along to join, sometime in the mid-1950s.
Going into Parliament
One of the sayings you quote about going into parliament, with the ALP, is that “you either go right or you go cranky!”
Ha, you either go right or you go cranky! If you’re an ALP activist in parliament, yes, you either go right or you go cranky. And I hoped that I’d been cranky more often than gone right! Yes!
So you moved to parliament in 1968, state election 1968. Obviously that was a big change. For one thing you had a whole new group of people you started to associate with, in parliament, and people who you otherwise would – I suppose the ALP was one sense that you had to deal with people you weren’t necessarily of like mind there, and you had to have your own internal struggle within the ALP?
Yeah. The only real friend I had in parliament was Jack Ferguson, and later on Frank Walker, when Frank Walker got there. But I didn’t have much in common with the others.
But nevertheless you did end up spending time with and talking to people, you talk in your book about some of the Liberals too, there are some, I don’t if they’re charitable or affectionate comments?
Oh some are affectionate! You know, for some reason I seemed to like [former Liberal, and later Call to Australia MP] Jim Cameron, even though he was such a dreadful bloody reactionary.
You even have some half-kind comments for [former Liberal Premier Robert] Askin.
Oh Askin, Askin was a charming rogue, considering what a ruthless sod he was, he could be quite charming.
You quoted Jack Ferguson as saying that he betrayed his own class, in front of him over a few drinks, and Askin protested that he “just represented the little people”. And Ferguson I think responded?
Oh “only one little person, yourself”!
What was Askin like, as an individual?
Oh he was alright. You know, you wouldn’t seek him out, you wouldn’t make a friend of him, but it was amazing just talking to us. You know, no other Liberal I know would talk as freely to a Labor person as Askin did.
You also had, interestingly enough, some relatively kind words for [former Liberal Minister for Justice] John Maddison, who must have been your nemesis in some respects, because you campaigned so long on prisons, when Maddison was there.
Oh I was his nemesis. Oh look, Maddison just didn’t have the guts to be consistent. You know, Maddison was basically a “small l” liberal who, I’m quite sure if he’d never gone into parliament, he was the sort of bloke you’d run into at a CCL [Council for Civil Liberties] meeting and think ‘What a decent bloke’.
Going back to the ALP then, it was always your biggest problem that you were bound by caucus, in the way you could vote, and I think you pointed out that you only ever voted against caucus in parliament once, and even though you’d been in parliament 19 years you were straight out on your ear?
That’s right, yeah, with even the left supporting my expulsion.
How difficult did you find the caucus rule to live with?
Well I supported it originally, because I knew the history of the caucus rule, and I knew that without the caucus rule there would never have been a Labor Party. It would have gone the way of all the other colonial parties.
So you accepted that party discipline was essential?
Was essential, oh I’ve now come to the conclusion that the caucus rule has been transformed into its opposite. It’s been transformed into a means of silencing radicals. But if they didn’t do it that way they’d do it some other way. Britain [the British Labour Party], which doesn’t have a caucus rule, managed to silence its radicals too.
You said that years in opposition, your eight years in opposition, 1968 to 1976 were more enjoyable, you remember them with more enjoyment?
Oh I do indeed.
You expressed doubts though, about the legitimacy of what you were doing, for instance during the [1969] Clarrie O’Shea strike?
Where I made what I think was one of the best speeches I ever made, at the [Wollongong] showgrounds in 1969. That was when Clarrie O’Shea was in jail, but it was the strength of the workers going on strike that got him out of jail, it wasn’t due to any speech made by me.
But you were expressing … don’t you feel now that you were representing a constituency in expressing the feelings of a lot of those people?
Maybe so, but my speech made no difference. It reinforced them I suppose, but no-one else, no other politician I know made a speech about it and Clarrie O’Shea got out of jail. And my speech, I don’t think my speech had any effect on it at all.
You were saying you felt there was an element of fraudulence about issues you’re dealing with in parliament, because you didn’t feel you were representing the ALP, because you were too much to the left, you were too much of a dissident, but surely you were representing a constituency here, that wanted you there?
Yes in a way, but I was representing a constituency of workers as consumers, not workers as producers, and I feel unless you represent a constituency of workers as producers, you are simply being one more small-l liberal.
Why couldn’t you see yourself as representing workers as producers?
Well because that’s not the structure of parliament. The structure of parliament is that you’re on a locality basis. You can only represent workers as producers when you have a system of what the Russians used to call Soviets.
It’s a whole problem with the parliamentary system?
It’s a whole problem with the parliamentary system, parliament is not a means to represent workers as workers.
This must have occurred to you pretty early on in your parliamentary career?
Oh well I knew about it when I went in there. I thought, I can make use of this. But I think when I became really aware of this was when Labor got into government in 1976. When the issue of the Newcastle dockyard came up, and the Labor Party had a policy of closing down the Newcastle dockyard. Whereas if they were really representing workers they should have kept the Newcastle dockyard open. And you couldn’t get a squeak out of caucus. Oh actually I seconded the motion by Sam Jones, for the workers to be laid off on the old trade union basis of first on last off. We couldn’t get them even to support that.
Labor in Government
Did those sorts of problems, the problems of Labor in power, confront you much more starkly in 1976 [when the ALP came to power in NSW] that they had in those previous eight years?
Much more so. It came as a shock to me. One of the things that came as a particular shock to me was the realisation that as a backbencher in government I had far less influence than a backbencher in opposition. The usual practice was to put people into various caucus committees, and in opposition the shadow cabinet minister is the leader of the committee, is the first amongst equals. In government he’s the boss, and the caucus can never discuss anything until after it’s been discussed by cabinet, and [by then] the whole matter’s been resolved in cabinet.
And then, because of the Wran structure at that stage, by the time cabinet ministers came to caucus, they’d already decided on their position and whether they’d agreed or disagreed, they were locked into their cabinet solidarity.
That’s right. I saw it happen over both right and left, you found the right locked into an environmental decision that Walker had managed to get through cabinet, and the left locked into the position of supporting anti-working class decisions.
Like the Unsworth bill on electricity?
Yeah, electricity. Well the electricity bill went through without any discussion at all in caucus. This was much later of course. In actual fact he brought down anti-trade union rules which formed the basis of Greiner’s Essential Services Act. Greiner just took them out holus bolus and then what applied to electricity workers, then applied to all workers.
So [Unsworth’s bill] wasn’t seriously discussed in caucus?
It wasn’t even mentioned in caucus. It was a great bloody bill, hundreds of pages long. By the time you got hold of it, and everyone agreed, we needed to have control over electricity supplies, [but] we didn’t see these half a dozen clauses in the middle.
Going back to that period in opposition then, it was something you worked on for many years, the prisons issue, did you get a sense of satisfaction in helping establish that Royal Commission?
Oh yes, I do get a sense of satisfaction from that, yes. Oh yes I was just saying that the three things I did in parliament were homosexual law reform, the Royal Commission into Prisons and playing a major role in getting the Ananda Marga trio out of jail! And also a fourth one – getting a double yellow line on Farnborough Road! (laughter)
Two of those three were when Labor was in government.
Yeah I know, but it was an enormous effort.
There was another one of course, that you were involved with the early committees on Aboriginal land rights. That’s something you saw through for a long number of years.
That’s right too. Oh Maurie Keane was the principal activist there. Maurie’s a terrible bureaucratic bloke in handling things, but Maurie has to take credit for that. And we got Pat Rogan on the inquiry into mental health … Chelmsford. Oh I did a great deal towards doing something about carcinogenic emissions from coke ovens, in cooperation with ?? Roberts(check name). But most of the time …
You don’t see those things as achievements?
Oh they are achievements, but it’s enormous efforts for small results. Carcinogenic emissions from coke ovens was important, for people that suffered from it, but it’s not as important. Yeah, I do get some satisfaction out of being … my time wasn’t entirely wasted.
What about in the local area, achievements in the local area?
Oh I managed to get accelerated sewerage down here, in the Shellharbour Municipality. What happened was, when Labor got into government, I saw Jack Ferguson, and Jack Ferguson agreed to accelerate the extension of sewerage to Shellharbour Municipality. Oh I can’t think of anything — oh I was also responsible for getting the area of forest called the Black Butt over there, maintained. It’s the only pristine area of forest left, oh between Helensburgh and Nowra, I think.
When you were a member for those two decades, did you have a — well what was the nature of the relationship between the Labour Council down here and you.
Oh a very close relationship, originally. Merv Nixon, all of a sudden Merv Nixon switched, along with the Communist Party, from being a militant to being a crawler to the establishment. But I had a very good relationship — but it became a very poor relationship later when you know, due to the fact that [George’s wife] Mairi became a delegate to the Labour Council and was challenging the Accord and their sell-out on workers compensation, and Merv Nixon was responsible for getting Mairi knocked off the Labour Council, by the Teachers’ Federation, despite the fact that they’re usually flat out getting the ten delegates from Teachers’ Federation to even stand, let alone attend local council.
Was there an active relationship though, with the unions, when you were in parliament. Were you constantly in touch with them? Were you representing them in parliament?
Oh I did, I did, whenever I could. And I did on a few occasions. The outstanding one I did, apart from the carcinogenic emissions from coke ovens, there was also the issue of air pollution on the Port Kembla waterfront, which I took up in parliament. But the number of cases I actually took up in parliament on behalf of the unions were very, very few. And in actual fact the usual practice when Labor is in government is for the union leaders to go direct to the ministers concerned, to bypass the local members.
There was one issue where I actually succeeded in stopping something, and that was when Wran actually brought into caucus a provision for making vagrancy an offence. Frank Walker tipped me off that it was coming up.
He would have been against it?
Oh he would have been. So I quickly dived down to the library and found what the leaders of the Labor Party in the 30s had said about it. I got into caucus and I quoted Lang, I quoted Heffron, I quoted McKell. I said, no-one could call these people radicals, by any stretch of the imagination.
Was that Wran’s initiative?
Yeah, the cops had asked for it. He was quite determined to bring it in. He said “Oh yes, I’ll have to refer it back to cabinet.” Well we never heard of it again; but I thought, what am I doing in this party, where you have to argue against … !
Had you abstained before on votes in parliament?
Never, never. I always voted as caucus decided. And if caucus didn’t decide, the leader has the power to direct you to vote in a certain way.
Except on those so-called conscience issues.
Oh yes, abortion, homosexual law reform.
How did that initiative come about — homosexual law reform — who was involved in that one in parliament?
Me, me and me! Ha ha! What happened was: I brought in a bill, which was defeated.
Who’d you get to draft that?
Oh, Lex Watson got some bloke who was a parliamentary draughtsman to help. I put it up. And then Unsworth brought one in. And the best thing that ever happened was that got defeated, but I supported Unsworth, and basically ended up thanking him for the honest way in which he did it. But thank God it was defeated, it was one of those cases where a small reform prevents a larger one. And then I think the story is that someone got at Wran, I think it was his wife, and Wran brought in his own bill. And the only objection to that bill was that it made the age of consent 18 instead of 16.
The Wran bill followed what you’d set up, except for that?
Except for that, yeah. Matter of fact it was a very simple bill; Wran’s a superb lawyer.
When you voted against caucus in parliament — you saw what was coming?
I saw what was coming, yeah.
Why did you decide — there must have been other issues in the past — why did you decide on the workers compensation issue?
Because this seemed more fundamental than any other. There was a previous issue, I was almost going to vote against them on the deregistration of the Builders Labourers. But I couldn’t … Gallagher then made a statement to his members, telling them to go and join the BWIU, so I didn’t see any point. I didn’t see any point in doing that.
What was it that you particularly objected to about the workers compensation legislation?
The principal objection I had was it destroyed the whole concept of workers compensation: that workers shall not be disabled any more than the disability caused by their illness or accident, and that they should have their income maintained, and that the boss should pay for it. In other words, what I was objecting to was that the Labor Party was acting on behalf of the bosses against the workers, and this was more clear cut than any other issue which I struck in parliament. The employer had the damages reduced because he was finding it too expensive to continue with workers compensation on the existing levels.
Wasn’t the argument put up at the time — what have you got to say about this argument — that this was giving wider access to compensation?
A lot of bullshit! Just didn’t happen to be true. No, in every way it’s been a disaster.
Was it more the issue that led you to vote against caucus, or was it the fact that you’d come to the end of your tether with being bound by caucus?
Oh it was partly that, it was partly that, but I could still have gone on for the rest of my term, and probably got an endorsement for another term. But I wasn’t happy to be bound by caucus on this issue. You know, it’s bad enough being bound by caucus on other issues, and in my book I give plenty of examples, where in fact I had to support … for example prostitution was one, ah the various, the restrictions on civil liberties in a number of bills.
By the way you were involved with other groups when you were a parliamentarian. You were involved with a lot of other groups. How important were they to your political expression? Like [the Council for] Civil Liberties for instance?
Oh Civil Liberties was very important, because Civil Liberties, which is basically a liberal bourgeois organisation, nevertheless has a detached view of civil liberties, and a view which almost invariably is one that involves a greater human freedom that what the government or the state provides.
Were there any other organisations that you were politically involved in, during your parliamentary career, that were important?
Oh well I’d been in various environmentalist movements, and I always tried to serve as their spokesperson in parliament.
After Parliament
You were talking about the nitty-gritty of electorate politics, which gets away from the larger political questions — what do you think about electorate representation, as opposed to broad — state wide or nationwide — representation?
Oh look I think proportional representation is fairer than the existing system of representation, but I don’t believe that the parliamentary system as such gives representation to workers.
Has your critique of parliamentarism become stronger since you’ve left, or was it always there?
Oh it was always there. It was there because, in actual fact, I’ve said it somewhere in my book: you don’t represent workers as workers in parliament. I can’t deal with it in an abstract sort of way. I believe that the class which will change society is the non-possessing class, the working class, the producing class. And it will not do it through parliament, it will do it only through its own strength. I prefer a proportional representation system because of the bigger possibility of people representing workers going in there and being able to use parliament as a forum for the movement outside. But as for seeing any virtue in the Upper House, or single member constituency parliament in the Lower House, I can’t see any value in it either of them.
You quoted with approval some British Marxists, who say that “the major obstacle to the destruction of a rotten edifice of capitalism is the Labor Party.” Do you believe that holds for Australia here.
I believe that holds for Australia here.
Did you believe that when you were in parliament?
Yes.
Well how did you reconcile that contradiction of being ‘part of the problem’ if you like?
It was a field to work in, a field where it was possible to obtain reforms. And I don’t believe you should bypass the possibility of obtaining reforms through parliament, whilst parliament exists.
You can have reforms without reformism?
Well you must have reforms, otherwise, you know I have little patience with the ultra-leftists who say ‘let’s boycott the lot until the Socialist Labour League leads us to the promised land’!
‘A general strike to bring the whole system down’.
To bring the whole system down! In actual fact, when workers gain reforms it gives them confidence in their own strength. It also makes it easier for them to live, gives them more leisure, and gives them more confidence in themselves, to be better educated. So naturally you have to strive for all those reforms, here and now, while you can. The only thing I’m saying is you won’t get your true freedom, until you run the state and society as workers, without any bosses over you at all.
Not through a parliamentary system.
Not through a parliamentary system. The Parliamentary system is not democratic.
But your views on parliamentarism haven’t greatly altered since what, the late seventies, when you reassessed things?
Oh no they haven’t changed basically. My views on the Labor Party have changed basically. I used to believe that you could work through the Labor Party, and the Labor Party through which workers would seek to take power in their own right. I no longer believe that’s so. The Labor party is the device for stopping workers from gaining power in their own right.
So that’s something that’s become stronger in your mind since you left the Labor Party, since you were expelled from the Labor Party?
Yes, it has become strong in my mind.
Was it harder to deal with those issues so long as you were in the Labor Party and trying to make the compromises?
Oh yes, and there’s also the fact that, as a human being, you work with other human beings who treat you as their comrade and friend, no matter how much they scream at you. I came back from hospital after open heart surgery, I came into caucus and they all stood up and applauded me for being back there; and for a moment I really believed there was some sort of solidarity, I suppose, but it wasn’t that, it was the guild members welcoming back one of their guild; whatever he might say, it was part and parcel of the system, in fact it was them using the system for their own ends.
Of course having been a political person most of your life, if not all of your life, you kept politically active after you left. Well after you left parliament, you were out of the …
Oh I was defeated in 1988.
Yes, that’s because you lost pre-selection, but you were actually there for a while as an independent.
I was actually there for a year, yeah.
Was there any difference being there as an independent?
Oh yes it was quite different. One of the important things that I think I said once was, you’ve got to read all the legislation! You can’t rely upon other people to do it for you. You can’t rely on only doing the things in which you’re interested. You know, I voted, I made speeches on a number of occasions against both the Liberal and Labor Party, mostly on civil liberties issues of one kind or another, and on a couple of occasions – I must go through one day and just check how many times I did this – but on a few occasions I called for a division which I was the only member voting against it. And I would have acted differently, in a way, to what the four independents act – they act as if they’re a median ground between the two – I always acted in a way – I’m to the left of the Labor Party, because I believe in working class power, which none else in the parliament does.
And was that a sense of freedom you had in that year?
Oh it was a sense of freedom in a way. It was a sense of freedom.
Did you get hostility from your former colleagues?
Oh yes, great hostility.
What happened at that time? They froze you out?
Oh they froze me out, yeah. I couldn’t sit down at a table in the dining room with them. I’d sit in the dining room on my own, or else with the independents or – in a way it’s different – the independents used to sit on their own, or sometimes they’ll sit with Labor or Liberal Party, but I was very much on my own.
And when it came to the election campaign of 1988, you decided to run again for your seat as ..?
Oh I’d actually formed the Illawarra Workers Party.
That’s right, so it wasn’t as an independent. You had a party.
We had a party, yeah but – and we did conduct a very good election campaign, a much more effective election campaign than anybody else, and I did get nineteen and a half percent of the vote – which if there’d been a PR system, would have ensured my being elected. I was hoping I’d get thirty percent of the vote and get the Liberals preferences, but I didn’t.
Still nineteen percent is a pretty extraordinarily strong showing in a two horse race.
It was, but the real problem though was to keep the Illawarra Workers Party going, because having formed the IWP, you could only keep it going as an election machine. And after about two years, of passing resolutions that the secretary do so and so, there wasn’t much point in continuing any further.
And since parliament you’ve been involved in other international workers’ groups?
Oh yes, I joined Socialist Alternative, led by Phil Sandford, and I would continue with it, except there’s only seven of us, and I – I’ve been to Argentina, I find myself quite sympathetic to the Argentinian Movemiento al Socialismo; what I like about them is that they’re well and truly integrated in the working class in Argentina and Brazil.
I think you’ve said that it’s one of the few examples you’ve ever seen of mass Trotskyist movements.
That’s right. Although their support is declining. What’s happening is in Brazil the workers support the Brazilian Workers Party, which is just another social democratic party, despite what the Green Left writes about it! And in Argentina the workers still support the Peronists. Nevertheless they are mass Trotskyist parties and, if I were younger, and in better health than I am, I’d like to take the matter further.
You don’t believe in this whole thing of independents, the rise of independents?
Oh no, no. I don’t believe in independents.
Are you impressed with [New Zealand New Labour MP and Alliance leader] Jim Anderton?
I’m impressed with him as a person, I don’t know whether I go along with the [New Zealand] Alliance. I can see an alliance of New Labour, Manu Motuhake and the Greens but not the Liberals! Ah maybe the Democrats, but not the Liberals, no. But I’m open to a mixture, and Anderton himself impresses me very much. I’ve met him and talked to him. He’s quite impressive.
And yet he’s not really a traditional left Labour person, he’s really an old style …
An old style centrist, yes, he’s a peculiar character. I don’t really know enough about it, but I could see the future alliance.
What about the NSW independents, how do you see those?
Oh they’re all doing a dance between Labor and the Liberals. Oh the good doctor from Manly [Dr Peter McDonald] is only a left liberal. John Hatton I’ve watched him, I’m full of admiration for the way he behaves, how he manages to pretend he’s somewhere between the two is beyond all my understanding; how he manages to hold that bloody conservative electorate! And Clover Moore seems to be the best of the three of them, but she’s no revolutionary, she’s no earth shaker. I’m much more impressed with [Australian Democrat MP] Richard Jones.
On environmental issues?
Well I’ve only dealt with him on environmental issues, but I believe he’s really good on other issues as well.
He’s active, he’s got a lot of energy.
Yes, and you know if all Democrats were like Richard Jones, that almost half persuades me to be a Democrat!
What was his position on the industrial legislation?
Totally opposed to it. Unlike the Democrats in the Senate, who voted to increase the period of suspension for the Builders Labourers.
Look, basically I’m an internationalist, and there have been three great international issues I’ve taken up. One is defence of the Palestinians; another one, defence of the revolution in Vietnam; and the other was total opposition to the Gulf War. And these three seem to encapsulate to me the vilest crimes committed by United States imperialism.
How do you see the different green groups in Australia, and discussions between them?
Oh the greens I find are divided into two groups – and I think the fundes and the realos, as they’re called in Germany, apply here. Well the fundamentalists and the realists, and I know if I were in the greens at times I’d agree with the fundamentalists and at times I’d agree with the realos. But they have no base except in peoples’ minds, on policies, and that’s the basic defect of the greens, as greens. At least the Democrats do appeal to the petty bourgeoisie, and they are spokespeople for the petty bourgeoisie, the greens are only spokespeople for …
Because they cross classes?
They cross classes, that’s their weakness, yeah.
What about the idea of green-left alliances?
Oh, it’s a thing which you do from time to time, but I don’t think you can build a movement on green-left alliances. There’ll inevitably be splits.
Don’t you see some of the future of left politics is in alliance building?
I don’t know, I’m not sure. Look I’ll work with people on particular issues, but the crucial question is the formation of a party of the working class, because there’s only one class which can be consistently revolutionary – the working class. All my experience has been that the power of the working class is far greater than that of any other power in this society, to challenge the ruling class. Nobody else is going to do it. The 1969 Clarrie O’Shea strike, the 1949 coal strike, the struggle of the workers on the Port Kembla waterfront against pollution, the ban on the Dutch ships for Japan. None of them were great victories. The 1949 coal strike was a defeat, but there is a power in that, and you must challenge the power of the capitalist class. Which isn’t to say you don’t struggle for reforms along the way and get alliances along the way; but the basic problem is that of creating a party, and when Lenin founded the Third International, that was the great problem that the world was faced with, the world working class were faced with. You know I wouldn’t have been in politics but for Lenin having done that, in the year I was born.
Your major issues at the moment are the [proposed Shellharbour] Marina development there – opposing that and defending the environment. You might say you’ve become more of a greenie in your old age!
Yes that’s right. Well I’m not a greenie, but there are these people – ordinary average people – who think they’ve got a raw bloody deal. And it’s a pity I can’t link with some bloody working class struggle, to give it power and strength. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it now, just the same.
