Mundey: With friends like these, who needs enemies….
Jack Mundey was for a period, Secretary of the Builders Labourers’ Federation in NSW. There was a hell of a struggle in the 1970s and 1980s to get rid of his pernicious influence amongst building workers in general and in the BLF in particular. (More about that at another time, but for now we look at at his political role as a revisionist so-called reforming ‘communist’, which culminated in the Communist Party of Australia supporting the Hawke Government Accord and the deregistration of the BLF.)
Mundey, in his role of President of the Communist Party of Australia, was instrumental in paving the way for the CPA to endorse the Hawke Labor Govt Accord in 1983 between the big multinational and big local bosses, and the trade unions, for class ‘peace’, class collaboration, an instrument to reduce workers’ wages and conditions, and to disarm workers and their organisations which was to have effects and ramifications for the next 40 years.
Leading lights of the Communist Part of Australia and a few from the Socialist Party of Australia including Mundey, Laurie Carmichael and John Halfpenny from the Metal Workers Union, Pat Clancy and Tom McDonald from the BWIU (later the CFMMEU), Jack Cambourne from the FEDFA, Peter Lane from the NSW Plumbers Union (not the Federal or other State Branches) and Tas Bull from the WWF (Wharfies) all supported and vigorously campaigned for the Accord.
They agreed with the big bosses and Hawke Labor Govt to vehemently attack anyone who opposed it, eg the BLF, the Federal and Victorian Plumbers Union, Food Preservers Union, Furnishing Trades Union and Air Pilots Federation (between 1983-91.)
Their class collaboration and desertion of all principles of communism goes down in history as infamy and treachery to the working class of Australia.
These traitors were courted and seduced by the big multinational and local monopoly bosses, and leading Labor lights, Bob Hawke and Paul Keating, as well as Bill Kelty, Secretary of the ACTU. Hawke and Kelty had intimate knowledge of the revisionist communists in the Trade Unions, their strengths and weaknesses, and played them on behalf of the big bosses.
It is important to look at the history of the Accord. The AMWU leaders, Carmichael and Halfpenny, and the BWIU leaders, Clancy and Tom McDonald, were not merely following Hawke and Kelty, they were among the architects of the Accord. They spoke of the ‘social wage’, when the Federal ALP was in Opposition, particularly from 1982 onwards. At the time Hawke, Shadow Minister for Industrial Relations, Bill Hayden, Leader of the Opposition, and Kelty, Secretary of the ACTU, used them willingly to get ‘consensus’ among the trade union movement on the question of wages, should the ALP be elected to government. From 1982 onwards the AMWU’s ‘The Metal Worker’ and the BWIU’s ‘Building Worker’ and ‘BWIU Review’ are full of references by Carmichael, Halfpenny, Clancy, McDonald et al of the need for a ‘social wage’ and an Accord between big bosses and workers.
Likewise the CPA ‘Tribune’ of Laurie Aarons and Jack Mundey pushed a similar line. Indeed Mundey tried to retake the NSW BLF in the 1982 BLF Elections by running for NSW Secretary with a full ticket of candidates for all positions in the NSW Branch. Mundey’s election platform included campaigning for the ‘Social Wage’, an Accord between bosses and workers, and of the need for a closer working relationship and cooperation with other ‘Left’ Unions, especially the BWIU leaders, Metal Workers leaders, FEDFA and the Wharfies leaders, and the Labor Party. Mundey was resoundingly defeated by Steve Black and his team who had the loyal backing of rank and file Builders Labourers in the NSW BLF elections.
Upon the election of the Hawke Labor Government in March 1983, Carmichael, Halfpenny, Clancy and McDonald, and the CPA’s Laurie Aarons and Mundey, played a vital role in the implementation of ALP policy, the ‘Summit’ of April 1983, and the so-called ‘selling’ of the policy to the employers (as if they needed any convincing). They were the ‘Communist’ or ‘Left’ leaders the ACTU (Kelty) and the ALP (Hawke) needed to legitimise the Accord and reduce opposition to it. The reward was to hobnob with the big bosses, be placed on government policy committees, having a ‘say’ on policy and hotlines to Hawke Government Ministers.
BLF policy was to oppose the Accord and to expose it as an ALP-ACTU instrument that pandered to the employers by cutting workers’ wages and conditions. Before the election of the Hawke Government in 1983, BLF policy was consistent and, unlike union leaders such as those of the AMWU and the BWIU, and the CPA, did not seek to delude workers with the ‘social wage‘ fantasy.
Norm Gallagher, National and Victorian Secretary of the BLF attended Hawke’s April 1983 Summit. Norm was attending as the Building Unions representative of the ACTU Executive, all members of which were invited by the Government. Gagged from speaking, Norm nevertheless distributed copies of a statement to the Summit opposing the Accord and its wage-cutting mechanisms.
The Accord was duly implemented by the Hawke Government and for the next two years workers’ wages and conditions worsened and the big employers were very happy with Hawke et al. The BLF campaigned hard with industrial action for a wage catchup and won an extra $9 a week breakthrough with the building employers. Hawke and Co threatened the BLF with destruction for daring to break the Accord but the developers and builders wanted a settlement. Suddenly a loophole was discovered in the Accord by the Hawke Government, ACTU and BWIU whereby this BLF wage rise would be paid as superannuation, and so began superannuation for blue collar workers that flowed on to all industries after Government legislation in 1984. This breakthrough was one of the few achieved by any union during the Hawke Government-ACTU wages straight-jacket.
The Hawke Govt-ACTU attacked other unions too, threatening their destruction for attempting to win wage rises for their members outside of the Accord, which provided for wage indexation rises to be solely approved by the Arbitration Court and to be only linked to the Consumer Price Index. The Plumbers Union, the Food Preservers Union, the Furnishing Trades Union and the Pilots Federation were all threatened with destruction by the Hawke Government-ACTU for taking industrial action for wage rises to make up for lost earnings during the Accord. Meanwhile other union leaders including the Left ‘Communist’ leaders either looked the other way or supported the attacks and defended the ‘sacred’ Accord with the big bosses.
When the facade of the Accord began to wear thin in 1985 these same ‘Left’ leaders played a vital role in the establishment of the Accord Mark II in September 1985 at the ACTU Congress (big business smiled on approvingly). During the Congress there was an evening meeting of the ‘Left’ Unions at the Wharfies Hall in Sussex St, Sydney. Five leading figures of the ‘Left’, one after another, supported the establishment of the Accord Mark II and gave stirring speeches how the Accord represented the best way to maintain (not improve) the living standards of Australian workers. Those ‘leaders’ were Laurie Carmichael (AMWU), Pat Clancy (BWIU), Tom McDonald (BWIU), Jack Cambourne (FEDFA) and Tas Bull (WWF).
The BLF was one of few voices opposed to this treachery by CPA leaders and some SPA leaders. By the way, the BWIU’s Pat Clancy, Tom and Don McDonald, and Stan Sharkey, and Wharfies’ Tas Bull and others were expelled by the SPA over this Accord sellout shortly after the 1985 ACTU Congress. This shows that Mundey, Clancy et al had spiralled out of control and there were forces in the SPA who held to principle. Likewise there may have been some groups in the CPA who were opposed to the sellout, but not the leadership of the Laurie & Eric Aarons and Mundey. A CPA member Harry Karslake who was on the Victorian BLF State Executive maintained principle, supported Norm Gallagher and opposed the Accord sellout.
In April 1986 the Hawke Government attacked the BLF with deregistration by the Arbitration Court on behalf of the big developers and builders. The big bosses, with the Hawke Government, used the police, courts and gaols to attack BLF officials and rank and file Builders Labourers to try and force them to join the BWIU instead of the BLF. The ACTU supported the attack with the full connivance of the BWIU, Metal Workers and some other union leaders.
The degeneration of Clancy and McDonald, Carmichael, Halfpenny as Communists was complete and Mundey, Aarons and most sections of the CPA were up to their necks in supporting the big bosses, the Hawke Government and the BWIU leaders in agitating for the destruction of the BLF. This betrayal of the workers by these renegade so-called ‘Communists’ was the logical culmination of their slide down the slippery slope of revisionist politics, where principles of class solidarity were jettisoned in favour of opportunity, empire building and praise from the ruling class. To this day the neo conservatives and media of the big bosses extol the virtue of the Hawke Government’s shameful attack on the BLF with the support of the ACTU, BWIU (CFMMEU) leaders and the CPA. The SPA, led by Peter Symon, to their credit opposed and condemned the attack on the BLF, likewise the CPA (M-L), led by Ted Hill who maintained his steadfast support for Norm Gallagher, Steve Black and the BLF right up to the time of his death in 1988.
The treachery of Mundey and Co is emphasised by the complete collapse of the CPA within a few short years (1990-91) and the collapse of their standing and support amongst the workers and all progressives. (The great CPA founded in 1920 had for many decades great esteem and support amongst the workers, indigenous people, students, women, progressives and patriots.)
It set back organised struggle in Australia but on the other hand it has provided a cleansing of such inadequate, deficient so-called ‘comrades’ from our ranks. The ideological, political and organisational weakness of such ‘comrades’ is there for all to see and the need for a much greater steeliness and committment to Communist principles is apparent. It is also not without precedence in Australia’s history where ‘Left’ or ‘Communist’ ranks go over to the side of the ruling class. Likewise, internationally this has happened many times. But the betrayal by the CPA led by Aarons and Mundey and the ‘Left’ of the Labour Movement in the 1980s, where the organising work of many decades among the workers was abandoned in favour of class collaboration with the ruling class, ranks as one of the greatest acts of treason and can never be whitewashed.
Much can and will be learnt from this, for when the big monopoly bosses and their ‘Labour Lieutenants of Capital’ (including revisionist ‘Communists’), unleash their firepower and fury on the workers and their organisations, we need comrades who are tempered and forged in struggle, who will stand up for the workers and not be deflected, weakened and sell out the workers, but who will rise to the occasion and get the workers organised to repel and defeat all big bosses’ attacks.
The workers and the Australian people expect and deserve nothing less.
