Farmers take on the banks
Rebellion in the countryside
By Peter Boyle
When local bank managers hear that a rural action group has been set up in their district, they press the panic button according to Jim Cronin, a co-founder of Bankwatch. "They are on the phone to head office straight away, and head office sends out the special circulars they've prepared on how to deal with Bankwatch".
Not that this does the banks much good. Bankwatch, a new farmers movement, has used militant tactics to stop banks from forcing the sale of farms during the current rural crisis.
In most cases, the threat of bad publicity, a new will among local farmers to stand up to the banks and the united front against forced land sales combined to stop the banks, Cronin explained to Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly. In the Eyre Peninsula and on Kangaroo Island, where Bankwatch began last year (as a "five-man operation gone crazy"), there has not been one successful forced sale.
Cronin and Bill Carey, also a co-founder, are wool and wheat farmers themselves. Their farms are not in trouble, but they were sick of seeing the human misery inflicted on other farmers during the extended rural crisis.
And it wasn't just farmers who were suffering, said Cronin. Rural towns were badly hit, small businesses were going bust and many people lost their jobs. There were suicides, families breaking up and many people going to pieces.
They were sick of government inaction in the face of a nightmare caused mainly by drought and high interest rates which rendered even efficient farmers unable to service their debts. The
government's Rural Adjustment Program was only designed to help along the reduction in the number of farms, they said.
Since 1968, more than 71,000 farms have disappeared in Australia, while some of the remaining 125,000 farms have grown bigger. But rural Australia could face its biggest shake-out yet over the next few years. Some agricultural "experts" are saying that another 10-15% of farmers will have to leave the land by the end of the decade. One National Farmers Federation official put the figure at 24%.
Despite little organising experience outside the local footy club, Cronin and Carey decided to take action. After studying the immediate problems (in the course of which, Carey says, he became a de facto social worker and counsellor in a sea of human misery), they hit on a strategy.
"We'll have to take on the banks, I said to you, Bill, didn't I?", says Cronin. Bill Carey nods. His voice quivering with emotion, he recalls driving home many a night, trying to "dodge the 'roos" with his mind still on the tale of sorrow he'd heard that day from a ruined farmer or his wife.
Bankwatch's first action was a simultaneous picket of 12 banks in the Eyre Peninsula. The banks got a fright. "A fax went out from their head offices telling them to hold off all forced sales for two months."
Further action was necessary in a few cases. Local farmers took it upon themselves to keep a watch on the gate of one property that the bank was trying to sell. Everyone who came to look at the property decided that they would not buy, explained Cronin with a grin. A couple of bank-initiated auctions only transferred the property to a relation of the beleaguered farmer. The banks got the message that Bankwatch was serious and haven't dared to hold a
public auction in that area since.
Over the last year, some 180 action groups have been set up in outback South Australia, Victoria and New South Wales. Each group operates autonomously, explained Carey. "We give them a few guidelines: a draft of a letter to hand to the banks which says that the local farmers are united against any forced land sales and another letter demanding that the bank itemise and fully explain all charges on the farmers' accounts."
The first letter usually puts the wind up the local manager. The second letter — delivered personally by each farmer — gives him a bigger headache, because in most cases the manager won't even know all the bank charges involved.
Penalty charges the banks have never mentioned to farmers are revealed. Some farmers who have paid off all their debts years ago have found that they have been charged thousands of dollars for having a loan facility, which they did not know about, held open for them. This sort of thing makes a farmer very upset, says Cronin, and likely to make the manager aware just how upset.
"These simple actions totally change the relationship between a farmer and the bank. Usually the bank intimidated the farmer, but now the roles are reversed. Just demanding information that a bank customer has a right to have puts the banks on the defensive", said Carey.
Carey and Cronin see that many workers in the cities are in as much strife as farmers. Both groups are victims of the economic rationalism extolled by the major political parties, as they see it. The banks were foisting on smaller customers the price of their reckless loans to the failed "entrepreneurs" of the late 1980s.
Carey and Cronin conclude that the banks need to be controlled. They also oppose any attacks on central
marketing authorities for rural commodities. The economy should be run with "people in mind".
They realise that there is a "need to find a nexus" between the victims of economic rationalism in the country and in the city. Farmers and workers have both been under extreme pressure in recent years, and their traditional leaders have sought to turn each group against the other.
"A worker needs to know that there is somewhere to come home to at night, as much as a farmer does", said Carey. He believes that there should be special low interest loans for housing as for farms. There should be concessions for small businesses and a guarantee of a decent living standard for all.
To bridge the traditional political divide, Bankwatch has been touring unionists in rural areas. "We brought people from Whyalla and the SA Trades and Labor Council to speak to our rallies in the Eyre Peninsula", said Cronin. Not surprisingly, traditional farm organisations like the National Farmers Federation are "a bit crook" with Bankwatch.
The feeling is mutual. According to Bill Deller, Victorian vice-president of the State Public Services Federation, a recent Bankwatch meeting he addressed in Harrow, in the state's western district, was also attended by NFF officials. But the officials received an angry reception when the only advice they could offer financially troubled farmers was to contact the NFF's financial adviser. "He's a former bloody bank manager", snarled one farmer in the hall.
Deller, who also spoke to a Bankwatch meeting of about 200 angry farmers in Ballarat in May, says that the movement is spreading at the rate of one new group a week. In return, the SPSF organised a public meeting in Melbourne to hear
Cronin and Carey speak about Bankwatch.
"There is a rebellion in the countryside", said Deller, "and people are turning away from the National Party as they are from Labor and Liberal parties in the cities".
What next for Bankwatch? Cronin and Carey hope for more local groups to be set up and for the banks to be picketed in the cities as well. "We've also got Nobby Clark [former chief of the National Australia Bank] in our sights, and we are not letting up because the banks are going to have to pay for the misery they've caused", said Cronin.
They have no aspirations to join parliamentary politics and are content to put pressure on all politicians. But other Bankwatch members have indicated that they might join the Independent Action campaign in the October 3 Victorian elections.