BY ROWAN CAHILL
During September 2000, prior to the Sydney Olympic Games and the Melbourne S11 protests, the Howard government, supported by the ALP, passed the Defence Legislation Amendment (Aid to Civilian Authorities) Bill, which clears the way for the overt and violent intervention of the military in Australian civilian affairs. The bill authorises the military to search, move, detain, and kill Australian civilians involved in "protest, dissent, assembly or industrial actions" deemed to endanger commonwealth interests or threaten life.
Alarmingly, during the Olympics, the army deployed 15 teams of Special Air Service (SAS) personnel in plainclothes, with permission to use force if necessary in the conduct of their duty, amongst Olympic crowds. Allegedly the civilian-attired troops were on the lookout for acts of terrorism or disturbances of any kind.
The operation was illegal on three counts: the federal government was not informed of the operation beforehand, when it should have been; neither the deployment of troops in plainclothes, nor permission to use force, are permitted in non-emergency situations.
The amendment bill and the illegal covert operation should set alarm bells ringing. Australia has a long history and tradition of adopting military-type solutions to complex industrial and domestic issues, and it is not hard to imagine the future use of the September bill.
Trade unionism developed in Australia following the end of the convict transportation system (1850) and in response to the development of capitalism.
The first large scale use of military units against Australian trade unionists occurred during the inter-colonial maritime strike of 1890. The advice on crowd control by Colonel Tom Price to the Mounted Rifles in Melbourne, "don't let me see one rifle pointed up in the air. Fire low and lay them out", resonates chillingly across the years.
The deployment of military units and armed police (often with rifles and fixed bayonets) against striking trade unionists and supporters characterised much of the 1890s.
Following federation, the 1912 Brisbane general strike saw commonwealth military officers and spare-time troops volunteer as specials against strikers. Many of the specials wore their commonwealth uniforms into action.
During the November 1923 strike by 650 Melbourne police officers over wages and conditions, commonwealth and state officials and industry leaders feared the onset of a Bolshevik-style revolution. The commonwealth armed forces were mobilised, and millions of rounds of ammunition allocated, to thwart any such contingency. With the armed forces held in reserve, a 6000-strong baton-armed fighting force of specials was recruited from ex-military personnel and Citizen Force officers to maintain law and order in Melbourne. The strikers lost their campaign; 636 police officers were discharged or dismissed.
Private quasi-military outfits proliferated during the 1920s and 1930s. Some of these organisations were the Order of Silent Knights, the Blackshirts, the White Guard, the Old Guard, the New Guard, the League of National Security. Together, they had an estimated membership of 130,000.
These outfits had access to arms and ammunition, were disciplined, conspiratorial, well organised and financed, and had significant links with serving, often high ranking, military personnel.
Distrustful of democratic processes and conventions, hostile towards organised labour, these outfits waited in the wings for the industrial circumstances that would give them the opportunity to impose authoritarian solutions.
The last known of these outfits was The Association, led by Sir Thomas Blamey, Major General C.H. Simpson, and General Sir Leslie Morshead. Organised in 1947, it disbanded in the early 1950s, welcoming the strong anti-communist and anti-union policies of the newly elected Menzies government.
The first post-federation peace-time use of troops as strikebreakers was by PM Ben Chifley's Labor government during the seven-week-long 1949 coalminers' strike. Rather than a reluctant last minute solution to a major industrial problem, the preferred view of history, recently accessed official documents show Operation Excavate (the military code name used) was a well-planned operation conceived at the outset of the strike.
Chifley set the precedent for subsequent use of the armed forces for industrial and political purposes. Robert Menzies used the army and navy to break bans by the Seamen's Union (SUA) and the Waterside Workers' Federation in 1951, 1952, 1953 and 1954. Harold Holt used the navy to break an SUA boycott in 1967. Malcolm Fraser used the air force to break union bans on Qantas in 1981. Bob Hawke used the navy and air force to help smash the Australian Federation of Air Pilots and its industrial campaign of 1989.
Since a 1993 election campaign threat by Liberal leader John Hewson to use troops on the waterfront "as a last resort", the martial option has been a shadowy dimension of Liberal Party industrial policy. The jury is still out on the extent of the involvement of military authorities in the Patrick Stevedores dispute (1998).
The most comprehensive plan to use the armed forces against organised labour was code named Operation Alien, 1950-53. This top-secret operation was under the control of Menzies, and planned by a select group of government, service and industry leaders. It was part of a wider Cold War strategy to smash militant unionism in Australia.
Operation Alien involved a large scale offensive against the maritime and mining unions in particular. Armed forces personnel would replace strikers; weapons were to be issued, cached in secure handy locations but not carried to work sites. The planners obviously anticipated a violent response, perhaps even desired it.
Partially implemented a number of times between 1951 and 1953, Operation Alien never went into full swing. Wary targeted unions failed to provide sufficient provocation.
A separate plan, beginning July 1950, also awaited the development of a Cold War crisis. It involved army run internment camps to be filled with men, women and children nominated by the Australian Security and Intelligence Organisation as being threats to Australia's security. By April 1955 the number destined for internment stood at 16,600 — including 1100 labour movement militants. The plan lapsed in the 1970s, by which time the project was presumably politically embarrassing, expensive and bureaucratically unmanageable.
[Rowan Cahill has worked as a teacher and freelance writer, and in various capacities for the trade union movement as a rank and file activist, delegate, and publicist. Author, or co-author, of five books and numerous pamphlets, his writings have been published in a wide range of academic, socialist, and radical publications. His forthcoming pamphlet is Picket Line Dispatches, the story of the Joy Mining Machinery dispute.]