By Pip Hinman
President Chirac's decision to resume nuclear testing in the Pacific sparked an immediate ground swell of opposition. People from all walks of life canvassed the how to force a back-down on radio talk back shows, in the print media and in debates on street corners.
After dramatically underestimating the strength of the anti-nuclear sentiment, the federal government scrambled to regain some credibility by cancelling defence contracts and encouraging a consumer boycott of French goods. But while Prime Minister Keating and foreign minister Gareth Evans talked of "diplomatic action", many unions were already drawing up action plans of their own — including urging their members to take to the streets on August 6, the 50th anniversary of the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima. This call is also being supported by the ACTU.
Sections of the union movement reacted quickly to the threat posed by the resumption of nuclear tests. Actions included bans on French property by the United Firefighters Union, rolling bans by waterside workers and custom officials of the Community and Public Sector Union, the refusal to service French aircraft by the Transport Workers Union and the mass attendance by trade unionists at Bastille Day demonstrations around the country.
For the federal president of the Transport Workers Union, Steve Hutchins, the union's Bastille Day protest, a 24-hour ban on the servicing of French commercial and military flights, was "just the first of what's to come". He pointed out that the union's action was instigated by the membership, not the union administration. "This is no stunt, but a more general expression of outrage and frustration against the French government decision."
Similar outrage was expressed by all the unions Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly contracted. The NSW Teachers' Federation, at its annual conference earlier this month, condemned both the Chirac government and the federal Labor government for its "cynical attempt to shore up election hopes ... while allowing the sale of uranium to continue".
Condemning anti-French chauvinism, the federation called on the French government to cancel its plans to resume nuclear tests, saying that this would only encourage other governments to do the same. The federation demanded that the Australian government cancel uranium sales to France and ban French companies bidding for defence contracts. It urged its members to attend the Hiroshima Day demonstrations and to encourage students to "commemorate, as appropriate, the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the need to rid the world of nuclear weapons".
Echoing the call to mobilise, the national secretary of the Australian Manufacturing Workers' Union, George Campbell, in the July issue of The Manufacturing Worker said he had asked the ACTU to call an urgent meeting of its international committee to consider further action. He noted that the dangers France posed in proceeding with the nuclear tests are not only environmental — they will also jeopardise the recently extended nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Describing the federal government's initial response as "pathetic", Campbell outlined the sorts of protest actions that trade unions could take, many of which are already being employed, including bans on French goods; bans on the servicing of French ships and aircraft; setting up regional trade union meetings to consider joint protest action; ending the sale of uranium to France; and a boycott of French goods and services.
Bill Ethel, WA CFMEU state secretary, told Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly that the time was right for unions to push for uranium to be left in the ground altogether (the building division's position) and for pressure to be put on France to leave its colonies in the Pacific. However, he said that these things would happen only if the ACTU extended its campaigning and networking with other groups such as Greenpeace. The CFMEU organised the Bastille Day protests in WA and is playing a central role in organising the Hiroshima Day rally there.
At its meeting in June, the ACT branch of the Community and Public Sector Union went one step further than other union leaderships and called on the federal government to ban trade with France.
Branch secretary Cath Garvan said that a number of "expressions of concern" had resulted in the branch passing a motion calling on the federal government to "institute strong measures against French interests including bans on the procurement of French goods and services and bans on trade, investment and other products and sales of uranium to France". The meeting also pledged its support for the Trades and Labor Council's picket of the French embassy.
ACT branch assistant secretary Greg Adamson told Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly, "Union members in the ACT are concerned by the Australian government policy of mining and exporting uranium to France. They see that this is contributing to the French government nuclear tests.
"There is a strong basis for this concern. The existing and potential trade in uranium and nuclear waste means that just about any uranium exported from Australia could end up in French nuclear weapons. Since the US Three Mile Island and Chernobyl accidents, we have also seen the devastation that a nuclear power accident can do.
"As long as Australia remains part of the nuclear fuel cycle by mining and exporting uranium, we are contributing to potential and actual devastation."
While the individual consumer boycott has been receiving a lot of attention from the media, government and union leaderships, largely ignored is the question of how effective this strategy is. Liquor merchants may be reporting a drop in the sales of French products, but this on its own will not be enough to force the French government to back down.
While boycotts can act as means for people to release their anger, the problem is that such action is left to the discretion of individuals. It is more likely to affect the products of (not very influential) small producers than the big-ticket items of large corporations. Action which is not nationally coordinated and targeted will fall short of achieving the desired political and economic impact required to force the French government's hand.
Imposing trade bans on the sale of wool and coal (the major exports) and uranium to France and cancelling the import of French goods (the major component of which is industrial goods such as machinery) would be a far more effective way of getting the anti-nuclear message across.
This was ruled out early in the piece by government officials who argued that the French wouldn't feel the effects of such a decision. However, the political impact of one government in the South Pacific taking such a stand should not be underestimated. It could be an important trigger to an international trade ban against the French — the sort of economic pressure required to force Chirac to back down.
Australia's trade with France is small (in 1993, France accounted for 1.23% of our exports and 2.4% of our imports), but such a stand by the federal government would more accurately reflect the extent of the outrage felt by the majority of Australian, New Zealand and South Pacific workers.
The real issue here, which the Australian government has so far ducked, is political leadership. Jim Donovan, a central NSW branch secretary of the Maritime Workers Union, believes the Coalition has "showed up" the government's weak response by calling on it to do more. He said that the union movement would be in a much stronger position if the federal ALP government was prepared to take a tougher stand. The Maritime Union has slapped bans on at least 10 French government and privately owned vessels entering Sydney ports and has taken action over a ship suspected of carrying radioactive waste from Moruroa to France via Australia.
Donovan told Â鶹´«Ã½ that he believed that the government should stop all trade with France, in particular, uranium, and agreed that now would be a good time for unions to extend the campaign to keep uranium in the ground. The maritime union currently has a position against taking industrial action over existing uranium contracts. However, Donovan was hopeful that this position would change after the union's next national council meeting.
To date, unionists have taken the lead in the campaign to stop the nuclear tests in the Pacific. It's clear that no amount of resolutions, advertisements in French newspapers and diplomatic niceties will persuade Chirac to change his mind. And experience shows that well-coordinated boycotts and trade bans do work. The crucial role they played in bringing down the apartheid regime in South Africa is the most persuasive example.
Without the international campaign to isolate the South African government both politically and economically, the mass movements inside the country would have been severely handicapped. Such united action, led largely by mass workers' organisations, was an important contribution to the eventual downfall of apartheid.
The brutality of the apartheid government was visible for all to see. But so too is the brutality of the effects of nuclear explosions as witnessed at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Maralinga and Moruroa.
It's clear that a majority in Australia agrees with the chairperson of the South Pacific and Oceanic Council of Trade Unions, Vaosa Elisaia, who said at its recent meeting that the campaign to stop the French nuclear tests "is the big issue of the decade". If we are to make it as big as the campaign to end apartheid in South Africa, or to end to Vietnam War — as Elisaia argued — trade unionists will have to step up the pressure on the federal Labor government to take more decisive action.
The ACTU must be urged to coordinate a national campaign of opposition to the French nuclear tests. Only such united action, which takes up some of the broader but related issues of uranium sales to France and the French colonial presence in the South Pacific, will force the federal ALP government to act responsibly.
While the ACTU's support of its affiliates' actions and Hiroshima Day activities is to be welcomed, it cannot stop there. To stop Chirac, trade unionists must demand that their peak body step up the pressure on the federal Labor government to ban trade with France.