Now back on the TOPIC of the shocking traitorous attrocities committed by unionists during the war.
Unions are revolting
Strikes at the heart of a nation at war
By HAL G.P. COLEBATCH 12:00AM DECEMBER 13, 2014
AUSTRALIAN governments have a long record of allowing certain unions to get away with criminal behaviour, no matter, it seems, how thoroughly exposed that criminality is.
There is nothing new in the allegations of thuggery and blackmail, not to mention allegations of association with organised crime and terrorists that have come forward in the royal commission into union corruption.
In World War II, according to official statistics, about six million working days were lost directly through strikes in vital industries such as coalmines, munitions works and on the wharves.
With the country in a desperate situation, this was sheer blackmail, as some of those involved have openly admitted.
Though these strikes, and even sabotage, probably caused the deaths of many Australian servicemen, not one of those responsible appears to have been punished in any way.
The minister for labour and national service in the Curtin ALP government, Eddie Ward, who coined the description “four bob a day murderers” for Australian soldiers, was openly on the side of the strikers, and it was said Ward believed in no war but the class war (though it was the strikers’ own “class” — the ordinary servicemen — who tended to suffer most).
There are strong indications that the behaviour of the unions played a major part in the early death of Labor prime minister John Curtin.
Union blackmail was common. The Battle of Milne Bay was fought without heavy guns because watersiders refused to load them unless they were paid quadruple time. (American servicemen eventually shot the locks off the cranes and load fed them but they got there too late.)
“Danger” money was demanded for perfectly undangerous exercises, such as fitting guns on ships in harbour.
The coalfields, on which all industrial production depended, were on strike for months on end during all phases of the war, including the desperate days after Dunkirk.
When then prime minister Robert Menzies appealed to the strikers to return to work, he was pelted with missiles.
US aircraft were deliberately wrecked when being unloaded from ships, and vehicles dropped overboard by crane drivers.
According to the unit history Radar Yarns, other aircraft were lost, and 36 aircrew died, because watersiders had stolen the valves from the radar sets that should have guided them home.
Following the publication of my book Australia’s Secret War: How Unionists Sabotaged Our Troops in World War II, a history of wartime strikes, go-slows and sabotage in Australian strategic industries, I have received a number of other stories.
One chapter of my book dealt with the strikes at Darwin, before the war and in the early days of it, which were a major cause of Darwin’s defences being in poor shape when it was attacked by the Japanese in 1942.
With the waterfront on strike, service personnel were obliged to unload coal for the power station.
The unit history Let Enemies Beware: Caveat Hostes: The History of the 2/15 battalion 1940-45 by Ron Austin, published in 1995, has the following passage:
“An interesting anecdote relating to wartime security was related by Bandmaster Norman Henstridge. While at the PoW Cage at Benghazi, Norm was approached by a (German) Afrika Korps officer who said, ‘Good day, Norm. How are you going?’
“A startled Norm replied ‘Who the bloody Hell are you?’
“The officer replied: ‘Don’t you remember drinking with me at the Don Hotel in Darwin? Do you remember the wharfies’ strike when you blokes unloaded the coal boat? Well, I was the bloke who organised the strike!’ ”
The fact that an undercover officer of the Wehrmacht was one of the union leaders casts a sinister light on the behaviour of some watersiders.
Perhaps equally sinister was the story related by Malayan communist guerilla leader Chin Peng.
According to Chin Peng, Communist Party of Australia secretary Lawrence Sharkey boasted at a meeting of Asian communist leaders in Singapore that in Australia communists had murdered strikebreakers.
Chin Peng said: “The meeting eagerly awaited Sharkey’s news on strikebreakers and how his party handled them. Our visitor leaned back in his chair as the question, originally posed in Chinese, was translated into English.
“Pausing for a moment, Sharkey glanced along the row of Asian faces at the table and said bluntly, ‘We got rid of them.’
“Someone who spoke English followed up. He thought he might have misheard the response, which had been delivered in such a thick, slow Australian drawl.
“ ‘You mean you eliminate strikebreakers, Comrade … kill …?’
“Sharkey considered the question carefully. Then he said: ‘But not in the cities, only in the outlying areas. The rural areas. The mining areas.’
“Translated, Sharkey’s words sent a rush of reinforced fervour through our gathering … what he said was pivotal in its overall effect.”
This “overall effect” was a communist guerilla uprising.
Whether or not Sharkey was telling the truth, thousands were killed in the Malayan Emergency that followed.
Although I have no hard evidence for obvious reasons, fatal accidents would plainly have been easy to arrange in a number of dangerous areas.
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