Another tale of WA's forgotten and hidden history: Don McLeod and the 1946 Pilbara strike

"He basically waged war against the West Australian government. He collected an enormous cache of documentation; he was going to run this huge High Court case based on legislation back in the late 1800s to try to achieve land rights for Aboriginal people. Pretty much to his dying day he was in there boots and all fighting for Aboriginal people."
Deborah Wilson on Don McLeod

Since  2010  I have been writing about the historical silences and the hidden and forgotten history of Western Australia.

 

This includes blog pieces on Aboriginal deaths in custody, Aboriginal poet Jack Davis on Aboriginal history, and the death of John Pat, the Wagerup community taking on Alcoa, the Esperance lead scandal, the scandal of asbestos and Wittenoom, the Atlas oil spill, corporate money and political parties, the imprisonment of an 8 year old Aboriginal boy for stealing a Freddo Frog, the long history of internment camps, the significance of the citizen sector and civil society protest movements, nuclear industry and the corporate stranglehold on NFPs,  

A number of blog pieces here and here were about the 1946 Pilbara strike by Aboriginal pastoral workers for fair pay and better working conditions  in the Pilbara region of Western Australia.

 

The strike was a historic event in Australian history. It was the first major strike by Aboriginal people and one of the longest strikes in Australian history. Sadly, the Pilbara strike is largely a footnote  in the 'official' view of Western  Australian history. A recent history of WA since 1826 gives the strike scant attention.

 

A key figure in the 1946 strike was Don McLeod, a white miner, activist, trade unionist and communist who had been initiated into Aboriginal society and culture. McLeod, along with Aboriginal lawmen Dooley Bin Bin and Clancy McKenna  were the coordinators and leaders of the strike.

Don Mcleod was chosen as the key negotiator. At the time he was  a delegate for the Australian Workers Union in Port Hedland.

The strike was planned as far back as 1942 at an Aboriginal law meeting attended by  200 senior Aboriginal law men representing twenty three language groups from much of the remote north west of Western Australia. The meeting lasted six weeks. 

The decision was  taken to postpone the strike until after the Second World War had ended. 

 

At the time Aboriginal workers were paid for their work with supplies such as tobacco and flour instead of cash. The situation in the Pilbara was akin to slavery: if Aboriginal people left a job they could be pursued by the police and forcibly brought back.

 

On May 1 1946, after years of planning, 800 Aboriginal pastoral workers walked off the large pastoral stations in the Pilbara  and from employment in the two major towns of Port Hedland and Marble Bar.

 

Despite constant harassment the strikers sustained themselves using a method of surface mining for tin, and trading skins and pearl shells. The strike continued until August 1949 when the striker's determination and tenacity were rewarded with improvements to pay and conditions for Indigenous people.

 

At the end of the strike many Aboriginal people refused to  work for white station owners. 

         

The strikers also realised a dream of economic independence. They established a number of successful cottage industries and mining concerns and in 1951 they registered Pindan,  the first Indigenous-owned company in Western Australia which went on to own several pastoral stations, including the Strelley station near Port Hedland and establish an independent community school.

 

In 2012, Anne Scrimgour argued that the community and political activism that resulted from the activities of the strikers and particularly from Pindan, the indigenous corporation they created, continued for decades after the strike and was largely overlooked in studies of Aboriginal and social justice activism in Australia.

 

The ABC website has posted a recent story about Don McLeod, which draws from Deborah Wilson's book Different White People: Radical Activism for Aboriginal People 1946-1973 published by the University of WA Press.

Wilson argues that the Pilbara strike was a trigger point that led to the modern Aboriginal rights movement.

Everyday heroes: sit-ins 50 years apart show the power of ordinary people to take action against injustice

"You don't have to be a big name to make a difference and impact change. Small things can make ripples that make a big difference"
Joan Trumpauer Mullholland

Today in a Perth court 11 Christian leaders were fined $50 each for trespass after they held a prayer vigil and sit-in at the office of the Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop as a protest against the plight of 1100 children imprisoned in Australia's onshore and offshore immigration detention camps.

There was some concern that the Christian leaders faced a jail sentence for their protest.

The protest in the Foreign Minister's office was followed by subsequent prayer vigils and sit-in by other Christians and Church leaders on the east coast, this time in the offices of the Immigration Minister, The Prime Minister and Leader of the Opposition.

The Christian leaders are part of a long tradition in which ordinary people use sit-ins as a form of direct action protest against injustice and domination,

This iconic photo was taken on May 28th 1963 in Jackson Mississippi and shows 3 people- 2 white people and one black woman- participating in a sit- in protest at a Woolworths lunch counter. They are surrounded by angry and aggressive white men who are pouring sugar, liquid and ketchup over the 3 protesters.

The protesters were three students- John Salter, Joan Trumpauer and Anne Moody- who were protesting against racial segregation of lunch counters in Woolworths stores throughout the American south.

Initially the protesters were jeered and taunted and then doused in sugar and ketchup. They were then beaten and kicked.  

It was one of the most violent attacks on protesters involved in a sit-in the history of the civil rights movement.

The attack went on for 3 hours as the Police stood by and watched

 The Woolworths store manager eventually had to close the store and the protesters were escorted away by Police.

 
The story of the Woolworths sit in, the events that lead up to the protest and the fall out from it (including the murder two weeks later of civil rights leader Medger Evers) and the stories of the protesters involved are told in Mike O'Brien's book We Shall Not Be Moved.

The Jackson sit-in was one of a long line of sit-ins used during the civil rights movement to protest against racial segregation in the South during the early 1960's.

Op Ed piece on the Resources super profits tax

For those who read the West Australian newspaper my colleague Gavin Mooney and I have an op ed piece in today's edition of the West Australian newspaper (Wednesday May 12) on the Rudd Government's proposed tax of mining super profits (see page 20 of the paper). The full piece is below.

Super Profits Tax is a just impost on miners
By Gavin Mooney and Colin Penter
The West Australian Wednesday 12 MAY 2010

The hysteria from the mining industry to the proposed 40% Resource Super Profits Tax (RSPT) demonstrates just how corporate Australia uses its political and financial power to protect its own privileged interests. (The West in its editorials of May 3 and 8 has been one of the few voices to alert the public to some of the potential benefits of the tax.)

Andrew Forrest of FMG accuses the PM of misleading the public; he himself comes out with the nonsense comment that a tax of 40% on excess profits is equivalent to a 40% nationalisation of the mining industry. Clive Palmer, another of the ‘big miners’, suggests Kevin Rudd is “a communist”. These ‘big miners’ even claim that they oppose the tax to protect working families.

We all knew they would attack the tax – fair enough but could we have known what sillinesses they would employ in doing so? These statements are from the ‘Captains of Industry’ who pay themselves massive incomes to run these mining organisations. Oh and if Kevin Rudd is a communist, what does this say about Ken Henry, the Secretary to the Treasury, whose idea this was. Reds not under the bed but in the Treasury, good heavens!

The Deputy Opposition Leader Julie Bishop further fuels the notion of a ‘communist’ plot by suggesting that the idea of the tax is straight from the pages of Marx’s Das Kapital (The West May 8)! Hysterical responses are not limited to the ‘big miners’.

Let’s put this in some sort of perspective. Mining companies are granted privileged and exclusive access to resources that are owned by the Australian people. That is the source of their excess profits.

Some relevant figures. In 2006-7 mineral production totalled around $100 billion, of which the Australian community, who owns the resources, received little more than 7% in tax revenue.

As the Henry Review demonstrates, as a proportion of profits, mineral tax and royalties have declined over the last decade, as the share of the profits made by the mining and resources industry has increased exponentially.

The idea too that many jobs will be lost as a result of this tax does not stand up to examination. Total employment in the mining industry is only a little over 130,000.

Furthermore, the mining industry causes significant economic, social, environmental and community harms to the Australian public as a result of the industry’s activities. Surely it is for the perpetrators to contribute to ameliorating these harms.

In Australia in general what has been happening to profits? Between 1960 and 1980, as a percentage of GDP wages rose from 52% to over 60% while corporate profits remained mostly under 20%. Over the 25 years to 2005, wages fell to 53% while corporate profits increased markedly to over 27%.

In 1980 the economy was not going bust. Firms with ‘low’ profits were not taking their businesses overseas. But since that time profits have grown not just strongly but astronomically. And remember that profits, especially those in the mining industry, first and foremost go to the top end of the income scale.

Here we have a large part of the explanation why income inequality has increased in Australia in recent years.

In market economic terms when firms within some industry or other make massive (read excess) profits this is supposed to be sorted out by new firms being attracted into that industry and greater competition thereafter forcing down profit margins. The community benefits through lower prices and the companies’ excess profits are curtailed. But in mining (and for example the banks) there are major ‘barriers to entry’. There are then ‘monopoly rents’ (i.e excess profits) to be earned.

So how so resolve this in economic terms? Simple. Tax the excess profits. This is not communism. It is not taken from the pages of Das Kapital. It is a standard way of sorting out a failure of competition in the market place.

We can however see that the ‘big miners’ might well want to argue ‘why pick on us?’ when for example the banks have also been making massive excess profits. A recent report from the Australia Institute (‘A licence to print money: bank profits in Australia) shows that the excess profits – those which arise because of their monopoly position - of the big four banks amount to $20 billion a year – that is excess (not total) profits of $1000 for ever man, woman and child in Australia!

We would support that argument if the ‘big miners’ were to make it. We would not use it however to suggest abandoning the excess profits tax on the mining industry but rather extending it to the banks.

The Rudd Government must have the courage not to abandon this tax on excess profits in the mining industry. Better still they must extend it to cover the banks.

Why this sudden change in the West Australian's reporting of the Atlas oil spill?

After ten weeks the West Australian finally has a front page piece on the environmental catastrophe occurring off the Kimberley Coast where the PTTEP owned West Atlas oil rig continues to leak massive amounts of gas and oil into the Timor Sea.

In the period since the spill the West Australian's coverage has been piecemeal and minimised its seriousness, extent and impact. The West has sought or provided little detail on the spill and its reports have been well back in the body of the paper. There has been no coverage of the local, regional and international consequences.

So why this sudden change of heart? Well it's known as corporate damage control and the West Australian is a key player in the resource industry's damage control strategy.

The West's report today suggests that the resources industry is concerned that the Atlas oil spill is damaging its reputation at a time when a growing number of multinational resource corporations are seeking massive expansion in offshore exploration, drilling and processing off the WA coast. Faced with the damage the spill is causing to their reputation, the industry has reportedly offered assistance to PTTEP.

So the industry's concern is not about the damage done to the environment, but a desire to repair the damage to the industry's image. And here's where the West Australian comes in.

The West's decision that the story is front page news does not reflect any real concern about the environmental destruction resulting from the spill or the negligence of the company involved. Rather, it reflects the West Australian's closeness to the resources and mining industry and its sensitivity to industry concern about damage to its reputation.

After all the West Australian is a major beneficiary of the resources industry. It's not something that is written or spoken about here in the West, but there are good reasons to wonder if an unhealthy level of closeness between the West Australian and the resources industry has influenced the paper's coverage of the Atlas oil spill.