A review
Brothers, Eight Leaders
of the Labor Council of NSW
By Marilyn
Dodkin. Published by UNSW Press, 2001
Reviewed by Bob Gould
Brothers is rather dry. It is an expanded version of
Marilyn
Dodkin's PhD thesis. Nevertheless, it is an extremely useful and
informative book for anyone seriously interested in the history of the
NSW labour movement. It complements Ray Markey's equally useful history
of the Labor Council (In
Case of Oppression. The Life and Times of the Labor Council of NSW,
ISBN 1864030054, January 1994).
As a long-established personality, and a kind of unofficial
archivist and historian integrated into the fabric of the NSW Centre
Unity machine, so to speak, Dodkin has had unique entree into the
complexity of the relationship between that grouping and the Labor
Council of NSW.
Her account of the life and times of the eight leaders she
discusses, and of the Labor Council and the Centre Unity faction, is
matter-of-factly empirical, but it is also infused by an attempt at a
balance sheet, in terms of the collective interest of the Centre Unity
machine.
From this point of view, Dodkin views most of the leaders as
successful, but she is critical of Michael Easson's leadership, which
she doesn't regard as so successful.
She concludes the book with a kind of homily to all those in
authority in the Labor Council and the Centre Unity, to preserve the
traditions of the grouping, particularly the "apprenticeship" system
for future Labor Council secretaries.
From that point of view, she's obviously not too keen on the
division that has emerged over the last 18 months or so between the new
leadership of John Robertson, and the grouping around Tony Sheldon and
the Transport Workers Union, a division that shows no sign of having
disappeared.
The book was published late in 2001, so she does not comment
on the
role played by the new Labor Council leadership in campaigning for a
more civilised Labor Party policy on refugees.
It seems likely that Marilyn Dodkin may disapprove of this
development because at the recent May 2002 State Conference of the NSW
ALP, the policy committee of which Marilyn is chairperson rejected the
Labor for Refugees resolution moved by John Robertson. Despite the
rejection, Robertson's amendment opposing mandatory detention was
overwhelmingly carried by the State Conference.
The most controversial thing in the book is the evidence that
Dodkin
presents, apparently establishing the likelihood that Jim Kenny had
some kind of intimate connection with ASIO, and she also records, as a
matter of undisputed fact, that Jack Clowes, a retired ASIO agent, was
employed as a research officer and librarian at Labor Council.
(Interestingly, in Bob Carr's new book, Thoughtlines:
Reflections of a Public Man
(Viking, ISBN 0670040258) one chapter is an extract from Carr's
unpublished novel, in which he includes a thinly veiled pen portrait of
Clowes.)
The Clowes connection is of some interest to me. I have
recently
obtained both my New South Wales Special Branch police file, and my
ASIO files up to the end of 1971, more than 5000 pages in all.
Way back in 1969 there is a curious series of entries in my
Special
Branch file. The context is that Resistance, with which I was
associated, held a forum at Goulburn Street on the result of the 1969
federal elections, with the participants in the forum being Arthur
Gietzelt of the Left Steering Committee, John Ducker, and myself.
This was a smallish meeting, due to competition with other
meetings
on the same night. In my Special Branch file, there is a weird entry,
allegedly from an informant present at the meeting, which fits me up by
presenting Bob Gould as having boasted at this forum about organising
violence at demonstrations.
Obviously, even this imaginative agent's handlers were a bit
cautious about his report, because there is a further entry a bit later
in my file offering a kind of "second opinion" from someone else who
was at the meeting, who, when questioned, asserted that he didn't hear
anything like that said by Gould at the meeting.
In context, it appears possible to me that this "second
opinion" may
have been acquired by Clowes asking John Ducker, and Clowes passing on
the relevant information to his old colleagues at ASIO and the State
special Branch. Who knows!
Despite its dryness of presentation, Dodkin's book, along with
Ray
Markey's book, is indispensable reading for anyone with a serious
interest in the nuts and bolts of how power is wielded in the NSW
labour movement, and how the peak organisation of the unions in this
state, the Labor Council of NSW, has evolved.
July 9, 2002
More on the NSW Labor Council:
Brothers:
Eight Leaders of the Labor Council of New South Wales, reviewed by
Bobbie Oliver.
To
organise wherever the necessity exists. Rae Cooper
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