How Labor betrayed anti-uranium movement
By Greg Adamson
In October 1980 a federal election returned Malcolm Fraser's conservative coalition. Despite widespread opposition to uranium mining, the ALP had refused to make it an election issue. ALP leaders had even turned down an offer from US actor Jack Lemmon to do an anti-uranium television commercial for free. Lemmon had starred in the anti-nuclear film The China Syndrome.
By 1981 all the elements were in place for the victory of the anti-uranium movement. Nine years earlier, a large movement had forced the withdrawal of Australian troops from Vietnam, and within a year giant anti-nuclear war mobilisations would begin to sweep Europe and Australia. For the past five years, a growing anti-uranium movement had mobilised tens of thousands of people.
Increasing Australian environmental concerns had developed something unique in the world, a strong and active union opposition to the nuclear industry. The ACTU had adopted an anti-uranium policy in 1979, and key unions were putting it into practice.
Electrical workers, metalworkers, road, rail and water transport workers were all willing to put themselves on the line in support of this position. Aggressive posturing by the Fraser government had not broken this resolve. Fraudulent assurances and studies guaranteeing the safety of nuclear power and backed by huge advertising campaigns had not stopped the growth of anti-nuclear opinion.
Labor Party members across Australia had campaigned for their party to adopt an anti-uranium position, and some of their leaders had addressed demonstrations against uranium mining.
Yet by the end of 1981 the union bans were off, the union movement split and demoralised. To understand how this came about it is necessary to look at two contradictory trends within the union movement: the fight to protect living standards and conditions of Australia workers; and the desire to trade off these same conditions in return for the perks of Labor in office.
Broad reach of bans
A February 6, 1981, meeting of 24 unions with possible connections to the uranium mining industry adopted a resolution for implementation of the ACTU bans. This meeting described the industry as including the provision of materials and services to mining sites and townships built to serve the sites. It also for the first time included servicing of an existing mine, Mary Kathleen. Previous decisions had related only to the opening of new mines.
While the mining companies could rely on some unions, particularly the Australian Workers Union, to assist in filling gaps caused by other unions, in areas such as telecommunications services, the bans would have an immediate impact.
On March 1 national bans by the Australian Railways Union, Electrical Trades Union and Amalgamated Metal Workers and Shipwrights Union came into effect. In Darwin, Waterside Workers Federation bans on loading of yellowcake were now matched by Seamen's Union bans on its shipping. (The previous year uranium which got past the wharfies had been carried by union-crewed ships.)
Transport, mining, construction, metal fabrication, power, telecommunications and a host of other services were denied to the mining companies.
By October the bans had stopped "business as usual". Mary Kathleen profits had dropped from $6.0 million in the second half of 1980 to $1.7 million for the first half of 1981. It managed this only by sneaking out two-thirds of its production in a couple of shipments.
Nabarlek maintained its profits with direct government aid. Yellowcake stored at Lucas Heights near Sydney had been exported earlier, and the stocks were then replenished from Nabarlek, the government handing over the previously received sales money.
Showing the strain, industrial relations minister Ian Viner in May threatened the use of troops to break the bans. In Queensland and elsewhere, governments prepared anti-union legal action.
Throughout the year small demonstrations and meetings supporting the bans were held across Australia. In November 15,000 took part in a Melbourne rally organised by the Movement Against Uranium Mining.
Bob Hawke
Then on December 8, 1981, the ACTU executive voted by 15 to nine to lift all bans on uranium until the following February. This decision was hailed by the media as a victory for Bob Hawke's pragmatism.
In the 1970s, Hawke had strongly opposed any ACTU action on uranium mining. In opposition to proposals to suspend uranium mining and exports for two years, Hawke argued for a referendum on the issue. Hawke's position won by 493 to 371. Before the following 1979 congress, an ACTU executive meeting voted to recommend that mining at Ranger and Nabarlek be allowed to go ahead.
On September 14, 1979, the congress delegates heard Hawke argue passionately for the executive's new position. Hawke predicted that uranium bans would not be enforced and would stand as "a monument to futility". But all Hawke's pessimism could not erase from the minds of the delegates the conviction that rank-and-file unionists wanted action, and were prepared to back it up. The vote went heavily against Hawke, 512 to 318.
ACTU policy is not binding on affiliated unions. Even before the vote, the Miscellaneous Workers Union and the Australian Workers Union had given notice that they would not withdraw the members they had working in uranium mines.
Leaders of the Waterside Workers Federation at an all-ports conference in early October 1979 called on the ACTU to convene a conference of 25 unions potentially affected by the nuclear industry. The WWF leaders indicated that their bans on the handling of uranium depended on other unions pledging to take similar stands.
In defiance of the wishes of the ACTU delegates — and in many cases of their own memberships as well — officials of the unions voted narrowly at a November 30 meeting not to take industrial action to enforce the ACTU policy. Later, with union members coming to understand the dire threat represented by uranium mining, pressure on the officials increased. The February 1981 ACTU unions conference mentioned above represented a complete turnaround.
But while the movement was gaining strength and thousands of workers were implementing bans in practice, a power shift was taking place in the ALP and ACTU. Labor leader Bill Hayden announced in November 1981 that he was opposed to the union bans. This had been foreshadowed in the 1980 federal elections, when Hayden refused to campaign on the uranium issue.
Why Labor ratted
The dropping of union bans in December 1981 wasn't just a momentary show of cowardice in the face of threats from Malcolm Fraser. It was part of the process of preparing for government, which transformed ALP policy in the early 1980s. The most visible evidence of this was the Prices and Income Accord. But the principle of such a social contract, in which unions, bosses and the government sat down to help make capitalism profitable, extended to other areas.
While the Accord during its life would result in the most dramatic shift of income from labour to capital in the country's history, this same approach would ensure stable export of uranium for the next decade and a half.
The story of Roxby Downs is typical of the impact of the uranium industry on political processes when billions of dollars are at stake. It also shows the process by which the ALP turned itself inside out on this key policy question.
The election of David Tonkin's Liberal government in 1979 was heralded as a green light for nuclear developments. The government was an enthusiastic public supporter of the Roxby Downs mine. However, it lacked a majority in the upper house, the anti-uranium Democrats holding the balance of power. Using the now familiar tactic of buying off an individual Labor Party member, the government was able to gain approval for the mine in June 1982.
This by itself would have been insufficient. Long-term development of the mine required Labor Party approval, at both state and federal levels. This was not long in coming.
Victorian "left-winger" Bob Hogg provided the opening at the ALP's federal conference in July. He proposed that uranium mining should be allowed where it was "mined incidentally to the mining of other minerals". On the face of it this position was silly. Nuclear weapons, radiation from nuclear power and nuclear waste are all a threat to human survival, regardless of whether the original uranium oxide was dug up alongside copper or not. But for the ALP, this was okay.
South Australian Labor was not slow to follow. Campaigning in the late 1982 state elections, leader John Bannon announced that Labor in office would allow the mine to proceed, a promise which he kept.
When Labor won federal power in 1983, Prime Minister Hawke used this precedent to approve exports from Roxby Downs, a decision accepted by Labor cabinet on October 31.
The final outcome of the ALP's about-face was the notorious "three mines" policy, which will be examined in the next part of this series. While it was not everything the mining companies demanded, and far short of the extensive development of a nuclear industry which its advocates wanted, in the real world of falling uranium commodity prices and collapsing interest in nuclear power, it was much more than should have been allowed.
[This is the fifth in a series on the history of the anti-nuclear movement. Greg Adamson has been active in the movement since the 1970s and is the author of We All Live on Three Mile Island: the case against nuclear power (Pathfinder Press, 1981). He is a member of the Democratic Socialist Party.]