BY BERNIE BRIAN
The first thing you noticed when you visited Bill Donnelly's house in suburban Darwin was the small bust of Lenin on his bookshelf. The second thing you discovered was that Bill was very proud of the fact that he was born in 1917, the same year as the Russian Revolution.
Born in Ireland, Bill arrived in Australia as an 11-year-old orphan. He was attracted to the Communist Party (CPA) as a young timber worker in the Gippsland forests in eastern Victoria. He remained committed to the cause until his death early this year in Darwin hospital, after developing complications from a fall at his home.
However, Bill will be mostly remembered as a leading identity in the post-1945 labour movement in Darwin. He arrived there in 1946 and got a job removing star pickets that had been dug into the shoreline as a defence against a Japanese invasion. It was very hard work in the hot and steamy conditions in Australia's tropical north. At that time, Darwin's trade unions were still very weak after having been suppressed by the military authorities during the war. In those days, Darwin was an undeveloped frontier town with a small population.
Perhaps Bill found the town too crowded, as he then moved 300 kilometres south to the settlement of Katherine. From 1948 until 1953, he worked at the town's powerhouse where he soon attracted the attention of the security forces and was labelled a "most dangerous" communist. He was known as an avid reader of political literature and some people recall visiting his small hut near the powerhouse and seeing all the available space covered by copies of Tribune, the CPA's newspaper.
Soon after leaving Katherine, he secured a job on the Darwin waterfront where he stayed until his retirement. "Wild" Bill, as he became known, became a leading figure in the often stormy battles of the Darwin union movement, especially during the bitter fights between the left and the anti-communist "groupers" for control of the labour movement in the early 1950s.
Bill would have cut a striking figure at union meetings, with his dark complexion, long black hair and thick glasses. He was nicknamed "Tarzan" by some of the young women of Darwin. He even earned grudging the respect of a local ASIO agent, who described him as a "fluent and convincing speaker" who was "popular" on the waterfront. This is probably why that same ASIO agent described him as "the most dangerous man in Darwin".
Bill was involved in many political campaigns during his time in Darwin, including fighting for the rights of indentured Malay pearl divers. In 1955, Donnelly and others hid a pearl diver from the authorities for a number of weeks at a remote timber camp in Arnhem Land. The diver had been involved in an industrial dispute with his employer and was being deported to Singapore.
For a number of years, Bill acted as vigilance officer, a full-time union position on the wharf funded by a levy on all waterside workers. The waterside workers were strong supporters of campaigns by Aboriginal people to gain citizenship rights. Donnelly travelled to Sydney in 1962 to report to the Waterside Workers Federation conference about the local campaign to defend Peter Australia, an Aboriginal wharfie who had been jailed for 12 months for giving an Aboriginal friend a glass of wine. The campaign was successful and Australia was granted early release by federal cabinet after serving four months. This campaign was part of a movement which eventually forced the federal government to grant citizenship rights in the 1960s.
In recent years, Bill's mobility was restricted due to ill health, but he was often seen at demonstrations if he was able to grab a lift with a wharfie mate. He remained a member of the Communist Party of Australia and, like in his days back in Katherine, he continued to read, including his subscription to Green Left Weekly.
Bill's last note to me was a short message in a 2002 Christmas card decrying the destruction of the Amazon River. With Bill's death, the Darwin labour movement has lost one of the last living links with its radical and colourful past. Bill was cremated on January 21, his simple coffin draped in a red flag as he had requested.
From Green Left Weekly, February 5, 2003.
Visit the Green Left Weekly home page.