Harry Knowles

One big union : a history of the Australian Workers Union, 1886-1994

Introduction: the progress of a moderate man W. G. Spence 1. The knights of the blade, 1886-9 2. Looking for justice, 1890-1 3. The hustle for jobs, 1892-4 4. Grinding in the iron heel, 1895-1901 5. The giant refreshed, 1902-14 6. One big union, 1914-20 7. Ourselves alone, 1920-9 8. A union that battles, 1930-9 9. A wonderful machine, 1940-9 10. Anxious to see the light, 1950-9 11. The meaning of mateship, 1956-9 12. Making the truth hurt, 1960-9 13. Too good for the lot of you, 1970-9 14. Out of the past, 1980-94 Conclusion.

From hire purchase to property development: the rise and demise of the Industrial Acceptance Corporation in Australia, 1926–77

While there are numerous histories of major Australian banks, the extant literature on the history of the Australian financial service sector pays only incidental attention to the role of finance companies and other non-bank financial institutions in the sectors long-term transformation, particularly the expansion of consumer credit. Drawing on Chandlers classic insights on the dynamics of firm strategy and structure, this paper focuses on the growth and development of one particular finance company – Industrial Acceptance Corporation (IAC) – between the 1920s and 1970s. IAC began as a subsidiary of a US finance company and grew to become one of Australias leading and innovative finance companies. Based on hire purchase for automobiles and other consumer durables, it diversified into property development during the late 1960s. Imprudent lending practices concerning property development led to financial difficulties in the mid-1970s and ultimately its full takeover by US banking giant, Citibank, in 1977.

Worth Fighting For: The Memoirs of Ray Gietzelt

Review(s) of: Worth Fighting for: The Memoirs of Ray Gietzelt by Ray Gietzelt, Federation Press, Sydney, 2004. pp. xiv + 217.

Arthur Rae: A 'Napoleon' in Exile

29.95 paper.

Book Reviews : THE UAW AND THE HEYDAY OF AMERICAN LIBERALISM, 1945-1968 By Kevin Boyle. Comell University Press, Ithaca, 1998, xiv + 338 pp., (no price stated)

Arthur Rae (1860-1943) was a New Zealand shearer and labourer who moved to Australia in 1889. The son of a long-serving official in the New Zealand railways union, he became an organiser and later a prominent leader in the Australian Workers Union (AWU) during the 1890s and into the early years of the twentieth century. In 1891 he began his somewhat sporadic career in Labour politics as one of the first Labour members to be elected to the New South Wales Parliament in 1891. Raes activism was informed by his deep commitment to late nineteenth socialist ideals and to ameliorating the condition of working people. His commitment to these socialist ideals and his refusal to compromise them were the determining factors in his labour movement career. It eventually cost him his career in, and membership of, his union and relegated him to the periphery of Labour Party politics. Raes struggle was to find the ways to proselytise his socialist vision for Australian workers despite his marginalisation within mainstream labour institutions. That he was able to do this over a period of almost three decades is a testament to the powerful role individuals can play making labour history.

Book Reviews : COPPER CRUCIBLE: HOW THE ARIZONA MINERS' STRIKE OF 1983 RECAST LABOR-MANAGEMENT RELATIONS IN AMERICA By Jonathon D. Rosenblum. Second edition, Cornell University Press, 1998, 246 pp., USS16.95 (paperback)

his book is an attempt to assess the place of the United States labour Tmovement in the P ost-1945 political order through an examination of the political activism of one CIO union, the United Automobile Workers. The author’s rationale for this choice is based on the political leverage available to the union as a consequence of its size and strategic position, the highly sophisticated nature of the union’s leadership and its employment of economic power to achieve a formidable level of political influence. It was able to wield this

Book Reviews : GREEN BANS, RED UNION: ENVIRONMENTAL ACTIVISM AND THE NEW SOUTH WALES BUILDERS LABOURERS' FEDERATION By Meredith Burgmann and Verity Burgmann. University of New South Wales Press, Sydney, 1998, xiv + 352 pp.,

for thinking about this, especially in the chapters on the changes in party industrial, electoral and community work flowing from attempts to build the popular front. He tells us, for example, about ’the transformative qualities’ ascribed to routine party tasks by its cadres, and the charge of ’bourgeois intellectualism’ levelled at party critics of communist jargon. In the chapter on how the party used the image of the Soviet Union in the 1930s he explains, through an excellent discussion of ‘popular tyranny’, the complicity of commu-

29.95 (paperback)

The book is divided into three parts: parts 1 and 2 are concerned with issues such as the concept of green bans, an analysis of the conjuncture of factors that formed the preconditions for radical unionism and the organisational principles and industrial relations strategies that were developed by the New South Wales branch to establish what was a new concept of unionism. The third part of the book describes in varying detail the events and consequences of the application of the various green bans imposed by the union and the eventual demise of the branch at the hands of the Gallagher-led federal union. It seems almost impossible to envisage the sort of union the New South Wales BLF was in the late 1960s and early 1970s in today’s social, political and industrial relations climate. Led by young, charismatic officials whose (Communist Party of Australia) communism was diluted by New Left ideology, the union vigorously promoted a rank-and-file autonomy that incorporated the characteristics of participatory democratic principles more in keeping with the Port Huron statement than with the minute book of an Australian trade union. As the authors explain, the leadership was able to gain the loyalty of the rank and file by refuting the ’iron law of oligarchy’ with the implementation of organisational practices such as those that provided for limited tenure for officials, temporary organisers, non-payment of officials during strikes, tying officials’ wages to BLF awards and the introduction of democratic decision-making procedures. As well as being able to observe this rejection of bureaucratic centralism by their hierarchy, the rank and file benefited materially from the union’s militant industrial relations strategy, by which it won every major confrontation with employers between 1970 and the intervention of 1975. ’