They tramp there in their legions on the morning dark and cold.
To beg the right to slave for bread from Sydney’s lords of gold.
They toil and sweat in slavery, ’twould make the devil smile,
To see the Sydney wharfies, tramping down the Hungry Mile.
This is just one stanza of a poem written in 1930, by a wharfie poet Ernest Antony, a poem that became an inspiration for the Waterside Workers’ Federation. The 13th of April 1943 signified the burial of the hideous, brutal “bull system” on the Sydney waterfront. In the early days of the twentieth century, a worker needed a “starting docket” to enter the wharves for a day’s labour to earn 23 shillings ($2.30). It was a degradingly cruel system.
The name, “The Hungry Mile,” designates a section of Sussex Street, on the Sydney waterfront, along which, from the 1920s to 1943, unemployed wharf-labourers trudged, waiting to be handpicked for the few jobs that were available. For many years, the men who had suffered the “bull gang” days, who had tramped the Hungry Mile of Sussex Street to search for work but failed, could only speak of it in a tremulous quaver, as though of extreme terror. The Hungry Mile is now dead, buried, but not forgotten.
The process started each morning early, at the gates of the wharves. Men seeking employment gathered and waited, desperately hoping to be allocated work. The employers had the whip hand in this situation and gave or withheld work on a whim. Because of the entrenched hostility between the employers and the Water Side Workers Federation, dating back to the great maritime strikes of the 1890s, it was expected that this “pickup” procedure at the dock gates would often be used to even up a few old scores, and to deny work to well-known union activists. Employers’ blacklists did exist and men on that list were often denied work, except when there was some urgency to clear up a backlog on the wharves. The State Government passed legislation giving preference to returned servicemen after WW1. It played into the hands of the employers, permitting them to play off the veterans against the unionists, effectively dividing the workforce and weakening the Union. Occasionally the pickup ended in a violent riot resulting in some serious injuries as too many men fought for too few jobs. At other times, gangs of Union thugs would charge into the hopeful workers, bashing randomly to drive the nonunion workers away. Those who had suffered the attack stayed away for a few days, but then hunger would drive them back to the gate, looking for work. It was a highly combustible situation. All this fighting was simply to pick up a piece of paper, to entitle them to a day’s hard work on the wharves.
The hundreds of men who had missed out on a ticket in the shipowners’ slave market style pickup, walked disappointedly and dispiritedly back up Sussex Street. Lines of fear, pain and anguish were etched in their tired faces, their fingers clutching and toying with the few pence in their pockets. Mumbles echoed about, “They only pick up the big blokes, but I’ve got a wife and kids. Gee what’s a man gunner do?”
Walsh. After the Deportation Board found against him, he was arrested and held at Garden Island, pending an appeal. The appeal was upheld. Meanwhile, the Bull system continued on without interruption, as the veterans and unionists battled on.
The Hungry Mile
In the years after WW1 bitter confrontations on the Fremantle Wharfs gradually escalated, resulting in the State Government organising an armed force of police to break the power of the union. All around Australia, the employers orchestrated a concerted campaign to retain control of the waterfront and to keep the workforce subservient and dependent on the bull system. In the 1930s, in Melbourne, a wharf labourer was shot by police in a riot on the waterfront, and several other members of the union were gaoled for 11 years.
As the 1930s began, and Australia descended into the Great Depression, the workers’ desperation intensified. The numbers searching for work at the pickup gate each morning skyrocketed. Water-side worker bulls were still given first preference, and those who were outsiders fought harder for the remaining few, if there were any. The stevedoring companies, as the employers, kept blacklists of those wharfies and unionists to be shut out as agitators. These lists were also used to warn other employers about union activities. More and more men decided to join the union. Employers resisted any union proposal, fighting them tooth and nail which resulted in widespread riots and gang fighting,
The industrial unrest on Australia’s waterfront had given rise to anger in the wider community. But there have been a number of occasions when Australia has had good cause to be grateful for the radicalism and preparedness of the wharfies to challenge the hegemony of conservative governments. Perhaps the best known of these incidents occurred in 1937 and 1938, when the wharf labourers refused to load ships carrying scrap iron to Japan. The wharfies argued that this pig iron would be used to augment the Japanese munitions and armaments industries, and that Australian soldiers would soon find themselves facing bullets and shells made from Australia’s own scrap iron. The Conservative government in Canberra, spurred on by its ambitious Attorney General, Robert Gordon Menzies, attempted to bring the union to heel with the Crimes Act, and to force the men to continue loading the pig iron destined for Japan. Menzies failed in this endeavour, and history has shown that the union was right and the government was wrong on this issue. One byproduct of the confrontation was the hated nickname of “Pig Iron Bob” that was conferred on Menzies by the wharfies, and which he carried for the rest of his political career.
In April 1942, the Stevedoring Industry Commission was established, charged with making the selection process fairer. It commenced registration of all waterside workers by its local body, the Sydney Ports Committee. Their staff manned the turnstiles at the pick-up centres. They had clerks with shirt sleeves rolled up waiting to register all attendees and noted those who soon left without gaining a ticket, and thus, not to be paid. But the bull system continued.
In April 1943, it all came to a head. The wharfies went on a general strike. They demanded meetings at the Leichhardt Stadium with all workers to come to an agreement on how to eradicate the bull system. Neither the employers nor the union executive saw it coming. It was to be a historic waterfront struggle. Many reported vivid memories of wild scenes as members fought to throw the bull system into the gutter where it belonged. At one of the Leichhardt Stadium hot meetings, the speaker quoted Karl Marx’s wise viewpoint: “Capital is concentrated social power while the worker has only his individual labour power at his disposal. The only social force possessed by the workers is their numerical strength. This force, however, is impaired by the absence of unity.” At this time, my father was on war service in PNG. He along with his unit were informed that the ships bringing the rations and ammunition were held up in Sydney. He and his mates were suddenly on limited rations. The powers that be decided to fly in rations. On medical advice the most available, and that with best nutrition, was baked beans. Accordingly, plane loads of cartons of tinned baked beans began to arrive. He ate baked beans for a few weeks … for breakfast, lunch and dinner. When a visiting general arrived and spoke to the troops, he said he was glad they were all cheerful and full of beans. A loud cry went up, “Yeah, baked bloody beans!” He never ate baked beans again.
Following the first four meetings the union officials negotiated a solution to the hated bull system. It was to be replaced by a rotating gang system. The rank-andfile wharfies at first resisted. Members who did not on that day in April 1943 agree with the Union bosses, voted for the strike to continue. The wharfies were flooded with leaflets. Gradually the support for the rotation system increased, and after the fifth meeting the voting was close. There were near riots at the sixth Leichhardt Stadium strike meeting when the chairman called a vote for a motion for return to work under the rotation system. The chairman said it had been carried by a show of hands. It caused an uproar of dissention with dire threats being flung at the chairman. The Committee, wisely, decided to test the outcome by a secret ballot. This was taken and counted that night. Crowds had assembled outside the stadium to hear the result. When the result turned out to be a majority of 110 in favour of work under the Rotation Scheme, it started a massive riot. So, the 16- day strike by the Waterside Workers’ Federation protesting the new system continued. The Curtin Government ordered troops to keep ships moving.
Following heated arguments, the workers finally agreed to the new system, eventually realizing that their strike was having no effect, and the new system improved conditions by imposing minimum wages, smoke-oh breaks, and overtime pay for weekend work. And most importantly, the new system scrapped the bull system. Men formed teams, or gangs, to work together. A gang was employed for blocks of four hours. Work was duly resumed, but the heat of the feelings cooled only slowly. The new system brought organisation to the supply and control of labour during the critical stages of the war. It therefore served a cause primary to all.
By 1944 labour shortages on the waterfront were critical. Responding to these shortages the Government ‘released’ 700 men from the Army to undertake waterfront work. However, numbers still proved insufficient, and the need to use military personnel on military cargo continued. The memory of the unfairness and the wrongs experienced in these early years has become part of the mythology of today’s Wharf Labourers and helps to explain their reputation for intransience and radicalism. The battle to end the bull system is unsurpassed in the history of Australian unionism.
It created a conflict of such heat that only those who participated in it will remember, and there was enough drama and activity for a dozen sensational films. Wild and dangerous rumours dominated commonsense discussions. It is little wonder that members got into such a state of apprehension at the suggestion of this great reform.
