Comrade Bill Andersen and the 1951 strike
Once Bill Andersen was a wharfie, he and his wife Flora moved back to the innercity, this time to a bedsit in Pollen Street, Grey Lynn. As was the working-class norm, Bill would hand his pay cheque over to Flora and she would pay all the bills. He cared very little about money and Flora managed their finances. Workplace accidents were common on the wharves – three or four watersiders died at work each year. Cargo was sometimes dirty, and Bill would return covered in dust from cement, lampblack (used to make tyres) and coal. Flora was responsible for the family’s laundry: lighting the fire under the copper, filling it with boiling water, and scrubbing, rinsing and wringing out the clothes by hand. Bill’s dirty clothing made this labour even more arduous.
READ MORE: * Obituary: Ken Douglas, unionist and visionary * One man's fight will shake up the waterfront
Flora and Bill’s first baby was born on October 25, 1949; they named her Sharyn Gail Andersen. Flora gave up paid work and her Mum came to help out. Then tragedy struck; their beautiful baby girl was diagnosed with a kidney condition that was simply incurable at the time. Sharyn died of kidney failure in April 1950. She was buried at St Matthias’ church with Bill’s mother and grandmother. Sharyn’s death had a profound effect on Flora, and on Bill too, although he never spoke about it. Flora felt people blamed her for Sharyn’s death; that she had somehow been an unfit mother. She couldn’t bear to remain in the Grey Lynn flat where Sharyn had been so very alive, and Bill moved them to a bach out the back of a house on the Mt Wellington Highway, as near to his family as he could manage. Doll and Alan McElwain were in easy walking distance if Flora needed their company. Flora discovered she was pregnant once more and was frightened for the future, despite her doctor’s assurances that she and her child would be fine. It was in these circumstances that the couple faced the major industrial upheaval of 1951.
*
Conflict peaked inside the Federation of Labour and militants, led by the Waterside Workers’ Union (WWU), staged a walkout from the FoL conference in April 1950. Watersiders, carpenters, drivers, miners and labourers formed a rival national organisation, the Trade Union Congress (TUC). Isolated from the broader labour movement, TUC members, particularly waterside workers, were all branded as communists and a threat to the public good.
The WWU argued that workers’ wages were buying less and less, and refused overtime work until employers entered negotiations. Rather than bargain, employers declared that watersiders were on strike, and issued lockout notices in February 1951. Seafarers, miners, freezing workers, drivers, hydro workers, gas workers, harbour board employees and sugar workers declared solidarity strikes to support the locked-out watersiders.
The government issued an ultimatum, which the WWU rejected, and the Waterfront Strike Emergency Regulations were issued in late February. The WWU’s registration was cancelled, funds and records were seized, police were given powers to arrest anyone aiding the watersiders, and troops were used to unload cargo on the wharves. Four thousand men were locked out or on strike the day the regulations came into force, and at the dispute’s height 22,000 workers were affected.
Early attempts to initiate arbitration talks broke down. Then the FoL national executive publicly condemned the WWU’s stance, likening it to the communism that New Zealand troops were fighting in Korea. With the public, employers and the FoL on their side, the National government continued to reject WWU offers to negotiate. As Bill reflected, "It really was a challenge, a heroic challenge, by a small number of militant unions and their supporters against both foreign and national capital and their local politicians and against the right wing of the union movement and the Labour Party leaders." The Labour Party, led by Walter Nash, declared its neutrality.
*
Two thousand Auckland wharfies were locked out on 19 February 1951, and they quickly organised. Despite his youth and short tenure as a watersider, Bill became a member of the Auckland Waterside Workers’ lockout committee. He spoke at meetings and got the WWU’s illegal publications printed for distribution. Freemans Bay wharfie Jim Knox, another member of the committee, became a prominent public speaker, drumming up support. Barnes, Drennan, Mitchell, Watene and Ron Jones played key leadership roles in Auckland; Jones managed to withdraw almost all the union’s funds from the bank before the regulations took effect, giving the Auckland union more resources than branches in other ports. The Northern Drivers’ Union provided office space for the deregistered Auckland WWU when it was forced to vacate its union office.
Len Gale, artist for the publicity team, described how the lockout committee operated: "The foyer [of the Trades Hall in Hobson Street] was where the day-to-day decisions were made. You could feel the energy, electric, as small knots of men and women huddled and conversed. Now and then one would cross to another group to check on a detail and report back to his or her comrades. Much of the work of these groups was hush, hush. The Regulations hung heavy.
"It was here that Johnny Mitchell, in charge of publicity, coordinated his team. The typist, artist, the office where he could print the bulletin. Here too Frank Barnard and Ossie Osman sorted out the night’s roster for the butchers. Check with farmers for available beasts. Check with transport for delivery to the depots. Tom Spiller ready for the fray and ‘Pincher’ Martin with his shipmate, born fighter Ronny [sic] Black. Placards to be made. Marshals’ arm bands to be sewn: who has the skills and a machine? Food and drink for those on picket duty. Collect baby food from Patel in Glen Eden. Rally a team of fruit pickers to go to Oratia. A hundred details to be acted on to bind the union folk together. No one afraid, yet this time they knew they had their backs to the wall.
"It has to be said that a person’s character is tested in moments of great crisis and this was one. That’s where I met Bill Andersen. His main job I learnt later was getting printing done, no easy task, as ‘illegal’ printers were likely to end up in jail. Bill was a fine-looking man, strong yet quiet in his manner. He was on good terms with other activists and when he spoke, those he was involved with took heed."
During the lockout and associated strikes, union members did not get other paid work; this was regarded as akin to strikebreaking. Families weathered the five-month dispute by drawing on meagre savings, borrowing money, and leaving bills unpaid. Strike relief was distributed from union funds, but did not meet basic costs. Accommodation costs were partially funded but this did not cover even half the average rent. Watersiders’ wives and older children went out to work.
*
While Bill was busy avoiding Special Branch police in performing his lockout committee work, Flora’s concern was to ensure they had food on the table. Many meals were taken with Bill’s family, and that is largely how the couple survived the lockout. There was also food provided by the union. The Auckland WWU relief committee’s main job was to collect, parcel up and distribute food to watersiders’ families from a number of depots around Auckland.
At the beginning of the lockout, the women’s auxiliary assisted in this work, but from mid-March, women were excluded from relief work at the depots. Mitchell spoke up for them but others argued that women were not capable of heavy lifting. Relief work was redefined as men’s work to counter the emasculating effects of the lockout – if men were no longer able to be breadwinners on the wharves, they would distribute food parcels instead. As a result, Flora remembers, food parcels were missing essentials: "We used to get a handful of bits of things. . . . We never really got the things that were necessary – like we didn’t get eggs or meat – occasionally we got a bit of meat." The women’s auxiliary instead organised activities and resources for the children of waterside families. Flora received a baby’s layette from the women’s Auxiliary, which she appreciated. Flora and Bill had little money for the five months because their families were too hard up to give them more than two or three pounds. Flora can’t remember how they paid their rent, but she does recall proudly they never went into debt. Possibly they had a sympathetic landlord, and Flora’s employment as a machinist would have been crucial.
For those locked out, May was a very difficult month; pickets on the wharves were violently closed down by police, army, navy and air-force platoons. The CPNZ forbade violence during the waterfront dispute, but Blackie was involved in so many fights with strikebreakers that he had to go into hiding to avoid both arrest and Walsh’s associates out for revenge. Bill got into a fight with one of those associates, an English middleweight boxer called Jackie Hughes. In 1949, after an argument at a party, Hughes had hit Bill from behind with a glass bottle; Bill was hospitalised and carried a scar on the back of his neck. During the waterfront dispute, Bill had an opportunity for revenge outside the Ambassadors Hotel, and this time he got the better of Hughes. Later, when his children asked about the scar, Bill told them one of two stories: it was a ringworm scar from a cat, or, a Japanese samurai had got him with his sword during the war.
Heavily pregnant, Flora did not attend a march up Queen Street on June 1. Twelve hundred watersiders and supporters, led by twelve women’s auxiliary members, rallied to advertise a public meeting that would tell the watersiders’ side of the story. Police attempted to stop the march and conflict erupted. Bill describes ‘Bloody Friday’ as "the most violent and bitter physical encounter between the Wharfies and the police". Fuzz Barnes was arrested and charged with inciting disorder, but the women involved claimed ‘police had pushed, shoved and punched them and referred to them as prostitutes’.
Flora and Bill’s son Karl Gordon Andersen was born only days later, on June 11, 1951. Flora’s mother sent a heater and toaster, and her sister sent up a pram by ship. Once the waterfront dispute was over, Bill wheeled the pram home.
Seamen and miners held out until early July. On 11 July, the WWU voted to return to work – but by this stage, their jobs were already filled and the union was effectively destroyed. Bill received his loyalty card, which read ‘Stood Loyal Right Through’ for 151 days, in December 1951. "I thought it was the struggle to end all struggles and I enjoyed it terrifically", he reflected. Bill drew on his experiences to dream a new future: "We had our own butchers, boot repairers, barbers and so on and we managed – just think if so many workers could manage themselves for five months this way how the working people could manage without the capitalists if we owned the factories, ships."
This vision sustained him as he faced unemployment. Taken with kind permission from Comrade: Bill Andersen – A Communist, Working-Class Life by Cybèle Locke (Bridget Williams Books, $50), available in bookstores nationwide.
