The capitalists had been preparing for the onslaught for some time. Seizing on the watersiders' reputation for militancy and readiness to take strike action when needed, they vilified the workers as "lazy wharfies" and red-baited their leadership as part of a more general witch-hunting offensive. More than one cartoonist boosted their careers fostering this caricature of the workers.

The immediate prologue to the lockout was an attack led by the Labour Party government on the Carpenters Union. In 1949, in the middle of a dispute in which the carpenters had won widespread solidarity, the government deregistered their union and encouraged the formation of a scab outfit. The top leaders of the Federation of Labour (FOL), the national union federation, gave the attack their support. Labour ministers justified their action by describing the affair as a "communist plot."

In the wake of that setback for the labor movement, the FOL leaders split the federation around a government-supported demand that the watersiders leave the World Federation of Trade Unions--dubbed the "voice of Moscow" by reactionary politicians from Washington to Wellington.

The same year, Labour ministers rammed through a "yes" vote in a referendum to establish peacetime conscription--a demonstrative sign of the rulers' preparation for new wars, four years after the end of World War II. The measure helped to alienate the union-conscious workers who were the core of the party's active base and electoral support. In the subsequent election the National party, representing big business in New Zealand, won a majority. The new prime minister, Sidney Holland, stepped up the red-baiting and antiunion propaganda that had marked his election campaign.  
 
The showdown is prepared
The stage was set for what shipping company representative Keith Belford described in November 1950 as a "showdown" with the "waterside workers and some allied unions." Speaking at a hearing of a royal commission on the waterfront, Belford advocated the adoption of antiunion legislation modeled on the U.S. Taft-Hartley Act and the Australian Crimes Act. "I don't want it to be thought that I welcome such a [showdown], I would much rather see a change in the union leadership," he stated.

The watersiders, along with freezing workers, miners, and a few other industrial unions, had earned both the fear and hatred of the capitalist class. Waterside workers occupied a strategic place in a capitalist economy heavily dependent on seaborne trade. Until the impact of the introduction of containers beginning three decades ago, their unions were also numerically a substantial part of the labor movement. Before, during, and after the war, the watersiders engaged in running battles with the shipowners over wages and hours, hiring procedures, and questions of safety. They were quick to lend solidarity to other unions involved in disputes.

The union also helped to lead a campaign against the introduction of peacetime conscription and opposed aspects of the government's preparation for new wars, including its commitment of forces to the brutal 1950–53 U.S.-led assault on Korea and British aggression in Malaya. "Not a son or a gun for Malaya" ran a slogan publicized by the union's monthly newspaper, the Transport Worker.

The National government and the shipowners seized on the issue of wages to launch their offensive, granting the WWU a 9 percent wage hike compared to a 15 percent national award to other unions on Jan. 31, 1951. When the union responded by clamping a ban on overtime, the shipowners reacted quickly, closing the gates on February 19 and beginning the lockout. Two days later Prime Minister Holland declared a state of emergency. Shortly after, troops began to load and unload ships.

"Any individual or group of individuals who stand in the way of, or limit the country's preparations for defense...is a traitor to the country and should be treated accordingly," said Holland. His government's emergency regulations were based on the Public Safety Act passed in 1932 after unemployed workers had defended themselves from rampaging cops in the streets of Auckland; they also bore many parallels to "special" measures imposed in World War II.

The regulations relieved the prime minister of any obligation to call parliament together, and allowed the executive to override any other legislation and suppress all civil liberties. The government was empowered to take over union funds and suspend awards, or contracts, as it did immediately to the watersiders. Rank-and-file police officers were given powers of arrest without a warrant, while their superiors enjoyed unrestricted right of entry and the authority to prohibit meetings and marches.

For workers, an "offense," among other things, meant printing or publishing anything that was likely to encourage a strike, and insulting a person for continuing to work--i.e., calling them a "scab." Jail terms and stiff fines were stipulated for those who transgressed. Overnight it became a crime to donate food to the workers' families. This provision was often less strictly enforced, however, given the government's fear of touching off a wider explosion.

The response of many workers to the rulers' offensive, and particularly this broadside against fundamental political rights, was immediate. Encouraged by watersiders, who spoke at a number of union meetings, some 12,000 miners, freezing workers, railway workers, seafarers, and others downed tools rather than handle scab goods or work alongside military labor.  
 
Proletarian social movement
Denied a legal platform, the WWU and its supporters produced millions of illegal leaflets, putting their side of the story. National WWU leaders Jock Barnes and Toby Hill spoke at public meetings involving tens of thousands of people. A May speaking tour attracted a total audience of 35,000 people around the country.

The watersiders led a march to publicize one such meeting planned for June 3 in a central Auckland park. Baton-charged by the police, many marchers were hospitalized; nevertheless, the meeting went ahead and drew a crowd of 17,000 people.

Efforts by the locked-out watersiders and the striking workers to disseminate the truth of the struggle in defiance of the regulations, and by workers, farmers, and others across the country to provide solidarity and aid to the families of striking and locked-out workers, took on the characteristics of a social movement. Backyard butchers and distribution centers were established. Many working farmers, from market gardeners in Auckland to beef and sheep farmers elsewhere, donated food to the relief centers organized by watersiders' wives and others.

At the same time, this social movement had an underground character, given the sweeping character of the regulations, the widespread police surveillance, and the frequent presence of the armed forces near workers' mobilizations.

The Labour Party, whose leader, Walter Nash, opposed some of the gag laws but declared himself "neither for the waterside workers or against them," was deeply divided by the dispute. The entire country of less than 2 million people, mostly located on two large islands, was transfixed and polarized by the struggle. For at least three decades afterward, people would still talk about "where they stood" in 1951, and assess acquaintances and family members by the position they had taken.

Port unions in Canada, Britain, and the United States organized financial solidarity and industrial protest action in support of the embattled workers. In neighboring Australia, waterfront workers donated up to $100,000 in the course of the dispute. After the Australian Waterside Workers Federation slapped a black ban in May on ships loaded by troops or nonunion labor in New Zealand, the Australian government organized soldiers and scabs to load ships in a number of ports, threatened to deregister the union, and charged its national leader under the Crimes Act with interfering with overseas trade. Union leaders called off the ban.

From 1950 onwards Canberra had prepared "Operation Alien," a plan to employ troops on the docks and mines in the event of strike action against the Communist Party Dissolution Bill--legislation that was shelved after its principal proposal was defeated in a 1951 referendum. (See "Australia in 1951: Lessons for fight against antilabor witch-hunt" in Dec. 24, 2001, Militant.)  
 
Labour officials side with government
In contrast to this widespread solidarity, the Federation of Labour officials called for the watersiders to accept compulsory arbitration, and ordered striking unionists to return to work. The vehemence of the red-baiting rhetoric of FOL leaders like Fintan Patrick Walsh rivaled that of the most reactionary politicians. Opponents of the conciliation and arbitration system, they said--meaning the watersiders and their allies--"can be successful only if they overthrew the government by a revolutionary conspiracy." They added that the attack on the watersiders was "part of a war that New Zealand troops are fighting in Korea."

On April 24 an FOL conference announced that the federation would take no action against the emergency regulations. The federation officials' maneuvers and pressure on miners--including maneuvers behind the back of elected leaders--freezing workers, and others eventually started to bring results. As the struggle became a war of attrition, the government's attempts to break watersiders away from their union had some results, particularly in more isolated ports. At the same time, progress was being made in constructing the scab union. Eventually fewer than 10 percent of WWU members crossed the picket line.

Confronted by these lengthening odds, the National Strike Council formed by striking unions called for a return to work in late June. WWU leaders declared they were prepared to negotiate, and announced they would accept the government's conditions. At each stage of the negotiations, however, the government added new demands, finally insisting the union be broken up and its leadership replaced.

When the watersiders returned to work on July 16 their union was fragmented into 26 port unions. Other militant unions suffered a similar fate. The Wellington freezing workers, who had led the union's national strike, were divided into 12 shed unions, and the Wellington Drivers Union was broken into six districts. With large-scale victimization on the wharves, only 4 percent of the new waterfront union in Auckland were veterans of the old union. Signs outside factories had read "Watersiders need not apply" during the dispute, and the same policy applied in many plants after July 16. Jock Barnes, jailed for two months for defaming a policemen, was never able to get hired on the wharves again.

Seeking to capitalize on its victory, the National Party called a snap election and kept the emergency regulations in place almost until the day of the vote. Labour's vote disintegrated, and National won with an increased majority.  
 
Rulers' victory was hard-won
The defeat of the watersiders and other militant unions brought the country's postwar upturn in union struggles to a sharp end. The rulers succeeded to a large extent in atomizing the most militant layers of the labor movement that had been forged in union struggles of the mid to late '40s and that were linked to earlier struggles, including in the depression.

The rulers' victory did not come easily, however. Although the workers were finally forced to relent before the government and employer offensive, they and their legions of supporters waged an impressive 151-day rearguard struggle. Their resistance made the confrontation an important landmark for revolutionary-minded working people and youth to both honor and learn from.

In particular, these workers' story gives working people and youth of today an insight into the potential power of the industrial unions and the capacity of the working class to draw other social layers behind it in struggle; it also helps us learn about the limitations of militant syndicalist leaders like those who headed the WWU in 1951.

A discussion of these points and of the international context of the 1951 lockout will be the subject of an article in a subsequent issue of the Militant.  
 
 
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