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A Tale of Two Towns:
Industrial Pickets, Police Practices and Judicial Review
David Baker*
Both the 1992 APPM Burnie dispute and the late December 1999 Lyttelton industrial dispute involved small bands of local police adopting peace-keeping and non-interventionist control of picket-lines. Considerable criticism from management, and subsequently the judiciary, was directed against the non-confrontational police response. Judicial criticisms of police handling of both disputes failed to consider the adverse consequences of a return to a traditionally aggressive policing approach. This article argues that the local relationship between union officials and local police was a significant factor in limiting violence and that a resort to belligerent policing of picketing should be resisted. The similarities of police and union approaches in both cases were stark, as were the criticisms of alleged police inactivity.
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| This article purports to recount neither the protracted 1992 Associated Pulp and Paper Mill (APPM) industrial dispute at Burnie, Tasmania, nor the short-lived Lyttelton (New Zealand) wharf picket in late 1999 when local activist Christine Clarke suffered fatal injuries after being run over by a four wheel drive motor vehicle.1 The purpose is to explore those factors that limited violence at these two disputes, the significance of the policing-union rapport and the potential ramifications of legal judgements. Although there are marked differences between the Burnie and Lyttelton industrial disputes, the similarities of police and picketer interaction are significant. |
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In both Australia and New Zealand, unionists have usually accepted some police involvement during the processes of protracted industrial disputes, but police tactics have been subjected to considerable criticism. The history of the policing of industrial disputes in Australia covers a motley and erratic pattern of intermittent violence and suppression. Employers customarily relied on the police, the apparatus of the state, to assist their plants to remain accessible and to protect staff and strike-breakers. Although there was no formulated policy of repression against strikers and although most industrial disputes have not involved police intervention, whenever major and prolonged conflict between worker and police occurred on the Australian industrial front, police actions were usually uncompromising, ruthless and legalistic.2 |
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As the coercive arm and guardian of the state, police in Australia historically at times adopted aggressive and bellicose tactics that escalated the tensions and potential violence during industrial conflict. This was so at Clunes in Victoria in 1873; at Adamson in the Hunter Valley, north of Sydney in 1888; at Townsville in Northern Queensland in 1919; at Rothbury in the Hunter Valley in 1929– 30, and at Korumburra in Victoria in 1937.3 When political and ideological clashes between capital and labour were rife amidst the communist hysteria of the 1920s, police saw themselves as defenders of freedom and enforcers of legitimate power against waterside workers and coal-miners in particular.4 A few notorious examples of police violence include: 'Black Baton Friday' on 2 February 1912 in Brisbane; 'Bloody Sunday', a pitched battle at Fremantle wharf on 4 May 1919;5 the shooting of Alan Whittaker at Port Melbourne on 2 November 1928; the NSW police 'flying squad' terrorising the northern NSW coal-mining communities in late 1929 and early 1930,6 and the 1948 'St. Patrick's Day bash' in Brisbane. For decades during protracted disputation, belligerent police excesses continued unchecked, unchanged and undeterred.7 |
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