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Book Review
| Ray Gietzelt, Worth Fighting For: The Memoirs of Ray Gietzelt, Federation Press, Sydney, 2004. pp. xiv + 217. $29.95 paper.
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| If for no other reason, Ray Gietzelt must be commended for leaving us a personal record of his career with the Federated Miscellaneous Workers Union of Australia (FMWU). Too often, Australian trade union leaders provide little fodder for the chroniclers of Australia labour history and for labour biographers. |
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Born in 1922, Gietzelt was a child of the Great Depression which he said 'fashioned his political instincts'. He spent his formative years in the Sydney suburb of Newtown but did most of his growing up in Sans Souci after the family moved there in 1929. He was studying chemistry at college at the outbreak of World War II and was eventually accepted into the Australian Army in 1942 after being first rejected by the Royal Australia Air Force on medical grounds. He saw active service in New Guinea until he was demobilised in 1945. |
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Gietzelt first joined the FMWU in 1940 and, after the War, he renewed his membership whilst working in a paint factory run by his father. He soon became aligned with a group of FMWU members who had become disaffected with the autocratic control of the union leadership and, following bitterly contested elections in the early 1950s, this group first won control of the NSW branch and then the federal leadership. In 1955, Gietzelt was elected federal secretary of FMWU and served continuously in that position until his retirement in 1984. |
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We learn a great deal here about his leadership as Gietzelt recounts the effort to build a numerically and financially strong union which went on to exert considerable influence in both the industrial and political wings of the Australian labour movement during its halcyon days of the 1960s and 1970s. In his 29 years as leader, membership grew from 21,349 in 1954 to a remarkable 122,148 by 1984. Under his leadership, the union also made a series of astute financial investment decisions in real estate and was restructured to meet the challenges of a number of successful amalgamations and branch expansions. By the late 1950s, disillusioned by the failure of the arbitration system to meet members' needs, Gietzelt's leadership group successfully guided the union into a 'militant and progressive' policy of collective bargaining, an experience which was to stand them in good stead when the Fraser Government abandoned its support for wage indexation in the early 1980s. |
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Gietzelt's incumbency did not go unchallenged. Chapter seven of this memoir presents a most intriguing account of the struggle against a right-wing inspired take over of the NSW branch of the FMWU in the early 1970s. Gietzelt's account is replete with tales of ASIO spies, stakeouts by private investigators, a misplaced bomb and Machiavellian and clandestine plots instigated by right-wing opponents in collaboration with disaffected FMWU members. Most disappointing for Gietzelt was the alleged betrayal by his trusted deputy, Don Hancock, who was suspected of conspiring against Gietzelt's regime in concert with the union's right-wing opponents. |
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We also learn of Gietzelt's time in the ACTU in a Services Group position and his influential role in the commissioning and administration of the ACTU history written by labour historian Jim Hagan. In 1984, the year of his retirement from the FMWU, Gietzelt also stood down as delegate to the ACTU Congress, ending one of the longest terms (17 years) in office of any ACTU executive member. |
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Ray Gietzelt had a long-term close association with Lionel Murphy, Neville Wran and Bob Hawke – who went on to become, respectively, a federal Labor Attorney-General and justice of the High Court, a State Labor Premier, and an Australian Prime Minister. Gietzelt's account of these relationships, supported by Murphy, Wran, and Hawke themselves, puts him in the realm of a 'kingmaker', having played an influential role in their rise to power. |
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These memoirs speak of a highly influential and key figure in the Australian labour movement during the first three decades of the post-World War II period. Importantly, Gietzelt is not into self-aggrandisement and he is particularly concerned here to acknowledge the role and achievements of others in union-building, particularly those in the lower echelons of the organisation. |
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Gietzelt includes a quote from Ben Chifley's address to the 1950 NSW State Labor Conference twice in these memoirs. Chifley was speaking of his own beliefs but the words seem to sum up Ray Gietzelt equally well:
Fancy being in the Labor Movement without radical tendencies. You cannot afford to be in the middle of the road. You have to be quite clear about what you believe in, whether popular or unpopular, and you have to fight for it (p. 87).
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Overall, this book is a valuable and interesting account of the leadership of one of Australia's foremost trade unions in the post-war period and one which also provides insights into the broader political and economic developments in the Australian labour movement occurring at that time. For labour historians and those interested in Australian labour history generally, this book is an essential companion to Margo Beasley's history of the 'Missos' and Christopher Sheil's doctoral thesis on the FMWU. |
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| University of Sydney |
HARRY KNOWLES | |
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